I mean, petals are thematically related to pixies...
Now I kinda want to play a petal who's a cross between Willy Wonka and Tony Stark.
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Yeah, +2. Even with buyoff, it shouldn't break the game. But yeah, if advanced to 3 HD, probably LA +0.
Petals are another borderline race. I feel like they’re underpowered at +2 (assuming no buyoff), but they’re a smidge over the line at +1. As stated, the classes that fit well with them are penalized harshly for LA.
The hardcore lack of carrying capacity certainly does come up, but being Tiny and able to fly has an awful lot of advantages. I really want to give them +1 because I honestly wouldn’t play one at +2 nine times out of ten. That’s a harsh loss of character power at +2. But I do agree that they’re a bit above many other races that are justified at +1.
I dont think they are especially frail even with a+3LA at the worst scenario compared to another sorcerer they are only
down at EL 4 with5.5+3xmod hp. So your looking at most likely 11.5-14.5hp . A feat can largely negate this, and with its DR is in play it can come out even. At a more reasonable level its +4 con will close the gap significantly
I think a petal can put 5 points that he would of otherwise put into intelligence and an otherwise odd stat and be fine
I think the petal is a +3 creature
I love playing petals. I've played them at the given LA and honestly, I can give WotC one thing right: +2 LA is my vote.
+2 for petals seems right. Swordsage, any invoker, psionic class, or caster works for them. And that 1 ****ty HD may or may not be replaced do to rules. And they have good stats for anything that doesn't need strength, or reach.
Humanoid phoenixes! Current LA is +5: I dare you to find anything with more than +2 original LA where WotC's value didn't get changed.
Phoelarches have seven monstrous humanoid RHD, which is not great but not terrible either. Their stats, most notably dexterity and charisma, gain bonuses ranging from +0 to +6. Unsurprisingly, they have the [Fire] subtype, which is never bad. +2 natural armor is not very notable, Great Fortitude and Alertness are bonus feats: aka the stuff too bad to ever pick yourself, but good enough to notice.
Special qualities are as follows: immunity to disease and poison (nice), 1d6 Heat (not bad), the ability to heal from fire damage (free out-of-combat healing), and two abilities that are only relevant when the Phoelarch dies. Death Throes, aka 'If I go down I am taking half the party with me' is nothing surprising, but Rise From The Ashes is more interesting. It causes a mysterious egg to remain when the phoelarch dies, which after 24 hours hatches into a new, majestic bird-creature. Not relevant for a PC, but cool to mention.
Spell-likes are at-will Light and Scorching Ray, 3/day Produce Flame, and 1/day Fire Shield. It's neat enough, if a bit one-sided.
So what LA fits here? I'm not going to pretend that playing a phoelarch dooms your character to uselessness, and 8d6 consistent fire damage that can be augmented with sneak attack is hardly bad. The free out-of-combat healing has its utility as well, and fire immunity is useful against a number of things. Finally, the stat boosts are reasonably good all-around.
In my opinion, a phoelarch would definitely be a +0 if the target is tier 4. It doesn't stack up to tier 3 characters of the same level, though, and would be -0 LA in those cases.
Phoera
Aka the magic birbs phoelarchs turn into after death. 3 magical beast RHD, Heat-augmented bite and claw natural attacks that set foes ablaze, a reasonable fly speed, an okay breath weapon that can be augmented with feats, pretty good stats (apart from intelligence), Alertness, and Healing Fire. Phoera also get Rise From The Ashes, which creates new Phoera.
However, being dumb as bricks and thumbless doesn't make up for those abilities. -0 LA, though again not entirely unplayable.
Vazalkyon and Vazalka
Very poorly-written cold-based variants. To illustrate what I meant by 'poorly written', by RAW, vazalkyons still have fire SLAs and a Vazalka's Rise From The Ashes leaves a phoera egg.
That said, the changes are minimal enough that I think the same LAs should work fine.
+2 seems appropriate. It could make a good caster, but it also has a lot of choices for other builds.
Excited to see the Phoelarch. For some reason I've always been a fan of them.
Aaand ninja.
I agree with on the Phoelarch. It's close, but shy of balanced for the level.
Phoera has enough going for it stats wise for +0, but I'm worried about the lack of an arms or hands slot and the lack of fine manipulators (beyond a beak). Or a way to talk.
The ice variants aren't different enough for a different LA, but it is notable that it's much less easy to heal using cold damage than fire.
Phoelarch: net abilities are below par at net +22, and would be more appropriate at 5-6 RHD. Natural AC should be around +7 not +2: also not good. Rise from the Ashes adds a 5,000 XP surcharge to the character's resurrections, and will be very difficult to secure before ECL 17 within your group (normally expensive scrolls and UMD, plus 24 hour recharge if you fail while the campaign moves on without you). SLAs are meh apart from healing yourself. Heat is alright but nothing to write home about-anything with any Fire resist at all is not going to be bothered, and it is the most common alongside Cold resist. 2 bonus feats you would almost never take on your own, but are common prereqs, so that mostly depends on your build. 2 solid immunities in Poison and Disease-not a priority, but common enough to be worthwhile. Still have Cold vulnerability as well.
Overall, not impressed, at all. Mediocre RHD, worse chassis and weak abilities do not for a solid character make. Anything this can do, can be done better by base races with tier 3 class levels, and several other monsters can provide a better base chassis for whatever you want to do with this thing, without the complications. Overall, the RHD and whatever build you could make with them is going to be tier 4 or below: I say LA -0. Not unplayable, but not competitive in tier 3 as written.
EDIT: Also Phoera: the fact that I forgot to mention them, and the Cold variants, tells you most of what I think of them. LA -0: replacing Fire with Cold is worse, since you no longer have a free way of fully healing yourself out of combat, and -8 Int with no hands, few slots, and RHD is not selling me on the offspring.
You forgot SR, which is decent at (HD +11) -- or not that decent if your DM rules that it never advances. There's no "Phoelarch as Characters" section where such advancement is usually spelled out.
The package -- including the immunities, net +22 stats, bonus feats, and SLAs -- seems like a reasonable replacement for class features.
I'm giving these guys a verdict of LA +0.
3 RHD isn't bad. Their stats would be +16 if not for the -8 Int, which is decent.
Not sure how gear & hands would be adjudicated, but they seem unable to talk which puts a damper on quite a bit. I'll give them LA -0.
Side benefit: Healing you is higher-priority, so you're less likely to die when the party is low on healing magic.
(Though I suppose you shouldn't need any healing magic if the party has a torch.)
Random question—how would ruling that the phoelarch's player controls the phoera affect LA? On one hand, it means the only penalty for that PC dying is taking half the party with them; on the other hand, the phoera is also much weaker than the phoelarch.Quote:
Aka the magic birbs phoelarchs turn into after death.
(Also, wait a second...if phoeras create new phoeras when they die, why haven't they overrun the material plane?)
I do like the fact that these guys come with an at-will SLA that's actually usable, worth building around, even. Note that the SLAs are at a fixed CL of 10, which could be problematic at higher levels--assay spell resistance becomes important if you want to keep using scorching ray. On the other hand, it only takes a CL boost of 1 to get a third ray with scorching ray, which is very nice. It's a racial version of eldritch blast, almost. Full base attack and two good saves are nice, though skills are terrible, as usual, with only four class skills.
I agree with +0 at tier 4 and -0 at tier 3.
You know, strangely enough, I've never liked these guys. I don't know why, just something about them never clicked for me or made me want to care about them. But that's beside the point, I'm gonna say a +0 to the people and -0 for the Bird.
It probably wouldn't affect it. The Phoera would just die in its first combat. But it would make a cool pet for the party.
I'm working on a Phoelarch society where Phoera metamorphose back into Phoelarches. New Phoelarches are only born when an egg is destroyed.
I'd say -0 for all of them. They're just shy of mediocre. The phoelarch might be nice if it only had 5 RHD, but not as it is now.
I think -0 for all of them. The Phoelarch is decent at level 7, but doesn't feed into any build well enough. If the temp HP stack, then +0 would be possible. The Phoera is quite nice, except for the Int penalty, which sinks it. The Vazalkyon is worse than the Phoelarch. The Vazalka breaks even, with worse elemental defenses, but a better rider on its bite.
None of these seem interesting at all. If your best shtick is Scorching Ray...
I'll say -0 for all of them.
I could see them being used for themed Swordsages or Warblades.
Stats boosts are always nice, and spell resistance is very nice.
I vote for +0
7 RHD is really high for me to be comfortable with a non-negative adjustment. Scorching Ray is decent but doesn't scale at all, which is fairly troubling. It's not a bad trick to have at-will at ECL 7, but how good is it at ECL 10? 12? 15+? You're correct that it can kind of be augmented with Sneak Attack, but that's pretty much your only option to make it stay relevant in the late game. (Assuming, you know, you find a way to reliably hide or reliably get things flat-footed, which isn't trivial. And the Rules Compendium precision damage rules apply, which is annoying.)
Going to mostly ignore the on-death abilities (Death Throes and Rise From the Ashes) because I don't expect them to come up on most PCs very often. Even when they do come up, we don't optimize for losing, so I don't think they factor into the ECL.
I like that the at-will SLAs have an explicit save DC of 15 when neither Light nor Scorching Ray allows a saving throw.
For serious though, I can see a phoelarch being fun from about ECL 7 to about ECL 10 (assuming, as always, that you're not totally sandbagged by everything being super resistant and/or immune to your preferred element), but the fact that it doesn't lend itself to an obvious choice for advancement makes me skeptical that it's going to hold up well after that. There's the obvious choice of initiator levels to get a half-credit refund on your RHD, but the phoelarch doesn't have any real tricks that make it especially well-suited for meleeing (okay but not phenomenal physical stats, and the only special feature that really applies to melee combat is Heat, which is okay but hardly overwhelming, give or take Fire Shield 1/day), so that seems a little weird. Thematic as hell on a Desert Wind-focused Swordsage, but not actually very powerful compared to a human or a traditional ECL 0 race.
Given that the phoelarch will run out of tricks but also given that it's okay for a few levels, I'm okay with either +0 or -0. Closer to -0, but I'll allow the relatively early game to serve as a mitigating factor.
For the phoera, it's got animal intelligence, no thumbs, and few if any abilities that can't be gotten for cheaper elsewhere. I'd give it +0 if it had less horrific INT or if it had thumbs, but without either, it doesn't have enough unique and scalable tricks to be worth the effort to go above -0. (So to be clear, this is -0.)
The arguements have convinced me, -0 for both.
The lack of scaling and lack of clear build path aren't good.
Isn't DC 15 the Reflex Save to avoid catching on fire? Only thing I can think of that might be applicable. Unless they were supposed to have Fireball as an at will or something.
They're mostly fairly close to getting over the line to +0, and could well be worth it in something like a one shot in the right level range, but close doesn't count.
I'm calling them all LA -0.
7RHD isn't a great start. Monstrous Humanoid, so not awful for melee types.
+2 natural AC is underwhelming.
The SLAs are a mixed bag: the only real notable is at will Scorching Ray CL 10th.
Healing Fire is handy.
Immunity to poison & disease, and SR 18 are handy, but not amazing.
Death Throes/Rise from the Ashes are more problematic than anything.
Str +4, Dex +6, Con +4, Wis +2, Cha +6: solid, but not really worth 7 class levels.
I'd say playable, but far from impressive. I'm voting LA +0.
As for Phoeera: Hmm, I think that deserves an LA -0.
Fire Shield (warm) somewhat covers the racial Cold vulnerability. If you're not spending a month on the Glacier of Only Cold Subtype Encounters it might be sufficient to carry you through an average adventuring day.
-- -- --
Thinking about builds:
BAB +7 opens the door to Divine Crusader (which makes good use of the +6 Cha), and at higher OP that transitions into Sovereign Speaker. That's not terrible.
Three levels of Barbarian -> Runescarred Berserker might be interesting, if you can meet the RP requirements for the prereq feats. Your extra Fire damage is (Ex) so you can kill some regenerators in your anti-magic field via melee attacks. 3 levels of Barbarian gets you Trapkiller, which is a hilarious-yet-useful ACF, and which benefits from one of your RHD skills.
Not sure how these phoenix-dudes would interact with the Frostrager PrC, but having both the Cold and Fire subtype, and inflicting both types of damage on every attack, seems at least mildly interesting. Throw on Fist of the Forest to benefit even more from your racial +6 Con (and one of your racial bonus feats).
Abjurant Champion, hmm... could you designate your race as an Arcane Spellcasting class to benefit from the CL-is-BAB thing at the end? Probably not, but at worst you might make better use of your RHD's full BAB on a casting PrC like Suel Arcanamach.
War Mind 10 or Monk 3 > Fist of Zuoken 10 might be viable, too.
... so it could be a half-decent caster in the 13 remaining levels.
I think it could be playable, but it's not going to be overpowered at any level.
It could do a doable dual wielding swordsage.Quote:
... so it could be a half-decent caster in the 13 remaining levels.
I think it could be playable, but it's not going to be overpowered at any level.
Assasins stance improve the scorching rays.
While the str and dex boost lend itself well to shadow blade.
Is that a metaphysical restriction (e.g, new phoelarches can only be born when an egg is destroyed because that frees one of a finite number of phoelarch souls, and reproducing when there isn't one available resuts in a soulless abomination) or a sociological one (e.g, the phoelarches only have officially-sanctioned occupations for 12,593 people, and don't know what #12,594 would do)?
It's the DC to disbelieve the light. If you succeed, you can close your eyes.
Hm...that's an interesting question. Can illusions create light? At the very least, I'd expect the semi-real illusions created by shadow illusions to glow a bit.
I would say yes, and they provide illumination as per whatever the illusion is of. Ie, an illusion of a lit torch provides the illumination of a torch while the illusion lasts. Alternatively, you can make an illusion of something else that sheds illusory light.
Here's another question - what about an illusion of darkness/shadows? Do you automatically get the Will Save to Disbelieve for interacting with the illusion?