You see, a couple months ago I started shwoing the material that they have written up to my gaming group b/c it's just such hot shit that I think everyone should read it.
One of the guys liked the material so much that he wrte up a Nightwalker PC race (a 17 HD, 3/4 BAB 'race/class' combination character who is CR 17).
Now, that's nice, except none of us are running a campaign where players start past 1st lvl, let alone 17th (this has now changed and we've started our WLD game at lvl 4 or 5, with some people at lvl 6 already).
So, this guy' brother offered to pit monsters against his PC in an arena and his other brother wanted to get in and play a monster or two and I hopped in since I've been wanting to play a Phasm PC since, well a long freaking time.
So, we've got:
(Oh, we're all.. good aligned, but 2/3 are evil races or usually evil races, the Nightwalker and Teifling, my own char will prolly be an Aasimar for the Cha/Wis(?) maybe I'll be a Teifling Archivist though)
A Nightwalker 17, he's a huge humanoid silhoette, with armour and a giant solid black great sword, and he has a flying shadesteel golem like some sort of parrot hovering over his shoulder.
A... Sactified Teifling 1/Fighter 1/Wizard 3/SpellSword 1/Wizard of the Lost Wizard Traditions 7/Master of Snake Mountain 4.
Since he couldn't decide on what sort of Monster to play (Any of the Trolls, Giants, Golems, Several Outsiders etc. etc.), I reccomended this as a 'Manager' for a whole team of monsters. So, he can just grab a monster manual, throw some gear and some grafts onto it and he's got a new cohort. Plus he's got his monsterous cohorts as well. One of the ideas for a monster chorot I reccomened was a fully advanced Summoning Ooze that his PC could ride with an adamantine throne.
So, a man, in armour, in a black metal thrown, riding on top of a red-pink blobl that pulsates with magical sigils and has elementals flying around it; and a Wartroll or Astral Stalker as the team captain for the elemental team.
Now, with my character, I wanted something that could change its form to suit whatever was going on currently, so the Phasm seemed best.
Of course, no matter what I did, there's no way to go past the 15 HD limit of the type of Polymorph that a HPasm has. While it's a pretty strong option, it wasn't as strong as I would have liked. Of course even taking levels in warshaper and 5 levels in a psion class in order to unlock the Metamorphic Ability form (to use a creature's Supernatural ability 3 times per day, or 3 Su abilities once a day from 3 different creatures; could easily be re-written for a non-psionic PC though) so I could command genies as a Yalkfolk or breath fire as a pyroclastic dragon or whatever the fvck I wanted to do.
So, instead, I'm just gonna play a 17th lvl Archivist 8/Sacred Exorcist 2/God Speaker 4-5/Radiant Servant of the Heavens 1+; who relies on persistant metamagiced Shapechange to .... 'be a Phasm' from a flavour point of view. Only a powerful one that can cast magic as well.
If asked, I'll tell people I'm an Indepentant Shoggoth who found religion.
The idea behind the classes is as follows:
Archivist 8 (decent skill list, spell casting, Int as a prime stat shoudl work with a Tiefiling base race, and it's an outsider
![Big Grin :D](./images/smilies/biggrinyellow.gif)
Sacred Exorcist (Turning/Day = Div Metamagic cheese, mosty for Persistant shapechange; but also b/c being able to detect good at will and having evil outsiders as a favoured enemy makes good support mechanically for someone who likes to beat up bad guys)
God Speaker (Aka a renamed Sovreign Speaker; get bonus domains and domain slots, its' a 7/9 casting class that gives you +3 more domain slots per level at lvl 9 (so... over 9 spell levels if gives your 27 bonus spell slots, or your normal total spells + 36 domain spell slots), and a domain per level for 9 levels.
Radiant Servant of the Heavens (aka a renamed RSof Pelor; full armour/weapon profs, not a huge deal, but you get to empower/maximize healing domain spells; but that's actually sort of sucky; I can get staffs of healing with very few charges if I bitch-slap a room full of Efreeti into making me such things).
That's not all 17 class levels chewed up though.
I've got Archivist 8, Sac Ex 2, RSoH 1, GS 4+ so far. I'll probably just get more levels in God Speaker for more domains and just finish off the class.
Oh, as for the little 'problem' of not being able to cast 9th lvl spells until lvl 19. I'm gonna patch that up with a Candle of Invocation [
[counturl=42]Link[/counturl]]
So that I'll have... 19th lvl casting at lvl 17; which will equal 18th lvl casting since I'll be behind a level due to God Speaker losing 1 casting level at around 4 or 5 and eventually an other later on at lvl 7-8.
Since the candle's are 8,400; I can always just 'buy' my first candle 'long ago' and use it's Gate Function in order to gate in Efreeti who create me 3 candles, netting 2 candles per use of every one candle. Or straight gems.
So... ths brings me to an even more profound realization. Divine casters are even more broken than anticipated.
They can actually afford to lose caster levels with no appreciable cost. Since they can buy and use a cheap (almost) disposable item at level 15 to give themselves +2 full caster levels with new spells and everything as if they were 2 levels higher in that class, not just caster levels.
Anyway; persistant divine metamagiced shapechange is what I'm planning.
Any reccomendations or suggestions?
I know where the Shapchange/Polymorph/Supernatural abilities threads are on the WoTC boards, I was just wondering if this is a valid tactic for someone who wants to play a character that can change his shape to great effect in both combat and non-combat encounters (although, this campaign will probably never see non-combat).