Vermin Master?

[Prak]

I'm working on some characters for Judging Eagle's MW game, and one of the ideas I had was for a caster that controls monstrous vermin. Specifically, I want to build on what was said in BoG about them, and how they're biological constructs built by the aberration empires of old, but I'm not sure how best to do this, so far I've just got a wizard with Master of Terror(leadership, skill feat) and a monstrous scorpion animal companion(pair of variant rules, one from UA, one from WotC's site), but I want my character to be a competant caster and control a few vermin, so what's the best thing to do that doesn't require buying or dling new books? think maybe there's an entire class or PrC in this?

[Voss]

There is the Vermin Lord in the Book of Exotic Piercings, but it isn't very good. 4 dead caster levels, and some frankly goofy abilities (wearing insects as DR based armor, for example). The Cancer mage in the same book also gets some odd insect related abilities, but it isn't at all clear why.

[Surgo]

You could use the Master of Snake Mountain PrC and get a stable of vermin monsters that way.

[Prak]

I'm not sure any of that really expands much on the Book of Gears bit about vermin, I started working on a class, I think I'm looking at something that deals with the underdark, spells, and forgotten magic(both items and vermin), with possibly some aberration themed things, not neccessarily aberration traits, but certainly knowledge.

Created Monsters: Forged and Bred
"It's alive! Or at least animate… it's not an object anymore, that's my point."

There are three entire types of creatures in D&D that are to one degree or another created. The obvious one of course is the Construct. It's a creature which was never alive and created by sorcery. Well, most of them are like that. The Flesh Golem is kind of hard to explain actually, but whatever. The point is that every Construct is constructed. That's the whole point. And of course there are a lot of Undead that are pretty much the same thing except that they are animated with Negative Energy channeled into them. There's a lot you can say about those guys, and we actually did that in the Tome of Necromancy. So we aren't touching that one here. The other one of course, is the Vermin. In D&D land, "Vermin" doesn't mean anything vaguely approaching its meaning in natural English. Rats and cockroaches are vermin because they live in your pantry and poop on your food stores, but they aren't Vermin because they aren't enormous biological constructs that mindlessly follow the programming planted in them by an ancient race of long departed mage kings. Really. That's what the Vermin type means in D&D land. Actual giant insects are just animals in the same way that dire toads and weasels are animals.

Vermin: Remnants of a Fallen Empire
" Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice. Things have learnt to walk which ought to crawl..."

Ants track by smell and follow trails left by other ants and bees see deep into the ultraviolet spectrum and perceive a beautiful tapestry of gorgeous colors that escape the eye of the man and the mouse. And when dealing with Vermin type creatures that all means precisely nothing, because Vermin in D&D don't do any of that. It's not because the scent ability was "left off" the Monstrous Ant description, it's because the Ant described in the Monster Manual genuinely doesn't have a good sense of smell. It does have Darkvision out to 60 feet like an outsider or a Construct, and that's not an accident either despite the fact that Earthly ants really demonstrably don't do that regardless of size.

The Monstrous Scorpion isn't a super sized scorpion at all. It has a set of abilities which are on the face of it completely bizarre from the context of what actual scorpions do, because it's actually a living construct created by a long fallen empire for use in war. That's why it's immune to hallucinatory poisons and can see in perfect darkness. It's actually created from biomass by powerful magic and not by the interaction of natural and magical mutation across a thousand generations and a harsh selection process hastened by unpredictable climate and predation by manticores. The Vermin have a couple of neat things going for them which is why they were created as war machines in the first place:
Mindless – unlike actual or even giant spiders, the monstrous spider has no mind at all. It cannot be influenced with magic or confused with poisons. It can't even be detected with detect thoughts.

Brainless – Vermin are subject to critical hits because they have segments and organs, but they don't have any brains. That means that they can be blinded, but not killed, by decapitation.

Darkvision – Vermin can see even in complete darkness, making them quite useful in cave fighting.

Aggressive – The vast majority of predators will retreat from battles where they are presented with even a chance at serious injury. Yet Vermin fight until they are dead. That's a really bad plan for an individual or even a species, but it's great for a battle platform.


Who made the Vermin?
"They did not know that steal marks flesh, and they did not know that flesh does not mark steal. In their ignorance they continued to do one task after another in the old ways. They did not know what we know."

Vermin come from the before time. The time when metals were not made and words were not written down. It's quite a feat of construction talent and a testimony to the power and ingenuity of these ancient flesh crafters that these devices are still running, still attempting to fulfill their programming to this day. The answer is not known in the days that D&D is normally set. They are a product of a bygone age and their origin is a mystery to all but the Aboleth and the memory fish are being extremely quiet on this subject. And yet, their conspicuous silence is probably more telling than anything they could possibly say. The Vermin were constructed during the days when aberrations ruled the world, and they were quite obviously designed to fight against aberrations.

Getting the Program. All Vermin have a program that they follow at all times, usually involving a spiral search pattern in groups of one to six until they encounter a creature, at which point they will attack it until it is dead. If confronted with more than one type of creature, they will target them in the following order:

Any Aberration (except their specific non-targeted group)

Any Humanoid

Any other moving creature they can detect

Anything especially edible
This behavior is entirely comprehensible from the standpoint of the wars in the before time – the Ilithid and Aboleth both sent slave troopers to their death by the millions in their quest for world domination.

Individual groups of Vermin will usually have one type of aberration that they will not ever attack. It may be an entire race of aberrations (such as Kopru or Neogi), or it may be a specific clan of aberrations (such as the Aboleth spawn of the Great Mother of the Howling Wells, or the Ilithid of the Tallow Halls). In any case, determining the type of Aberration that is completely safe from any group of Vermin can be done by observing the markings on the beast. Extracting that information is a DC 30 Knowledge Nature check.

Vermin eggs persist apparently indefinitely and are produced by the hundred score. A starving Vermin cocoons itself and goes into a state of hibernation so deep that it is essentially mummified. When in the presence of magical auras, the eggs of Vermin progress steadily towards hatching, and the cocoons burst forth their contents. Thus it is not weird or unexplainable for areas that recently have been subjected to incursion by adventurers or mind flayers to spontaneously develop invasions by tiny monstrous centipedes or giant cocooned spiders.

Vermin Alchemy
"The old ways are the good ways."

Vermin cannot think for themselves, nor would they have been better at their job given that ability. So it is not surprising that one can severely adjust the behavior of Vermin through the use of chemicals and sounds. Identifying the sounds and smells that a particular group of Vermin will respond to is difficult (requiring a DC 30 Knowledge Nature check), but actually producing them is not particularly. Here is a list of possible behavior modifications one can achieve and the Perform or Craft (Alchemy) check required:
DC 10 - Rampage It's a very simple behavior modification to cause a rampage. The spiral search pattern ends entirely and all affected Vermin take off in a random direction and move at full speed or until their path is blocked by a creature.

DC 15 – Ignore There are chemicals that cause Vermin creatures to simply ignore

DC 20 – Attack

DC 20 – Shut Down

DC 35 – Command

[JonSetanta]

Tome of Necromancy
I stumbled upon it tonight while looking for Tome feats/classes/items for my own CharOp heh

CTRL+F: "Lurker in the Swarm"

http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewth ... thread=684

[Prak]

yeah, I was thinking about that... I think I discounted it for specific flavour, but now that I give it more thought, I think I will go with that in alternating levels with Seeker of the Lost Wizard Traditions.