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rferries
2017-09-24, 04:25 PM
The Soulful


https://i.imgur.com/lmrgpuA.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/Bl3e8dF.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/Dt6K8Kh.jpg?1



Celestial dreams and infernal nightmares... metaphysics made flesh.



The soulful are exactly that - celestial and fiendish souls from the Outer Planes. Some are spontaneous creations of their home planes, others are the spirits of particularly noble or wicked mortals that have returned (or escaped) from the afterlife. Soulful are extraordinarily variable in appearance, but generally take the forms of angelic or demonaic entities.

Soulful Traits
Ability Score Modifiers: None. Each soulful is a unique creature defined by its own ability scores, with no particular racial bonuses or penalties.

Size: Soulful are Medium creatures and have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.

Type: Soulful are creatures of the outsider type. They have the extraplanar subtype, save when on their native Outer Plane. At character creation a soulful also gains any alignment subtypes (chaotic, good, evil, lawful) appropriate to its alignment; these subtypes do not change if the creature later changes alignment unless it also receives the benefit of an atonement spell.

Speed: Soulful have a base speed of 30 feet.

Outsider Features (Ex): A soulful has the features of the outsider type or its class levels, whichever are better. This provides the following benefits:

A soulful's class Hit Dice are increased to d8
A soulful's base attack bonus (as calculated from its classes) increases to equal to its character level
A soulful's base Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves (as calculated from its classes) increase to equal to one-half its character level + 2.
A soulful's skill points are increased to (8 + Int modifier, minimum 1) per Hit Die, with quadruple skill points for the first Hit Die.

Darkvision (Ex): A soulful has darkvision out to 60 feet.

Outsider Soul (Ex): Unlike most other living creatures, a soulful does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When a soulful is slain, no soul is set loose. Spells that restore souls to their bodies, such as raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection, don’t work on a soulful. It takes a different magical effect, such as limited wish, wish, miracle, or true resurrection to restore it to life. A soulful with the native subtype (i.e. through the Mortal Memories feat) can be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected just as other living creatures can be.

Weapon Proficiencies (Ex): A soulful is proficient with all simple and martial weapons.

Outsider Vitality (Ex): A soulful breathes, but does not need to eat or sleep (although it can do so if it wishes). Soulful spellcasters must still rest for 8 hours to regain spells. Native soulful creatures (i.e. those with the Mortal Memories feat) breathe, eat, and sleep.

Skills (Ex): Knowledge (religion) and Knowledge (the planes) are always treated as class skills for a soulful, and it may use those skills untrained.

Languages: Soulful begin play speaking Common and the language of their native Outer Plane (typically Abyssal, Celestial, or Infernal). Soulful with high Intelligence scores can choose from the following: Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Celestial, Ignan, Infernal, and Terran.

Favoured Class: Favoured Soul

Level Adjustment: +2

Soulful Feats

Devil's Deceit
You are as silver-tongued as any fiend.

Prerequisites
Soulful, Bluff 10 ranks, any evil alignment.

Benefits
You gain the benefits of a constant glibness effect (caster level = your character level). This effect cannot be dispelled but is suppressed while in an antimagic field or the like.

Divine Wings
You fly as gracefully and freely as a spirit.

Prerequisites
Soulful, character level 6th.

Benefits
You gain a pair of wings (feathered, batlike, insectile, or any other appearance you choose, even multiple sets of wings or no visible wings at all). You gain a fly speed of 60 feet with good maneuverability.

Eternal Evil (Eternal Good)
Your malign spirit endures beyond death.

Prerequisites
Soulful, character level 8th, any evil alignment.

Benefits
You gain the benefits of a constant death ward effect (caster level = your character level). This effect cannot be dispelled but is suppressed while in an antimagic field or the like.

You may be raised, resurrected, and reincarnated as though you were a native outsider. Constitution loss and level loss you suffer from being restored to life are instead converted to Constitution damage and negative levels (DC 20 to remove), respectively.

Special
If you are good-aligned, you may select this feat as Eternal Good. You retain the appropriate version of this feat so long as you are either good or evil, but if you are neither good nor evil the benefits are suppressed until your alignment changes appropriately.

Mortal Memories
You retain memories of your life before your afterlife.

Prerequisites
Soulful, must be chosen at character creation.

Benefits
Choose a core race (dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, half-orc, or human). You gain the traits of a member of that race (including automatic and bonus languages) in addition to those from being a soulful.

You gain the native subtype and the appropriate racial subtype (e.g. elf).

Special
The DM may choose to increase your level adjustment by +1 for certain races you select for this feat (e.g. human).



To do: Additional feats (e.g. Exemplar feat granting Angel/Archon/Demon/Devil trait, or at least Greater Teleport (self plus 50 pounds of objects) feat; feats granting natural attacks (e.g.as Pit Fiend, including poison and disease), etc.)

Westhart
2017-09-24, 07:16 PM
Outsider Features are very powerful (if it works as I believe). With this you can play a straight wizard and be an efficient gish, let alone when you throw in abjurant champion or anything else... Full BAB, all good saves and an increased hit die... Can be rather potent.

rferries
2017-09-24, 11:08 PM
Yeah, the benefits are certainly powerful (and the higher your level, the better they get). LA+3 may be more reasonable.

ShiningStarling
2017-09-27, 12:02 PM
You reference Mortal Memories as a feat that lets you be Rezzed normally, but in the actual feat blocks it seems that Eternal [Alignment] is the feat that does that.

Love the concept though ^.^

rferries
2017-09-27, 12:10 PM
You reference Mortal Memories as a feat that lets you be Rezzed normally, but in the actual feat blocks it seems that Eternal [Alignment] is the feat that does that.

Love the concept though ^.^

It's a subtle distinction, heh!

Mortal Memories - you gain the native subtype (so can be raised as a non-outsider).

Eternal Evil/Good- you can be raised as though you were a native outsider, but you're not actually a native outsider (so you're still vulnerable to things affecting extraplanar creatures).

Thanks!

Knitifine
2017-09-27, 02:07 PM
Outsider Features (Ex): A soulful has the features of the outsider type or its class levels, whichever are better. This provides the following benefits:
A soulful's class Hit Dice are increased to d8
A soulful's base attack bonus (as calculated from its classes) increases to equal to its character level
A soulful's base Fortitude, Reflex, and Will saves (as calculated from its classes) increase to equal to one-half its character level + 2.
A soulful's skill points are increased to (8 + Int modifier, minimum 1) per Hit Die, with quadruple skill points for the first Hit Die.

This is what I would call an 'impossible to balance' feature. Because it is so powerfully bias to other decisions, LA to impossible to determine and must be on a class per class basis.

rferries
2017-09-27, 10:31 PM
This is what I would call an 'impossible to balance' feature. Because it is so powerfully bias to other decisions, LA to impossible to determine and must be on a class per class basis.

It definitely suits some classes more than others, but I disagree that it's impossible to balance (otherwise any race with a Str bonus but Int penalty would need 2 different LA scores). LA+2 may be too low, but not by much.

Let's do some calculations. First we'll use max-level characters as the benefits of being a soulful scale over time.

"Best" soulful classes - will use sorcerer
18th-level soulful (vs. 20th-level non-soulful): +31 hp, +8 BAB, +122 skill points, -1 Will, +5 Fort, +5 Ref

"Worst" soulful classes - will use monk
18th-level soulful monk vs 20th level non-soulful monk: -9 hp, +3 BAB, +76 skill points, -1 to all saves

Not bad if you're a wizard, sorcerer, or other squishy class! I personally think the skill points are the best feature though; even monks enjoy them (and they're definitely the worst soulful class to take). However, let's do a more realistic comparison, at 4th and 10th level (where most campaigns will be taking place).

2nd-level sorcerer soulful (vs. 4th-level non-soulful): -1 hp, +0 BAB, +26 skill points, -1 Will, +2 Fort, +2 Ref

2nd-level monk soulful (vs. 4th-level non-soulful): -9 hp, +0 BAB, +12 skill points, -1 to all saves

8th-level sorcerer soulful (vs. 10th-level non-soulful): +11 hp, +3 BAB, +62 skill points, -1 Will, +3 Fort, +3 Ref

8th-level monk soulful (vs. 10th-level non-soulful): -9 hp, +1 BAB, +36 skill points, -1 to all saves

At lower levels you actually sacrifice a lot, and really only get extra skill points. Most importantly, all the spellcaster examples will be 1 full spell level behind non-soulfuls (though they can still get 9th-level spells at max level).

Soulfuls are good for gishes (though ASF is always a problem) but not horribly broken overall IMHO.