DR / Arcane ?

[nighttree]

I'm working on a character concept for Iron Gods that I need a bit of advice on.

Character will be an Andriod/Synthesist...who's Eidolon is re-flavored to represent advanced nanite's in his system.

So when looking at the Damage reduction evolution, choosing an alignment to bypass the DR just doesn't make a lot of flavor sense...nor has any material I have thought of so far, other than Star Metals...which are uncommon enough to seem like a bit of cheese....

It occured to me that the "opposite" of technology would basically be magic....but as that would render his DR useless most of the time...I was thinking of narrowing it to specifically arcane magic.

So opinions...is that a fair trade off for an alignment that bypasses his DR ???

[Zhayne]

Unless the magic in question deals bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, DR won't do anything, technically.

[nighttree]

I'm talking about weapons that are also enhanced by arcane magic...so for example a Magus who has added enhancements to his weapon, or someone wielding a magical weapon ;)

Mundane, masterwork, and magical weapons created by divine magic wouldn't penetrate the DR....but magical weapons created by arcane means would ;)

[Cyrad]

nighttree wrote:

I'm talking about weapons that are also enhanced by arcane magic...so for example a Magus who has added enhancements to his weapon, or someone wielding a magical weapon ;)

Mundane, masterwork, and magical weapons created by divine magic wouldn't penetrate the DR....but magical weapons created by arcane means would ;)

That's not appropriate. Magic weapons don't really differentiate between divine and arcane. Even if it did, following the precedent for determining a creature's spell-like abilities, all magic weapons would default to arcane. You might as well make it DR/magic.

The reason the eidolon's DR uses alignment is because it's technically an outsider. You could make it have DR/chaotic. If someone asks, you could argue the spirit of the nanites originate from Mechanus, the lawful neutral plane of machines from Planescape.

[boring7]

First: Few permanently enchanted weapons bother to specify if they were made by an arcane or divine caster, so you're creating a headache for whoever DMs that.

Second: As you already implied, DR/magic is way, way lower in value than DR/(alignment).

Third: The impression I got was that the civilization that made Silver Mountain and it's parts was magitech in nature. They had magic which fueled their technology, so making androids magic-opposed seems a bit of a stretch to me.

Third: Unless I am misunderstanding it DR/any starmetal you choose to name is going to be beat by a +4, also starmetal is a bit more common in Numeria than other places.

Fourth: Emotion-anathema droids who loudly and proudly don't grok fleshies and their silly organic ways is generally portrayed as Law and weakness against/opposition to Chaos. So the idea that a chaos-blade of madness introduces fatal system errors and viruses into the code of your nanites near the areas it strikes (i.e. wounds that don't insta-regenerate from your DR) isn't that far off the narrative path of a lot of settings and stories.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Going by the name of the thread, I thought this was going to talk about if there is such as thing as Resist/Force...

[nighttree]

All very good points ! Many thanks for giving me other angles to think about....

OK, question...the character is Neutral.
The evolution states " The alignment must be opposite to one of the alignments possessed by the eidolon"....

So by "raw" I would need to shift alignment to LN...not too sure how I feel about that....will have to give it some thought....OR...does the eidolon's alignment HAVE to match the characters ?

Could the character be Neutral...and the nanite/eidolons be lawful neutral ???

[boring7]

SRD said wrote:

An eidolon has the same alignment as the summoner that calls it and can speak all of his languages.

So probably not. Also it's semi-demi-part of you as a synthesist, ESPECIALLY when it's bio-mechanical extrusions of your internals.

As for picking an "opposed" alignment when you don't have one...if I were DMing *I* wouldn't have a problem with it, but I don't see a "cheat" to get around it within the written rules.

And I mean, you're already "breaking the rules" by having the Eidolon (which is an outsider) be a nanopaste-construct (which is just machinery) so bending a few more rules shouldn't be that big of a deal. Making the nanites lawful (and perhaps role-playing them as a separate mental influence or even full-blown separate personality) while your character's brain is decidedly neutral might be interesting.

Or whatever.

[Bandw2]

nighttree wrote:

All very good points ! Many thanks for giving me other angles to think about....

OK, question...the character is Neutral.
The evolution states " The alignment must be opposite to one of the alignments possessed by the eidolon"....

So by "raw" I would need to shift alignment to LN...not too sure how I feel about that....will have to give it some thought....OR...does the eidolon's alignment HAVE to match the characters ?

Could the character be Neutral...and the nanite/eidolons be lawful neutral ???

eidolon always shares your alignment.

but LN makes a lot of sense for an andriod, just play the less extremist forms of LN. like you know, you prefer order over chaos, you clean up after your self, you comply usually with the law.

[Arachnofiend]

For the record, this is the homebrew forum... I think an eidolon and summoner with different alignments is probably less of a difference from RAW Pathfinder than getting DR against enchanted weapons.

[boring7]

Indubitably.