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[Draignean]

Alright, I'm having a bit of a fight with the 3.5 monster manual 2.

At the end, they introduce a rather nifty concept which I'd love to borrow- the creation of half-golems, people who have prostheses made from enchanted materials. It's a neat concept, one that fits well into a campaign where I'd like to throw people the bone of critical injury (severing a limb, crippling a nerve) as an alternative to straight-up death.

Problem: The rules are straight up busted for PCs.  Spend 20,000 gp, make a DC15 will save, and you've got +11 natural armor, +12 strength, +4 Con, DR 25/+2, a death poison breath weapon, and probably a hilarious amount of other broken shit that I'm forgetting. That's not for a full body Iron Golem conversion either, that's for getting a single iron arm.

Having a single arm made out of iron gives you more defense than full plate mail. Why? Why would that ever be true?

So, should I just try work out how to scale this a bit more realistically (Nerfing AC values, discarding the breath attacks/rage impulses/alignment shifts, nerfing or discarding DR), or should I just homebrew my own set of magitech bionics?

[SOLDIER First]

I would say scale down everything existing you want to keep and homebrew everything that doesn't exist. Do you want a wooden arm? One made of pure water/magic fire/stone/x generic fantasy element, maybe?

[Criptfeind]

I know eberron has some construct grafts that are a little bit more player friendly. Although they might go too far in the other direction, typically you pay a few hp permanently and a truck of gold and get a shitty bonus and sometimes some negative.

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to retexture an approprate magic item into a graft. Belt of giant strength? Iron Arm of giants strength. That's probably what I'd do.

[kilakan]

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/variant-rules-3rd-party/4-winds-fantasy-gaming/the-loss-of-a-body-part/prosthetics/
These third party rules for pathfinder could be easily converted to 3.5e (as the systems are damn near identical) and the parts listed there seem significantly more balanced than what you found.

[Jimmy]

Yep, half-golem grafts are stupid unbalanced. As an alternative to what others have mentioned, perhaps look at the various dismembered body parts of Vecna. Of course, these are AD&D rules, so you'd need a hefty splash of houserules for porting it over.

Still, replacement parts should be a downgrade or sidegrade at most if you're offering dismemberment in replacement of outright player death. Otherwise you're incentivising reckless playstyles to gain permanent upgrades to their character. Losing a limb should be a traumatic experience, not something you plan as part of your character build.

[Rolan7]

Dear bay12:
Vampire game restarted, with my old character returning to Charlotte to find it wracked by hunters.  She met with her butler coworker in an old model t, and tried to drive home.  But a heavy ambush disabled the vehicle, forcing them to flee by foot into a park and try to find a sewer entrance.  So far so good.  There we meet the 2 new PCs
...

Vampire A is a freaky nosferatu with shark teeth.  She fails her frenzy roll (only 3 dice) to frenzy at our unexpected and stressful appearance.  She runs up and grabs the butler, looking to diablerize him.  The butler is unphased.
Vampire B is a swarm of bees

Then one of the hunter rolls 12 successes on 9 dice, driving a stake straight through Vampire A's shark face.  She "survives" with 1 damage (of any type) meaning true death, falling over in torpor.

Vampire B.  Is a swarm.  Of bees.  he's not a vampire
he wrote a source book, bay12
it's full of bee puns
he's been waiting six months for this

Somehow this is blowing my mind even more than the < 1/20000, yes *twenty* thousand, roll the random hunter got on his first shot.

[Egan_BW]

T- twenty-thousand? O_O

hwudda eggerbludding puck

[Rolan7]

The roll, and a look at the map.  The bees have a power called mid-air sex, so there are more now

Spoiler: I Kid You Not (click to show/hide)

oh but some are stinging themselves by accident, because tabletop games (or the stingers are just snapping off ineffectually)
the hunters are rolling for allergy, this is all in the book

Spoiler: Screenshot of the book (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Allergy section (click to show/hide)

[Jimmy]

Current game idea: The party's going to get a quest to go rescue some runaway slaves that are being chased by hellhounds. The slaves are hiding in an abandoned mine, and I've built it with the five room dungeon rules.

First encounter is a straight up fight with the hellhounds at the entrance of the mine, which the slaves have barricaded with old minecarts, support beams and empty barrels.

Second encounter is a skill challenge across a room whose wooden floor has rotted away years ago, exposing a bottomless chasm. There's a set of rusty iron minecart rails across the chasm, but everything in the room is covered with slime.

Third encounter is a jury-rigged trap made by the slaves of three barrels of black powder hooked up to a tripwire and a tindertwig.

Fourth encounter is a straight up fight after finding and freeing the slaves who have been trapped by two earth elementals.

Fifth encounter is the NPC questgiver giving the party a hand breaking into the local slaver HQ to retrieve some important documents they've been after once they turn in the quest.

Looking forward to seeing whether the group picks up the clues to the tricks in the dungeon. The barrels in the first room have traces of black powder in them if examined, which is a clue to the third encounter trap. The second room is filled with flux slime, which is nasty stuff that emits an anti-magic aura, so no flying over the pit, plus it makes Climb and Acrobatic checks much more difficult. If they're clever enough to use a minecart from the first encounter to bypass the second encounter entirely, the greased wheels will plough them straight into the third encounter's trap. There's also a treasure worth 90K gp in the fourth encounter room, but it appears as a simple polished rock, so unless they actually try to detect magic, they're likely to miss it.

[TheBiggerFish]

@Rolan7: *inserts Nic Cage reference*

[BlackFlyme]

Apparently the new-ish Pathfinder Adventure Path, Ironfang Invasion, included Were-Raptors. Not like Dinosaur-Lycanthropes, but Bird-Lycanthropes.

It marks the first Lycanthrope that gains its animal's movement speed in Hybrid form, gaining quite a fly speed. Yea, turns out Were-Sharks and Were-Crocs can't swim.

Also includes a new Skinwalker heritage, which gets a whopping 10ft fly speed.

The art is weird. Fine for the most part, but it's got human feet. The rest of it is clearly bird. Weirds me out.

[Jimmy]

Were-chickens are best lycanthropes.

[Neonivek]

Were-chickens are best lycanthropes.

To my knowledge only Half-lings and gnomes could be a Were-Chicken.

[SOLDIER First]

A thing that is not a werewolf are best werewolves.

[BlackFlyme]

Were-chickens are best lycanthropes.

To my knowledge only Half-lings and gnomes could be a Were-Chicken.

Yea, gotta be within one size category of the animal, last I checked. That would require either a massive chicken or an extraordinarily small man.

Now for a Stone Giant Were-Roc.


I had to google to see if werechickens were done before. Apparently there was an episode of the animated Ghostbusters cartoon involving a werechicken.