In my freshly starting Age of Worms game, I have a half-troll PC. The player is interested in the character potentially "exploring" her troll heritage, so I've been looking at the Paragon Classes from Unearthed Arcana, and the savage progression for trolls from Savage Species. But I thought of a simpler solution, and figured I would put it to the excellent minds on these boards:
If you have Fast Healing "X", how many feats must you invest to turn it into Regeneration "X", and what would the prerequisites be?
Considering Regen doesn't really do much more than make you annoying to kill, relative to Fast Healing. You still get up after you should go down, put yourself back together fast, and with decent pacing start each fight at full HP. Regen character just won't stay down unless its via "anti-regen" means. High level death effects work just fine either way as well.
Granted, we use the Paizo Crit and Fumble decks, so the issue of a severed head or limb, while present, becomes a lot less frustrating for a regenerating character.
So, whats the upgrade worth? One feat? Two? The regen is half of the origional fast healing value? Any thoughts or ideas?
Requirements would probably be a minimum Con score, and maybe a minimum Base Fortitude Save. Probably just one feat, or if you're going with a Half-Troll Paragon class, make it the 3rd level capstone ability.
I'm assuming there's an ECL cost to playing a Half-Troll (I don't know squat about that template!), so the PC is already paying a cost to get Fast Healing and/or Regeneration. Multiple feats seem like too much of a cost (unless she's a Fighter!).
Thats what I thought. The differences aren't that much: reattachment of limbs is very corner case/situational. Since most regeneration is opposed by fire or acid (especially if you look like a troll) most knowledgeable enemies will quickly figure that out. And swallow whole becomes a lot more frightening, due to the acid damage, than it does to the fast healer.
I agree with the base fortitude requirement, I hadn't thought of that previously, so thank you for mentioning it.
Perhaps for a Troll Paragon class it would be:
3rd Level: Uncanny Healing. At 3rd level, a troll paragon is capable of healing from tremendous injuries, or even those which normally would not heal. If a troll paragon has Fast Healing (via the Half-Troll Template, or lesser troll species) they now possess Regeneration at the same amount. Like a standard troll, they take lethal damage from fire and acid.
If the troll paragon already has regeneration, their regeneration improves by 1, and when damaged by an attack capable of doing lethal damage, they take only the minimum possible damage of the attack as lethal, the rest is non-lethal. Thus, a fireball doing 5d6 would only do 5 points of lethal damage, the remaining damage would be nonlethal. This lethal damage is not lowered by successful saves unless the save reduces the total damage to below the attack's normal minimum, such as a total of 8 points of damage from the fireball being reduced to 4 on a successful save. All 4 points would be lethal.
A bit weighty and awkward, but could make for an interesting twist for only 3 HD. Now I just need to figure out the other two levels.
As for a feat, perhaps:
Awaken Regeneration:
Prerequisites: Base Fortitude +5, Con 20, Fast Healing 1+
Your fast healing becomes regeneration of an equal value. You choose 2 energies from cold, fire, electricty, and acid. These energies do lethal damage to you.
I may implement both of these options, so she could then get both of them, by taking the feat before finishing the Paragon Progression. Could be interesting.
Perhaps for a Troll Paragon class it would be:3rd Level: Uncanny Healing. At 3rd level, a troll paragon is capable of healing from tremendous injuries, or even those which normally would not heal. If a troll paragon has Fast Healing (via the Half-Troll Template, or lesser troll species) they now possess Regeneration at the same amount. Like a standard troll, they take lethal damage from fire and acid.
If the troll paragon already has regeneration, their regeneration improves by 1, and when damaged by an attack capable of doing lethal damage, they take only the minimum possible damage of the attack as lethal, the rest is non-lethal. Thus, a fireball doing 5d6 would only do 5 points of lethal damage, the remaining damage would be nonlethal. This lethal damage is not lowered by successful saves unless the save reduces the total damage to below the attack's normal minimum, such as a total of 8 points of damage from the fireball being reduced to 4 on a successful save. All 4 points would be lethal.I may implement both of these options, so she could then get both of them, by taking the feat before finishing the Paragon...
Be careful about that portion of only doing a minimal amount of lethal damage. At high levels, this character will only truly be vulnerable to death magic . . . which got severely weakened in Pathfinder. In combat, yes, the character can be dropped. But the opponent will need to have a continual source of fire or acid damage to actually KILL the character, such as a flaming or corrosive weapon. As written, this character could survive a meteor swarm pretty early on (as soon as they have more than 32 hp, in fact).
A good note, and thank you for bringing it up, while we aren't playing with full pathfinder rules, this Age of Worms campaign was actually going to be the test of the Pathfinder spells, ironically.
Perhaps I should look at a way to see how the new Pathfinder death spells interact with Regen... if there isn't anything, maybe a sub-note could be added to say "if this damage reduces the creature to -10 (or whatever is your house ruled death threshold) the creature dies, even if regeneration would convert this damage to non-lethal.
As it is, in standard 3.5, a troll is certainly knocked off of its feet by a Harm spell, but not killed by it. Now that Harm is the defacto death spell, I should decide if the world swings in favor of the PCs or not. In favor: death effects kill regenerators if the damage would take them down, or even just death effects do lethal damage. Not in favor: death effects are just any other sort of damage, and are regenerated normally.