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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class Shadow Chameleon (OP, for fun, not actual use base class)



gooddragon1
2017-06-15, 11:58 PM
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nonsi
2017-06-16, 11:26 PM
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I think the concept needs a lot of work.




Once per day, a shadow chameleon may form his own shadow into a medium sized companion that follows him at all times. This shadow has levels in one base class of the shadow chameleon's choice equal to his shadow chameleon level. It has skills, feats, alignment, movement speeds, and hit points identical to the shadow chameleon's own.


Seems OP. if you choose Wizard, your shadow is basically a wizard with extras, while you're a shadow of your shadow in terms of capabilities.





A shadow chameleon can select any feat that either he or his shadow would qualify for (he may delay selection of a feat gained from leveling up until he chooses to take it, but his level for that feat is treated as the level when he first had the option of selecting it).


That's weird. What do you do with a metamagic feat when you yourself have no class features?





The shadow persists until destroyed or another one is formed. A shadow chameleon's shadow is the same one even if it is destroyed or formed differently and retains most things between iterations except class features and choices made for those features such as spells known.


Seems like the shadow would be more resilient than the character itself.
Also, it should be spells prepared, because rewriting your known spells each time anew is way too much.





It has ability scores of 14 + 1/2 the shadow chameleon's class level.


So, it excels at nothing at low levels and excels at everything at high levels.





The shadow cannot use or carry any non-mundane items of any kind, but it has natural armor of 2 + 1/2 the shadow chameleon's class level and a slam attack that deals damage as a monk of level equal to it's HD would.


"cannot use or carry any non-mundane items" implies that those have a negative influence on the shadow.
So, how does non-mundane gear that’s imposed on the shadow affect it?





This shadow has a type of outsider and no subtypes. It remains within 10 feet of the shadow chameleon at all times. The forming of a shadow is supernatural, but the shadow itself is extraordinary and the process of forming a shadow is not disrupted by effects that would affect supernatural abilities.


What do you mean by "effects that would affect supernatural abilities"? Is it anti-magic in specific, or are there other effects that you had in mind?

rferries
2017-06-17, 10:34 AM
Interesting! It's basically Leadership for free at 1st level, but no other class features. Possibly not all that overpowered after all.

Morphic tide
2017-06-17, 08:05 PM
Hmm... I'm already considering means of balancing it and making it more coherent, as well as making it less balanced and complex.

Being less balanced and simpler, I'd have it be heavily based on Shadow Illusion and take duplication further. Essentially, Manipulate Personal Shadow gets an overhaul to be a partial character, rather than a full one, with build options that make it easy to get a strong creation with nasty tricks. Instead of making a separate character each day, you make a creature out of various abilities at the start of each day, with high-powered options like an altered Shadow Illusion ability to make it more open-ended than it already is(heresy, I know), energy drain, Shadow creation and so on. Additionally, a variant Shadow template and a variant Shadow creature that makes said Spawn able to scale with the enemy it's made from, while also having the ability to just directly turn killed enemies into Shadows and Devourers later on. Similarly, the actual character can get access to Shadow Illusion abilities to make copies of creatures and spells with extremely vague guidelines to them, like a CR, volume and spell level based limits to make the list of copied things be "everything." Then throw in a bit of Plane of Shadow travel options like what Shadowdancer gets to have the ability to ignore many obstacles, only without any restrictions on use. Then toss in direct character sheet element copying to finish, making something that's rather simple to play due to being able to nearly just declare you are doing a thing and then do that thing.

Making it balanced, my idea is to turn it into a base class that merges Shadowdancer and Chameleon into something that acts like Factotum, with all the stuff above being done in a more balanced fashion. All the Shadow Illusion stuff would be focused on copying things onto your Shadow and yourself, from gear to spells to feats, within fairly strict limits that place them firmly into t2 or t3 by being able to fill literally any roll competently, changing on a daily basis, possibly reaching t1 by virtue of being able to do literally everything with preparation time, much like a Wizard with every spell in existence in their spell book, or a Psion with 1/day free Psychic Reformation.

gooddragon1
2017-06-17, 09:22 PM
I think the concept needs a lot of work.

I was just doing it for fun/relaxation/zen mode. Maybe a bit of inspiration for later or something.


Seems OP. if you choose Wizard, your shadow is basically a wizard with extras, while you're a shadow of your shadow in terms of capabilities.

Or a familiar in a way... :D


That's weird. What do you do with a metamagic feat when you yourself have no class features?

They're useless to you, but useful to it.


Seems like the shadow would be more resilient than the character itself.
Also, it should be spells prepared, because rewriting your known spells each time anew is way too much.

You could pick the same ones each time if you wanted to cut down on bookwork or not if you don't.


So, it excels at nothing at low levels and excels at everything at high levels.

That's pretty accurate.


"cannot use or carry any non-mundane items" implies that those have a negative influence on the shadow.
So, how does non-mundane gear that’s imposed on the shadow affect it?

No negative influence, they just can't use or benefit from them. If it were forced to wear a +5 full plate it wouldn't get the +5 extra AC from it. It would just get the +8 AC it normally gives and the penalties.


What do you mean by "effects that would affect supernatural abilities"? Is it anti-magic in specific, or are there other effects that you had in mind?

Anti-magic fields, the area around the base of the city of sigil, etc.


Interesting! It's basically Leadership for free at 1st level, but no other class features. Possibly not all that overpowered after all.

Leadership causes penalties when your guys die though. I would say this is probably tier 0.5 if not at least tier 1.


Hmm... I'm already considering means of balancing it and making it more coherent, as well as making it less balanced and complex.

Being less balanced and simpler, I'd have it be heavily based on Shadow Illusion and take duplication further. Essentially, Manipulate Personal Shadow gets an overhaul to be a partial character, rather than a full one, with build options that make it easy to get a strong creation with nasty tricks. Instead of making a separate character each day, you make a creature out of various abilities at the start of each day, with high-powered options like an altered Shadow Illusion ability to make it more open-ended than it already is(heresy, I know), energy drain, Shadow creation and so on. Additionally, a variant Shadow template and a variant Shadow creature that makes said Spawn able to scale with the enemy it's made from, while also having the ability to just directly turn killed enemies into Shadows and Devourers later on. Similarly, the actual character can get access to Shadow Illusion abilities to make copies of creatures and spells with extremely vague guidelines to them, like a CR, volume and spell level based limits to make the list of copied things be "everything." Then throw in a bit of Plane of Shadow travel options like what Shadowdancer gets to have the ability to ignore many obstacles, only without any restrictions on use. Then toss in direct character sheet element copying to finish, making something that's rather simple to play due to being able to nearly just declare you are doing a thing and then do that thing.

Making it balanced, my idea is to turn it into a base class that merges Shadowdancer and Chameleon into something that acts like Factotum, with all the stuff above being done in a more balanced fashion. All the Shadow Illusion stuff would be focused on copying things onto your Shadow and yourself, from gear to spells to feats, within fairly strict limits that place them firmly into t2 or t3 by being able to fill literally any roll competently, changing on a daily basis, possibly reaching t1 by virtue of being able to do literally everything with preparation time, much like a Wizard with every spell in existence in their spell book, or a Psion with 1/day free Psychic Reformation.

I think making it balanced would take a lot of work (this was a very quickly made thing as it is). The core idea is to have something like an animal companion and the chameleon class put together:
+No penalties for it dying other than having to wait.
+Can copy features from different class types (healer, mage, thief, fighter, etc.)
+Extra action economy boost.

Your ideas on balancing it look like they'd be about right, but it might have to be weaker than a normal chameleon since it's a boost in the action economy.

Morphic tide
2017-06-17, 09:59 PM
I think making it balanced would take a lot of work (this was a very quickly made thing as it is). The core idea is to have something like an animal companion and the chameleon class put together:
+No penalties for it dying other than having to wait.
+Can copy features from different class types (healer, mage, thief, fighter, etc.)
+Extra action economy boost.

Your ideas on balancing it look like they'd be about right, but it might have to be weaker than a normal chameleon since it's a boost in the action economy.

Well, my biggest idea for such things is something found in a hypothetical Druid variant that can shift the Animal Companion mechanics between themselves and any number of creatures they feel like. Basically, if you want more action economy, you can have it by splitting power between bodies, but the inherent scaling of the system makes doing so have inherent tradeoffs.

For example, let's say you get one extra HD per class level. You can have that HD go to you, getting more health and to-hit capacity for better melee power and damage soak, or you can put it into other creatures, getting more actions but having less force concentration, leading to a higher chance of losing long-term assets, including the PC proper. Split it too many ways and you get some serious problems with force concentration, as none of your things have enough capacity to deal with larger threats. Great for butchering masses of weak enemies, though, especially if you have someone with Mass spells to buff the large group of creatures to hell and back.

In this case, the Shadow and Chameleon abilities are drawing on a shared pool, acting more like a Shadow-themed flexible Synthesist Summoner(PF archetype infamous for being a pain to put down because 35 HD at level 20) able to split Eidolon levels between themselves and any number of Eidolons than a regular Chameleon type class. The ability copying would be mostly in the form of Shadow Illusion based shenanigans, using Shadow-stuff to make stronger muscles, harder skins and quicker "nerves". And, of course, taking bits of the Shadows of others to copy their abilities, with limits on what's copyable, but the ability has to be there to copy for the balanced version.

The Imbalanced version, meanwhile, can basically name a feat or spell and have it, while also having a minion that makes the Summoner's Eidolon look positively tame.

gooddragon1
2017-06-17, 10:50 PM
Well, my biggest idea for such things is something found in a hypothetical Druid variant that can shift the Animal Companion mechanics between themselves and any number of creatures they feel like. Basically, if you want more action economy, you can have it by splitting power between bodies, but the inherent scaling of the system makes doing so have inherent tradeoffs.

For example, let's say you get one extra HD per class level. You can have that HD go to you, getting more health and to-hit capacity for better melee power and damage soak, or you can put it into other creatures, getting more actions but having less force concentration, leading to a higher chance of losing long-term assets, including the PC proper. Split it too many ways and you get some serious problems with force concentration, as none of your things have enough capacity to deal with larger threats. Great for butchering masses of weak enemies, though, especially if you have someone with Mass spells to buff the large group of creatures to hell and back.

In this case, the Shadow and Chameleon abilities are drawing on a shared pool, acting more like a Shadow-themed flexible Synthesist Summoner(PF archetype infamous for being a pain to put down because 35 HD at level 20) able to split Eidolon levels between themselves and any number of Eidolons than a regular Chameleon type class. The ability copying would be mostly in the form of Shadow Illusion based shenanigans, using Shadow-stuff to make stronger muscles, harder skins and quicker "nerves". And, of course, taking bits of the Shadows of others to copy their abilities, with limits on what's copyable, but the ability has to be there to copy for the balanced version.

The Imbalanced version, meanwhile, can basically name a feat or spell and have it, while also having a minion that makes the Summoner's Eidolon look positively tame.

Well, this qualifies as the inspiration part. I've heard of classes in some circumstances transferring things between two entities so it's not totally foreign, but balancing it could be hard. Still, it'll be more interesting imo than a straight conversion of chameleon to a base class. Even presents an opportunity to not require an anti-anti magic field clause because the class could just have the abilities retain onto itself instead if it couldn't "summon" it's separate entity. I like the idea of a shadow mainly because they stick with you by default and possibly other reasons. Writing this up/thinking of how to make it work is going to take a bit of effort though... and I just installed crysis 1...

Also, it's probably going to have to be complex to make it balanced, and complexity is the bane of DM's reviewing homebrew. It'll be interesting to make though. I'll read more in depth on the transfer ideas you posted above once I'm out of ... Crysis mode? :D?

I'll have to evaluate whether it should be free shifting action wise/amounts transferred/etc. It's an interesting idea though.

Thoughts so far:
+Crysis isn't as fun as I thought it would be (To be fair(?) I'm cheating with cheat engine)
+No penalty for transfer, but "points" are more effective on the shadow than on self.
+Transfer as a standard action for either (a few times perhaps faster). This way, one casts or does something, the other uses a standard action to transfer. So both can't use the abilities to fullest extent in the same round.
+Pick a mode (maybe once per day? maybe more?) of class (like healer, mage, fighter, thief or something like this) to define what things you have available.
+Resources are converted to points maybe. Like spell slots and uses per day of things.
+Second type of points relating to things like HD, saves, attack bonus (things that aren't expended on use).

The idea of copying other abilities of things with shadows is interesting. Balancing is an issue, but it is a very interesting idea.
+Maybe something like the metamorphic transfer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#metamorphicTransfer) feat. Something you've encountered that had a shadow and your shadow companion was in that shadow it then gains the ability to copy an Ex or Su ability (being made of shadow it can imitate forms and such) of that encountered creature as long as it has HD less than or equal to your class level. Copying/using such an ability would require points expenditure and/or maybe have a per day limit.

More Ideas:
+1 point per level. 1 Shadow HD for every 4 points invested. Shadow HD give more benefits than normal HD.
+Points can be given to other bonuses for more specific boosts in greater amounts (like ability scores, saves, attack rolls). May have caps on how much can go to a specific boost though.
+Character has 3/4 BAB, shadow companion has full BAB (the shadow HD will by default give better benefits to it than to the character in this regard, but this will be the way of the points in all or almost all regards)
+Capstone 20 has the character able to take shadow form temporarily (max number of rounds per day split as desired) and gain equivalent benefits to shadow companion for points. Not fundamentally game changing, but cool.
+Not sure how whether to make stats of shadow companion identical, different, something?

noob
2017-06-18, 04:20 AM
base class of the shadow chameleon's choice equal to his shadow chameleon level
Can the chameleon be a murkdweller and then pick up a changeling wizard(the base class) and then turn himself in a level 9999999999 chameleon by a standard action?