Making Slenderman WITHOUT Homebrew

[Malysev]

So I'm wanting to play Slenderman in my group's 3.5 campaign...sort of. I know that so much of Slendy isn't just about the aesthetics, but the cosmic horror he presents to the audience. So the thing I want to play will not be a true representation of the Eldritch Horror that is "The Slender Man".

I'm wanting to find an official race that is or can be taller and thinner than a normal human, is pale/paler than normal, is featurless/more vague looking than normal, and works well with an official class that's good at being sneaky and creepy. If the race has tentacles or the ability to gain them somehow, that would be great. So would teleportation abilities, mind control abilities, etc.

The more like Slenderman, in aesthetics and ability, the better. It just has to be all official and all 3.5 dungeons and dragons. I tried this once with a changeling factotem, and it worked out alright. But I'd like a better, more Slendery, version. Any ideas?

[AvatarVecna]

Are you attempting to make Slenderman as a monster for the PCs to face, or as a PC? And what powers do you generally associate with Slenderman?

[Waker]

I'm about to walk out the door, so I can't elaborate too much, but there are a few quick suggestions I can make.
Will Deformity (Thin) I believe is one you can grab from BoVD. There is also a feat to get tentacles from Lords of Madness, but I can't recall the name or requirements off hand.

[Malysev]

Are you attempting to make Slenderman as a monster for the PCs to face, or as a PC? And what powers do you generally associate with Slenderman?

A pc for me to play.

[Malysev]

I'm about to walk out the door, so I can't elaborate too much, but there are a few quick suggestions I can make.
Will Deformity (Thin) I believe is one you can grab from BoVD. There is also a feat to get tentacles from Lords of Madness, but I can't recall the name or requirements off hand.

Ah, I see the Willing Deformity feat. There's one for "gaunt" and another for "Deformity(Face)". So that could work out well. I'd love to hear more about the tentacles and the Lord's of Madness though.

[Malysev]

Ah, I see the Willing Deformity feat. There's one for "gaunt" and another for "Deformity(Face)". So that could work out well. I'd love to hear more about the tentacles and the Lord's of Madness though.

Actually I just found the LOM book and am looking through it. Yeah, there's lots of fun stuff in there. I think I might be able to make Slendy just from feats, physically anyways. So I need as many feats as possible at lvl 1. I know humans get an extra feat, but I'm pretty set on making a changeling. You get an extra feat for every "flaw" you take, right? I think I heard that once.

[Esprit15]

There's also Willing Deformity (Tall).

[Gildedragon]

Race: Changeling
Class: Shadowcaster

[AvatarVecna]

Hmm...alright, I've got a pretty neat build in mind. Optional bits are underlined. A quick word about flaws: you're generally only allowed to start with two, although if the DM lets you take more, that works too.

Base Race: Changeling.
Template(s): Dark Creature, Unseelie Fey , Magic-Blooded
Class Levels: Rogue (Penetrating Strike) 6/Warshaper 1
Feats (suggestions): Darkstalker, Craven, Willing Deformity (HoH version), Deformity (Tall), Deformity (Gaunt), Deformity (Face), Abominable Form, Item Familiar, Combat Reflexes, Vexing Flanker, Adaptable Flanker
Flaw suggestions: Frail, Pathetic (Constitution), Pathetic (Wisdom), Vulnerable

Basic idea here is that you'll start out the game with great Dex, great Cha, poor Wis, and Hide/Move Silently/Intimidate ridiculously high. When you pick up Warshaper, you'll be using the usual Warshaper cheese to give yourself a tentacle every time you change shape (presuming your DM is willing to tolerate this nonsense for the sake of a neat character idea); add as many tentacles as you can get away with, and go into combat.

Dark Creature template lets you Hide In Plain Sight, letting you use your ridiculous Hide/Move Silently to make your way across the battlefield unseen. Walk up to a target who you can flank and attack them while they're flatfooted (since they don't know you're coming). Make a sneak attack with each of your tentacles to add 3d6 (and possibly +8) to the damage; if you have enough attacks, and your attack bonus is good enough to give you a decent chance of hitting, you'll likely do quite a bit of damage. You'll need to shift your mindset with this kind of build: your actual defenses are kinda low, but you'll be basically impossible to find if you're bumping your stealth skills enough. However, depending on how the rules are interpreted, you probably need to spend a Move Action to re-Hide, which is a problem if you just made a Full Attack. Since this build is already pretty laden with cheese, if you got this far you've got a DM willing to tolerate a lot of shenanigans, so see if you can swing a 12000 gp "Shoes Of At-Will Lesser Celerity" (well within what you can afford by level 8, and even easier to afford if you make it a Rogue-only item). Picture it:

You're hidden, and walk up to a guy in the middle of a fight. Briefly, you appear next to him, lashing out with a mass of tentacles that each poke him a bit to death, with the lot of them doing enough to kill him; then, before his allies can move in to fight you, you disappear to somewhere within your movement speed of where you just were (probably 40 ft unless you've got an item/spell boosting it). They have to try and hunt you down, or predict when you're going to appear next, in order to get you...all while you're emerging from thin air over and over, picking them off one by one. You have become the horror monster...at lvl 8.

[Nifft]

Race: Changeling

Excellent idea.

Combine with feats:
L1 - Aberration Blood (LoM)
(flaw) - Inhuman Reach (LoM)
(flaw) - Deepspawn (LoM

... and you can have 10 ft. tentacle reach at level 1.


For class, I'd suggest Swordsage, with your primary focus on Shadow Hand, and your secondary focus on Diamond Mind & Tiger Claw.

At level 1, you have Concealment whenever you move (Child of Shadows stance), and your attacks appear to come from impossible angles (Shadow Blade Technique).

At level 2, you are always one step ahead of your opponents -- they strike at you, but you're already gone (Wisdom to AC).

Level 3, you'll want to take the Adaptive Style feat. You can turn invisible at-will (Cloak of Deception), or you can teleport 50 ft. at-will (Shadow Jaunt).

At level 4, you get whichever maneuver you didn't pick at level 3 (invisible or teleport are both key to your image).

At level 5, you want Assassin's Stance (+2d6 sneak attack) or Dance of the Spider (spider climb at-will).

You can continue with Swordsage all the way to level 20 and be 100% dark scary sneaky guy.

You could dip into Totemist for 2 levels to get more tentacles and/or claw attacks.

Warshaper is also an option (at +4 BAB).

Cheers!

[Waker]

Ok, I'm more or less settled at home now. So let's get listing some nasty stuff to be a monster.
Willing Deformity so you can grab Deformity (Gaunt) and (Tall). Willing Deformity and Gaunt are both from BoVD. Tall is from Heroes of Horror.
Aberration Blood so you can grab Deepspawn and Inhuman Reach. All are from Lords of Madness.
Between Deformity (Tall) and Inhuman Reach, you've got a reach of 15ft. Because of Deepspawn you qualify for Flexible Limb from Savage Species for an additional 5ft to your reach, though one could argue that it also applies to Inhuman Reach because of the description. Assuming the DM hasn't thrown the book at you, you now possess a 20ft reach as a medium creature.
As a Changeling, you qualify for the Warshaper class in Complete Warrior. at level 3 you gain Morphic Reach. You now have a reach of 25ft.

[DMVerdandi]

Hmm, as far as the class, I'd Suggest the dragon magazine Erudite, with the spell to power ACF.

Now, to explain why it's great.

A. You get to use arguably the most flexible psionic class, if not class in the game.

Is that Overpowered? No. Don't be that guy, and it will work fabulously. Simply have a working load out of powers/spells that you use regularly. Become familiar with them, and make printouts. That's your bread and butter.
Then, simply adjust fire based on the needs of the group, and you, based on your role. You want to be that creeper, yes? The thing that goes bump in the night? The Boogie man? The Slenderman

Focus on fear effects, illusions, enchantments, teleportation, and cloud/fog spells. Use your Unique powers per day for Utility stuff.

The Unique power per day mechanic + power point system is just perfect really. It's like a playstation 3 controller, it just fits, and ergonomically makes sense.



B. It works better to come up with really interesting spell/power combinations than anything else.
Let's say you want to use some assassin exclusive spell. Makes sense, it's slender man, right? You are capable of doing that. Now, lets say it works really well with some bard spell. You can also do that.
And finally, maybe you still want the flexibility that inertial armor from the psion/wilder list gives you.
Too easy.
Obviously don't abuse any spell loops. But you can do that with any 9th level caster.

C. You can absorb power/spell knowledge from PALMING SOMEONE'S DOME.
That's just great.






All that considered, changeling is perfect for race, and the deformity advice that the previous posters gave was pretty spot on.

[Hackulator]

Twisted Lord prestige class.

[ATHATH]

Seconding Swordsage.

Twisted Lord MIGHT work, but it'd probably come online too late.

[Manyasone]

Well, since you didn't actually specify (or i simply did not register it...end of school year tiredness, daughters...) I actually have a rather nice combo that comes quite close. It does involve DSP material, be warned
Combine an Aegis -aberrant- with a Daevic -passion of Wrath- into the PrC Black Templar.
Naturally you will use as much tentacles as possible with the aegis and voila...Slenderman, sort off

[Wacky89]

Serving a elder evil would grant you vile bonus feats at lvl 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20
That helps with picking up all the deformity feats you want

[Sam K]

It seems like a lot of people are imagining slenderman as a damage dealer? Isn't the whole idea with him that he doesn't seem to DO very much, strange things just happen around him? People get paranoid, go insane, or simply vanish without a trace. Accidents. Families turning on each other. Slenderman is distinctively NOT a graphical violence kind of damage dealer, even if he does have reach.

All this makes me think psion. StP Erudite is obviously the most powerful and flexible, but other options could work as well. You need some way to get invisibility or stealth, though. Dark creature (for hide in plain sight) would be a great start.

[Psyren]

It's 3rd-party but, the Pactmaker class (a conversion of the Binder to Pathfinder with a whole pile of new vestiges) has as one of its vestiges a 2nd-level one that is clearly inspired by Slenderman and gives your binder some creepy thematic powers. His name is Al'kra, The Operated. (http://alharadnd.wikidot.com/al-kra) He lets you blur the area around you, teleport towards your targets, and whenever you use one of his abilities, shadowy tentacles erupt from your back.

[Manyasone]

It's 3rd-party but, the Pactmaker class (a conversion of the Binder to Pathfinder with a whole pile of new vestiges) has as one of its vestiges a 2nd-level one that is clearly inspired by Slenderman and gives your binder some creepy thematic powers. His name is Al'kra, The Operated. (http://alharadnd.wikidot.com/al-kra) He lets you blur the area around you, teleport towards your targets, and whenever you use one of his abilities, shadowy tentacles erupt from your back.
Call me a dingus. I forgot about the binder. The name 'ballad if the tall man' and the lore screams slenderman.

[Thurbane]

If I understand the lore on Slender Man correctly, his key attributes are: being tall and slender; being extremely hard to see until it's too late; and inducing fear.

A Dark Creature Skulk with the God Touched (Vecna) template is going to tick a lot of boxes. Load up on the feats Dark Stalker, Willing Deformity (tall), maybe some Aberrant blooded feats, and invest in maxing out Intimidate. Maybe go into Factotum so you get that extra versatility and some SLAs to back up the abilities you want to emulate.

Going to be a very feat starved build, though. Worshipping an Elder Evil and maybe the Human Paragon class might help.

[Prime32]

Twisted Lord prestige class.

Twisted Lord MIGHT work, but it'd probably come online too late.

Came here to post this. It has the right looks, can scare people or make them turn on each other, and can turn invisible when no one's actively looking for them. You need to be at least lv6 to meet the prereqs though.

[Malysev]

Serving a elder evil would grant you vile bonus feats at lvl 1, 5, 10, 15 and 20
That helps with picking up all the deformity feats you want

Where are the rules for that? Which book? I'm making this character a servant under Hastur from the Pathfinder Bestiary, so would that count?

[CIDE]

Where are the rules for that? Which book? I'm making this character a servant under Hastur from the Pathfinder Bestiary, so would that count?


Elder Evils page 10 under "Serving Elder Evils". I'm not exactly sure how Pathfinder treats elder evils but they were essentially modeled in D&D after Lovecraftian nasties like Cthulu, Hastur, etc. In PF are guys like Hastur treated like deities? Do they grant divine spells, have domains, etc? Or are they something else all together?

Depends on Pathfinder rules and how they mesh with 3.5 rules.

[Malysev]

Elder Evils page 10 under "Serving Elder Evils". I'm not exactly sure how Pathfinder treats elder evils but they were essentially modeled in D&D after Lovecraftian nasties like Cthulu, Hastur, etc. In PF are guys like Hastur treated like deities? Do they grant divine spells, have domains, etc? Or are they something else all together?

Depends on Pathfinder rules and how they mesh with 3.5 rules.

They are treated like deities, do not grant spells, but do allow access to domains.

[ShurikVch]

Slenderman should be able to control darkness, and control of darkness in D&D - for me - strongly associated with Shade template
Also, Shade gives bunch of very thematically-fit abilities - Invisibility, Shadow Stride, Shadow Travel...
If LA +4 is too much, then there is a Savage Progression in Dragon #322 (and two of the levels may be replaced with Uncanny Trickster)

So, something like this:
Race - Human
Classes - Psion (Nomad or Telepath), Shade
Prestige Classes - Uncanny Trickster, Warshaper - for Morphic Weapons (tentacles)
Feats - Deformity (Tall), Slender
Disease - Faceless Hate
1
Control Flames
Control Light
Déjà Vu
Primal Fear

2
Cloud Mind
Control Sound

3
Cerebral Phantasm
Mindfire
Time Hop

4
Modify Memory, Psionic

6
Cloud Mind, Mass
Temporal Acceleration

[Afgncaap5]

Probably not the best fit, but it's hard for me to read this conversation and not be reminded of The Boogeyman (http://dictummortuum.blogspot.com/2011/12/boogeyman.html).