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I can't figure out what the equivalent Wizard level the Gwytune Arak should be. If you read the text carefully, its not clear that the Gwytune Arak is actually an 8th level equivalent Wizard, but only casts and knows spells as a Wizard in some respects. Then the part about Gwytune Arak characters throws a curveball by talking about Sorcerers. What is going on here? Screenshots for context below.

Well, the "double the HD" could easily be changed to "Regardless of HD, they cast spells as 8th lvl wizards. Further wizard levels stack" and ignore the curveball with the sorcerers.

Reading it, it looks like “sorcerer” in the last paragraph is a typo and should be “wizard”.

So a 5HD Gwytune with 2 wizard levels casts and prepares spells as a level 10 wizard.

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote: ↑Sun May 29, 2022 7:34 am Reading it, it looks like “sorcerer” in the last paragraph is a typo and should be “wizard”.

So a 5HD Gwytune with 2 wizard levels casts and prepares spells as a level 10 wizard.

That would be advisable. Yet what of all the bonus feats, bonus to skills, and ability score adjustments? That should have been included in the section for Gwytune characters, but was not. Any idea about how to parse this out?

tomokaicho wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 1:29 am

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote: ↑Sun May 29, 2022 7:34 am Reading it, it looks like “sorcerer” in the last paragraph is a typo and should be “wizard”.

So a 5HD Gwytune with 2 wizard levels casts and prepares spells as a level 10 wizard.

That would be advisable. Yet what of all the bonus feats, bonus to skills, and ability score adjustments? That should have been included in the section for Gwytune characters, but was not. Any idea about how to parse this out?

They don’t get any of them. It’s not that the Gwytune HD give them bonus wizard levels, just extra spellcasting.

So a 4HD Gwytune with 2 wizard levels casts and prepares as if he has 10 levels, but only has the extra HP, feats and ASI as a level 2 wizard. His racial HD don’t affect anything except the number of spells he can prepare and cast.

But they do. Look to the statblock. They get Eschew Materials, Skill Focus (Knowledge [arcana]), Skill Focus (Spellcraft), Spell Focus (any 1 school), any 3 metamagic feats.

That is 7 feats. Only two of them could possibly be from racial HD, acquired at levels 1 and 3 respectively. For arguments sake, I am just going to say that it is the two skill focuses that they get from racial HD, which leaves Eschew Materials, Spell Focus (any 1 school), and 3 metamagic feats as bonus feats. That information, along with the skills bonuses, should be in the characters section of the statblock.

At racial HD a Gwytune would have a maximum of 7 ranks in skills. So in terms of the skills, it is possible that they do not get any skills bonuses, assuming that the bonus from ability scores is included in the statblock.

The Level Adjustment of +1 makes the Gwytune a solid choice for a PC character. A Gwytune RDH 4; Wizard 1; Beguiler 1; Ultimate Magus 10 would be almost unstoppable, especially if LA buyoff is on the table.

To elaborate, the above Gwytune would be the equivalent of a 16th level Wizard, 11th level Beguiler at 16 HD total. Due to the spellpower bonus of Ultimate Magus, caster level would be 20 CL and 15 CL respectively.

tomokaicho wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 10:47 amI can't figure out what the equivalent Wizard level the Gwytune Arak should be. If you read the text carefully, its not clear that the Gwytune Arak is actually an 8th level equivalent Wizard, but only casts and knows spells as a Wizard in some respects.

It has the spellcasting of an 8th level wizard, but isn't a wizard by default. It's a creature that can gain class levels if it desires but doesn't have the other class features of a wizard.

tomokaicho wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 10:47 amThen the part about Gwytune Arak characters throws a curveball by talking about Sorcerers. What is going on here? Screenshots for context below.

There's two possibilities.
The first is that it's an error and the monster originally was a sorcerer but this was changed in drafting or development to being a wizard and that reference was missed.
The second is the innate spellcasting stacks with class levels, and sorcerer is purposely given as an example to show the spellcasting stacks in terms of spells per day. It should probably be limited to arcana spellcasting, but right now it's any spellcasting. By taking class levels it gets higher levels of spells and not a second track of low level spells.

The latter option seems the most useful. Gaining an extra 1st level spell wouldn't account for the CR increase from gaining sorcerer or wizard levels.

It's a typo. It should be "wizard." Drinnik is right.

Ryan Naylor wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:51 am It's a typo. It should be "wizard." Drinnik is right.

What about the bonus feats?

They're bonus racial feats. The line saying so has been deleted somewhere along the way.

Gaz IV and V were being written immediately after the release of the 3.5 rules, and the unfamiliarity with the new system, plus system and formatting differences with 3e blocks (and perhaps Swords and Sorcery knowing the line was winding up and so being less than meticulous in their editing and oversight), meant that there were several (fairly) small errors that crept in.

There are typos and alterations in the published version that weren't in my original draft, for example (like the stray quotation marks at the end of Spells section, for example).

Sadly, I have to confess that I'm pretty sure the wizard/sorcerer thing is my mistake.

Ryan Naylor wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 10:53 pmSadly, I have to confess that I'm pretty sure the wizard/sorcerer thing is my mistake.

Well, that's disgraceful I guess (lol) but you do you still have the text of which feats are the racial ones and which feats are the level 1 and level 3 feats?

While I never expected that anyone would care enough to ask, all of the feats related to the manipulation of magic are inherent, and those related to an eternity of study (Skill Focus) are learned.

Anything else you'll have to make up for yourself though - that's about the limits of my memory.