Build your own Flerken! [3.5e]

[El'the Ellie]

Build-a-Flerken!

https://terrigen-cdn-dev.marvel.com/content/prod/2x/chewie-slurp_0.jpg

If you're like me, you recently saw Captain Marvel and fel-ine love (see what I did there?) with Goose, the lovable house cat/alien monstrosity. Or you know Flerkens from the printed comics, either way.

"How can I bring this horrible monstrosity to my D&D table?" you ask. Well cry no more friends, for I have devised a way. It can even be semi-optimized, if you pick your spells right.

Step one: Pick your base
You'll need 3 levels of Druid for the second level spells, trackless step, and the animal companion. In fact, we'll really only be taking 3 levels, so feel free to optimize the rest away. You're going to want a relatively high wisdom (16+ probably), since your druid casting is going to advance later. (and your wisdom will also drop! Sorry, certain sacrifices must be made in the pursuit for greatness)

The animal companion will be the base for your Flerken, so you can really pick whichever type you want. There's a small snag here: technically cat isn't an allowed druid animal companion. I think most DM's would allow you to down grade or reflavor this to be an actual cat, however. If your DM is being a big stickler, well then Goose just got a big buff into being a wolf. (And you can always make it a cheetah later using the stronger animal companion rules.)

Step two: Hit the books
Next, we need some arcane casting. The obvious go-to is wizard for spell selection and such, but any arcane casting will work! Even though we need second level arcane spells for the next step, we also need +4 BAB. Taking sorcerer isn't too bad, because it doesn't delay your entry at all. Feel free to alternate-class-feature away your animal companion: you'll be required to get rid of it later anyway.

Step 3: Mix gently
The next step is to get into Arcane Heirophant. If you took 3 Druid/3 Wizard, you'll need one more level of anything for the +4 BAB. I recommend a 1 level dip in beastmaster. You lose a caster level for the +3 effective level to our animal companion, but he's the real showstopper anyway. And if sacrificing a bit for your flerken doesn't sit will with you, the next step is going to be really hard.
Once you're in Arcane Heirophant, say goodbye to your familiar if you had one! Your animal companion now gets all of your familiar abilities, which will be crucial to finish this up.

Stay in Arcane Heirophant until you can cast 3rd level spells in either druid, or your arcane class, which will probably only be 1 or 2 levels. Make sure to have picked up the Augment Summoning feat by this point. Other good feat recommendations are Natural Bond to buff up the companion even more (check with your DM first to make sure they're ok with it stacking with beastmaster), companion spellbond, and extend spell (since many spells will go to buffing you and your animal companion).

Step 4: Let's get crazy
We're in a dual casting prestige class for one or two of the most powerful classes in the game! You know what we should do now? Immediately leave it for something unoptimized. That's right, we finally qualify for alienist! On the downside: you're going to lose 2 wisdom, lose a lot of flexibility in summoning spells, and pause advancing wisdom classes. On the upside, you get a metamagic feat, +1 to saving throws (kind of), and can summon pseudonatural creatures!

Stay here until level 5 (and probably not any longer) to get a pseudonatural familiar! Now you regular old 'cat' is an animal companion equivalent of a 12th level character (counting the level of beastmaster and natural bond feat), a familiar for a 10th level character, and is pseudonatural, granting it an alternate form with horrifying tentacles!

Step 5: Season to taste
Chances are at this point you're a Druid 3/Wizard 3/Beastmaster 1/Arcane Hierophant 2/Alienist 5, with 5th level druid casting and 10th level arcane casting. From here, you can go wherever! The obvious choice is back into Arcane Heirophant for the multiple casting stats and animal companion advancement, but there's lots of different directions you can go, depending on what you want to do.

There's also probably ways to further optimize this, with cheese to get into Arcane Hierophant before level 7 for instance, but I picked options that didn't use too many additional books and that most DM's (assuming they were already ok with a flerken animal companion) would be ok with.

Suggested spells:
Bite of the were(wolf, bear, rat, etc): You can share these spells with your familiar to beef each of you up quite a bit in combat.
Gutsnake: More tentacles! Now from the stomach!
Flame Whips: Keep your enemies on the back foot by turning your arms (and the arms of your flerken) into whips!
Enhance/Fortify/Augment Familiar: Decent buffs to your familiar
Girralon's Blessing: Who doesn't love more arms?
Evard's Menacing Tentacles: Who doesn't love more arms tentacles?
Amorphous Form: Did the bad guys close the door in your companion's face? Enjoy their looks of horror as he slides right under the crack!
Wraithstrike: Meh for you, great for your companion!
Familiar Pocket: Plan B if your familiar gets in too deep. Also great to watch some huge creature jump in/out of your backpack
Animal Growth: Just great for animal companions
Heal Animal Companion: Because he's going to take some hits

Please feel free to comment with thoughts/improvements!

[the_david]

Uh, no. That's the wrong template. You get the other one, without tentacles, from Complete Arcane. Not the one from the epic level handbook.

[El'the Ellie]

Well yes, that would be rather broken if alienist gave you the epic template to your familiar/summoned monsters. But the upsetting alien-cat-elder-horror is really what matters, and you add the tentacles in with spells if you want them.

[Bad Wolf]

Uh, no. That's the wrong template. You get the other one, without tentacles, from Complete Arcane. Not the one from the epic level handbook.

No, they're accurate. The CA version gives them an alternate tentacle form.

[DwarvenWarCorgi]

Uh, no. That's the wrong template. You get the other one, without tentacles, from Complete Arcane. Not the one from the epic level handbook.

Complete Arcane template grants an Alternate form ability "a grotesque tentacled mass(or another appropriately gruesome form, as determined by the DM.)". I'd say a cat who's head unfolds into a mass of tentacles is a gruesome form.


Edit:saged

[the_david]

Ah, okay. So a lot of hoops for a tentacled cat without tentacle attacks. Maybe we should homebrew a real Flerken...

[Telonius]

Hm. I'd have thought to have the tentacled horror as the base creature, with a couple of Druid levels on top to change into a cat for most of the time, then Leadership to get a human cohort.

[Segev]

I think you can do this much more easily. As early as Wizard or Sorcerer 1, you can have a cat familiar and the spell hoard gullet, which lets you store up to 100 lbs./10 cubic feet of stuff per CL (maxing out at 10 CL), which has Personal range and can thus be shared with your familiar.

With a generous DM, you can stunt this horrifyingly. Without a generous DM, you can take Spell Thematics to give your spells "horrifying devouring tentacles" as a theme, making your hoard gullet open and engulf things as well as disgorge them in the appropriate manner.

Going Alienist by a fairly normal build route at this point would be perfectly fine, and further enhance the familiar's Flerken-ness, but you've got the basics right there at level 1. The spell even lasts for an hour per level, so you can carry a fair bit for a while.

The one drawback is that it is limited to things you could normally swallow - i.e. fit in your mouth. So you need a way to get that enlarged to really sell the Flerken ability to swallow things bigger than should fit inside it. Arguably, the Alienist ability to add pseudonatural to your familiar could do it. Who knows how big their mouths are?

There's also a spell, I think, whose name I'm forgetting but I'm pretty sure is in the Spell Compendium, which allows you to force a creature into an extradimensional "stomach" that has the visual impression of your mouth distending grotesquely and swallowing them whole, which you could have your familiar deliver. I think. I can't look it up right now and don't remember the specifics. But it would allow for the attack version of your flerkin, at least in the short term.

[MisterKaws]

I think you can do this much more easily. As early as Wizard or Sorcerer 1, you can have a cat familiar and the spell hoard gullet, which lets you store up to 100 lbs./10 cubic feet of stuff per CL (maxing out at 10 CL), which has Personal range and can thus be shared with your familiar.

With a generous DM, you can stunt this horrifyingly. Without a generous DM, you can take Spell Thematics to give your spells "horrifying devouring tentacles" as a theme, making your hoard gullet open and engulf things as well as disgorge them in the appropriate manner.

Going Alienist by a fairly normal build route at this point would be perfectly fine, and further enhance the familiar's Flerken-ness, but you've got the basics right there at level 1. The spell even lasts for an hour per level, so you can carry a fair bit for a while.

The one drawback is that it is limited to things you could normally swallow - i.e. fit in your mouth. So you need a way to get that enlarged to really sell the Flerken ability to swallow things bigger than should fit inside it. Arguably, the Alienist ability to add pseudonatural to your familiar could do it. Who knows how big their mouths are?

There's also a spell, I think, whose name I'm forgetting but I'm pretty sure is in the Spell Compendium, which allows you to force a creature into an extradimensional "stomach" that has the visual impression of your mouth distending grotesquely and swallowing them whole, which you could have your familiar deliver. I think. I can't look it up right now and don't remember the specifics. But it would allow for the attack version of your flerkin, at least in the short term.

Bite of the King, Hunger and Gluttony domains, 9th 8th level.

On a side note, I think being the Flerken would be better for that.

I mean, there's already a build made for a mid-level Tibbit Barbarian who counts as Large while being Small, so you'd only need Swallow Whole and tentacles at that point to do the thing.

[Segev]

Bite of the King, Hunger and Gluttony domains, 9th 8th level.

On a side note, I think being the Flerken would be better for that.

I mean, there's already a build made for a mid-level Tibbit Barbarian who counts as Large while being Small, so you'd only need Swallow Whole and tentacles at that point to do the thing.

Ooh, that could work. (And thanks for looking up the spell name. That means it's off the wizard list, sadly, so makes it much harder to work in.) CAn you find and copy the build stub and brief explanation of key tricks into this thread on the Tibbit Barbarian so we can workshop getting the tentacles and swallow whole in as efficiently and synergistically as possible, please?

There's the Aberration Bloodline feats in Lords of Madness, one of which gives you hip-tentacles for bonuses to grappling which could possibly be reflavored, but the feats come with deliberate downsides of not being hidable, which makes this trickier for the flerkin build (where appearing to be a normal kitty is essential to the concept).

[mabriss lethe]

You could be your own flerken as a Tibbit warshaper...

[MisterKaws]

Ooh, that could work. (And thanks for looking up the spell name. That means it's off the wizard list, sadly, so makes it much harder to work in.) CAn you find and copy the build stub and brief explanation of key tricks into this thread on the Tibbit Barbarian so we can workshop getting the tentacles and swallow whole in as efficiently and synergistically as possible, please?

There's the Aberration Bloodline feats in Lords of Madness, one of which gives you hip-tentacles for bonuses to grappling which could possibly be reflavored, but the feats come with deliberate downsides of not being hidable, which makes this trickier for the flerkin build (where appearing to be a normal kitty is essential to the concept).

Arcane Disciple nets you the domain easily, so that's only one less feat free.

As for the build, it was Tibbit something X/Stoneborn(Goliath) 3/Goliath Barbarian 1, for the Goliath Rage substitution, which lets you count as Large while being your own size, if I'm not mistaken.

Edit:

Mountain Rage (Ex): A goliath barbarian who takes the 1st-level racial substitution level can tap into the mountain’s strength to increase his size and power during a rage. When he rages, his size category increases to Large. (Although his size category increases by one step, the goliath barbarian’s height only increases by a foot or so and his mass only increases by about 30–40%, so his equipment still fi ts normally.)

So your height increases by one foot, which, in the case of a cat, would make you a whopping 2 ft. tall, while occupying a 10ft. square and being considered a Large creature.

[Segev]

Arcane Disciple nets you the domain easily, so that's only one less feat free.

As for the build, it was Tibbit something X/Stoneborn(Goliath) 3/Goliath Barbarian 1, for the Goliath Rage substitution, which lets you count as Large while being your own size, if I'm not mistaken.

Edit:


So your height increases by one foot, which, in the case of a cat, would make you a whopping 2 ft. tall, while occupying a 10ft. square and being considered a Large creature.

So you're a "big" cat. The kind that pins somebody down by sitting in their laps, but doesn't put legs to sleep.

Stoneborn(Goliath) is a class that makes you count as a goliath-the-race, despite being some other race entirely?

[noob]

So you're a "big" cat. The kind that pins somebody down by sitting in their laps, but doesn't put legs to sleep.

Stoneborn(Goliath) is a class that makes you count as a goliath-the-race, despite being some other race entirely?

Yes.
It exists for whole bunch of races including dwarf and goliath.

[MisterKaws]

So you're a "big" cat. The kind that pins somebody down by sitting in their laps, but doesn't put legs to sleep.

Stoneborn(Goliath) is a class that makes you count as a goliath-the-race, despite being some other race entirely?

Third level capstone, makes you count as either Gnome, Dwarf or Goliath(your choice when you enter the PrC) to fulfill any requirement/restriction.