| Snakebearer |
My first question is about Special Attacks vs. Special Abilities.
The question is rather to clarify a concept, but also to help me deal with a particular situation I'm in.
My situation: I'm playing a necromancer. I do have Animate Dead spell. So I want to create a nasty minion for myself. So I kill a tatzlwurm (Kingmaker campaign) and raise it as a skeleton. The problem is that the template has so many nasty side effects.
Special Attacks: A skeleton retains none of the base creature's special attacks.
Special Qualities: A skeleton loses most special qualities of the base creature. It retains any extraordinary special qualities that improve its melee or ranged attacks.
Ok, to my problem, if I apply the skeleton template to the Tatzlwurm does it lose its poison gasp or not? It is included in both the Special Attacks and Special Abilities section. And the template states that a skeleton loses all special attacks, but retains any ex special abilties that improves its melee and ranged attacks (which by coincidense Poison Gasp is and does).
I read this in three ways. Either the ability is simply lost because it's included in the Special Attack section. Or it retains the ability, but has no way of using it. Or it simply keeps it?
And to apply logic, the last one seems unlikely since the body does have neither lungs or poison sacs.
I'm just using the Tatzlwurm since that's my immediate problem. But I do really want to know the answer to be able to apply this on other creatures as well.
My second question is about alternate summons. The alternate rules on the SRD suggests that a bloody skeleton is viable for Summon Monster 1. (Does this reduce the Skeleton Summoner feat to being useless? I mean, that would suggest that the feat is kind of redundant. )
Well, the real question is about alternate summons. I know that in the end my DM could say that I could summon what the hell I want, or just say that I can only summon stuff from the basic lists.
But let's say for balance sake, and for an atempt to keep as true to the rules. If I find creatures I want to be able to summon (that makes sense), do I have a good case in front of me as long as the creature is within the right CR? I mean, I see a pattern on the lists between the level of summon spell and the CR of the creature summoned.
Let's say I want to summon a Tatzlwurm (I really like that monster. :P) that has CR 2. That would place it at Summon Monster 3 if I'm right.
But to be honest. I think that the tatzlwurm is kind of powerful for that level. Are there other things I have to consider?