3.P: Ambulatory or playable trees?

[Perturbulent]

Long story short, I have a pair of players. One wishes to be a dryad, the other wants to be her tree. Is there a way to make that work? Preferably on the lower side of the levels. Preferably without being sickened consistently. It's 3.P anything from pathfinder, 3.0 or 3.5 that might help is welcome. Reasonable homebrew might be considered.

[Prime32]

Livewood from Eberron is a type of tree that remains alive after being cut down. It's explicitly mentioned that there are buildings and ships with dryads bound to them because of this.

Livewood has also been mentioned as a component of warforged, which would probably be one of the easiest ways to play a "tree".

[InvisibleBison]

The first thing that springs to mind is the spell awaken (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/awaken.htm). I don't know how well an awakened tree will work as a PC, but it does seem interesting.

[Malimar]

There is also the treant racial class in Savage Species, which is, like all racial classes and all "playable" monsters, kind of garbage (unless you can take it as half of a gestalt).

[Perturbulent]

Livewood from Eberron is a type of tree that remains alive after being cut down. It's explicitly mentioned that there are buildings and ships with dryads bound to them because of this.

Livewood has also been mentioned as a component of warforged, which would probably be one of the easiest ways to play a "tree".

Livewood warforged might just do the trick. I'll have to offer the idea.
I knew treants might qualify, but they're kind of high powered and tricky, that's a lot of build dedication.

If anyone has any further ideas, I'm still happy to take them.

[Perturbulent]

The first thing that springs to mind is the spell awaken (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/awaken.htm). I don't know how well an awakened tree will work as a PC, but it does seem interesting.

If I recall, awakening a tree doesn't allow it to move, which is part of the reason the dryad pc was hoping to have a player be able to play the tree, so she'd be more free to move.

[Ruethgar]

3.5 awakened trees can move just fine, not sure about Pathfinder. However 3.5 awakened trees have massive ECL(5 for a small one). Dryads are ECL 4 and can be easily mobile with an Acorn of Far Travel. If you are going the Warforged route, don't forget to mention Ironwood Body and Landforged Walker. If they really want, you could update the Verdant Lord PrC which has the capstone of the plant type, the ability to animate endless trees, and the ability to wild shape into plants. There are also Life-Shaped creatures which are very similar to Warforged but far more customizable, able to be an actual tree instead of a tree-person-robot or tree spirit. Also, the combination of Tree Shape, Expeditious Retreat and Expansion(such as in a Sculpt Self custom item) causes you to become a Huge tree with 30ft movement speed and an effective Dex of 1. This also increases your strength to ungodly levels and is not suggested but including for completeness. You could also play a Living Spell (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Awakened_Living_Spell) of a Wood Wose, Tree Shape, or other. The Woodling Template is not very good for the LA, but would allow for a plant character. There are probably others I'm forgetting, but that is a fair array.

[gorfnab]

You said Pathfinder might be an option. Here are three tree like races from Pathfinder sources: Oakling (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/alluria-publishing/oakling), Seeding (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/jon-brazer-enterprises/seedling), and Ghoran (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/more-races/advanced-races-11-20-rp/ghoran-19-rp)

[Psyren]

Livewood from Eberron is a type of tree that remains alive after being cut down. It's explicitly mentioned that there are buildings and ships with dryads bound to them because of this.

Livewood has also been mentioned as a component of warforged, which would probably be one of the easiest ways to play a "tree".

Building on this idea, take the Oak Body feat at 1st-level and fluff yourself as being almost entirely wood and stone. This would be the easiest approach in 3.5.

In PF, you can play a Ghoran as suggested above, or an especially woody Oread, or go whole-hog and be a Treant or Awakened Tree using the "Monsters as PCs" rules.

[Deadline]

While I think that a refluffed warforged is your best bet (probably one that goes into Landforged Walker), you could also look into the Wizened Elder (MMIV), or the Woodling template (MM2?).

You could also use the Savage Species Monster class progression to play a Treant from level 1.

[OldTrees1]

Savage Species introduced monster classes
This forum then tried to make better designed monster classes

8 level Treant class (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?165439-3-5-Improved-monster-classes(2-0)-adapting-creatures-for-player-use-taking-requests!&p=9386283&viewfull=1#post9386283)

You can read the comments below the class for other's opinion of the class.

[Zaq]

There's the wood woad from MM3; the 3 LA is pretty reasonable (maybe a little bit excessive, but Plant features are pretty nice), but the 8 RHD is hard to swallow (though if you have a GM willing to work with the player, there's really no reason they need all that RHD, and they could easily be trimmed back). They hold a special place in my heart because we had a long-running campaign with a much-beloved NPC (not quite a DMPC) who was a wood woad (she had started out as a buomman and ended up as a wood woad because of shenanigans with a custom Reincarnate table, so she still adhered to the buomman vow of silence and could only sing), so they tend to be what I think of when I think of playable trees.

Of course, if you already have MM3 open to the wood woad page, you may as well turn to literally the next page and just use the woodling template (same LA, no RHD). Woodlings are a lot stronger than wood woads. Woodlings aren't true Plants (they don't have the Plant type), but they do get "Plant traits," so they basically get all the good parts of being a Plant while still keeping any benefits of their original type, if applicable. Wood woads are true Plants, so if that matters to you, that might be a consideration.

Of course, if you just want a playable critter who looks plantlike and you don't care about having Plant immunities, you could do worse than the killoren, a Fey from Races of the Wild that looks very plantlike. No LA or RHD. They have pretty neat abilities, too.

[Amphetryon]

I was going to suggest Woodling, and then Zaq beat me to it.

[The Vagabond]

Personally, if my characters were making a tree character, I'd just use pathfinders meth of CR=LvL, then just have him play a level 5 large tree, with pre-assigned construction points. Would be more balanced, and more interesting, and I'd say well worth the price.

[The Viscount]

I'm seconding the warforged recommendation, especially if you want to take Darkwood body, and say that it's also Livewood.

If you use a little bit of refluffing, you can use Volodni, which are plants with an LA of "only" 2 as opposed to woodlings 3. They are still full on plant type so they have that sweet mind affecting immunity, and take half damage from piercing. IF this were ever updated it would likely be made into DR, but it's not.

[Bohandas]

If I recall, awakening a tree doesn't allow it to move, which is part of the reason the dryad pc was hoping to have a player be able to play the tree, so she'd be more free to move.

IIRC the Awaken spell, when cast on a plant, gives it the characteristics of an animated object (except that it has the plant type and an intelligence score), and animated objects can move

[Inevitability]

There is also the treant racial class in Savage Species, which is, like all racial classes and all "playable" monsters, kind of garbage (unless you can take it as half of a gestalt).

I once saw a DM allow gestalting monster classes with any class of tier X or below (X being whatever seems like it'd be balanced in your campaign). It worked pretty well.

[atemu1234]

I once saw a DM allow gestalting monster classes with any class of tier X or below (X being whatever seems like it'd be balanced in your campaign). It worked pretty well.

Treant // Ranger sounds fun.