Gauss |
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I was looking around for a feat similar to Planar Wild Shape but for undead. Not finding any I decided to create the following. Please let me know what you think.
Undead Wild Shape (custom feat):
Prerequisite: Wild shape class feature, Evil alignment, Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks.
Benefit: When you use Wild Shape to take the form of an animal, you can expend an additional daily use of your wild shape class feature to become a skeleton or zombie animal. Add the following bonuses and penalties to those already gained from Wild Shape:
As with the spell Undead Anatomy, you are treated as undead for the purposes of effects such as detect undead, channeled energy, cure spells, and inflict spells. See the spell Undead Anatomy for details.
Skeleton: +2 Dexterity, Darkvision, DR 5/Bludgeoning, and Cold Resistance 20. Unlike true skeletons you have thin membranes for wings and thus retain an animal's fly speed and maneuverability.
Zombie: +2 Strength, -2 Dexterity, Darkvision, DR 5/Slashing, and the zombie's slam attack. Unlike true zombies you are not staggered and your flying maneuverability is not reduced to clumsy.
Daniel Turner Zen Archer |
Hmm. I'm personally not a big fan about alignments, so I'd do away with having to be of an evil alignment to gain this feat. That's just me though, since I like the idea of a sentient undead not being evil. That aside, this is still a nice feat I'd simply houserule in without the alignment restriction. I'd also create a similar feat for Warforged who sought to become Druids, thereby allowing the Warforged to Wild Shape into any form while retaining their half-construct type.
Adjule |
I agree with Azten. Though I haven't looked at Undead Anatomy spells, I think those extras might be a bit too much. Just going Undead Anatomy (like regular wild shape's beast shape) might be the better way to go.
One of my favorite PrCs from 3.5 edition was the Master of Many Forms, and anything that would duplicate it is a good edition, to me. I had thought of doing something similar myself, creating either a PrC that replicates the MoMF, or feats that do so as well. At least, ones that allow you to use the spells like Dragon Form, Undead Anatomy, Monstrous Physique, etc.
Either way, I like the feat. Maybe allow Neutral characters to take it as well, but they ping as evil and are affected by spells and abilities as if they were evil when using this feat, as well as what you already had.
Daniel Turner Zen Archer |
For those that keep to the Pathfinder idea that undead are evil then the alignment makes sense. For those that don't they can remove the Evil alignment requirement. It is more flavor than anything.
Aside from that, what do you think about the balance etc?
For balance, the only issue I see with this feat is that as a skeleton you get Cold Resistance 20, which some classes get either through high level spells as as a level 20 capstone ability granting them such high energy resistance. At 5th level (the earliest you could take this feat due to it's need for 5 ranks in Knowledge: Religion) having Cold resistance 20 negates all damage from cold damage types spells from characters who are of a similar level to you. Though since there's not that many cold damage spells that exist anyway, having Cold resist 20 might not be as powerful as it seems at first glance. Just my opinion anyway, I like being a Tiefling within a bonfire who only gets burned when the GM rolls a 6 on the damage die from the fire (*coughs* Infernal Healing *coughs*).
Gauss |
Azten, when I was building this the original idea was adding the "template" but then I realized that created a number of problems. So, I toned down the template idea but left the ability score modifiers from the templates.
My balance comparison was in comparing it to Planar Wild Shape. For me, this is a less powerful feat than Planar Wild Shape for the following reasons:
1) The DR is readily bypassed relative to DR/alignment.
2) This does not grant Spell Resistance or Smite.
3) While one of the forms grants Energy Resistance against one type Planar Wild Shape grants broader energy resistance (more useful until you get Resist Energy up).
4) Darkvision is equal for both.
That leaves just the ability score bump. While it is good, I believe the feat is still less powerful overall than Planar Wild Shape (which was my goal). Did I miss that mark?
Shadowkras, at the moment, yes. But people ignore alignment restrictions all the time. :)
Adjule, I tried to figure out a way to get the Undead Anatomy spells into Wild Shape and, frankly, it was much more difficult a prospect and one I felt violated the idea of Wild Shape.
Druids changing into undead skeletal/zombie animals is borderline appropriate for druids of decay. Druids changing into more powerful forms of undead is something I felt was not appropriate to druids.
For that I feel a more appropriate route would be a revamp of the 3.5 Blighter (fallen druid) prestige class into a PF anti-druid archetype. However, that is not a project I wanted to take on right now so I chose the feat route.
Daniel Turner Zen Archer, my logic for the cold resistance is as follows:
1) I based the Cold Resistance 20 on Elemental Body - Fire gaining Fire Resistance 20. Fire Elementals are immune to fire but Elemental Body grants Fire Resistance 20.
2) At level 7 (2 levels later) you can get Cold Resistance 20 with the spell Resist Energy which will last for over an hour.
3) Planar Wild Shape grants Energy Resistance 10 against 2 or 3 different energy types.
Based on all of that I figured a couple levels early of cold resistance would be reasonable. Also, at 5th level a Druid is pretty much unable to use the feat without finding a source (ie. Druids Vestment) of additional wild shapes per day.
Thank you everyone for your responses. :)