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I recently recieved my copy of Dragon 338 and jumped straight to the Wormfood article to get a look at the Wormhunter prestige class. I liked what I saw: The class has great flavor supported by even better mechanics, but who would take levels in it?
My main problem with the class is the Regained Lore, Spiritual Conduit and Increased Spellcasting Gifts of the Worm. Both of these can serve to make the class highly adaptable, but are limited by only being able to choose the gifts once and the gifts not growing with the class.
My solution was to make Increased Spellcasting and Spiritual Conduit grow with the other Gifts recieved by the Wormhunter. This makes the class more attractive to casters, who are usually loathe to give up caster levels, and in an undead heavy campaign clerics will want to hold onto thier turning levels.
While growing with the other Gifts works for the two caster based Gifts of the Worm, Regained Lore quickly gets out of hand using this technique. Any fighter-type would drool over being able to retain their bonus feats and get other abilities to boot. They are also, however, not going to benefit as much from the other Gifts, unlike a cleric or other caster, and are thus not likely to persue Wormhunter past first or second level. For these reasons I am considering making Regained Lore stackable. Each time to take the Gift, you gain a free feat (and a form of Madness). This would replace the current text of "You gain a number of bonus feats equal to the number of Gifts of the Worm you currently posess".
These are my thoughts, what are yours?
-Ryn
I'm also going to nudge one of my players toward it but am facing a similar dilemma. He's playing a ranger and there's not a whole lot of ranger-y class features, so I'm going to have to make up some new ones. I love the flavor of the prestige class (and I think he will too) but now I'm trying to figure out how to make it more appealing as a class.
I think it is nice enough as is without need for tampering. Casters are indeed loathe to give up caster levels but some of the abilities you can gain instead are mighty powerful and will contribute to survival. Not to mention, anyone with levels in this class will have a much easier time in future adventures in this series, meaning this class is more balanced, possibly even ahead of the power-curve, for this campaign in particular. Having read through the Spire of Long Shadows where virtually every opponent is a minion of Kyuss, the Wormhunter abilities will really shine.
I'm certainly not going to allow it. It requires a character to have a worm start burrowing into his brain before you can take the prestige class? No thanks. And I just don't think the class makes any sense from a fluff point of view.
I recently recieved my copy of Dragon 338 and jumped straight to the Wormfood article to get a look at the Wormhunter prestige class. My solution was to make Increased Spellcasting and Spiritual Conduit grow with the other Gifts recieved by the Wormhunter. This makes the class more attractive to casters, who are usually loathe to give up caster levels, and in an undead heavy campaign clerics will want to hold onto thier turning levels.
-Ryn
I haven't read the class yet, but most PrC don't stack with cleric levels for turning undead. Or is that the function of that "Spiritual Conduit" that you mentioned? Anyway, giving spellcasters more hp and combat abilities *and* spellcasting would tend to make it more powerful than a single-classed caster of the same level, right? That's generally bad.
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Compounding the problem is the fact you don't really face a worm of kyuss until encounter at blackwell keep wwhere there were only two chances (Ilthane's "egg" and the spawn of kyuss at the keep). the egg was avoided only by destroying it. the spawn also since none of my players will let it near them.
after that you won't meet the worms until three adventures later at the spire? what is the point of having a prestige class that only get to shine in only one adventure?
Andthe smokin'eye template from shaclked city i thought was needless.
Creative Director
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Compounding the problem is the fact you don't really face a worm of kyuss until encounter at blackwell keep wwhere there were only two chances (Ilthane's "egg" and the spawn of kyuss at the keep). the egg was avoided only by destroying it. the spawn also since none of my players will let it near them.
after that you won't meet the worms until three adventures later at the spire? what is the point of having a prestige class that only get to shine in only one adventure?
Andthe smokin'eye template from shaclked city i thought was needless.
There are encounters with spawn of Kyuss between "Encounter at Blackwall Keep" and "Spire of Long Shadows."
There are encounters with spawn of Kyuss between "Encounter at Blackwall Keep" and "Spire of Long Shadows."
Or just side-quest them... put some of them into the wandering monster tables (they still exist right?)
Actually, my party was starting to think the druid was smoking something when he was talking about unkillable zombies... until Filge's worm that is.