Started by making a zombie race, since I guess Skaabs can actually be sapient-
Skaab
Skaabs are creatures made from various corpse parts stitched together by mad necromancers known as skabaren. As creatures made from corpses, their primary strength comes from not actually being alive, but they also benefit from being composite creatures. Most skaabs are actually mindless, but some, made by particularly powerful necromancers, do have minds and sapience.
Skaab Racial Traits
- +2 Str or Dex, No Con, -2 Int: Skaabs are constructed creatures, often made for a purpose, while many are musclebound brutes, there are those made with more corded, wiry muscle and nervous systems chosen for their speed. All skaabs are undead creatures which lack a metabolism, and their reanimated brains are poor tools for logic.
- Medium Undead (Dark Minded)
- Skaabs have a base speed of 25'
- +1/3 character level Natural Armor: Skaabs reanimated flesh is thick and rubbery, making it more resilient than living flesh.
- Composite Creature: All skaabs are stitched together from multiple corpses. The primary benefit of this is that it allows them to be healed with a needle and thread, without any need for magic. With an hour of downtime, a needle, and thread, a character can make a Craft (Tailor) check at DC 15. A successful check heals the skaab 5 hp, plus 1 per point their check exceeds the DC. The skaab can heal themselves in this way, but the DC for doing so is 20.
In addition, a skaab can temporarily augment themselves with spare body parts. Given fresh corpses at hand, a skaab can effectively create a magic item which confers an enhancement bonus. This magic item is temporary in nature, lasting a number of hours equal to the skaab's character level, but it does not require gold or xp, merely time and the aforementioned spare parts. Rules for creating Skaab grafts follows. - Automatic Language: Skaab speak Common and a single language chosen by their creator at the time of their making.
- Bonus Languages: Any
- Favored Class: Fighter and Rogue
Given time and access to fresh body parts, Skaabs and characters with access to Blue magic and ranks in Craft (Tailor) skill can create temporary grafts for Skaabs. These grafts are magic items which are limited to conferring either a single enhancement bonus or a natural attack, but do not cost money or XP.
The enhancement bonus granted by a Skaab graft works slightly differently from normal magic items. First- in order to confer a bonus, the creature the part is from must have a bonus that is higher than 0 in the given stat. For example- a skaab could replace their arms with the arms of an ape to gain an enhancement bonus to Strength, or graft ape skin to their body to gain an enhancement bonus to Natural Armor, but they could not gain an enhancement bonus to Intelligence or Charisma from ape body parts. Second- the bonus granted by the item is static and calculated based on the HD of the donor creature. The ape arm graft from the previous example would grant a +2 enhancement bonus to strength, while the ape skin graft would grant a +1 enhancement bonus to the skaab's natural armor.
If the donor body has a natural attack, a Skaab Graft made from that creature can integrate the natural attack. It deals appropriate damage for the skaab's size, however, if the donor creature is smaller than the skaab, treat the skaab as being one size smaller, if the donor creature is larger than the skaab, treat the skaab as one size larger.
If the donor is at least the same size as the skaab and has alternative movement modes, these can be granted as an graft which takes an amount of time based on the mode- 30 minutes for swim or climb, 1 hour for burrow, and 2 hours for flight. The graft grants the chosen movement form at a speed of 10 ft per crafter character level.
Creating a Skaab Graft requires 10 minutes per HD of the donor creature, plus 10 minutes per natural attack integrated. A Skaab Graft lasts a number of hours equal to the character level of the creating character.
What do people think of the Skaab Graft thing? I know that in general magic items with creature part prereqs are considered too complicated, and too much to track, but I think it's an acceptable level of "wait, what does this thing have?" Certainly less than you'll care about as a necrolord. Are the time requirements worth the bonuses?