Chronicling Crea'eth's page

The name lapidan is actually a modification of the word lapidary. Lapidary is the art of cutting, faceting, and polishing crystals. I didn't even notice that their name was an anagram of paladin until you pointed it out to me.

You have a valid point that a lapidan with a full vitality pool wouldn't have to worry much about being brought to negative hit points. I don't want to create a race that anyone who plays it never worries about dying.

What might be a good solution to that? Two options come to my mind. One is removing the line that states they are healed to 1 hit point. Instead they would expend their whole pool as an immediate action. This would ensure that they could only enjoy this effect once during a battle. The other option would be to eliminate the self-reviving effect entirely. Their stored vitality ability would instead be a pool of healing they could use on themselves or others, much like a racial version of the paladin's lay on hands. What do you think of those possibilities?

I will be designing some unique lapidan weaponry in the future. Possibly things like crystal swords, diamond pole arms, and gemstone hammers.

Hey everyone,
I've been working on some new races for my campaign. The one I'm sharing today is the crystalline Lapidan. They are a race of people that have crystals growing in their very bodies. Their bones have crystals embedded in them, and large crystal growths sprout from their skin. These crystals give them a natural affinity for working with gems, whether its cutting them, magically imbuing them, or using them to work with light. I'm finishing putting together their background and story, but I was hoping for opinions and feedback on their racial traits. So without further ado, here's what I have so far.

Lapidan

+2 Constitution, +2 Wisdom, -2 Dexterity: A lapidan’s gem-studded body is hardy and their spirits focused, but they lack the agility of other races.

Medium: Lapidans are medium creatures and receive no bonuses or penalties due to their size.

Slow Speed: They have a base speed of 20 feet, but their speed is never modified by armor or encumbrance.

Natural Armor: Their crystal growths grant lapidans a +1 natural armor bonus to AC.

Lightbringer: Lapidans are immune to light-based blindness and dazzle effects, and are treated as one level higher when determining the effects of any light-based spells or effects they cast (including spell-like and supernatural abilities). Any lapidan with a Wisdom of 10 or higher can cause their crystals to glow like a torch at will as per the light spell.

Gemcutting: Lapidans receive a +2 racial bonus on all Craft (gemcutting) checks.

Stored Vitality: The crystals in a lapidan’s body absorb a small portion of her vital energies. All lapidans have a pool of vitality points. The pool’s total equals her Wisdom bonus (if any), combined with her level. These points can be used in two ways. The first is a reaction to if she is brought to negative hit points, these points are spent as magical healing as an immediate action. Each vitality point heals one hit point. A number of points will be spent to bring her to one hit point. She has no choice in how many points are spent through this method. The other is to heal an adjacent creature as a standard action. If she uses her vitality points to heal others, she can choose how many points to spend. The only way to replenish her vitality pool is through natural healing. Once she has fully recovered, any excess healing she would have gained from resting instead refills her vitality pool.

Meditative: Lapidans gain a +1 racial bonus on concentration checks to maintain spells they have already cast.

Weapon Familiarity: All lapidans are proficient with heavy picks, light hammers, warhammers, and treat any weapon with the word “lapidan” in its name as a martial weapon.

Languages: Lapidans begin play speaking Common and Lapidan. Lapidans with a high Intelligence can select any of the following: Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Gnome, Orc, Terran, and Undercommon.

If anyone's interested, there's three things in particular that I'd appreciate some feedback on.
The first is their lightbringer ability. Its nearly the same as what's found in the Advanced Race Guide. I only switched the ability tied to it (wisdom rather than intelligence) and made it so that their light spell-like ability can only be used on their body crystals. I gave them lightbringer because of how crystals refract light, it felt appropriate for a crystal race to have a natural affinity for light magic.
The next is their meditative ability. This one I came up with and I'm curious what you all think of it.
And finally the big one, stored vitality. This I want to be their iconic ability. Do you guys feel its balanced for a race of the standard power level? Or is it not useful enough? This one I'd really like some feedback on.
Well, hopefully you all found my lapidans interesting. I'd love to hear what you think!

If you were a cleric of Nethys, Destruction and Protection look like good choices. They would arm your cleric with abilities so that he can smite his enemies with one hand and guard his allies with the other.

I can't think of an archetype that would help you. Most of the ones I know revolve around giving up one of your domains.

Also, as more food for thought, what about Pharasma as your patron deity? Since she governs both life and death, she would mirror your cleric's back story. He goes from being a master of death (necromancer) to a protector of life as a doctor. If you were a cleric of Pharasma, you could select both the Death and Healing domains to even further accentuate your character's struggle between light and dark.