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So, two characters here, a brother and a sister from a cursed family that has ancient ties to mad entities of the Dark Tapestry. They're minor villains, though I could also see circumstances falling where they end up helping the party. The sister, at least, is pretty crazy but not all that terribly evil, so it could go that way.

Now, the sister is simple enough to spec out, a dual-cursed (haunted/tongues) oracle of the Dark Tapestry focused on debuffing and mind control, plus the various Dark Tapestry oracle tricks of black tentacles, telekinesis, forced re-rolls, all that. I'm good here. I still need to pick some feats, gear, etc, but that's no problem to figure out.

Her brother, though, is somewhat less ... intact. Due to circumstances years ago, all that's left of him is his spontaneously-animated undead hand, using the crawling hand stats. Crawling hands are really stupid, but they are still "intelligent" undead, and I want to add some class levels onto him. Call it 5 to 8 class levels. Oh, and there's one or two +1's from HD increase, too.

But, yeah. I have no idea what to do from here. He's a disembodied hand, which puts a lot of special constraints on what I can do. So this is a spitballing thread. Anyone have some suggestions?

The crawling hand statline is really pretty decent: Str 13, Dex 11, Con —, Int 2, Wis 11, Cha 14.

I'm sticking with those base numbers, but of course switching to class levels lets us add modifiers per the Monster Advancement rules: +4, +4, +2, +2, +0, and -2. One of the +2 bonuses will go to bringing Int up to 4, just so he's not quite so stupid, and I think the +0 goes into Con, for fairness' sake. Other than that, open season.

• I don't really want to set him up as a primary spellcaster, since that's what his sister is. It's cool if he has magic, I just don't want a full sorcerer or another full oracle. A little magic would be nice, actually, particularly if focused on the family's Dark Tapestry hooks.

• I also don't want to do anything that really messes up the flavor of the crawling claw. He should be skittering around on his fingers, lurking in the shadows, and leaping at people and trying to strangle/claw/whatever them.

• For the sake of argument, let's say that he can take barbarian levels and use rage, moral effect or no moral effect. I'm not sure that that would be a good direction to go, but it did catch my eye.

• I'm at least strongly considering dipping a level of oracle (dual-cursed deaf and wasting, not sure of the mystery) for thematic link to his sister, and also for double-teaming the Misfortune revelation.

• The diminutive size, the lack of limbs/mouth, and the really low Intelligence make for fairly bizarre restrictions. The undead traits, blindsense, and the Mark Quarry ability are interesting toys. Also grab, I suppose, though it's really only counterbalancing his size penalty to CMB.

On one hand, I'm looking at going barbarian / oracle dip / rage prophet. That's a complex build, though, and tricky to make work even on a normal character. Though it might be a little easier with undead, since they use Charisma for Constitution in most cases, making it less MAD than a typical rage prophet.

Or bard might work, going the dervish dancer route. Or a ninja? A martial artist monk? A human-bane ranger? I can bend this a lot of ways, but I'm finding myself kind of at a loss.

What would you do?

Having recently been forced to flee a fairly unpleasant fight with an incorporeal outsider-thing, my druid/monk sits down and spends two and a half days fast-crafting a +0 ghost touch amulet of mighty fists, in order to be ready for a second go at that fight.

So that's good. But I'm seeing some possibly-odd corners of the rules in this. I've mentioned it to my DM, but might as well ask here.

Ghost touch:

A ghost touch weapon deals damage normally against incorporeal creatures, regardless of its bonus. An incorporeal creature's 50% reduction in damage from corporeal sources does not apply to attacks made against it with ghost touch weapons. The weapon can be picked up and moved by an incorporeal creature at any time. A manifesting ghost can wield the weapon against corporeal foes. Essentially, a ghost touch weapon counts as both corporeal or incorporeal.

It's those last few lines that are interesting. Check my logic:

• Wearing the amulet basically make my body ghost touch, yeah? So I count as corporeal and incorporeal, both.

• If so, that should mean that a ghost and I interact normally, basically as if we were both corporeal. It can grapple, bull rush, make normal attacks (beyond incorporeal touch attacks), all that, and I can do the same to it.

( The above matters particularly for this upcoming encounter, since "incorporeal outsider-thing" can flip back and forth between corporeal and incorporeal, and it has attacks and abilities that only work while it's corporeal. Probably it can use those attacks on me regardless, while I'm wearing the amulet? )

( On the other hand, being able to grapple incorporeal creatures could be handy for me. )

• And this seems sketchy, but would I gain my natural armor bonus (from wild shape or whatever) against incorporeal attacks? If the ghost touch starts at my skin/scales/etc, that seems logical, but ... I dunno.