I am ordering Savage Species this week, but I don't actually have a copy at the moment. One of my PC's is considering running a "Savage Species"-his initial idea was an undead creature, but it's not set in stone. (Yet.)

Now does Savage Species allow you to stagger powers? For instance, say he did pick an Undead Template, could he start off with a few basic powers, but then as he advanced in levels purchase more? Or is that not how it works? The reason I ask is that I own the MM and UA, and a few other books and based on stuff written in them I am assuming this is going to work similar ot bloodlines, and the racial alternatives.

Have any of you got any experience or advice on this?

Well, I'll tell you, I've been through Savage Species a little now, and, of course, it's more complicated than I'd like, but it looks like everything I need - I'm the player in question - is in there. Just not, you know, as a convenient stats block. There are various species spelled out completely, but most of them are more powerful undead, which isn't what I'm looking for. I suspect I'll just end up applying the undead template to human, and being a skeleton, which is all I wanted anyway. [Well, that, and a path to lichdom.]

Paul and I have been exploring the nature of the undead in various ways for a couple of years. In our Winter Wall setting - Paul and I develop settings the way most people seem to develop house rules and game systems - we asked the question of what the long-term behavior of a large group of undead would be. In my own chunk of the Kingdoms [Eastern Kingdoms], I'm asking what the medium-term behavior of a moderate-sized group of undead under the protection of a human leader would be. What we haven't really explored is the moment-to-moment behavior of an undead, which is why I'd like to do this.

Living things in the real world all possess a single, overriding imperative: reproduction. This may not be true on an individual level, but at the species level, natural selection means the world will end up full of things that are good at making lots of copies of themselves. Natural selection will always exist, in any setting, because of the sieve of death's icy scythe - figuratively, at any rate. But is reproduction the imperative of the undead? It certainly wouldn't need to be, as there need be no species-level imperative when undeath are involved, because they do not have genetic heredity.

If reproduction is the imperative of a certain group of undead, what effect would that have on their culture? Look at humanity [or squirrels or bacteria, but we know humanity better] and all of its imperatives which are ultimately based on reproduction, like survival, love of our offspring, the desire for a mate, and so on. To an undead who wishes to reproduce, peace and sex are the opposite of its needs: war and death are the undead's sex and birth!

These are, to me, fascinating questions, but if you're a polite player, you'd like to do it without breaking the game. We're 3rd level characters, so I'm looking for an ECL or 1 or 2. [Paul has let me start over-level before, so I could manage a 1st-level Poison Dusk, but I'd rather not do it this time.] I was very interested in things like Shadows and Wraiths and whatnot - three-dimensional movement has another whole batch of questions associated with it, particularly when matter does not impede movement - but with their +7 ECLs and massive gamebreaking power - "I'll just push through the wall and look on the other side." - they're not, you know, polite. But all I need is to be undead, and I'm not looking to get awesome powers out of the deal; I could be a ghoul, but really, what need have I of paralysis to talk about the life of the undead?

I just want to be a skeleton. I have Savage Species, I have the PHB and DMG and Monster Manuals galore. How do I do it?

This is not to replace Paul's questions, only to add one of my own, more specific than his. But the general questions are important, and deserve response as well. Please!

Is this in the wrong forum, or does no one know how monster levels work?

I haven't been online, and am running low on time at the public library.

Expect interested discussion from this rules guy on Friday or later.

It will be verbose!

Quote from: beejazzIt will be verbose!

Oh, that's as we like it. Verbote away, and thank you!

Check out WotC's website for an article series called Savage Progressions. they expand upon the rules in Savage Species and give class progressions for a lot of different races and templates. I doubt there's one for "skeleton" since those are suppoesd to be mindless and so wouldn't make a good PC, but there might be something similar.

If you're wanting to start at 1st level as an intelligent skeleton, I'd say give it +1 LA, start as an NPC with the template, and then when you've got enough XP for 2nd level, upgrade your first level class to the appropriate PC class. For instance:

1st level: Human Warrior with skeleton template
2nd level: Human Fighter with skeleton template
3rd+ levels: gained as normal

If you want to start at higher than 1st level with a skeleton, you'd just lose one class level, but still have the xp of your level. For instance:

3rd level: Human Fighter 2 with skeleton template and 3,000xp
4th level: Human fighter 3 with skeleton template and 6,000xp

Isn't Savage Species a 3e book and not 3.5e?

Yes, but IIRC it was made right before the 3.5 changeover and part of the marketing for it was that it involved a lot of 3.5 ideas. I might be confusing that part of it with Book of Vile Darkness.

Either way though, there's nothing in Savage Species that wouldn't work in 3.5 except the ECLs for the anthropomorphic animals. But those don't work for 3.0 either.

Seriously. Ask your GM if you can play an anthropomorphic squid. You'll either get slapped, laughed at, or totally pwn the rest of the table.

You do realize that as a skeleton you'd be completely mindless and soulless, with no ability to think creatively.  You could never become a lich.  And the first time you encounter a good cleric, you're toast.  If it's an evil cleric, you'll just be his bitch forever.

It sounds from your description that you would be much better off playing a Necropoliton from Liber Mortis.  Easily the most playable undead, with moderate "don't get ganked by Turn Undead" abilities, a natural healing rate -- regualr undead don't heal!  ever!  they need evil clerics to cast inflict spells on them to repair them, and evil clerics can (and will or at least SHOULD) rebuke them.

Perhaps the best thing about Necropolitons is that they don't have a real Level Adjustment, nor do they require monster levels.  There's a rite involved, and a 1000 GP expenditure, and I think you might lose a level in the transition, but I'd let a player start as one if the game was starting at higher than 1st level (and, you know, undead were pure flithy evil buggers).

Quote from: JackalopeYou do realize that as a skeleton you'd be completely mindless and soulless, with no ability to think creatively.  You could never become a lich.  And the first time you encounter a good cleric, you're toast.  If it's an evil cleric, you'll just be his bitch forever.

There's a sourcebook out that overcomes these problems though, called 'Rule Zero'. :haw:

Quote from: JongWKIsn't Savage Species a 3e book and not 3.5e?

The rules are of secondary importance, we can make those fit-especially if I have input from people who've run the game for a while. (Who you know, actually know the rules. As opposed to me-where I know like a quarter of the rules.)

Quote from: Age of FableThere's a sourcebook out that overcomes these problems though, called 'Rule Zero'. :haw:

:rolleyes:

"I want to play a rutabaga."

"But then you'd be an unintelligent lump of vegetable matter incapable of any action."

"You could just invoke rule zero and define rutabagas as sentient mobile masses of vegetable matter."

SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP

Yeah, ain't Rule 0 grand? I can't picture myself ever wanting to play a rutabaga, but it rocks that it's so easy to do if I wanna.

Our solution, which avoids the question of how a skeleton can be usefully sentient, has been to make me a ghoul...by the stats, anyway. My creation was other than "standard" ghoul creation, so I'm probably something else, but similar enough that the stats fit [practically identical in every way]. I took two levels of ghoul, per Savage Species, to add to my one level of Sorcerer, and now I'm pretty cool. I played him once thus far, and we had some fun dealing with questions like my dessicated weight and whether I could legitimately float or not. I snagged another level of sorcerer, as well, through the course of the adventure.

My plan is to make my way up another seven levels or so, and become a lich. Sounds like fun.

Quote from: Age of FableThere's a sourcebook out that overcomes these problems though, called 'Rule Zero'. :haw:

My favorite supplement.

Curses at my phone company, whatever they're called now that they've merged. I am still without internet, but luckiy have 23 minutes to spare.

I second the savage progressions thing. They included monster classes for templates, including lycanthropy, IIRC. It would be one way of having a slow progression lich in character. There are other ways, including the item creation and spell prereqs listed in the Monster Manual and a little fudging (I'd require a 15th level caster and have him drop a few levels from the trauma of dying, similar both to the rituals for becoming a monster in Savage Species and the way a person becomes a "necropolitan" in Libris Mortis). My favorite quest for undeath character in the secondary rules though is still the dread necromancer in Heroes of Horror. 20 levels of a core class lets you become an undead badass just in time for the epic rules to break everything.

I'm wandering I think. The monster classes are both cool and kind of wonky. I was never a fan of level adjustment. But besides that, they're useful as hell, either for letting your players play monsters or for "backwards advancing" your NPCs to a lower CR. I did it with a flesh golem once. Worked out pretty nicely.

Some of the templates are awesome too. I've always kind of preferred handling undead as templates rather than out of the book stat blocks (though, in fairness, I'd be lost without pregenerated sample undead). It's nice to let undead be as unpredictable as humanoid foes in their capabilities, especially since I've been using alot of them lately.

Some of the templates, though, are wonky. Multiheaded doesn't really add anything unless the monster already has a breath weapon or similar attack, or if the monster is a TWF or MWF build. Tauric I've seen abused like hell by my powergaming friends, but could be useful. For example, I've always been a bit baffled by driders in Eberron. With tauric I could make them tauric drow/scorpions instead. Symbiotes is... nothing I'd ever let a player do, and something I can't personally figure out how to use. There are others.

There's more that can be said, but sadly little time to say it.