Hmm?
No, it's meant to be for non-casters, at least flavor-wise. The draw isn't reduced move speed, that's just the 'major drawback' that happens because of the abilities. That said, your move speed isn't further reduced by armor...
It's basically necromancy without being a necromancer, in some effects. Might work well with casters, but still.
Stuff like latching ghosts onto people, calling them into your weapons, their sheer mass providing protection and eventually pulling you halfway into being incorporeal, causing/having nightmares, summoning a vortex of the damned or something...
Refluff a class similar to Dwarven Defender (not the actual Dwarven Defender though, it sucks, from what I hear).
There are werewasps.
Go home, 3.5, you're drunk.
Haha, wow, I might need to make one of those.
Mate, I don't remember what edition it was from, but there are
were-asses (not were-asses, these are donkeys that turn into humans).
Sounds fun. I'm using the tier-based free LA houserule, as well.
Hello shenanigans, my old friend; Ive come to talk with you again.
as a person who's never actually played DnD, despite owning the rulebooks, I have a question
what is this house rule? What does it do?
There's a lot of power disparity in the game. Fighters and monks, to put it mildly, suck. Wizards can singlehandedly do everything before they're half max level. Lots of houserules have been come up with to get around this, from blanket bans on the strong stuff to stuff like giving lower-tier characters "gestalt" abilities where they get to advance in two classes at once. I'm partial to the "Level Adjustment by Tier" rule, where lower-powered characters get to add extra stuff to their characters, like templates and more powerful races like drow and stuff.
Personally, I prefer having a gentleman's agreement with anybody who wants to play stuff like Druids or Wizards, since they're the only one who has fun turning into a bear that shoots bears that spit fire and fart lightning or use the Locate City bomb to eliminate everything in a seventy-mile radius. Some people run high-powered games where the free LA starts coming from everywhere below Tier 1, but I'm more of a Tier 3-baseline kind of guy and intend to start supplying it to Tier 4 (default rangers/rogues/paladins) and under.
Make that two and a half, depending on whether or not I can be arsed to break out Ye Olde Rulebooks once more.
3/2!
How heavily can we optimize?
I'd prefer you not go into full-on munchkin mode, but I don't mind the sort of splatbook-laden min-maxing that internet class guides generally advocate. To an extent, that is.
So... that means I can't go with the phrenic, half-fey, unseelie fey, half-golem, incarnate construct, arctic, desert, necropolitan, spellstitched, venerable gnome (all of that is only +3 LA, and all of the SLA's are usable 3 time per day) Ur-Priest/Sublime Chord build (with a psychic reformation tattoo) that I want to try out?
How about a less-cheesy LE, dragonwrought, kobold sorceror (with Loredrake, if it's allowed) that locks other spell-casters in the back of the party's wagon, hits them with a Feeble-Mind, hooks them up to a torture device, attaches an item to them from the BoVD that turns pain into pleasure, and extracts liquid joy from them? He then casts Dragon-Touch (that's probably not the correct name) on them to give them the [dragon-blooded] subtype for a few minutes, then he casts Dragon-Blood Spell-Pact on them (using the liquid joy to negate the xp cost), and
uses them as living spellbooks (I actually really want to play this character, please consider him).