The LA-assignment thread IX: I have no mouth and I must S,V,M

[danielxcutter]

Hm, guess the real lesson here is that 'Z' names are evil?

Zordon was a good guy.

[Inevitability]

Symbionts (1)

Because the optimal party consists of four abominable organs fused to the one humanoid PC.

A general overview of symbiont mechanics: they have an Ego score, which is calculated in a roundabout way mostly related to mental stats. If the host goes against the symbiont's desires, the host has to make a DC (ego score) Will save or be controlled by their symbiont for a while. Given the obvious issues that arise with one PC controlling another fulltime, I suggest that DMs only allow symbiont-host pairs that agree on most important matters.

Further rules: Symbionts act on their host's turn in combat (good, as most have terrible dexterity), they can be targeted independently unless located inside the body, they are technically vulnerable to the 'natural ones damage equipment' rule but nobody uses that, and they get a free Share Spells effect that bypasses type restrictions to boot.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at the symbionts themselves!

Cerebral Hood

A 2 RHD tiny aberration, with a lowish fly speed, a weak tail slap as its sole natural weapon, great mental stats, and poor physical ones. It also gets Improved Initiative as a bonus feat, which seems wasted on a creature that's going to be acting on its host's turn anyway.

The hood's own attacks are a hilariously terrible Engulf (which, amusingly, works on medium-sized and smaller creatures, implying it can attach to being smaller than itself), and a reasonable Mind Blast that gets stronger when attached to a host (in which case it stuns for 1d4 turns). Its only downside is dealing a point of Intelligence damage to the host every time it's used, which is mitigatable with the right recovery magic or simple immunity.

The hood can communicate telepathically and has blindsight (which it shares with its hosts in exchange for blinding them). It also provides its host with immunity to gases, inhaled poisons, and starvation and dehydration (presuming that the cerebral hood consumes a point of their intelligence each day). Note that this regular consumption simply manifests as a persistent -1 penalty, but it also takes up all natural healing capacity (meaning that those points lost to Mind Blast will need healing eventually).


I could see an intelligence-based caster working here: 2 RHD aren't too bad and attaching yourself to a meatshield (or even better, a bulky wis-based support caster) bestows some pretty amazing defenses. Getting to fire off Mind Blasts is great, especially because you can switch between hosts to let them recover their Intelligence some. Between Mind Blast spam, solid natural stats, useful utility abilities and amazing defenses, I'm going to assign +1 for now (although I think a case is to be made for +0). Do discuss!

[Efrate]

+1 Flight blindsight and a bunch of other good stuff is great. Would gladly take that 3 level prc on nearly anything that needed it. Standard mitigation issues arise but that's a feat away to fix for anyone you want to glomp onto.

[danielxcutter]

Considering most of these can't, y'know, move, shouldn't they all have asterisks?

[Remuko]

'natural ones damage equipment' rule

wait what? ive never heard of this rule!? :O how did I miss this? id probably not use it, as you said, but i was unaware it existed!

[Falontani]

Further rules: Symbionts act on their host's turn in combat (good, as most have terrible dexterity), they can be targeted independently unless located inside the body, they are technically vulnerable to the 'natural ones damage equipment' rule but nobody uses that, and they get a free Share Spells effect that bypasses type restrictions to boot.

Quick thing: unlike the familiar Share Spells (which the feature works off of) this one works both ways. So the host can cast personal spells and share regular duration spells with the symbiont, but the symbiont can do the same thing to the host.

Considering most of these can't, y'know, move, shouldn't they all have asterisks?

Most of them can move a little bit. And having a fly speed at all qualifies for Air Heritage for +30 ft to their speed.

[Dimers]

wait what? ive never heard of this rule!? :O how did I miss this? id probably not use it, as you said, but i was unaware it existed!

It's legacy ... the same concept was in 2e AD&D. Thankfully 4e and 5e both dropped it.

[Dalmosh]

Psion (Telepath) levels allow it to develop a suite of abilities all about mentally suppressing, dominating and overpowering weak-willed hosts, and it can overpower a lot of potential Hosts with the initial Mind Blast.

There's nothing confining an optimised one to using cooperative PCs, because it can dominate animals, and meatshield barbarians and control them with reasonable reliability, especially if it finds a way to drain its target's Wisdom. Sparing use of Psionic Charm means it will rarely even cause personality conflicts with the Host.

Its better thought of along the lines of Puppetmaster or Intellect Devourer - but more limited to what it can attach to.
I think that's worth 3 levels
+1

[Thurbane]

Cerebral Hood

• Tiny Aberration (Symbiont)
• 2 RHD (d8 hp, medium BAB, once good save, 2 skill points/"level")
• Speed 5 ft, fly 20 ft (good).
• +2 natural AC
• Tail slap 1d4.
• Engulf: try to wrap around a medium creatures head, but with a really poor grapple modifier. Usually used only on stunned opponents.
• Mind Blast: at will save or stun attack. Gets stronger and larger area if it has a host. Host suffers 1 Int damage for each use.
• Mind Feeding: deals 1 point of Int damage to host each day.
• Blindsight 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft: decent senses, espcially once you take the Mindsight feat.
• Mouth tube: host no longer needs to eat or breathe. Also immune to gasses, dehydration and starvation.
• Symbiont traits:
• Telepathy 100 ft: nice.
• Str -8, Dex -6, Int +6, Wis +2, Cha +4: net -2. I mean admittedly, you're probably not going to be relying on physical stats anyway, apart from Con.
• Small-ish but useful skill list. +4 bonus on Hide checks.

Very non-standard body type, no limbs or manipulative digits, and don't speak (although they have telepathy, so not such a hindrance).

Honestly, it's going to be hard to rate symbionts, because I just can't see a progression for most of them. They are more like intelligent items than creatures, in most aspects. I guess a psionic class would work - although my knowledge of psionics is minimal. At will mind blast is neat, and if your host has some source of healing Int damage (Binder etc.) you can spam it every round.

I'll tentatively agree with LA +1.

P.S. 100% will be equipping a future Binder bad guy with one of these in my game.

[Morphic tide]

I concur with LA +1, given the varieties of unholy pain you end up making of so much of character design assumption. Technically speaking, you should have your own item slots to load up on various things somewhere, and since you're physically a piece of equipment, you can put literally everything into utilities, beyond your mental score(s) of choice. When it comes to progression, the Symbionts can use Psionics without issue, most of Warlock, at least some Incarnate builds, probably Artificer in theory, and there's probably some way to finagle a functional Bard to use the high Int and Cha scores at the higher levels.

[Remuko]

It's legacy ... the same concept was in 2e AD&D. Thankfully 4e and 5e both dropped it.

where in the rules is it? i joined near the start of 3.0 and switched to 3.5 when that came out and despite my many readings of the 3.0 and 3.5 rules over the years i dont recall ever seeing it!

[Dimers]

where in the rules is it? i joined near the start of 3.0 and switched to 3.5 when that came out and despite my many readings of the 3.0 and 3.5 rules over the years i dont recall ever seeing it!

SRD, under "Items surviving after a saving throw" or PHB page 150, same subheader.

[Remuko]

SRD, under "Items surviving after a saving throw" or PHB page 150, same subheader.

ah yes i think i knew this. i was interpretting the vague "natural 1s damage equipment rule" as something wildly different than what it actually is. I was thinking "you rolled a nat 1 on your attack roll, your sword is now damaged" instead of thinking of saving throws against spells.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Hey Inevitability, do you think you could update your Signature so that it links to the right thread? Its currently four threads behind, as it links to VI instead of IX.

Also, I think everyone else has said things well enough, but +1 for the Symbotie seems reasonable to me.

[Inevitability]

Hey Inevitability, do you think you could update your Signature so that it links to the right thread? Its currently four threads behind, as it links to VI instead of IX.

Also, I think everyone else has said things well enough, but +1 for the Symbotie seems reasonable to me.

Ah yes, thanks for reminding me of that.

[Inevitability]

Cerebral Symbionts, Continued

Two more symbionts are placed in the 'cerebral' category: the Mind Leech and the Psionic Sinew. Let's see how playable they are?

Mind Leech

The Mind Leech is one weird critter. It has a single Aberration RHD, great mental stats and terrible physical ones, Fine size, and a listed speed of one foot. Interestingly, this is allowed rules-wise: it simply means that the leech cannot take move actions and must instead spend a full-round action to move five feet. It also gets Alertness and Spell Penetration as bonus feats.

Without a host, the mind leech is near helpless. It can't move normally, its sole special ability is At-Will Detect Thoughts, and its only attack is a bite that deals zero damage (and, in fact, doesn't even seem to be perceptible). Fortunately, it's still a symbiont, and if its bite hits it can immediately burrow into the target's nervous system and enjoy some good hostpitality.

With a host, the leech gains the ability to project Mind Blasts (which damage the host for one point of intelligence damage), communicate telepathically with its host, and cast Charm Monster, Dominate Person, and Suggestion at-will. The latter abilities all deal intelligence damage (2 for Dominate Person, 1 for the others).

The leech is tricky to rate. As intended, its access to powerful magic is limited by the host's intelligence score, and it is 'merely' an extremely potent psion chassis that's untargetable and can occasionally nuke an encounter. Once the party picks up a Wand of Lesser Restoration, finds an immune host, or even just dominates a bunch of disposable hosts in a row, that restriction obviously goes right out of the window.

For the caster chassis alone, I'm tempted to give +1 (or even +2). With at-will Dominate Person being a very attainable option, I don't think +3 is crazy as far as LAs go. The mind leech offers casters perfect defenses, solid stats, and free domination fodder, and making it give up a couple levels for that is more than balanced.

Psionic Sinew

Another Tiny symbiont, again with 2 RHD. Interestingly, it has to be voluntarily attached, which eliminates some 'capture meatshield, bleed dry for power, abandon' strategies that the other two symbionts do have access to.

The sinew surprisingly has reasonable strength and constitution, terrible dexterity, and bad mental stats. As it has zero natural attacks and should always be attached to a host, that's not a great stat spread. It also has +4 armor AC from an always-on Inertial Armor effect, as well as Blindsight.

Attachment itself is a reasonably solid deal for the host, who gets +4 strength, the same inertial armor bonus, and the ability to get 1d12 damage bear claws for three hours at the cost of one point of dexterity (it can also get 3 temporary HP for the same cost but that's a terrible deal). Depending on how spread-out combat encounters are, this might very well mean that the sinew isn't consuming more dexterity than a character can naturally heal.

What direction to take this creature in, though? Its intelligence and wisdom are bad, it cannot speak, and it lacks the ability to battle normally. I guess the sinew would be okay as a charisma-based caster that can also buff one of your beatsticks a bit, but at 2 RHD that shouldn't require an additional LA. +0 LA for now.

[Prime32]

So... the psionic sinew's claws are in kind of a weird place. It's a 3.5 spell-like ability which references a 3.0 psionic power for its effect. And in 3.0 psionics, natural weapons granted by powers are wielded like manufactured weapons (iterative attacks, TWF, but no making natural attacks in addition to your normal attack routine). The 3.5 equivalent of claws of the bear is claws of the beast, but it never grants a d12 damage die. If it were converted to the 3.5 power, and its missing ML was taken to be equal to character level, it would improve playability a bit, since the claws start weak but continue to grow stronger even as the +4 enhancement bonus to Strength gets outpaced.

Its "Vigor (Sp)" ability also appears to be modelled on a 3.0 vigor power (grants 3 temp HP/ML), though unlike "Claws of the Bear (Sp)" it doesn't explicitly reference that power. And since the claws are a 2nd-level power, it couldn't have an ML of 1 anyway. Again, the 3.5 version of vigor has a completely different formula (5 temp HP, +5 per pp spent on augments).

EDIT: Oh, and of course it doesn't have the psionic subtype either.

[Aniikinis]

Cerebral Hood deserves a +2. But since I don't think it'd be worth it starting at ecl 5 and alright at ecl 4, I'm giving it a +1.

Honestly, I can think of at least 6 different ways I could build this guy and run through a campaign with him. Especially since stealth would be off the charts and I could nab a commoner or guard as a body to ride on, using my Ego score to force them to do what I wish. Psionic, Warlock, Dragon Shaman, Dragonfire Adept, Healer(only usually lawful evil), and quite a few others could be easily built on this guy since you could theoretically use your mountwearer for the items needed, though you won't be using them directly.

And if the body dies? Just have a teammate scoop you up and snatch someone for you to attach to.

[EDIT] I didn't see the other two when I posted. Sinew is +0 in my opinion, since if it wasn't being protected by a beatstick it'd be completely worthless as an option. The leech on the other hand is worth +3 if not higher. I'm well aware of the power this sort of creature can hold given the amount of puppeteers and parasites I've played/used.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Just want to pop in to say I'm enjoying looking at the symbionts, and the ratings seem good to me. Mind leeches are funky as hell.

[Efrate]

I think +3 and +0.

Fine size and at will dominate person is amazing. Also granting yourself total cover nearly always. A listed speed means any enhancement boosts will work. Have a thrall activate one or eat a barbarian level to fix it. I could see a +2* because infinite-ish minions.

The second is fine...just meh.

[Dalmosh]

Wouldn't Mind Leech need the Run feat in order to move a square as a full-round action?

[InvisibleBison]

Wouldn't Mind Leech need the Run feat in order to move a square as a full-round action?

It might. Inevitability was probably thinking of the minimum movement rule, but I'm not sure that applies to a creature whose unpenalized speed is too slow to actually move.

[Thurbane]

Not sure how I feel about rating creatures with little or no ability to move unless attached to a creature. I think it's worth an asterisk. The cerebral hood had a fly speed of 20, at least.

I'll vote +3* and -0 respectively.

Rating symbionts is harder than I thought.

[Debatra]

I only partly agree. The Sinew should definitely get an asterisk for that since it needs a willing host, but the Mind Leech has a much easier time of things once it can get over the initial hurdle. And that can be done fairly easily by letting it ride on the party beatstick until it can dominate something.

I'll say +3 and -0* for now.

[Morphic tide]

Hmm... Mind Leech is a bit bothersome to properly crunch out, given the absurdity that gets brought to bare when it properly gets rolling. To actually put some numbers to this, an Intelligence or Charisma based Manifester will get 1.5 PP per Manifester Level, alongside +3 save DC. On the power point front, the LA is a big hit because the full manifesters always get more PP from each level as you go up. 2-4-5-6-8-10-11-12 and on. At Psion 1 with 18+6 vs. 16 Intelligence to assume leveraging the total non-physicality, Practiced Manifester gives you 2+14 PP to an actual Psion 4's 17+6, and it only goes downhill from there.

On save DCs, you have PL+6 vs. PL+3, with one level lower in maximum Power level but that doesn't mean that much to Psionics because of the innate scalability of a lot of the Powers you roll saves on anyways. At ECL 5, to paper over the annoyance I feel at various unused PP caps, Demoralize at 5PP has a save DC of 20 for the Mind Leech versus the presumably-human Psion's DC of 16, inflicting Shaken on enemies with an Intelligence score that fail a Will save. A reasonable poor Will save for a single-entity encounter would be +2 at this point, giving the Mind Leech a 90% chance to successfully inflict the various -2 penalties, against the regular Psion's 70% chance, if I have the way saving throws is correct (oddly enough, the SRD doesn't seem to actually list whether it's the number to match, or the number to exceed)

Where I come to want LA +4, without a catch, is that this Mind Leech can throw out 1 PP Demoralize for DC 18 from the very start, giving +2 DC on a fifth the cost. Sure, you're losing 10 feet of radius... But you can just use it again to catch whoever you missed the first time. Four times as much, in fact. Being two power levels behind for shenanigans isn't that big a downside when you're saving at least 6PP on every Power you'd augment that much for DC purposes and completely shutting off any concern of self-defense investment.

As for Psionic Sinew, my own take is LA +1 without the asterisk. Yes, I think this thing is worth ECL 3. Because you make a very incredibly powerful Psychic Warrior. Yes, you have a Wisdom penalty. But you never have to manifest Natural Attack granters, and can plant yourself on somebody else while you spend literally every action on a buff. This is massive. I really, really think that ECL 3 should be the bare minimum for the Symbionts because of the way they utterly brick the expectations when you make them a PC. Even setting aside the ultimate cheese of auto-Twin on Bestow Power massively simplifying the logistics of the loop when both people are using it, you still reliably end up with unbelievable stupidity with the slightest effort to leverage it.

[Falontani]

I just want to throw 2 cp into the ring about the different symbionts.
They can use the many different feats/class features to gain a host. Wild cohort is cheap. Psycrystal affinity is usually a bare minimum. But I can see druids and even paladins. A level of wizard gives a familiar, a cohort, or a skeleton. Death Master also gives a skeleton. That's without looking at hunting down or using wbl to obtain a relatively simple host.

[danielxcutter]

I dunno about some of those - I'm not sure if undead can even be hosts and I'm pretty sure that most tables don't let Leadership be a thing - but Wild Cohort should usually be okay.

[Falontani]

I dunno about some of those - I'm not sure if undead can even be hosts and I'm pretty sure that most tables don't let Leadership be a thing - but Wild Cohort should usually be okay.

Most of my tables allow Leadership; but I was talking about the Enchanter Wizard that trades familiar for a cohort. Nothing in the Symbiont states that Undead can't be a host, although I can definitely see requiring the host be able to suffer the stat damage, which for mental stats intelligent undead still work.

[Thurbane]

I just want to throw 2 cp into the ring about the different symbionts.
They can use the many different feats/class features to gain a host. Wild cohort is cheap. Psycrystal affinity is usually a bare minimum. But I can see druids and even paladins. A level of wizard gives a familiar, a cohort, or a skeleton. Death Master also gives a skeleton. That's without looking at hunting down or using wbl to obtain a relatively simple host.

The issue with Wild Cohort, for these symbionts in particular, is that they don't have a whole lot of Int to fuel their abilities.

Also, Wild Cohort is annoying silent on what happens if the animal dies. A lot of DMs rule you can replace it the same way you replace an Animal Companion, but the feat doesn't actually state how or if that works.

[Sutr]

+3 and agreeing with Morphic Tides +1.