A Unicorn Conundrum: Valarian broke my unicorn!

[Malphegor]

So I was thinking about theoretical builds using unicorns (assuming their cohort LA works like regular LA because sure ok, 4 levels is a LOT despite their good stats and abilities and assuming they can advance by class levels)

Removing this LA with the PGTF back of the book way (as UA way doesn’t do enough with 4LA) then buying back your levels with xp, then going into cleric to then go into beloved of valarian, but instead of getting a unicorn companion you treat yourself as the unicorn involved.

This results in at ECL14 you become a celestial charger.

Which gets... weird.

As this would immediately result in one being bumped up to ECL23 I think? with the hitdice additions celestial charger has over a regular unicorn.


Now that you are epic levell’d, prepare to die, because a level 16ish cleric barely leveraging domain spontaneity with versatile spellcaster to scratch their way into getting 9th spells is going to struggle to keep par. And the beloved of valarian spell list is mostly already on the cleric list and the domains a cleric of valarian would probably have.

...

I think I’m probably better off just treating the celestial charger upgrade as just giving the celestial template maybe and ignore the hitdice increase and the cleric levels. But it’s been a fun experiment in ‘if you can just mush up one element of a class how does it break things?’

[Troacctid]

That's...not how Beloved of Valarian works. To be honest, I'm not quite sure how you got the idea that you can choose an existing unicorn to be your companion rather than being sent one as a conjuration (calling) effect, but however you arrived there, it's definitely not RAW.

(It's also not how the negative LA rules work.)

[nedz]

Unicorns advance by HD.

Celestial Chargers are just a result of the gods being munchkins.

[noob]

Unicorns advance by HD.

Celestial Chargers are just a result of the gods being munchkins.

Any creature with more than 3 int can advance by class levels however there is a line that indicates whenever it is hd or class level the more standard way for the creature to advance.(and creatures advancing in a different way than the standard one should be gm made exceptions)

[nedz]

Any creature with more than 3 int can advance by class levels however there is a line that indicates whenever it is hd or class level the more standard way for the creature to advance.(and creatures advancing in a different way than the standard one should be gm made exceptions)

The Celestial template is silent on the issue of Advancement.