The better man? There is no such thing [base class]

[Draken]

I am very interested in creating a Dvati evolutionist with the addition of Symbiosis

Wonder if they have to take the same mutations....

Two Dvati have the same sheet. So yes, they have to take the same mutations. They also share a pool of uses for abilities with daily uses or cooldowns, if I recall their mechanics correctly.

[Milo v3]

Two Dvati have the same sheet. So yes, they have to take the same mutations. They also share a pool of uses for abilities with daily uses or cooldowns, if I recall their mechanics correctly.

Probably be best to take a large amount of mutations that stack a small amount of times each, cause that way when they fuse they gain all the mutations rather than them losing a few because of they reached the limit on how many times their HD allows them to take the mutation.

[Hanuman]

I really like the crown of vermin, it has a lot of interesting potential.

Swarm Form is nice and really helps to add the Vermin flavor requested so long ago.

Sign is delicious, I love macro effect on characters.

There are so many good mutations, I'll have to read it all when I have a bit more time.

[silver spectre]

A question on the Resin mutation: is there something I missed that says how much (weight or volume) 5gp worth is?

[Hanuman]

For parasitism what about having damage taken erode your +20 disguise bonus?

Like, lose a +1 from disguise bonus for every 1 damage you take. Warforged Ancient:

Spoiler

Show

Decent optional rule anyway.

[Draken]

A question on the Resin mutation: is there something I missed that says how much (weight or volume) 5gp worth is?

It's an abstraction. D&D uses those a lot, sometimes to silly results. For instance, take crafting a longsword and the cost of iron.

A longsword weights four pounds and costs five gold in raw materials to craft.

Now, four pounds of iron cost four silver. Less than half a gold piece.

So where do the other four gold and six silver go? The leather for the hilt and scabbard?

For parasitism what about having damage taken erode your +20 disguise bonus?

Like, lose a +1 from disguise bonus for every 1 damage you take. Warforged Ancient:

Spoiler

Show

Decent optional rule anyway.

It's a decent optional rule, but it would cause problems for the parasite if he needed to extrude his limbs to fight but wanted to keep the disguise.

[Necroticplague]

For the Ancient Ascendency/Perfection, how do you determine whether you gain it or the ascendancy determined by your type? Looking at it as it is, there doesn't seem to be anything stopping your from taking a mismatching Ascendency and Perfection using Ancient. Maybe have it change your type to either:Some new custom type made up for this purpose, or Abomination (since abominations can access the list).

[Draken]

For the Ancient Ascendency/Perfection, how do you determine whether you gain it or the ascendancy determined by your type? Looking at it as it is, there doesn't seem to be anything stopping your from taking a mismatching Ascendency and Perfection using Ancient. Maybe have it change your type to either:Some new custom type made up for this purpose, or Abomination (since abominations can access the list).

?

You don't gain the ascendancy fit for your type. You can pick any ascendancy you want and it changes your type to the ascendancy's.

Your perfection is keyed to the ascendancy you picked.

Aaand I just noticed that there is nothing saying that in perfection, so the Ancient Perfection screws things up a bit. It has been edited to match your ascendancy, not your type.

[Necroticplague]

?

You don't gain the ascendancy fit for your type. You can pick any ascendancy you want and it changes your type to the ascendancy's.

Your perfection is keyed to the ascendancy you picked.

Aaand I just noticed that there is nothing saying that in perfection, so the Ancient Perfection screws things up a bit. It has been edited to match your ascendancy, not your type.

Looking at the text, the Ascendency seems to work the other way by the wording: you get to change your type, then get the appropriate ascendency.I'll quote and highlight the bold phrases.

At 10th level, the evolutionist becomes something… Different from whatever he used to be. The evolutionist may choose to change his creature type to Aberration, Dragon, Fey, Giant, Magical Beast or Monstrous Humanoid. He may chose to remain a humanoid if he is one, but most other creatures agree that humanoids are a step down in the evolutionary ladder. The evolutionist gains the augmented subtype pertaining to his old type.
If they don’t already have it, aberrations, dragons, magical beasts and monstrous humanoids gain Darkvision out to a range of 60 feet (stacking with any other Darkvision not granted by creature types) while giants and fey gain low-light vision. In addition, the evolutionist gains two extra mutations and one benefit from the following list, depending on his creature type:

Note the lack of anything about picking your ascendency, only picking your creature type and (in the next paragraph, cut because not relevant), your age categories.

[Draken]

Looking at the text, the Ascendency seems to work the other way by the wording: you get to change your type, then get the appropriate ascendency.I'll quote and highlight the bold phrases.


Note the lack of anything about picking your ascendency, only picking your creature type and (in the next paragraph, cut because not relevant), your age categories.

Vast Glub.

Mutant Ascendancy Rewritten.

[Shazek]

Symbiosis is really, really strong. Might I suggest removing the line about rolling for initiative for each participant? It makes the power increase quadratic with each character added.

[Draken]

Symbiosis is really, really strong. Might I suggest removing the line about rolling for initiative for each participant? It makes the power increase quadratic with each character added.

Without that the fused entity is pretty much objectively inferior to the separate participants.

It is very potent, I will admit, but requires quite a bit of setup.

[Shazek]

Without that the fused entity is pretty much objectively inferior to the separate participants.

It is very potent, I will admit, but requires quite a bit of setup.

I honestly hadn't noticed that part of the entry when making my character for that cult game until I was mostly done planning. Suddenly realizing I had quadruple normal action economy was a bit of a shock. I guess utilizing Leadership-type effects in character building generally leads to a strong character, but I'm going to be able to perform 84 attacks in a round, at level 9. These are almost all natural weapons, on a character who'll be Huge and have Dire Body. The setup has been a chore, seeing as I've worked for days on the character, but I think you may underestimate the synergy that gets going when you can stack so many mutations and class features onto one character. Perhaps half the number of participants in actions, rounding up? Would still be a very strong ability, but not nearly so ridiculous.

[Draken]

I honestly hadn't noticed that part of the entry when making my character for that cult game until I was mostly done planning. Suddenly realizing I had quadruple normal action economy was a bit of a shock. I guess utilizing Leadership-type effects in character building generally leads to a strong character, but I'm going to be able to perform 84 attacks in a round, at level 9. These are almost all natural weapons, on a character who'll be Huge and have Dire Body. The setup has been a chore, seeing as I've worked for days on the character, but I think you may underestimate the synergy that gets going when you can stack so many mutations and class features onto one character. Perhaps half the number of participants in actions, rounding up? Would still be a very strong ability, but not nearly so ridiculous.

I'm going to have to review that sheet, because I am quite certain that there is something wrong with those numbers.

Still, that is more of a leadership issue than anything. You are cramming the power of more than two characters into one body after all, it is supposed to look crazy.

[Necroticplague]

Without that the fused entity is pretty much objectively inferior to the separate participants.

It is very potent, I will admit, but requires quite a bit of setup.

The entire concept in general sounds like a pain. Either you're limited to one set of action, and it's inferior to both separate, or it gets multiple actions, and it's almost flat-out superior (except maybe for increasing size, and increased need to eat/sleep, and longer time preparing stuff because you can't do it all at once, all of which can be avoided by un-fusing during the downtime).

Ironic note though:it synergizes very well with Symbiotic creatures and Symbionts, who typically have a more limited range of actions that they can take (like throwing scarabs can't do jack when they fuse except provide shards).Symbiosis mutation allows you to turn these limited-use actions into unlimited-use action (you can now use the scarab's action to fight twice as fast).

[RoyVG]

This is the first time I have taken a good look at this class, and all I can say is, great job. I'm currently building one, and looking throught ther Teratomorphs, I noticed something with Size Increase I.

Size Increase I says that you gain a +2 bonus to Strength and the benefits and penalties as indicated in the table. When changing from Medium to Large, does that mean you gain a +4 bonus to Strength in total? And changing from Huge to Gargantuan would give a +6?

Also a few small questions about the Quills mutation. It counts as a natural weapon, so if you increase your size, the damage should increase as well, right? So 1 becomes 1d2, 1d2 becomes 1d3, etc.
Second when combined with Impale, which damage does the impaled victim take, the 1 damage from the attack, or the 1d4 listed when removing Quills?
Third, is the nemy impaled by 1d4 quills or just 1 for damage purposes?
Finally, does the Thorns Mutation in the Plant section also apply to the Quills?

[Draken]

This is the first time I have taken a good look at this class, and all I can say is, great job. I'm currently building one, and looking throught ther Teratomorphs, I noticed something with Size Increase I.

Size Increase I says that you gain a +2 bonus to Strength and the benefits and penalties as indicated in the table. When changing from Medium to Large, does that mean you gain a +4 bonus to Strength in total? And changing from Huge to Gargantuan would give a +6?

That is correct.

Also a few small questions about the Quills mutation. It counts as a natural weapon, so if you increase your size, the damage should increase as well, right? So 1 becomes 1d2, 1d2 becomes 1d3, etc.

Correct again.

Second when combined with Impale, which damage does the impaled victim take, the 1 damage from the attack, or the 1d4 listed when removing Quills?
Third, is the nemy impaled by 1d4 quills or just 1 for damage purposes?

An impaled target is basically touching you every turn and gets hit by 1d4 quills every round.

Finally, does the Thorns Mutation in the Plant section also apply to the Quills?

Yes.

[Shazek]

So, the attack number I tossed out was before I finished calculating the character sheet for the Fused form. It's looking like it will be more or less accurate. (23 attacks per Full Attack with 4 Full Attacks) Now I have some questions about it. Specifically, about mutation caps. Say you have a mutator level of 9 in your fused form, thanks to mutator level capping at HD, and two of the participants together have a total of 14 instances of the Spell-Like Ability Mutation, with no overlap. Since there's a cap of 9 due to the mutator level, does that mean that you lose 5 SLA's when you fuse? If so, how do you determine which ones? Similarly, what if each of your participants have Evolve Talent up to the max allowed? Do you lose feats when you fuse? Also, if you lose the benefits of repeated feats, what about the mutations gained by taking Ancient Mutator or Outsider Mutator or Construct Mutator? Do you lose 1 mutation for each overlap? Lastly, what about Integrated Tools? If you have 12 instances total, do you have to choose 3 to lose while fused?

It makes sense that stacking effects would be capped by HD, to avoid stacking massive bonuses. But parallel effects are still limited by the participants' mutator levels, and capping them for the fused form leads to all kinds of headaches.

EDIT: Oh, right. Forgot to ask: Symbiosis says you get the natural weapons of all your participants and gives rules to determine your size. Would your damage dice on those be determined by your size in your fused form, or by the size of the participant? I assume fused form, but I wasn't sure.

[Draken]

So, the attack number I tossed out was before I finished calculating the character sheet for the Fused form. It's looking like it will be more or less accurate. (23 attacks per Full Attack with 4 Full Attacks) Now I have some questions about it. Specifically, about mutation caps. Say you have a mutator level of 9 in your fused form, thanks to mutator level capping at HD, and two of the participants together have a total of 14 instances of the Spell-Like Ability Mutation, with no overlap. Since there's a cap of 9 due to the mutator level, does that mean that you lose 5 SLA's when you fuse? If so, how do you determine which ones? Similarly, what if each of your participants have Evolve Talent up to the max allowed? Do you lose feats when you fuse? Also, if you lose the benefits of repeated feats, what about the mutations gained by taking Ancient Mutator or Outsider Mutator or Construct Mutator? Do you lose 1 mutation for each overlap? Lastly, what about Integrated Tools? If you have 12 instances total, do you have to choose 3 to lose while fused?

It makes sense that stacking effects would be capped by HD, to avoid stacking massive bonuses. But parallel effects are still limited by the participants' mutator levels, and capping them for the fused form leads to all kinds of headaches.

EDIT: Oh, right. Forgot to ask: Symbiosis says you get the natural weapons of all your participants and gives rules to determine your size. Would your damage dice on those be determined by your size in your fused form, or by the size of the participant? I assume fused form, but I wasn't sure.

How do you even have that full attack routine before fusing, dare I ask?

As for everything else. You would have to chose which integrated tools and spell-like abilities would not be available in the fused state. The damage of your natural weapons would be set by your new size. And I think I will do some rewording in regards to the feats.

[Shazek]

How do you even have that full attack routine before fusing, dare I ask?

As for everything else. You would have to chose which integrated tools and spell-like abilities would not be available in the fused state. The damage of your natural weapons would be set by your new size. And I think I will do some rewording in regards to the feats.

Sorry, the full attack routine isn't before fusing; I just had figured it up before worrying too much about the rest because I was curious. I have 8 arms with 2 attacks each, thanks to Improved Multiweapon Fighting, 4 heads with bite attacks (all racial), 4 tentacles, 2 claws (racial) and a gore. Which adds up to 27.... Not sure what happened there.

What about Evolve Talent? That's the part that is most important to my build. Do I just give up some of those feats? 2 of them are Improved Cohort, which makes this even more complicated, since I could lose my fusion buddies while fused.

[ShadowFireLance]

(If you don't mind me popping in here..)

The Ancient Mutation list is amazing. Pure awesome, I love it. It fits perfect with my Anathema.

Now, on to the point of this post:
I (Personally) think there should be a little more on the side of bonus feats, because racial feats are hard to come by, and just normal bonus feats make life much better. Just my 2/C.

[Draken]

Sorry, the full attack routine isn't before fusing; I just had figured it up before worrying too much about the rest because I was curious. I have 8 arms with 2 attacks each, thanks to Improved Multiweapon Fighting, 4 heads with bite attacks (all racial), 4 tentacles, 2 claws (racial) and a gore. Which adds up to 27.... Not sure what happened there.

What about Evolve Talent? That's the part that is most important to my build. Do I just give up some of those feats? 2 of them are Improved Cohort, which makes this even more complicated, since I could lose my fusion buddies while fused.

I honestly don't know how you got yourself four heads and I am not sure if I want to know.

Symbiosis was honestly not made with cohort stacking in consideration (It doesn't disregard Karish Broodmother stacking, of course, but those of far less mutations).

Plus, your crazy attack routine can do with an offscreen nerf anyway.

(If you don't mind me popping in here..)

The Ancient Mutation list is amazing. Pure awesome, I love it. It fits perfect with my Anathema.

Now, on to the point of this post:
I (Personally) think there should be a little more on the side of bonus feats, because racial feats are hard to come by, and just normal bonus feats make life much better. Just my 2/C.

Either way, I guess there isn't really any reason to have Evolve Talent be as scarce as it is, so here goes a small changelog.

Changelog:
Basic Mutations:
- Evolve Talent: Minimum mutator level lowered to 3. Maximum instances changes from 1/6 to 1/4.

[Volthawk]

Sorry, the full attack routine isn't before fusing; I just had figured it up before worrying too much about the rest because I was curious. I have 8 arms with 2 attacks each, thanks to Improved Multiweapon Fighting, 4 heads with bite attacks (all racial), 4 tentacles, 2 claws (racial) and a gore. Which adds up to 27.... Not sure what happened there.

What about Evolve Talent? That's the part that is most important to my build. Do I just give up some of those feats? 2 of them are Improved Cohort, which makes this even more complicated, since I could lose my fusion buddies while fused.

Can we see this build of yours, and this race you're using?

[Shazek]

Certainly, I'd be happy to share the build. I'll post the character sheets after I've cleaned them up a bit and handled Skills. There are a total of 4 individuals involved in the fused form. The first is the main character, Human Evolutionist 9. He has Size Increase 1, Karish Companion, the Leadership Feat, the Dragon Cohort Feat, and 2 instances of Improved Cohort (specifically approved by the DM in this case- otherwise, it's a small power/versatility drop). He has no natural weapons. The Leadership cohort is a human Evolutionist 5/Weaponthane Ascendant 3. He has Multiweapon Fighting and Multidexterity, with the Anomalous Mutation Teratomorhpism. When in fused form, he'll have sufficient BAB to turn that into an instance of Evolve Talent for Improved Multiweapon Fighting. He also has no natural weapons, but he does have Extra Arms twice. The Dragon Cohort is a White Wyrmling. It has LA 2/Dragon Hit Dice 3/ Evolutionist 6. It has a natural bite and two claws, it took the tentacles mutation twice and the gore mutation once, giving it a total of 8 natural attacks. It also has rend x3 and rake. Its teratomorphisms are Dire Body and Plating. The last member of the fusion is a Karish Companion. The base creature is a Dark Multiheaded (Pyro) Giant Ant Soldier. I added 2 heads with Multiheaded, bringing it to 6 HD. Neither of those templates changes its type from vermin, so it's still eligible to be a companion. Since the Karish Template gave it feats, I took the Ancient, Undead, and Outsider Mutator feats, giving it 3 mutations for use in Symbiosis.

The other mutations for the character and cohorts are rather immaterial as far as the basic build goes- I went with skillmonkey stuff and utility SLA's, along with some defensive boosts. I'd say you first start reaping benefits at level 6, when you get leadership, then get periodic major power boosts as you level up further. 8 gets the Karish 6 HD, 9 gets the Dragon, 11 gets you into High Evolutionary, letting you use anyone in your Fusion, more or less, and then every odd level is a potential new member. Obviously, using it in this fashion is a bookkeeping nightmare, but it's been interesting building this character to level 9.

And honestly, a massive natural attack routine can be done by any old Totemist/Evolutionist, and the utility power this character has could be handled by a Cohort for the most part. It's being able to not only get both in one shell but have it all synergize off each other and then use the best aspects several times as often that makes it a little broken. The dragon cohort, for example, is more or less useless in combat alone. It may have the weapons, but with a size so small they do next to no damage. Scale it up 4 or 5 size categories and give a huge strength, and it ends up bringing a lot to the table that it never really had. The main character is more of a face than anything else, but he has little combat capability and can't skillmonkey well without the others. The regular Cohort is closest to being strong on his own, but his defenses are terrible. And the Karish has no chance against the encounters I'd expect a level 9 to face. Yet, put them all together, and it can do anything really well. 4x a round.

[Volthawk]

So what you're saying is if you stack cohorts, stack templates onto the aforementioned cohorts (particularly abusing the fact that Karish just specifies HD) and then get DM permission to cheese it further, then you get...lots of attacks and a good bit of toughness? To be honest, with that level of effort, things could be far, far worse.

[Draken]

Your Karish companion can't take part in the fused entity. It can only participate in a fusion with up to three other participants.

Also, you should probably check with LordChaos if that 11th level wyrmling is even allowed.

Also, your giant ant is medium-sized, so it can only receive up to 1 instance of multiheaded, which raises its HD to 4, leaving only two other HD that you can use to advance it before you hit the cap.

[Shazek]

The Karish doesn't need the templates to work here; I could drop both and lose a grand total of a subtype, a breath weapon, and two bites. I just thought it was a neat idea. DM permission to cheese it further... I assume you mean allowing Improved Cohort twice? Again, losing 1 level makes very little difference. Even if those two specific issues are disallowed, the character can still outfight a CoDzilla and do comparable damage to an Ubercharger without needing to charge, and ends up being a better face than a bard, a better sneak than a wizard, and having the action economy of an entire party. Having 2 cohort feats and a class feature like an Animal Companion is well within the reach of, say, a druid. This character could likely kill an appropriate level optimized Druid, both his cohorts, and his animal companion, convince his friends and family it was a multiple suicide, then get the druid's party to go on a grand quest to defeat the dark magic imprisoning the druid's soul that ultimately benefits him. I can think of no other ECL 9 character, with or without cohorts, that could do all of that without resorting to TO shenanigans like getting 9th level spells at that level.

Your Karish companion can't take part in the fused entity. It can only participate in a fusion with up to three other participants.

Also, you should probably check with LordChaos if that 11th level wyrmling is even allowed.

There are only 3 other participants- the character, the dragon, the cohort. I will ask LordChaos about that. I had assumed that it would be fine, being one of the tamer things possible with Dragon Cohort, (Infinite Cohort Chain, anyone?) but you make a fair point.

[Draken]

The Karish doesn't need the templates to work here; I could drop both and lose a grand total of a subtype, a breath weapon, and two bites. I just thought it was a neat idea. DM permission to cheese it further... I assume you mean allowing Improved Cohort twice? Again, losing 1 level makes very little difference. Even if those two specific issues are disallowed, the character can still outfight a CoDzilla and do comparable damage to an Ubercharger without needing to charge, and ends up being a better face than a bard, a better sneak than a wizard, and having the action economy of an entire party. Having 2 cohort feats and a class feature like an Animal Companion is well within the reach of, say, a druid. This character could likely kill an appropriate level optimized Druid, both his cohorts, and his animal companion, convince his friends and family it was a multiple suicide, then get the druid's party to go on a grand quest to defeat the dark magic imprisoning the druid's soul that ultimately benefits him. I can think of no other ECL 9 character, with or without cohorts, that could do all of that without resorting to TO shenanigans like getting 9th level spells at that level.



There are only 3 other participants- the character, the dragon, the cohort. I will ask LordChaos about that. I had assumed that it would be fine, being one of the tamer things possible with Dragon Cohort, (Infinite Cohort Chain, anyone?) but you make a fair point.

Ah, fair. Your four-headed ant is still illegal in pretty much every conceivable way.

[Shazek]

Ah, fair. Your four-headed ant is still illegal in pretty much every conceivable way.

3 headed, actually. While I agree it's cheesy and abusive of RAW (and something I don't think I'll use in the game), may I ask how it's illegal? I didn't see any rules prohibiting templates, and it is a vermin with less than 3/4 my HD.

[Draken]

3 headed, actually. While I agree it's cheesy and abusive of RAW (and something I don't think I'll use in the game), may I ask how it's illegal? I didn't see any rules prohibiting templates, and it is a vermin with less than 3/4 my HD.

Each head adds 2 HD. For a total of 8 HD if it is a worker or soldier and 10 if it is a queen.

And it can only receive three extra heads if it is a queen. So there you have the illegality. You are capped at 6 HD companions (3/4 of your mutator level, same as cleric BAB).