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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Just to Browse
So I was playing around with the evolutionist to see what I could break and I ended up writing
this guy. I took an hour or so to do it (most of that being evolution choice and formatting), so it's not finished, but I found that the raw potency that this class offers is incredible--specifically the at-will casting you can pick up. I recommend imposing per-encounter limits of some kind instead of per-day, with harsher scaling, and implementing some sort of buff-persisting evolution for SLAs so characters can get persistent effects instead of racking up and ability and using it at-will every time the duration expires..
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Orc Evolutionist 6, Level 6, Init +1, HP 48/48, Speed 30
AC 17, Touch 11, Flat-footed 16, Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +3, Base Attack Bonus 6/1
4 Claws +14 (1d4+3, x2)
Bite (Primary Weapon) +14/+9 (1d8+9, x2)
Chain Shirt (+4 Armor, +1 Dex), +2 Natural
Abilities Str 22, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 11, Wis 8, Cha 6
You make 6 attacks in a full attack, each dealing ~10 damage plus 1d3 Wisdom. You have pounce, at-will wraithstrike, and at-will invisibility. Go to town.
Spell-like ability centric builds are some of the strongest builds avaible, I will admit.
Maybe I should slap an ability prerequisite on spell-likes and psi-likes to make them MAD, at the very least. No balancing good rolls, as they say.
By the way, I can't find a reason why you have a second attack with your bite. The only method I know of that allows iterative attacks with natural weapons only applies to paired natural weapons.
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Originally Posted by
Rizban
On the entry feat requirements, is there an ability to waive one of the Mutator feat requirements if the evolutionist has access to a special list due to his type? For example, if a Warforged Evolutionist wants to take this class, can he have only Iron Will and Plant Mutator due to having access to Construct Mutations due to his creature type?
It's feat tax. I don't really plan to waive it for those with free access to an extra list at the moment.
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Can a high evolutionary target himself with Evolutionary Touch? As written, it just specifies "a creature," allowing self as a valid target.
Yes.
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Also, is there a maximum number of creatures that can be affected, or can I affect all 200+ of my low level minions from Leadership plus anyone else in town? I could see having this guy mutate an entire village just for fun if there's no limit on the number of creatures.
No limit. Make the world a better place, go to every town and slap a +7 charisma on every man and every woman. And then geas them all to do whatever you want.
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Also, from a balance standpoint, I'd probably limit the ability to grant mutations to strictly the ones he chooses on his Latent Mutations/Teratomorphisms list. It makes a High Evolutionist pick his LMs with a bit more thought and prevents him from adding basically any mutation on the list to someone.
The problem with that is that mutations in the latent list count towards the High Evolutionary's (not evolutionist) mutations, so what this would do is block him from taking these mutations for his baseline setup and preventing him from using anything in his baseline setup (such as, likely, his ability boosters) on other recipients.
I should note that Evolutionary Touch and Latent Mutations are both based on Class Level not on Mutator Level. Evolutionary touch can grant up to 10 mutations at class level 5, and the Latent Pool has only 20 mutations at the same level.
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Other than that, I really like it. I have a certain artificer who would take this PrC in a heartbeat.
An artificer?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Well don't let my criticism make you feel like you should cut down evolutionist SLA use. I think a spell or two is the best way to make a cool monster, and your scaling table is already pretty smart. My most specialist want is to see persistent spell-based buff support in the abilities.
Also, pounce seems really good... should that be a feat?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Just to Browse
Well don't let my criticism make you feel like you should cut down evolutionist SLA use. I think a spell or two is the best way to make a cool monster, and your scaling table is already pretty smart. My most specialist want is to see persistent spell-based buff support in the abilities.
Also, pounce seems really good... should that be a feat?
The persistent spell effect is, in a limited fashion, found in the Outsider mutations list.
In any case, persistant spell effects don't have many differences from at-will spell effects, when it is all said and done.
Pounce is an interesting ability. There are primarily two simple ways of acquiring it. 1 level of barbarian with a certain ACF, and polymorph into a variety of creatures. These are the fastest paths to pounce. There are many others, a number of them related to mounted combat, just to add insult to grievous injury (because clearly, charging for double damage is not enough, you need to attack multiple times for double damage each).
There are also a few feats that grant variants of it, such as Two Weapon Pounce (PHBII) and an epic feat that, like most epic feats, is actually pretty lame in comparison with many things that are avaiable much earlier.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Draken
The problem with that is that mutations in the latent list count towards the High Evolutionary's (not evolutionist) mutations, so what this would do is block him from taking these mutations for his baseline setup and preventing him from using anything in his baseline setup (such as, likely, his ability boosters) on other recipients.
In my own defense, I corrected that before you posted the reply. :smalltongue:
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Originally Posted by
Draken
I should note that Evolutionary Touch and Latent Mutations are both based on Class Level not on Mutator Level. Evolutionary touch can grant up to 10 mutations at class level 5, and the Latent Pool has only 20 mutations at the same level.
Ah, yes, that makes sense. Just to be completely clear though, the Latent Mutations do nothing for you unless you apply them with the Evolutionary Touch ability, but the still count against your mutation level limits. Correct?
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Originally Posted by
Draken
An artificer?
I have an artificer character with the Construct Grafter feat and level in Renegade Mastermaker. His goal is to upgrade himself and start upgrading others. I can see him dipping Evolutionist a few levels then taking High Evolutionary to "gift" others with grafts and mutations, all flavored to be mechanical upgrades to their bodies.
maybe start a little Borg collective...
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Rizban
In my own defense, I corrected that before you posted the reply. :smalltongue:
Bah. :smalltongue:
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Ah, yes, that makes sense. Just to be completely clear though, the Latent Mutations do nothing for you unless you apply them with the Evolutionary Touch ability, but the still count against your mutation level limits. Correct?
Correct. Latent mutations (and teratomorphisms) provide no benefits to you, unless you apply them to yourself with Evolutionary Touch.
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I have an artificer character with the Construct Grafter feat and level in Renegade Mastermaker. His goal is to upgrade himself and start upgrading others. I can see him dipping Evolutionist a few levels then taking High Evolutionary to "gift" others with grafts and mutations, all flavored to be mechanical upgrades to their bodies.
Makes sense, but your mutator level will be tanked at a maximum of 6~. Imposing some severe limitations on your potential choices.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Draken
Makes sense, but your mutator level will be tanked at a maximum of 6~. Imposing some severe limitations on your potential choices.
What I was thinking was drop the Renegade Mastermaker entirely. It's pretty underpowered and was being taken mostly for the fluff flavor and to eventually change type from humanoid to living construct.
That would make the build effectively Artificer 8 / Evolutionist 7 / High Evolutionary 5. I'd probably take it as Arty 5 / Evo 1 / HE 2 then alternate +1 in each class in whatever order seems best for the campaign until I finish out at 20.
I'd probably go with Construct and Plant Mutator feats. Plant gives you access to Verdant Servant, which, as written, is a construct rather than a plant, as well as a laser beam like attack. This gives him a couple extra construct minions in addition to his homunculi and can be easily refluffed to be "construct" based instead of "plant" based.
While obviously not as strong as going Arty 20 or focusing Evo/HE, it provides some very interesting combinations on the theme of mutating/grafting others. Heck, you could take any of the grafting feats and/or levels in Fleshwarper to fill out this concept too.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Looking at the High Evolutionary, I'd probably take leadership and load my level ones with at will sixth level spell like abilities. Give one of the higher level ones a nice psychic reformation so that he can give them supernatural transformation. A few at will supernatural heal bots would be pretty sweet. Would be awesome to gestalt with thrallherd.
Oh, have your cohort be an artificer and give your thralls the set of spell like abilities mentioned in the cost reduction handbook. Many uses for this. I can't see a major country that doesn't have one of these for augmenting the higher ups in the army.
EDIT: Only CL 8th for the SLAs, but that's still none too shabby.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rizban
What I was thinking was drop the Renegade Mastermaker entirely. It's pretty underpowered and was being taken mostly for the fluff flavor and to eventually change type from humanoid to living construct.
That would make the build effectively Artificer 8 / Evolutionist 7 / High Evolutionary 5. I'd probably take it as Arty 5 / Evo 1 / HE 2 then alternate +1 in each class in whatever order seems best for the campaign until I finish out at 20.
I'd probably go with Construct and Plant Mutator feats. Plant gives you access to Verdant Servant, which, as written, is a construct rather than a plant, as well as a laser beam like attack. This gives him a couple extra construct minions in addition to his homunculi and can be easily refluffed to be "construct" based instead of "plant" based.
While obviously not as strong as going Arty 20 or focusing Evo/HE, it provides some very interesting combinations on the theme of mutating/grafting others. Heck, you could take any of the grafting feats and/or levels in Fleshwarper to fill out this concept too.
13 skill ranks means you need to be 10th level to take your first level in HE.
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There is an excellent reason why most countries wouldn't want a High Evolutionary beefing up their high ranked officers.
That reason is called Geas.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Draken
13 skill ranks means you need to be 10th level to take your first level in HE.
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There is an excellent reason why most countries wouldn't want a High Evolutionary beefing up their high ranked officers.
That reason is called Geas.
On the other hand, if he is a high ranked officer/king/general then it shouldn't be a problem now should it? :smallwink:
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Draken
13 skill ranks means you need to be 10th level to take your first level in HE.
Ah, yes, forgot that in the example. Still, Arty 8 / Evo 2 or Arty 5 / Evo 5 would work. Probably take all 5 HE levels at that point.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Dude. Construct Mutators are now Transformers? AWESOMESAUCE.
Not entirely sure what the point of Extrude Docent ability is. Yeah, it can give you minions sometimes, and they can scout, but is that it? It seems like it should be able to provide some sort of rebirth thing ala Braniac.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Draken
In any case, persistant spell effects don't have many differences from at-will spell effects, when it is all said and done.
The thing that bothers me about the "at-will = persist" mentality is that it encourages getting at-will effects that are 1r/lvl instead of 1min/lvl (because those are stronger and require no extra investment), and also facilitates arguing with the DM about how many rounds ago you cast your buff when you enter combat. Natural Invisibility suffers from a similar problem, but breaks so easily that I didn't think it really mattered.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
I'm currently making a PrC for this and I was wondering; Say you are a fire elemental (thus having the fire subtype by default), you gain Heart of Elements [Air] (gaining the Air subtype). If you then obtained the Elemental Potency Teratomorph, would it improve both your fire and electricity damage or would have have to select one.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
All of the elemental teratomorphisms past rank I give abilities based on what elemental subtypes you have. All of them.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Draken
All of the elemental teratomorphisms past rank I give abilities based on what elemental subtypes you have. All of them.
Hmm. That's going to make balancing difficult for my PrC, as it's based on giving the Evolutionist Heart of the Elements for the other elements, thus creating an evolved elemental.
Well, time to tweak features.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Milo v3
Hmm. That's going to make balancing difficult for my PrC, as it's based on giving the Evolutionist Heart of the Elements for the other elements, thus creating an evolved elemental.
Well, time to tweak features.
You mean elements besides the four base elements? Because there is a sidebar for that.
If you mean granting the rest of the subtype teratomorphisms, I would suggest adjusting pacing along the prestige class, the ultimate balancing act on that should be the fact that it is giving more low-level teratomorphisms in exchange for high-level ones (and perfection)
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Thanks for the tips on his character, gives him something to consider when leveling. I'm kind of arms-race about encounters so he's probably going to boil his party in difficult situations being dangerous alone doesn't solve.
What do you think of me retooling the old pokemon trainer class and making it evolution and teratomorphism based instead?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
Hanuman
Thanks for the tips on his character, gives him something to consider when leveling. I'm kind of arms-race about encounters so he's probably going to boil his party in difficult situations being dangerous alone doesn't solve.
What do you think of me retooling the old pokemon trainer class and making it evolution and teratomorphism based instead?
Have a go. I do recommend cutting out access to Spell-like Abilities and Psi-like abilities for such a class, unless there is a hard limit on how many monsters the class gets.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
There's no (Sp) (Psi) or spells cast, the PKMT has caster levels, what problems could be ran into with (Sp) access for the pokemon?
http://www.scshop.com/~ritaxis/summoner.html
There's no limit to how many you can get, only how many you can control (and therefore the ones that you can release, equal to your CHA mod. There's really no rules stated for how you control one then refund and control another other than releasing the pokemon i think, I'll write something in allowing a change during rest to make sure spell effects are a non-issue.
The main mechanic that worries me is the CR cannot exceed CL, I playtested this a while back and it was pretty silly what utility you can get out of a midlevel, and what templates you can put on em. It's kind of like having 4-6 pathfinder summoner eidolons you can throw out 1 at a time, and each are more powerful.
Lacking spells, you gotta have a bit more options, but having 6 CR9 monsters...
Arcane Ooze = Living Antimagic Ooze
Gargantuan Assassin Vine = Like an optimized grappler + Living Spell (Web)
Elsewhale = Planar Transport Bus
Inferno Spider = When you want to set everything on fire.
Phasm = Powerful Shapechanger Diplomancer
Yuki-On-Na = Because I'm a bard, and between pixie, yuki and I, hell we made demons dance with pure skillchecks. To this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJdnWsArEPo
Pixie Cohort (Leadership)
It's not that the utility is bad, I'm just saying that having several 20HD monsters at level 9 is broken.
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Ok, so here's the basic brainstorm:
Capture "monster" as stated in class, no more than CHAMOD# of Level -2HD(minimum 1/4HD@level1, 1/2HD@level2) monsters, grant monster evolutionist levels that you control to a maximum of 2HD lower than you are, and the ability to replace a certain number of HD with evolutionist level HD?
So you go brain a rat with extreme prejudice, capture it in a ball, and mutate it replacing it's normal animal HD and associated granted stats and replace with an evolutionist level. "RATATA, FLAMETHROWER!" Even level 1 would be rad.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
I am presuming you mean the 'retooling' to be upgrading the monsters caugh with mutator levels and mutations.
The thing with SLAs/PLAs then, is that you could hand various spells/powers to different monsters. And that could be problematic, because the evolutionist has a very extensive spell list (technically, all spells are avaiable), which is only limited by the fact that you can only take up to 20 different spell-likes.
Edit: I can't emphasize how poor of a choice exchanging racial HD of monsters with levels in any class would be.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Well, that sounds like it just gives incentive to capture a bigger monster and ditch your caterpie sooner. If not, give it wings and poison spores and stuff, or keep it as a really really amazing caterpie. That being said, low pokemon have low stats anyway, so it's keeping theme.
I don't really see a problem with having a lot of really low level spells except at like level 1-3, perhaps a clause can be added to limit spell gain on each per level?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Is the table for SLAs based on how many times the mutation has been taken?
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Elemental Lance
Prerequisite: Elemental resistance.
Ability Score: None
Benefit: The evolutionist can attack one target within 60 ft. with a bolt of elemental energy as a ranged touch attack, dealing 1d8 points of damage. This damage must be of a kind of energy to which the evolutionist has resistance or immunity. For every two mutator levels beyond the first (3rd, 5th, 7th, etc), this attack deals an extra 1d8 damage.
Further Mutations: Each time this mutation is taken, the evolutionist can gain an extra elemental lance, dealing a different kind of energy damage, or he can increase the range of an existing elemental lance by 60 ft and the damage of that lance by 1d8. This mutation can be taken up to once per two mutator levels.
One point in this mutation gets you 9d8 damage by level 20. If I'm reading this right, you can take it 4 more times and get 4 more lances, each of which scale with level. 5 lances x 9d8 = 45d8 damage by level 20 for the price of 5 mutations.... or can you only fire one lance per round?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
That is not how elemental lance was supposed to work, but it is a perfect valid reading, given the wording of it.
Elemental lance should not be used. It is undergoing a rewrite as we speak.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
To mod it with the least effort, replace the (extra lance) with (seperate lance), and explicitely state each attack can only be made with one lance. This still allows you to switch lances mid-full-attack, while not increasing damage from that option. I do assume the intent of taking it more times is to increase the versatiliy (i.e. having one fire lance and one ice lance), not deal ludicrous amount of damage to something not immune to the element you. You might also want to specify the use of a lance is an attack action, since it's only implied rather than outright stated.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
i have come up with a question due to something one of my players came up with. if you take nourishing flora, and disease, can you bestow the disease through the fruit?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
zetsu1919
i have come up with a question due to something one of my players came up with. if you take nourishing flora, and disease, can you bestow the disease through the fruit?
By definition, no. Since you must employ natural attacks to transmit diseases.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Here's a level 10 evolutionist who looks like just another guy on the street - except for being stronger, tougher, and more mobile:
http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetvie...sheetid=477345
I still have 4 feats left that I'm leaving blank until I figure out if this is going anywhere.
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
Depends, did you want this fruit be 100% fruit or did you want the fruit to have your natural weapons?
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
It was just a fruit, but my player was trying to think of a way to disease people with his fruits in a social gathering like thing, and make it so he isn't suspected to have caused it
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Re: The better man? There is no such thing [3.5 base class]
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Originally Posted by
zetsu1919
It was just a fruit, but my player was trying to think of a way to disease people with his fruits in a social gathering like thing, and make it so he isn't suspected to have caused it
If he's got a disease that is transmited by contact he could use a touch attack (by all means, a handshake) to deliver it.