Need Racial Ideas

[Belphegor]

Hmm interesting ideas certainly. I don't like the bugs and mice they are too inhuman. Cannines seem to work best. I'm not too good with the D&D terms so if you excuse my foolish suggestions.
Also is it me or would this race work much better as an NPC?

I think thats the way to go, roll stats normally and decide the attribute penalty on death of individual. Perhaps some form of a mental web that allows the inteligence to be transfered from one endelot to another could explain this?
Yeah I agree with your suggestions Roethke it would made it complicate to calculate the damage for each member everytime unless its some magical missle damage. I wonder will the 0hp penalty be too much since their attributes logicaly would fall of with number of the units, meaning if you kill one the others are as good as dead.

On the attack thing I think there should be a limit I mean they can't all jump out and do sneak attacks. I mean I would prefer to limit the attack to a maximum 2-3x sneak attack, like you see them but only the first two have you suprised. You would instinctly defend yourself (like raising shield or something) against the next attackers.
About flanking I think (I'm unsure what this means in D&D) they could but ussually wouldn't. My guess is that they travel like this, first is the scout,then the muscles and finaly the head or the alfa endelot.

About casting I'm wondering could there be a requirement that would enable each endelot to cast a spell of level equal or greater than the number of individuals in endelot.

Endelots being cannine would get Int bonuses for presence of other non-endelot cannines but get some sort of confusion penalty when near sources of distraction like their common enemy - cats.

@ Vorpal pete hmm interesting but still why is there a such a penalty for Int? I mean with 3 endelots with 2Int they would have 0 Int if not mistaken. The minimum you suggested should work for this too, right?

About telepathy and shared spell I agree. It should be implemented since they are pretty much their founding aspect.

IMO it seems that endelots would work far better as NPCs.

[Vorpal Pete]

I'm envisioning it differently than Rotheke - as he's writing it up, one player would play a small pack of endelots. As I see it, one player would play a single endelot, and would benefit from having more endelots in the party.

The high intelligence penalty is to make the endelot drop to almost animal intelligence (unless he's a particularly brilliant endelot to begin with) when he's alone. An average endelot's intelligence when he was alone would be 4.

The intelligence goes up (+2 per endelot beyond the first) as more endelots join the pack. A group of 4 average endelots would be as intelligent as an average human. A group of 8 endelots (the perfect pack size) would possess genius intelligence.

Thereafter, the intelligence would drop as you add more endelots, with a group of 17 or more back to animal intelligence. It's actually a very simple mechanic.

So what if only one player wants to play an endelot? You could allow any type of canine to increase the endelot's intelligence a bit. It's as if the endelot was borrowing a part of their brains for computing power, right? So with his canine affinity, the endelot can pick up a number of dogs, wolves, or whatever to boost his intelligence (probably something like +1 per canine, but the endelot can only manage up to four canines that way). As those animals die, run off, whatever, his intelligence would drop again.

That rule would be basically to make endelots more easily playable as PCs, but it would also make some interesting "packmaster" characters. It also suggests an endelot society that incorporates a lot of more mundane canines. Regular canines should never give endelots intelligence penalties.

Certainly the endelots would be more challenging to implement as PCs than, say, hobgoblins or people with wings or whatever. It's a cool concept, though. Kudos to Roethke for suggesting it. :)

[Roethke]

Ah, Pete, I had missed that.

I think having the PC's as individual members make it a viable PC concept, and really emphasizes the pack = sum of parts aspect.

You could tweak the intelligence/wisdom mechanic to suit the campaign, like I said, that's probably the easiest to deal with. For myself, I wouldn't want genius's and dummies all over the place, so I'd make it the average intelligence of the 3 smartest pack members. Add a penalty for over 4 members or less than 3. That way it kind of reflects the D&D party composition. But however you want to swing it.

To really get the feel of the hive-mind though, I'd have some mechanism to make snap decisions. For example, if the DM needs an immediate reaction, either have the players write down their choice (if there are only a couple of actions possible) or negotiate for a short time among themselves and then vote on what the entire pack should do. Ties could be resolved by a roll of the dice.

Wouldn't use it too often, but it would be pretty novel.