[3.5 PrC] The Monstrumologist (critiques welcome)

[Necrosnoop110]

Well, growing new bodies, mixing them up to make new species, having the potential to bring back the elderly and even clone your own body so as to live forever... doesn't seem appropriate?

@ Dim Mak: If Dim Mak actually covers a large range of abilities then it is fitting; I was just under the impression that it was a subset of TCM which focused primarily on the touch of death and not a robust system.  

@ Playing God: It covers the functions of the ability, I just strongly dislike the aesthetics of the name. I was trying to avoid saying it but since veekie already did, IMHO it's way too cheesy. Especially compared to how fitting and powerful the rest of your nomenclature comes off. I realize that there is some intellectual weight and historical precedents behind the phrase "playing god" but I just don't like it in this context. 

 

[veekie]

Well for clarity, Dim Mak uses the same principles as TCM, namely the manipulation of flows of energy through the body via well positioned application of external force or the practitioner's inner energy(commonly known as qi or ki). However, Dim Mak is NOT TCM, as it is almost entirely practiced by martial artists.

At the low and realistically possible level, the practicioner strikes nerve points to cause numbness or pain. This is used by lots of martial arts, and incorporated into joint locks and nerve strikes.

At the common wuxia level, this expands the numbness to paralysis or unconsciousness, allowing the practitioner to paralyze a subject with a few quick strikes , or against more skilled opponents, merely disable a limb. Very popular with taking people of the the picture, but powerful opponents can regulate their own ki to get around it or are simply too tough to easily stop. This is generally what the 'touch of death' that most people refer to.

At the high wuxia level, this becomes more exaggerated. You can induce(by injecting conflicting ki) or purge poisoning, strengthen or weaken muscles by unlocking channels, send people into comas(including yourself, or feigning death) or crush internal organs. The touch of death is amongst these, by striking a point that causes fatality.

[TheVorpalTribble]

One line is unclear:  (not a spell gained exclusively from levels in a class, though you may a power due to its inherent nature)

Power = psionic power. Mentions psionic powers a couple other times in the text as well. Basically you can learn inherent spells, but not ones studied from a book. You can learn powers because they are inherent within the manifester.

This class is awesome. How would it interact with Constructs and living constructs though?

About the same as everything else I'm thinking. There are even a couple official feats out there that lets you sneak attack them. That's why in the vivisection and dissection I mentioned 'dead or inert' and 'live or animated'. I guess dismantle would be more the word than vivisect.

 

Playing God: It covers the functions of the ability, I just strongly dislike the aesthetics of the name. I was trying to avoid saying it but since veekie already did, IMHO it's way too cheesy. Especially compared to how fitting and powerful the rest of your nomenclature comes off. I realize that there is some intellectual weight and historical precedents behind the phrase "playing god" but I just don't like it in this context.  

Hmm, that's odd. As you say it has intellectual weight. Never heard the phrase and thought 'that's cheesy' myself. I thought it felt a good, strong, and appropriate phrase.

*spreads hands*

At the low and realistically possible level, the practicioner strikes nerve points to cause numbness or pain. This is used by lots of martial arts, and incorporated into joint locks and nerve strikes.

That's basically what I was going for. Something as realistic as possible. This class of course stretches some points, it is, after all, fantasy, but nothing really supernatural about it. Most of it has real life precedents or equivalents.

I do admit to the vivisection ability to take powers and spells via brain inspection being directly inspired by a certain Heroes villain  

[Prime32]

This class is awesome. How would it interact with Constructs and living constructs though?

About the same as everything else I'm thinking. There are even a couple official feats out there that lets you sneak attack them. That's why in the vivisection and dissection I mentioned 'dead or inert' and 'live or animated'. I guess dismantle would be more the word than vivisect.

I specifically wanted to know if it's possible to create human/golem hybrids with Playing God (they'd come out as effigies maybe). It would be fun to resurrect someone as part shield guardian so they have to obey your commands.

Is it possible to create second-generation hybrids? I.e., could you use samples from an elf and a dwarf to create an elf-dwarf, then combine a sample from the resulting clone with a sample from a demon to create a fiendish elf-dwarf?

[TheVorpalTribble]

I specifically wanted to know if it's possible to create human/golem hybrids with Playing God (they'd come out as effigies maybe). It would be fun to resurrect someone as part shield guardian so they have to obey your commands.

"This means only living creatures can be grown from this ability, but that even those who have an undead body can be resurrected into a living body."

Constructs are not living. Even Warforged don't have living parts.

Is it possible to create second-generation hybrids? I.e., could you use samples from an elf and a dwarf to create an elf-dwarf, then combine a sample from the resulting clone with a sample from a demon to create a fiendish elf-dwarf?

Eh... I suppose so. After that its up to the DM.

[SiggyDevil]

The class is a bit bulky. Difficult to compare balance to equivalent spells

[TheVorpalTribble]

The class is a bit bulky. Difficult to compare balance to equivalent spells

Can you elaborate?

[bearsarebrown]

I think what he means is that the class abilities are so broad and undefined. The power of the class relies heavily on what monsters the DM throws at you/your ability to go find certain monsters. It's difficult to see balance because of this.

[SiggyDevil]

Yes

[TheVorpalTribble]

Well, lets look at it this way.

As is, two abilities use Knowledge of the Knife aside from the ability itself.

Knowledge from the Knife
- If the Right Eye-stalk Offend Thee
- Dim Mak (and this allows for lesser damage to those you haven't cut into)

So basically knowledge of the knife determines what he knows about a creature's abilities, and what supernatural abilities he gains from it. Now, even if he fought a wizard of his level every few days he wouldn't get more abilities than what he would if the PrC had spell progression, because if he was killing them he'd level up again, wash, rinse, repeat.

That's not unbalanced I think we can agree?

To gain these he'd also have to render it helpless. That's hard for powerful creatures. 

What may become unbalanced is how many creatures he has had brought to him already trussed up. Now, if he isn't killing them himself this is likely going to cost money, and most of those you will be hiring will be lesser level than yourself, thus lesser creatures with less powerful abilities.

So really, it's not much worse than wizards or archivists in general as they can inscribe as much as they can find themselves as long as they can pay for it, or kill the one with a book to copy from. In this regard you are paying for corpses instead of scrolls.

So what I may add is that if you start off with this PrC, thus assuming you have already dissected a number of creatures, for each spell you gain from one of these 'previous' dissections, you have to also pay the cost as if it were a scroll.

How does that sound?

[TheVorpalTribble]

Under 'DM Notes' of Knowledge of the Knife I give info for limiting abilities gained.

[TheVorpalTribble]

Ok, I've apparently been getting bad-mouthed about this fellow here on the previous forums that I can no longer post in.

Apparently it is an epic-leveled campaign and the DM is saying this PrC is utterly godly because many creatures have epic at-will spells. This DM probably has not read the part about the whole 'must keep it helpless for an hour' because generally it's very difficult to keep an epic-leveled creature down.

So, please, someone craft me a broken Monstrumologist. Let's see how broken we can get it and see if it compares to anything else. Wondering if I shouldn't post this challenge to the Optimization board.

Edit: Oh, and if you just wanna grow it from a piece of it, that's a minimum of 140 days for a lowly 20 HD epical monstrosity.  Most have 30+. Yup, if you wait a year you can gain an epic spell. Congrats.

[bearsarebrown]

I wouldn't worry about it. I think it's well known that most DM's over at GitP are terrible. Especially the ones running "Sandbox Evil Gestalt Epics!"

[Bozwevial]

Off the top of my head, not many creatures have epic spells at-will (not that it matters, as the Monstrumologist gets them 3/day, max). What I could find with a quick scan included Hellball, Safe Time, Dreamscape, and Time Duplicate, none of which are terribly overpowered (especially considering what you'd go through to get them).

[veekie]

Well, maybe if you used Leadership to get a weaker cohort, who then SCIENCE!'s the epic creature with your assistance to gain Ultimate Cosmic Power? It'd be one way to get minions with epic abilities. I can see it now, a crippled Phane being used to teach budding Monstrumologists Time Duplicate at an academy.

[Bozwevial]

Time Duplicate really isn't that powerful as an epic spell. Compare it to, say, Greater Celerity, and it's strictly worse because you can take steps to mitigate the side-effects of Greater Celerity, whereas Time Duplicate means that for a round you present twice the target you normally do (as well as the round you spend doing nothing).

[veekie]

Well, yeah, just theoretically speaking, a bunch of minions with Time Duplicate can be useful.

[Bozwevial]

Well, yeah, just theoretically speaking, a bunch of minions with Time Duplicate can be useful.

Oh yeah, definitely. It's just not nearly as bad as the people over at GitP are assuming it is because they saw the word "epic" and things got all wonky.

[veekie]

Psh, just go for Wish. Beats Time Duplicate 99/100.
The 100th scenario is requiring the exact spell of Time Duplicate.

[Bozwevial]

Psh, just go for Wish. Beats Time Duplicate 99/100.
The 100th scenario is requiring the exact spell of Time Duplicate.

At which point you wish up a Candle of Invocation (or whatever) and gate in a Phane?