My DM told me a story about an interesting creature named Maulagrym. He then told me a story about how he felt that the crunch didn't really represent the fluff in a way that tickled him. He knows how much I like to tweak and play with the rules, so he challenged me to make them somewhat...meatier.
These new abilities would just be added to what they already have in Monsters of Faerun, and these are seriously early draft of what I've got going on, but I thought I'd throw out what I've got so far and see what peoples think of my ideas. So........what d'ya think?
Partial Transformation (Su): You have such a mastery of your forms that you can change parts of your body to gain an advantage in combat. A number of times per day equal to 1/2 your Hit Dice (rounded up), you may perform any of the following action:
- As a move action, you may ignore the blinded, dazzled, deafened, grappled, held, or mute conditions for 1 round as you grow new organs to compensate for the ones not currently working. If the condition is from a magical effect, it allows you to reroll any saving throws made when the spell is cast.
- As a move action, you may take an additional standard action this round.
- As a move action, you gain the improved uncanny dodge ability (see PHB, page 26) for 1 round.
- As a free action, you gain 1 extraordinary ability. If used to gain an ability that is based off Size, you may spend an additional use of this ability to be considered 1 Size larger.[note: hoping to emulate the holding them for 1 round and then using swallow whole next round]
- As a free immediate action, you may take an additional attack of opportunity this round. [note: I don't know if a "free immediate action" is actually kosher using 3.x rules, but it's the cleanest way I've found to represent something you can do at any time and for an ability that stacks on itself]
- As a free immediate action, you gain 10% miss chance for every use of this ability that you spend.
You may attempt to push your body past its limits using this ability. In order to do so, you must make a Fort save (DC 15 + 2 per attempt more than 1/2 HD). Failure leaves you stunned for 1 round as your attempted transformation does not manifest.
Slipped Transformation (Su): While on the Plane of Shadow, your body is so mercurial that you have a tendency to slip between forms, giving away your true nature. Any time someone successfully uses a Charisma-based skill check, you fail a skill check, or if you take damage and fail a Concentration (DC 10 + damage dealt), you slip from your current form into something else. Anyone with the appropriate Knowledge skill will instantly recognize your true nature.
