I think it's interesting that this topic got brought up just now. One of my new players (new to this campaign, that is) wants to play a renegade golem, and I mentioned the warforged to her. She thought it was a great idea, but her immediate question was "How is this not level adjusted?" XD
I think that if you take the warforged out of their current contect (humanoid golems built for warfare) and place them in the milieu of Ravenloft (weak golems of various types that were built and then thrown away), they can work out nicely. You can also dispense with their standard physical description and just make them look like whatever you want without affecting their mechanical considerations at all. Obviously, to keep the integrity of the setting, they should be pretty rare, but I think that the "Created" can fit in to the gothic horror genre with only a little extra effort.
My big complaint about shifters is that they shouldn't be a "race." They should be individuals from nominally human bloodlines that have some of the powers of their lycanthropic ancestors but not the full shapeshifting abilities. Maybe kind of like the wolf-blooded or kinfolk from Werewolf: The Apocalypse/The Forsaken. While they can't actually change, they provide a useful link between true lycanthropes and normal humans.
Jeremy Puckett (Hida Jiremi)
warforged & shifters?
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hidajiremi
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Rotipher of the FoS
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NeoTiamat
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Isn't there a PrC based on that idea? Not the Moonchild, but Moonbane I think it was. Came from mild powers that are remnants of cured lycanthropy.
Ravenloft GM: Eye of Anubis, Shattered City, and Prof. Lupescu's Traveling Ghost Show
Lead Writer & Editor: VRS Files: Doppelgangers; Contributor: QtR #20, #21, #22, #23, #24
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Lead Writer & Editor: VRS Files: Doppelgangers; Contributor: QtR #20, #21, #22, #23, #24
Freelance Writer for Paizo Publishing
That might be interesting-- I have to admit, I like the idea of having something happen besides "no it fails and you're a lycanthrope forever" if someone *thinks* they have gotten rid of the infection's progenitor and performs what should be a successful cure (mostly because as it stands, the odds are that if you're infected in Verbrek you're permaf**ked unless you want to build a campaign around killing off Alfred Timothy).Rotipher of the FoS wrote:Perhaps a shifter in Ravenloft could be what you get when an attempt to rid someone of lycanthropy mostly works?
Dunno, in fact being a shifter means having useful powers, having feats meant to improve them, shifting only a number of times per day (and igìf I'm not wrong, whenever you want)...Rotipher of the FoS wrote:Perhaps a shifter in Ravenloft could be what you get when an attempt to rid someone of lycanthropy mostly works?
It's not very "I'm fighting the beast", it's more "I've cool beastie skillz!", and that's not very gothic...
Coltiviamo per tutti un rancore
che ha l'odore del sangue rappreso
ciò che allora chiamammo dolore
è soltanto un discorso sospeso
che ha l'odore del sangue rappreso
ciò che allora chiamammo dolore
è soltanto un discorso sospeso
I answered your supposedly witty rolleye-flavored retort by PM, so we won't derail this thread with our traintalk...Faust wrote:"And come on, the magic train! Not the magic train!"
Yeah its ridiculus that in a setting where magic is omnipresent that it replace scienceHonestly the magic train is really a great idea! It allow the characters to move quickly from place to place, a bit like the magic mist in RL...
Coltiviamo per tutti un rancore
che ha l'odore del sangue rappreso
ciò che allora chiamammo dolore
è soltanto un discorso sospeso
che ha l'odore del sangue rappreso
ciò che allora chiamammo dolore
è soltanto un discorso sospeso
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Jester of the FoS
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It's all in presentation and attitude. If you say it like that then no, it isn't.Sorti wrote:Dunno, in fact being a shifter means having useful powers, having feats meant to improve them, shifting only a number of times per day (and igìf I'm not wrong, whenever you want)...Rotipher of the FoS wrote:Perhaps a shifter in Ravenloft could be what you get when an attempt to rid someone of lycanthropy mostly works?
It's not very "I'm fighting the beast", it's more "I've cool beastie skillz!", and that's not very gothic...
If you say it like "I was cured of the curse but the blood of the beast still flows through me. I can feed my heart pounding in my chest and the desire to run naked under the moon. Most of the time I can keep the urges in check. But I can let it out, unleash the beast. Two, maybe three times a day. Any more and the beast threatens to overwhelm me and I lose a piece of my soul, becoming closer to what I was..."
Well, the thing is, you shouldn't be able to control the Beast, because the Beast's the Beast, it's exactly the primitive part of you that wants to do what it wants, and cannot be held in check; being a werebeast means you lost your control over the most feral part of yourself, and when certain conditions happen (i.e. full moon) it's just so much stronger than you...Jester of the FoS wrote:It's all in presentation and attitude. If you say it like that then no, it isn't.Sorti wrote:Dunno, in fact being a shifter means having useful powers, having feats meant to improve them, shifting only a number of times per day (and igìf I'm not wrong, whenever you want)...Rotipher of the FoS wrote:Perhaps a shifter in Ravenloft could be what you get when an attempt to rid someone of lycanthropy mostly works?
It's not very "I'm fighting the beast", it's more "I've cool beastie skillz!", and that's not very gothic...
If you say it like "I was cured of the curse but the blood of the beast still flows through me. I can feed my heart pounding in my chest and the desire to run naked under the moon. Most of the time I can keep the urges in check. But I can let it out, unleash the beast. Two, maybe three times a day. Any more and the beast threatens to overwhelm me and I lose a piece of my soul, becoming closer to what I was..."
So no, "I can unleash it two or three times per day with no consequence if I wish, or else keep it down forever, or anything else" is not very "I'm fighting the Beast", it's much more "I completely tamed the Beast", and you can't tame the beast (or call Azalin a bag o' bones and survive, or beat Chuk Norris, or many other things) in a gothic setting.
Coltiviamo per tutti un rancore
che ha l'odore del sangue rappreso
ciò che allora chiamammo dolore
è soltanto un discorso sospeso
che ha l'odore del sangue rappreso
ciò che allora chiamammo dolore
è soltanto un discorso sospeso
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Jester of the FoS
- Jester of the Dark Comedy
- Posts: 4536
- Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2003 12:19 am
- Location: A Canadian from Canadia
If you're a lycanthrope no, you cannot control the beast. With effort and practice (represented in the game with a feat and tonnes of skill points) you can have some influence (will the change or hold it at bay) but the beast is still the beast.
Shifters, as we're presenting them, are not lycanthropes. They're no stronger than the average human and have a beast that CAN be controlled. It hasn't been tamed as much as whipped into submission. There can still be some loss of control but that is entirely role-played instead of handing the character sheet over to the DM and having him rip into your loved ones.
There might be a social or mental/psychological consequence to "unleashing the beast" for shifters but, again, this has no in-game impact. A shifter might role-play having to fight turning on friends after or while shifting or might have to resist the urge to eat the bodies of the fallen. But, again, I wouldn't make these hard rules otherwise it would be unfairly hard on the shifters.
As we mentioned earlier, shifters might be people cured of lychanthrope (the beast purged through magic), people born into cursed bloodlines ("I have a beast within myself, but it is chained") almost infected but not fully, etc. A very different situation than the standard werewolf.
Are they gothic as presented in the Eberron book? No, but they're not meant to be. Neither are dwarves, elves and (oh god) gnomes. There's nothing gothic about four-foot chubby balding folk who cast dancing lights daily and speak with badgers.
That doesn't mean we can't make them gothic. Infact shifters and changleings almost work better with the setting than gnomes and halflings.
Are shifters overpowered? Not really, even in a low-magic setting. Their powers make them powerful but they have to sacrafice feats to do it and can only really get 3-4 feats over the course of their career. A human with their bonus feat can be just as powerful and can use it more often while shifters are limited to a number of times per day. It's not like a shifter fighter can use their fighter-feats to gain extra shifter abilities.
A shifter with careful feats can be tough but a 1st level human rogue with combat expertise, improved feint and max ranks in bluff can be deadlier and requires NO magic.
Shifters, as we're presenting them, are not lycanthropes. They're no stronger than the average human and have a beast that CAN be controlled. It hasn't been tamed as much as whipped into submission. There can still be some loss of control but that is entirely role-played instead of handing the character sheet over to the DM and having him rip into your loved ones.
There might be a social or mental/psychological consequence to "unleashing the beast" for shifters but, again, this has no in-game impact. A shifter might role-play having to fight turning on friends after or while shifting or might have to resist the urge to eat the bodies of the fallen. But, again, I wouldn't make these hard rules otherwise it would be unfairly hard on the shifters.
As we mentioned earlier, shifters might be people cured of lychanthrope (the beast purged through magic), people born into cursed bloodlines ("I have a beast within myself, but it is chained") almost infected but not fully, etc. A very different situation than the standard werewolf.
Are they gothic as presented in the Eberron book? No, but they're not meant to be. Neither are dwarves, elves and (oh god) gnomes. There's nothing gothic about four-foot chubby balding folk who cast dancing lights daily and speak with badgers.
That doesn't mean we can't make them gothic. Infact shifters and changleings almost work better with the setting than gnomes and halflings.
Are shifters overpowered? Not really, even in a low-magic setting. Their powers make them powerful but they have to sacrafice feats to do it and can only really get 3-4 feats over the course of their career. A human with their bonus feat can be just as powerful and can use it more often while shifters are limited to a number of times per day. It's not like a shifter fighter can use their fighter-feats to gain extra shifter abilities.
A shifter with careful feats can be tough but a 1st level human rogue with combat expertise, improved feint and max ranks in bluff can be deadlier and requires NO magic.
