| Aziraya |
So I decided to take it upon myself to make the Hound Archon into a kind of playable race/class. Here's the really rough ideas that I have right now. Let me know if there's anything that should be added/removed on account of balance and sticking to the creature's lore. The idea is to make it a mix of holy support and melee, much like a Paladin except not able to use shields or healing.
Racial Traits:
+2 Str, +2 Con, -2 Int
Darkvision (60 ft)
Low-light Vision
Powerful Build
Bite (1d8)
Detect Evil (at will)
Some kind of natural armor bonus
Small resistance to electricity
+4 to saving throws against poison
Small DR/evil
Replace the word "Undead" with "Evil Outsider" in spell and feat descriptions.
Truespeech
Spell-Like abilities:
Aid (One time a day + Cha mod. Must have at least 12 in Cha to cast)
Teleport (Two times a day)
Continual Flame (Once a day)
Aura of Menace (Same reqs as Aid)
To prevent this from being too powerful the natural armor bonus, resistance to electricity and poison, and DR/Evil would either just outright be small or scale with character level. Now, for the class stuff.
For the most part, it acts like a Paladin except with some changes:
Hit Die: d8
Has to remain within one step of Lawful Good.
Doesn't need to follow a specific conduct, but has to stay within the alignment range. If not, loses any divine spells until redeemed.
Proficient with all 2-handed weapons (Bastard Sword counts for this) and all Martial weapons, but not shields.
Proficient with light and medium armor.
Can't use any healing spells/abilities.
No Mercies or Lay on Hands. Instead, it gets Celestial Heart much like an Empyreal Knight.
Has an inexplicable compulsion to clean/oil their weapon at least every other day. Failure means taking an attack penalty until cleaned.
Not sure if I should go 3/4 or full BAB
Starts with +2 Fort, +1 Ref, +1 Will save and scales accordingly.
Skills: Knowledge (Planes, Religion), Climb, Sense Motive, Perception, Acrobatics, Intimidate, Craft, Spellcraft, Swim, Handle Animal.
I figured that not having Mercies or access to the healing spells and the slightly smaller Hit Die balances well with having Powerful Build (Half-giant is able to get it as a racial anyway), the small damage resistances and the Magic Circle. I actually got the idea of Powerful Build from "Some hound archons can grow to a great size, and these creatures are a much more powerful foe" and "This powerfully built, dog-headed humanoid is a hound archon". While this Archon is Medium sized, Powerful Build seems to fit. Cleaning the weapon is a reference to the description saying "This canine-headed humanoid's well-groomed appearance and polished greatsword show it to be more than a common beast".
Story-wise, this could work. Imagine you're in some kind of holy city. It wouldn't be too big of a stretch (although maybe a little surprising) to see one of these guys acting as some kind of emissary from Heaven or acting as a holy guard of some leader there. The Archon gets sent along with the party for some reason or another. Maybe the leader sent the Archon along to help with some task he/she set forth, or maybe the Archon is meant to watch the other players to make sure they don't royally screw up. Hell, maybe he just simply got bound to the plane by some summoner but was able to retain his free will.
Any ideas or suggestions? I like the idea of splitting it into race and class separately, meaning someone could still use this as a character even if they don't want to play some kind of Paladin variant. Honestly, the thing I really need are some good numbers for the resistances and other things I purposefully left vague since I wouldn't really know where to draw the line would for too good or too useless.