PDA

View Full Version : The world of Morphic Tide, a land of Fleshcrafted monstrosities.



Morphic tide
2016-01-26, 12:54 PM
Wight-pocalypse? Dark Sun? Points of Light? Tippyverse? The worst these offer is little compared to the horrors that this realm can bring to bear. A shattered, half-mad god of twisting life, plagues that turn victims into cancerous, oozing monstrosities, a city devoted to the furthest study of Fleshcrafting and more madness. Locate City Bombs are old news here, Defiling is an accepted form of magic in many places, the primordial elementals are sleeping avatars of older times and at the center of it all is a city founded on magical perversion of life and death. Grand walls encasing continents hold the horrors of countless careless experiments at bay, grand kingdoms live in eternal fear of the day the madness is loosed by uncaring Binders and the heavens weep at the lost world. Many creatures considered irredeemable monstrosities are common citizens in many place, and of these, the Alitharid, warped mockeries of the monstrous Illithid, are the most seen. This is a world of unbound progress, and to end the madness is something many have tried and failed to achieve. To live here is to change, to die here is to be fuel. Welcome to the lands of the Scholomance, city of dark, mad studies of twisting life and cheating death.

OOC: Scolomance has been used in several works to refer to immense or important places of learning. While the only use of it I can remember is the one in World of Warcraft, I know there are other works that use it.

Morphic tide
2016-01-27, 08:40 PM
Race: The Alitharid

Creature type: Aberration
Size: Fine
LA: +1
Physical stat modifiers: Str -4, Con-4 Dex +6
Mental stat modifiers: Wis +2, Int +2, Cha +2
Racial HD: 1d4
Alignment: Never Chaotic.
Diet: Psionic energy and brains.

Neural Parasite: An Alitharid is, on it's own, a limbless creature that has only the senses of sight, hearing and touch, but may implant itself into a living creature one or more size categories larger to use the creature's body, hereafter referred to as the host. If the host is less than two size categories larger than the Alitharid, the Alitharid is exposed and can be hit by area damage and precision damage from behind the host. The implantation takes 10 minutes and the potential host makes a Reflex save with a DC of 30 + the Alitharid's Strength+Dexterity each round. These saves can be failed intentionally and fail automatically if the host is immobile. If the host succeeds any of these saves, the implantation fails. If the host gets a critical success or succeeds by twice the DC, the Alitharid is killed. If the implantation is successful, the Alitharid gains permanent control of the host and the host may only be raised after the Alitharid is removed. Removal of the Alitharid is always lethal for the host. After 1d6 hours, treat the host as killed by Deceribrate upon death. After 1d6 weeks, the host gains the Alitharid's Intelligence modifier as an untyped bonus to it's reflex save and Intelligence and the Alitharid gains mental stat's equal to the host's as an untyped bonus and may control the host. After an additional 1d6 weeks, the host's creature type becomes Aberration. After a third 1d6 weeks, the host gains the Alitharid's racial traits and abilities that mention the host using them until killed. One host may have one Alitharid of the same size category, two of one size category smaller, four of two size categories smaller or 8 of three size categories smaller, but for this to happen, the Alitharid must have one shared mind. If the host dies, the Alitharid must make a DC 5 Strength check to leave the corpse, making one such check each round. The Alitharid does not age while in a host and may intentionally leave the host by making such a check at any time as a full round action.(Cerebromorphosis that lets it leave the host alive. And may leave it hanging out of the host's head.)

Brain Eating: An Alitharid may make a grapple attack to latch on to the head of a creature up to two size categories larger than it. If the attack succeeds, the Alitharid begins to extract the brain of the target, taking 5 minutes for a target of the same size, halving the time for each size category below the user the target is and doubling for each size category above the user. Once the process is halfway completed, the target is dead. If the target has at least 5 intelligence and is one size category or more larger, the Alitherid may gain one racial HD and always gains one Intelligence per size category above the Alitharid's.The Alitharid's host is considered to have had it's brain extracted by this ability. If this ability is used by an Alitharid's host, the brain counts as eaten by all of the the Alitharid, evenly splitting racial HD and intelligence gained no matter what, losing the remainder. At 2 racial HD, the Alitharid's size increases to Diminutive. At 4 racial HD, it's size increases to Tiny. At 7 racial HD, it's size category increases to Small. At 11 racial HD, it's size increases to Medium. At 16 racial HD, it's size increases to Large. At 22 racial HD, it's size increases to Huge. At 29 racial HD, it's size increases to Gargantuan. At 37 racial HD, the Alitharid's size category increases to Colossal and may grow no further. One brain with 10 or more intelligence counts as a day's rations for the Alitharid. One additional brain is needed for a host, but also feeds all implanted Alitharid(Eat brains of things your size and bigger to get bigger yourself. But at a certain point, you are likely to run out of non-dragon hosts for yourself. Or your swarm, if you grab the crazy LA you will have from the template that makes it work. But those dragons will be all but unkillable, with the insane SR you get.)

Psi Eating: An Alitharid grappling with a creature may drain Intelligence and PP up to it's Intelligence modifier from a creature as a full round action and gains 1 PP per two points drained this way. Intelligence draned this way recovers at a rate of 1 per 5 minutes. Draining 1 PP this way counts as a day's rations for a Fine Alitharid, 2 PP for a Tiny one, 4 PP for a Small one, 8 PP for a Medium one, 16 PP for a Large one, 32 PP for a Huge one, 64 PP for a Gargantuan one and 128 PP for a Colossal one. Use the host's size to determine the amount needed for a day's rations and then add the Alitharid's needed PP for a day's rations.

Alitharid Traits: An Alitharid has the abilities of and counts as a Wilder with a level of 1/4 it's racial HD, with the PP and Powers Known being considered those of all classes that have features including them. Additionally, an Alitharid gains 1 SR per racial HD it has and may form a telepathic link with 10 ft. range per point of Int.

Acquired Template: Mind-Linked Swarm:
LA/CR: +1
Effects: A Mind-Linked Swarm is several creatures that have one mind, act on one turn, share all XP gained, PP and powers and have the same classes. Their may be up to 8 creatures in a Mind-Linked Swarm. Add the mental stats of all members is 1/4 the total of the stats of all members, using the final result as the mental stats of all the members. All members of a Mind-Linked Swarm must have the template.(for a full 8 Fine Mind-Linked Alitharids, that's ECL 24 if none have a class. But, assuming you roll 18 for Intelligence for all of them, they have 40 Intelligence, making it a very tempting choice for point buy. And you are getting insane racial HD, if you pack them all into one host. And the host gains all their spell resistance bonuses.)
Requirements: PP from a racial ability or trait or from a hereditary template and 5 Int.
Getting: All creatures must have a telepathic link with all other creatures to be in the Mind-Linked Swarm and they all must have identical personalities. The telepathic link becomes permanent and it's range becomes 1 mile per point of Intelligence on the resulting creature. If the bond is broken, the creatures no longer linked lose this template and all their mental stats become 0 permanently, including for their soul.(All these requirements can happen with a newly-spawned group of Alitharid on accident. And the bit with souls is so that they are permakilled. Or just become mindless, if they are Undead or a Construct.)

Morphic tide
2016-02-07, 04:09 PM
Race; The Morphic Men

Creature type: Aberration (It was a fairly big secret, for obvious reasons)
LA: +3
Physical stat modifiers:Str +2/ Con +4/ Dex -2
Mental Stat Modifiers: Wis +1/ Int +2/ Cha -4
Size: Medium
Age: as Half-Elf

Favored Classes: Binding classes, Monk, Druid, Divine Casters with a deity of choice, Fleshwarper

Racial Trait: Unstable Form:
Benefit: Once per day per HD, you may shift physical stats up to your HD for 1 round/HD as a full round action. In addition, your size category can be shifted one step as a full round action, with the largest being one step away from your default.(I.E., if you have 5 hit dice, you may take 5 points from your physical stats and put them into other physical stats. This means that if you grab a class that needs physical stats, you are best off dumping everything into Con, then shift it to your needs)
Special: Add one d20 HD for each age category past the minimum for a class level and invert stat changes from aging and remove the age limit if you have Timeless Body. In addition, you count as having the Morphic template for all purposes.

History: The Morphic Men are an artificial race created accidentally by a powerful mage known only as Mophic Tide in modern times who latter became a god from their worship. Early on, they where ridiculed by all others, leading them to seek a place they would be accepted. When their creator learned of their existence, he began to seek them out to gather them in a fortified city he shaped from the stone of the mountains surrounding his base, using the chance to get a decently sized city near his base to buy supplies at. Later on, as his death approached, he actively supported the religion they made surrounding him in pursuit of becoming a god, being sure that it would share his views. These views became the foundation of their society, one of wielding nature as a tool and seeing life as but one more thing to shape. They learned much of these things, but could not find a solution to their creator's mortality and had even less success with solving their own. However, the views their creator imparted forbid the full abandonment of life, leading to artifice and undeath being shunned far more than usual. This lead to a strange practice of using warped living creatures as complex tools, rather than magically infused metal and stone.

Religion: Due to their nature as an artificial race, most gods outside of their creator reject them as worshippers, leading to most defaulting to their creator, who often sends groups to remove threats to their race. Those who don't often take up the veiws of Druids out of a strange sort of guilt at being unnatural.

Other races: They have a strange view of the Illithid, as they are another artificial race with an interest in life as a tool, but the normal Illithid society's ego at their superiority of their species as it as now is a major issue. Their opinion of elves and dwarves is almost universally negative, due to the elves obsession with the natural order and dwarf's refusal of change. In regards to all other races, they are largely neutral or, if the race has a similar aversion to change as the elves and dwarfs, a significant amount of dislike for the refusal of progress.




Template: Morphic

LA/CRA: +3

Effects: Morphic creatures gain (Ex) Fast Healing X, where X is their Constitution, and may shift all points between physical stats as a full round action, with the shift lasting 1 round/HD. If they have Con 50 or greater, they instead gain (Ex) Regeneration X bypassed by Fire and Acid, where X is 1/2 their Con. They may also change their size by up to two size categories away from their default as a separate full round action.

Special: A Morphic creature's age category's durations are halved, physical modifiers from age are doubled and mental modifiers are always negative. If a Morphic Man has this template, reduce the LA/CRA by 1, double the Fast Healing/Regeneration and reduce the threshold for Regeneration to 25 Constitution

Requirements: Must be living and have flesh.

Legend: Early forms of the Morphic Men had much greater physical prowess, and their ability to shift their forms was much more available, but they had much shorter lives from their forms being even less stable and the instability caused their minds to fade much sooner. In his attempts to learn how to fix their flaws, their creator made other creatures with it to use as test subjects for improvements and fixes. However, an early batch of test subjects, the first to have non magical regeneration, escaped, as the security measures were made to contain creatures with magical regeneration. The key of this escape was a distorted attempt at cloning a creature Morphic Tide only refers to as 'Big T,' calling this test subject 'Little T.' To this day, the Morphic Men still hunt 'Little T,' as Morphic Tide admits that 'Little T' is the most stable creature with the full Morphic trait set that has ever existed, and likely holds the key to solving their flaws forever.


Feats: Morphic
Placeholder for now

Morphic tide
2016-02-07, 06:02 PM
As always, will be updated with more things as I go along


Important Locations in Scholomance: Arenas
Scholomance has an oddly large number of arenas, each focused on a different type of fighting and all of them with means of quickly reviving slain 'contestants', also known as those so desperate for money, fame and combat experience that they are willing to die several times for it. To reduce the havoc of the arenas, an entry bid is required to enter some of them and all have a limit to how many rounds are allowed each day, some have a limit to how many contestants may be in a round and some have a time limit. The entry bid only allows the highest bid to enter the arena, but the bid has an upper limit of 5000 gp, with multiple bids that reach this leading to secondary bids that have no upper limit for the bid. There are 4 of each Arena, with each type being in a tower with all 4 in it and 1000 ft of height for each layer


Arenas of Endurance:
The Arenas of Endurance are open, circular, level fields surrounded by the spectators stands, roughly 400 feet across. They have an entry bid, a time limit of 30 minutes each wave, a limit of 6 hours per round, a limit of 6 contestants per round and a limit of 3 rounds per day. Contestants face near endless waves of summoned creatures, each wave more difficult than the last. When a contestant suffers lethal injuries, they are teleported to the entrance. For each wave completed, the prize earned doubles, starting at 10 gp after the first round. On the first wave, a single Summon Monster One is used. Each wave after, one more Summon Monster 1 is used, until the sixth wave, where a Summon Monster 2 is used, in addition to six Summon Monster 1 spells. From then on, each wave adds one more spell of each type in use, with every fifth wave bringing a new spell. Wave 11 adds Summon Monster 3, Wave 16 adds Summon Monster 4, Wave 21 adds Summon Monster 5, Wave 26 adds Summon Monster 6, Wave 31 adds Summon Monster 7, Wave 36 adds Summon Monster 8, Wave 41 adds Summon Monster 9, Wave 46 adds Summon Nature's Ally 1-9, with the number of each being equal to the equivalent Summon Monster spell. On Waves after 50 ,all spells are Intensified and summon the most numerous option. Waves 51-100 do not add more spells, instead increasing the number of times each spell is used by 2. Wave 100 is the last wave and doubles the number of times each spell is used

For those who want to KILL KILL KILL without limit or roleplaying.

Arenas of Slaughter:
The Arenas of Slaughter are areas 2 miles across with many light fortifications that are enchanted to automatically repair themselves at the start and end of each day. It has two rounds each day, an entry bid, no limit on the number of contestants and the first round runs from the hour after dawn until the hour before twilight and the second round runs from the hour after twilight until the hour before dawn. Anyone may enter at any time, including during a round, with contestants entering once per hour. When a contestant suffers lethal injuries, they are teleported to a room next to the area that contestants wait to enter at, with the option of reentering immediately or leaving. The prize is 100 gp per kill and 1000 gp per 10 minutes survived. Contestants are to kill eachother constantly until the end of the round and may not bring their own equipment with them, instead receiving a Merciful Adimantite replacement for their weapon, a Mithral version of their armor and a replacement spell book with one of several fixed spell lists for their stay(will write up the spell lists. It's to prevent the use of things that would prevent the recovery of slain contestants)

For those who want some strategy, DMPCs out the ass, nigh-impossible encounters and a little roleplaying. Seriously, you are supposed to face Epic level casters that Dark Chaos Feat Shuffled their way to otherwise impossible builds involving 5 Intensified Disintegrates per round without spending spell slots. This is where gods go for power leveling, including the setting's namesake, who DCFSed their way to being able to kill a Greater Deity in one attack action.

Arenas of Armies:
The Arenas of Armies are clear, flat areas 3 miles across. It has no entry bid, 2 rounds each day, no limit of contestants at a time and the first round runs from the hour after dawn until the hour before twilight and the second round runs from the hour after twilight until the hour before dawn. Contestants face an endless army of creatures,512 castings Summon Monster 1, 256 castings of Summon Monster 2, 128 castings of Summon Monster 3, 64 castings of Summon Monster 4, 32 castings of Summon Monster 5, 16 castings of Summon Monster 6, 8 castings of Summon Monster 7, 4 castings of Summon Monster 8 and 2 castings of Summon Monster 9 per round, all Intensified and Permanent. The prize is 10 gp per kill, doubling for each spell level above 1 used to make it and 500 gp for each hour survived.

For those who want to be in an army without roleplaying or kill several hundred enemies per spell.