-[Feats] Self-Mutilation-

[Deathtouched]

[Feats] Self-Mutilation
(And yes, this is emo D&D, thank-you-very-much, extremely emo)

Self-Mutilation: Extensive Scarring
By cutting yourself regularly and then quickly healing, you have built up a large amount of scar tissue and scabbing that makes your skin thick and irregular.
Benefit: You gain a +2 natural armor bonus to your AC. Because your scarred skin is heavier and less flexible, you take a -2 penalty on all Balance, Move Silently, and Tumble checks

Self-Mutilation: Overly Scarred
Because you are constantly cutting yourself and forming scar tissue, your skin has become resistant to the blade.
Benefit: You gain damage reduction 5/bludgeoning. Because of your horribly scarred body, you take a -4 penalty on all Bluff and Diplomacy checks.

Self-Mutilation: Eye Gouged
By gouging out your own eyes, you have learned to rely on other senses and have become immune to eye-based effects.
Benefit: You are immune to all gaze attacks and blinding attacks. You do not usually need to make a Spot or Listen check to notice creatures within 50 ft of you. Magical concealment on your target does not give you a miss chance. Because you can no longer see, you take a -2 penalty on melee attacks and a -10 penalty on ranged attacks. You cannot distinguish the shapes of objects or creatures.

Self-Mutilation: Frightful Visage
By purposefully mutilating your face, you have become a terrible sight to behold.
Benefit: You take a +4 bonus on all Intimidate checks. Any creature your level or lower within 30 ft that views your face directly must succeed on a Will save or become shaken for 1d6 rounds (DC 10 + 1/2 your level + your Charisma modifier). Any creatures that succeed on the Will save are immune to your presence for 24 hours. Because you are so hideous, you take a -4 penalty on all Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, and Handle Animal checks.

Self-Mutilation: Muscle Acupuncture
By sticking large metal needles into certain muscles on your body to stimulate them, you are able to increase your physical power in short bursts.
Benefit: You take a +2 bonus on all Strength-based checks. Because your muscles are pained and overworked, every time that you make a Strength-based check you must succeed on a Fortitude saving roll or your muscles will go into spasms (DC 12). The spasms will last for 1d6 minutes and during that time you will take a -2 penalty to all attacks and your AC.

Self-Mutilation: Painful Piercings
After piercing your entire body with sharp bits of metal, you have grown used to the metal and become resistant to the pain.
Benefit: You gain damage reduction 5/adamantine. Because the enormous amount of metal in your body is harmful to your brain, you take -2 on all Intelligence-based checks.

Self-Mutilation: Nerveless
Because you have systematically destroyed certain nerves in your body, you no longer feel heat or cold.
Benefit: You gain resistance 5 from cold and fire energy. Because your tampering affects other parts of your sensory system, you take a -2 penalty on all Spot, Search, and Listen checks.

Self-Mutilation: Flayed Skin
By carefully stripping off your own skin, you have forced your body to heal faster.
Benefit: You gain fast healing and every round, you heal 1 hit point. Because your skin is weakened, you take 3 extra points of damage from any physical attack that hits you.

Self-Mutilation: Metal Teeth
After tearing out your own teeth and replacing them with metal fangs, you are able to use your mouth as a weapon.
Benefit: You have a natural bite attack that you are considered proficient with. As a normal attack you can deal 1d6 damage that counts as piercing, slashing, and bludgeoning damage. Because your mouth is overcrowded and hard to work, you take a -2 penalty on all Diplomacy and Gather Information checks.

Self-Mutilation: Reinforced Hands
Because you have shoved metal rods into your hands to stiffen them, you are able to hit harder without bending or breaking.
Benefit: You gain +1 damage on all attacks. Because your hands can no longer move correctly, you take a -2 penalty on all Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Open Lock, and Perform (musical instrument) checks.

Self-Mutilation: Torn Spine
By tearing your spine from its place and putting it partially outside your body, you have become more flexible.
Benefit: You take a +2 bonus on all Tumble, Balance, and Escape Artist checks. Because your spine is easily damaged, opponents attempting a Sneak Attack or Critical Hit get a +2 bonus to their check.

Self-Mutilation: Dead Nerve
By killing most of the sensory nerves throughout your body, you have become resistant to large amounts of damage.
Benefit: You are able to take 10 less points of damage from critical hits and sneak attacks. Because you can not process electrical impulses correctly, you have vulnerability 5 to electrical energy.

Self-Mutilation: Minor Lobotomy
Because you have cut out a part of your brain controlling emotion, you are immune to fear and panic.
Benefit: You are immune to all fear effects. You take a +2 bonus on all will saves against mind-affecting spells and spell effects. Because your lobotomizing has injured your brain, you take a -4 penalty on all Intelligence-based checks.

EDIT: Alright, I've changed some things about them, though I'm wondering if Muscle Acupuncture should just be a fatigue thing or even just a skill penalty. I've also removed the prerequisites and added a few more of my ideas. In any case, you have to remember that this is self-mutilation, not getting new spells. The bonuses and penalties aren't supposed to always make perfect sense and they don't need to balance. Somehow I doubt that carving up your own body is going to be a process that gives exact results. :smallannoyed: Anyways, what else do you think I should change, because making these up is fun! :smallbiggrin: The only problem is that they can't really go more than skin deep, otherwise the mechanics would change. Ex: Is self-lobotomy a self-mutilation?

[Mordokai]

Extensive Scarring seems a tad too good for my taste. +4 bonus to AC for -2 to Bluff and Diplomacy checks? Any fighter or barbarian will take this and a good deal of other classes as well. Perhaps add a -1 to all attack rolls because you cut some fine nerves and thus have hard time coordinating your attacks. Or something similar. As things stand, I think this feat offers much greater bonus than penalty. Penalty on attack roles increases to -3 if you take Overly Scarred.

Nerveless is the other feat I have problem with. Sure, every class can benefit from good Spot and Listen modifier, but at the same time it's cross class skill for classes that could use it and as such, penalty from the feat doesn't really hurt them all that much. For those classes that have Spot and/or Listen as class skills they can just put ranks in them and ignore the penalty from the feat. Getting 10 energy resistance to fire and cold seems too good for such a lowly penalty. Perhaps -2 to wisdom would be better, but I think that would be too much. Perhaps somebody else will give you better advice.

But I like these ideas. They could provide for nice roleplaying. I'll have to ask my DM if he would allow them.

On a related note, could you give me a link to these Mental Abuse feats topic? I'd like to see what VT came up with :smallsmile:

[Shademan]

is this like...DD fer emoes?
sorry, had'tha say it...

[Caracol]

What the hell?:smalleek:

Anyway, nice ideas, they are good for players with that macabre sense (that basically are ALL the players in my group)
some suggestions:

Extensive Scarring: too powerful for the drawback. Lower the AC bonus to +2. You can survive without skills. You can't survive without AC, so be careful when you trade skill points for AC, Abilities or BAB: the latter are much more important.

Frightful Visage: lower to 1d6 the duration.

Muscle Acupuncture and Painful Piercings just do not do too much sense to me. Maybe redo the flavor text or change the bonus/penalities. Painful Piercing has a too high penality.

Nerveless: make the character choose if he gains fire or cold resistance, or lower both resistance to 5.

Those ideas are good, and the prerequisites are not really needed in my opinion. A class based on this? Let me see.... An arcane caster that could reshape his body self-mutilating himself from time to time, able to choose what mutilation wants to do to himself and change it, but that slowly loses his fisical or mental health... What about this?

[Raroy]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72006

All these feats open up to a new realm of role playing! And mental trauma, lots and lots of mental trauma.

[RTGoodman]

I don't know if you've seen them, but the scarring ones and the eye one already exist (in a slightly different form) in Book of Vile Darkness or something like that.

If you're going to use these, they should probably have the Willing Deformity feat as a prerequisite, as well as maybe something else depending on the feat.

Extensive Scarring, as written here, is too powerful. I agree with the others - drop to to +2 AC, and it should be fine (and I think is what the published version has).

Also, for Overly Scarred, you say that you're "resistant" to blades. However, you gave it DR 5/Piercing and Slashing. Several things here - first, DR 5/X means that the only thing that deals normal damage is X. The way you have it written, piercing and slashing weapons overcome damage reduction, but damage from Bludgeoning sources is reduced (and I don't think that's what you want). Secondly, "piercing and slashing" is ridiculously good. The way you have it worded, a weapon has to do both of them at the same time to overcome the damage reduction, and there are very few of those. I'd change it to DR 5/Bludgeoning if you're trying to simulate something that is resistant to blades.

As others have said, some of the other feats are kinda powerful (especially for Fire and Cold Resistance 10 at the low, low cost of one feat). Muscle Acupuncture seems weak considering the penalties.

[Deathtouched]

Yeah, I knew there were problems with a bunch of them. Like I said in the post, this was an idea that I didn't really think through. I just wanted to provide a physical trauma alternative to The Vorpal Tribble's mental abuse feats.
But like I said before, these kinds of abilities would make a good class...
For physical trauma there would be three groups: Cutters, Piercers, and maybe Body Molders. Cutters get abilities involving bleeding and trauma to skin and such. Piercers are all about sticking things into themselves to gain strength. And Body Molders do things involving the abuse or destruction of outer-ish organs.
OOH! Or maybe an entire macabre world where all the classes involve mutilating themselves in some way! That way, you can always tell who's who.
Ex. Covered in scars: Cutter, full of metal: Piercer, missing important parts: Body Molder. It's perfect!
I can see it now...mmmmmm :smallamused:

Also, I assumed many already existed in some form, but I've never seen them. I tend to come up with concepts that already exist, but are original to me. One might say my creativity is lost in a transdimensional wormhole leading to a past of our world where macabre gaming is the only gaming. Or I'm just so unknowing about D&D that I follow others. :smallsmile:

[Roderick_BR]

Interesting feats. Can, fluffy-wise, they be taken as battle wounds, instead of self-inflicted? A warrior that took too many hits to the head, or something could start to develop some of these abilities.

Also, I suggest you check the Book of Vile Darkness. There's a prestige class with similar abilities, but that sucks, since all his abilities can be gained with magic itens. These feats are way better.

[Nonanonymous]

I don't understand where the bluff check penalties are coming from, wouldn't a Cha penalty make more sense than one related to that skill?

[Deathtouched]

I didn't want to mess with actually stats like Int or Cha. I suppose I could, but the bluff thing is supposed to be because they are so mutilated. As in, why would you trust the things someone who did THAT to themselves says. I mean really, would YOU trust someone who had just gouged out their own eyes or torn out their spine? I wouldn't. :smallamused:
I have heard that there are similar things in the Book of Vile Darkness, but I've never read that book. So, basically, it doesn't matter to me because these abilities are things i came up with on my own. My feats might be better because they weren't designed with a class in mind. :smallsmile:
Although, like I said before, wouldn't it be AWESOME to do a campaign in a world where every character is like this? Like wizards would cut out important parts to gain immunities, warriors would cut themselves etc. for armor, rogues would take out their spines or stick metal in their bodies. NPCs might only have a few "modifications", whereas the classes would basically transform the character into a twisted, macabre creature upgraded through physical abuse. I would love something like that. :smallsmile:

[Mee]

each one taken should give a permanent -1 con penalty. (if this has already been pointed out, ignore me. :smallwink: )

[magic_unlocked]

I agree with the -1 con penelty. Because, well, yer tearing your body apart. Perhaps, the class that has these in mind becomes a 1/2 golem at level 20 and ignores the con penelty? It would be at level 20 and by then, you'd probably have 6 of these feats.

Also, Restoration could be cast as an attack spell against someone with these feats. it would be some sort of opposed Will save, with the character getting a bonus = 1/2 his character level. Success means the feats are nulled and yer back to your spiffy old self.

In the latter event, i could say that you could spend a week to re-gain a feat if lost in this maner.

That's my 2 CP.

[Deathtouched]

Like I've said before, even though Con and Char penalties might make sense, I don't want to make these feats useless for any one class. Cha damage means no sorcerers, Con damage would make it bad for fighters and such. It would make sense, but it's like self-surgery. It hurts and bad things happen, but your not killing yourself. There is no one class for these feats. They are feats for any class, perhaps biased a bit because I haven't made enough of a variety or such. The Restoration thing sounds interesting, but magic doesnt heal all wounds. Scars ad such can remain when a cleric heals you later in life. And how would Restoration deal with things like metal in your skin? If it messes those up too, then anyone wearing body jewelery and getting healed is in trouble. This is just meant to be a list of macabre feats for characters who don't mind ripping out their own eyeballs.
However, the feats could be adapted to become a class of their own. I'll probably do that sometime soon. :smallsmile:

[F.H. Zebedee]

I just did something similar, adapting the Aberrant/Demon/Graft/Willing Deformities feats into Mutation feats, making it much more practical to use any of them.

I made it essentially that the prerequisite feat could add various skill bonuses, but cost alternatingly 1 CHA and 1 CON. After that, the rest of the feats went like yours, with penalties based on the feat itself.

Also, I had some of the aberrant feats which got stronger with more feats, meaning that stacking a whole lot of them actually was fairly beneficial for a character who was dedicated. Maybe have some goofy little feats like, say:

Macabre Artistry
This character has learned through mutilation of their own body various new medical techniques.
For every Self Mutilation feat this character has, they gain a +2 bonus on Heal checks and a +1 bonus on Concentration checks and Sleight of Hand checks.

Though it seems a bit strong initially, you need to remember that it doesn't run off of itself. It needs a person to get heavily mutilated before it actually benefits more than a standard, wretched +2/+2 feat.

[magic_unlocked]

That seems a bit better. An initial -1 con and -1 cha, then yer donw with it.

As for the restoration bit, it's not the lesser version, it's the full blown fully "I fully restore you now" spell. Since you put things in yer body that aren't normal, the spell expels them out as it fixes you up. Which can open up plot hooks of sorts. Like, you have an invasion of forign clerics into your macabre land and they cast restoration on everyone to return them to "normal".