Symbiotic Template

[AthasianWarlock]

Has anyone ever used this template? I am trying to determine If the guest or the host is the PC. The example monster block has character advancement by character level, which is something the host (bugbear) has but guest (strige) does not. Yet the mental stats are of the guest.

Further, it says the template is applied to "two living creatures", which means isn't this two monsters and not 1?

[Troacctid]

I would rule that it is actually two monsters, not one, and the level adjustment is applied to each of them. A PC using the template would have a lot in common with a gestalt character.

[AthasianWarlock]

I would rule that it is actually two monsters, not one, and the level adjustment is applied to each of them. A PC using the template would have a lot in common with a gestalt character.

Is that the RAW?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

What book is the template from?

[Troacctid]

Is that the RAW?
Sure. As you correctly discerned in your OP, the template contradicts itself, which means it falls to the DM (in this case me) to adjudicate the ambiguity.


What book is the template from?
Savage Species.

[ShurikVch]

Has anyone ever used this template? I am trying to determine If the guest or the host is the PC. The example monster block has character advancement by character level, which is something the host (bugbear) has but guest (strige) does not. Yet the mental stats are of the guest.Also, Stirge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/stirge.htm) is a Magical Beast; Symbiotic Template required "two living creatures of the following types: animal, humanoid, plant, or vermin."


Further, it says the template is applied to "two living creatures", which means isn't this two monsters and not 1?Check the Tauric Creature template from the same book:
CREATING A TAURIC CREATURE
"Tauric" is an inherited template that combines two creatures into one hybrid creature. The template can be added to added to any corporeal humanoid or monstrous humanoid of Small or Medium-size (referred to hereafter as the base humanoid) and any Medium-size or Large corporeal animal, magical beast, or vermin with at least four legs (referred to hereafter as the base creature).Thus, two becoming one

[Darrin]

You might want to look at The Forgotten Template (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?259833-Gather-round-children-and-let-me-tell-you-a-story-about-the-forgoten-template).

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Huh. With a human (or something related to human) as the base creature, the symbiotic pair could take the Human Heritage feat to change their type back to Humanoid (human)... qualifying them for use as a guest or host again.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

For which is the PC, I agree that they become a single creature that is the PC, with traits from both: the HD, BAB, physical scores, and advancement of the host; the mental ability scores and alignment of the guest; the special abilities and special attacks of each. (Unless they detach, of course, in which case why yes I do have a good answer for which is PC it's - oh my god look a moose!). How that works for LA is frustratingly unspecific, not helped by the fact that the sample creature both doesn't list an LA at all (also making it hard to know whether one of the base creatures can legally have LA: - ) and is illegal by the rules of the template.

I think that technically, the phrasing "A symbiotic creature has characteristics of both the host and the guest, as noted below." followed by an LA of +1 with no mention of either creature means that the final result either has an LA of +1 that overrules both constituent creatures' LA or you add all three LAs together. The first way lies madness, and the second precludes a whole lot of interesting builds. Almost all builds period, in fact (you're left with basically just Half-Ogres with Human Heritage being ridden by kobolds, goblins, halflings, and gnomes), and when the template discusses symbiotic creature characters it only mentions low intelligence as the limiting factor on symbiotic PCs. I don't like either of these options, but fortunately we've got two more:

Savage Species provides rules for determining the LA of a creature based on its abilities. This is honestly probably the best way of doing things, but it's time intensive, will still end up with an unplayably high LA a lot of the time, and doesn't make me feel clever for coming up with it, so instead...

... let's turn to the next entry in the book. Tauric Creatures are, like Symbiotic Creatures, a combination of two creatures' stats and abilities into a single creature. It also doesn't list an LA or rules for calculating one, because that would be like way too convenient. We're not done yet, though; the section on Tauric Creatures as characters is compelling evidence that they are intended to be playable, so we look to the sample creature statblock and... Aha! +2 LA that's added to the LA of the base humanoid. This has no relation whatsoever to the +3 cohort only LA of the griffon that comprises the other half of the creature, and I feel comfortable saying that's a generalizable rule. Taurics advance as the base humanoid and symbiotics advance as the host, I think it's fair to say that you add +1 LA to the LA of the host creature to get total LA of the creature.

Is just +1 LA too powerful? Possibly (probably), but also remember that pretty much any legal creature for the guest will either have no interesting abilities (humanoid) or a -8 penalty to intelligence and probably to charisma as well (vermin, animals, plants). These interesting creatures will also be unable to choose their own feats, lacking the intelligence to do so, so while you'll get some free feats they'll mostly be a whole lot of Toughness and Alertness.

SO to be clear, I'd recommend figuring out the LA from scratch either by using the Savage Species rules or by bombing over to the LA Adjustment threads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518086-The-LA-assignment-archive&p=21798987) and adding up the LAs they have there.

[Blue Jay]

You might want to look at The Forgotten Template (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?259833-Gather-round-children-and-let-me-tell-you-a-story-about-the-forgoten-template).

It's a messy template, but trying to retrofit a swarm guest into it is really just abusing it. When Savage Species was published, the swarm subtype didn't exist (it was introduced in Fiend Folio, which was published a couple months later), and SS was never updated. So it's not surprising that, when you combine the weirdest creature subtype in the game with the messiest template in the game, you get something preposterous.

I mean, consider that Symbiotic has you take the size of the host creature. So, if you're a human host with a dread blossom swarm guest, your "Size and Type" line would be: "Medium Aberration (Swarm),"* Then, look at the first line of the swarm subtype's definition: "A swarm is a collection of Fine, Diminutive, or Tiny creatures that acts as a single creature." Swarms of Medium creatures aren't supported**, so this is just a miasma here.

*You'd probably also have the Augmented Humanoid, Augmented Plant and Human subtypes, as well; but let's keep it simple.
**The mob rules in Cityscape kind of make it possible to be a "swarm" of Medium creatures, but mobs don't have the Swarm subtype, and it should be obvious that trying to apply those rules here would only make things worse anyway, so let's ignore mobs.

But, there is one mistake from that thread that I can call out with reasonable certainty. Sgt Cookie says, "Look, the minimum Intelligence for the guest is 3, so that means I can bump the dread blossom swarm up to Int 3, which gives it 3 feats and 10 skill points. And, since the Symbiotic template transforms those into bonus feats and racial skill bonuses, that's basically three free bonus feats and +5 racial to any skill I want!" But, the problem is that "minimum Intelligence 3" refers to the combined creature, not to the guest (Savage Species clarifies this on P. 144, "Notes on Specific Templates"), so there's no justification for this idea that you get to go back and give yourself free feats and skill bonuses bonuses from granting the guest an Intelligence score.


For which is the PC, I agree that they become a single creature that is the PC, with traits from both: the HD, BAB, physical scores, and advancement of the host; the mental ability scores and alignment of the guest; the special abilities and special attacks of each. (Unless they detach, of course, in which case why yes I do have a good answer for which is PC it's - oh my god look a moose!). How that works for LA is frustratingly unspecific, not helped by the fact that the sample creature both doesn't list an LA at all (also making it hard to know whether one of the base creatures can legally have LA: - ) and is illegal by the rules of the template.

I agree with you on this, but then there's the added mess of the Detach ability. If the host and guest combine into one creature, then advance as one creature, what happens after they split up? Say the combined creature takes 3 levels of cleric, and then the two detach. Which creature gets to keep the cleric levels, and all the abilities that go with it? Presumably the guest, since it's the "brains" of the operation. But, if the guest is a vermin or animal, it won't have the Intelligence score necessary to take class levels.

I did try a remake of the Symbiotic template, and I've been meaning to post a thread for my homebrew templates at the Playground, so maybe I'll do that now.


I think that technically, the phrasing "A symbiotic creature has characteristics of both the host
and the guest, as noted below." followed by an LA of +1 with no mention of either creature means that the final result either has an LA of +1 that overrules both constituent creatures' LA or you add all three LAs together. The first way lies madness, and the second precludes a whole lot of interesting builds. Almost all builds period, in fact (you're left with basically just Half-Ogres with Human Heritage being ridden by kobolds, goblins, halflings, and gnomes), and when the template discusses symbiotic creature characters it only mentions low intelligence as the limiting factor on symbiotic PCs. I don't like either of these options, but fortunately we've got two more:

Savage Species provides rules for determining the LA of a creature based on its abilities. This is honestly probably the best way of doing things, but it's time intensive, will still end up with an unplayably high LA a lot of the time, and doesn't make me feel clever for coming up with it, so instead...

... let's turn to the next entry in the book. Tauric Creatures are, like Symbiotic Creatures, a combination of two creatures' stats and abilities into a single creature. It also doesn't list an LA or rules for calculating one, because that would be like way to convenient. We're not done yet, though; the section on Tauric Creatures as characters is compelling evidence that they are intended to be playable, so we look to the sample creature statblock and... Aha! +2 LA that's added to the LA of the base humanoid. This has no relation whatsoever to the +3 cohort only LA of the griffon that comprises the other half of the creature, and I feel comfortable saying that's a generalizable rule. Taurics advance as the base humanoid and symbiotics advance as the host, I think it's fair to say that you add +1 LA to the LA of the host creature to get total LA of the creature.

Is just +1 LA too powerful? Possibly (probably), but also remember that pretty much any legal creature for the guest will either have no interesting abilities (humanoid) or a -8 penalty to intelligence and probably to charisma as well (vermin, animals, plants). These interesting creatures will also be unable to choose their own feats, lacking the intelligence to do so, so while you'll get some free feats they'll mostly be a whole lot of Toughness and Alertness.

SO to be clear, I'd recommend figuring out the LA from scratch either by using the Savage Species rules or by bombing over to the LA Adjustment threads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518086-The-LA-assignment-archive&p=21798987) and adding up the LAs they have there.

I really like your reasoning here, and I agree that the Tauric template's LA was a misprint: that line was supposed to appear in the "Creating a Tauric Creature" section, not in the example stat block. But, I think Tauric works generally well at LA +1, because the template also requires that you to take on a minimum of 2 RHD (and that's for creatures that would have have no racial hit dice). Symbiotic is problematic though, because you get to drop the RHD of the guest creature; so there really ought to be a cap on the number of RHD you're allowed to ignore.

[Dimers]

I think that technically, the phrasing "A symbiotic creature has characteristics of both the host and the guest, as noted below." followed by an LA of +1 with no mention of either creature means that the final result either has an LA of +1 that overrules both constituent creatures' LA or you add all three LAs together. The first way lies madness, and the second precludes a whole lot of interesting builds. Almost all builds period, in fact (you're left with basically just Half-Ogres with Human Heritage being ridden by kobolds, goblins, halflings, and gnomes) ...

You can replace the half-ogre with a chameleon shinomen naga from OA, but that takes LA and RHD.

I mostly came here to mention another abusive option. A legendary eagle (MotW) can have 24 HD while staying a Small animal, so you could get two epic feats with that as the guest. Still have the "Large humanoid" problem if you want it to have most advantages of PCs, though an ape might suffice.


... there really ought to be a cap on the number of RHD you're allowed to ignore.

Yeah, that. :smallamused:

[Blue Jay]

If you don't mind me posting a plug, I've posted my attempt to remake the Symbiotic template in a homebrew thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?586460-Templates-for-Monster-Characters).

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One thing I've tried to do several times is make a Symbiotic creature that uses the myconid (junior worker) from Monster Manual II as the guest. I'm kind of enamored by the aesthetic of a myconid "riding" a violet fungus host or something like that. The trouble is that the junior worker is adorable, but it doesn't do anything interesting as a guest: it doesn't get any interesting spores, and the mental stat modifiers (-2, +2, +2 ) aren't particularly compelling, either. So, it's really just a let-down to me.