The Gaming Den

Totem Knight Altname: Headhunter
"My friends kill monsters and rob of their valuables. I kill monsters and rob them of their dignity. Oh, and their skin. Can't forget the skin."

Because I'm not gonna wait for Kaelik to do it although she did kindlygive me an idea for Hunch so, thanks Kael and good luck with Headhunter! Also, I reread the RoW Knight and finally realized it was what I have been longing for in a Fighter-esque class.

So, in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, you got a lot of magical critters running around like Displacer Beasts and Trolls. We as humans have had a long history of eating the hearts of animals and wearing their body parts to gain their strengths with mixed results. In DnD, the kind of fucked up mysticism should actually work and not just with wolves and caribou and lame mundane animals, but with fucking Displacer Beasts and Trolls.

Skills: Craft 1, Survival 1
Special: Knightly Code of Conduct

Add Knowledge (Nature) to the Totem Knight's class skills.

1: Corpse Crafting, Storage, Code Leniency, Monster Lore
2: Hunch, Most Dangerous Game
3: Trapper

Corpse Crafting (Ex): When the Totem Knight comes upon the intact, not decomposed corpse of a monster (IE, right after killing it) she may attempt to craft items from it. To do so, her total class levels must be equal or greater to the rating of the item in question. She must make a Craft check vs rating for each item crafted or fail in crafting that item and ruining the parts to the degree that she can't make that particular item again unless she have spares (IE, a giant spider has two poison fangs, you can make two poison daggers. Screw up with one, you still have another). Abilities used with these items counts as Extraordinary Abilities.

Storage (Ex): The Totem Knight may preserve currently unusable parts for later use. To do so, her total levels must equal or exceed the monster's CR.

Code Leniency: The Totem Knight gains a little leniency in her Code of Conduct. She may ignore the Code of Conduct as it effects her usage of items made with Corpse Crafting (IE, you can use that poison dagger made from the fangs or that skin you took from the doppelganger). She still can't sell items she made with Corpse Crafting.

Monster Lore (Ex): When encountering a monster, hearing its name, finding evidence of it, seeing a picture, etc, etc, the Totem Knight may attempt to learn about it and the useful things you can do with its corpse. Make a Knowledge (Nature) + half the Totem Knight's Knight levels rounded up vs CR to get a stat sheet of that monster and a list of items that can be made with its corpse. If the creature is an Outsider, use Knowledge (The Planes) instead unless you are on its native plane.

Hunch (Ex): The Totem Knight gains an instinctive knowledge of where to go to find monsters. Twice a day, a she is treated as having cast Locate Creature on the nearest individual of a monster species that she has previously made a knowledge check (Including up to and beyond Monster Lore) to know about.

Most Dangerous Game (Ex): Their is absolutley no way the Totem Knight will hurt herself fiddling with dangerous monster parts. You may ignore any rolls to prevent damage or harmful status effects that come as a result of handling monstrous body parts or the items made from them.

Trapper (Ex): The Totem Knight may leave traps for monsters. After determining a certain kind of monster is in the area, she may build a trap for it once a day by making a Craft check (She suceeds always except on 1). After 24 hours, the monster makes two rolls; a Spot Check vs the Totem Knight's Craft check and a Escape Artist check vs the Totem Knight's craft. If it fails on both counts the Totem Knight may consider it helpless and with damage equal to twice the Totem Knight's Craft check already done to it.

I'm glad my talk of real people looting creatures down to their very bones made an impression on someone.

Huh? I was the one who made that thread!

And I got the idea from JE and it was refined by Kaelik's ranting.

I'm talking about my post:

me wrote:In a world where there is dangerous shit around every corner and you could conceivably loot it down to it's fucking bones to gain an advantage against other things, YOU DO THAT especially when you don't have personal magic.

Even fucking primitive tribesmen in South America can figure out "well hey, these frogs are poisonous, if we rub our darts on them, our darts will be poisonous and better at taking down things we want to eat"

There were/are also plenty of real world warriors who eat the flesh of things/people they kill to gain their power, and plenty of animistic tribes would skin lions and shit that they brought down and wear the hide and be all "I'm a fucking lion man! ROAR!" and people would back the fuck off because they either believed that worked or thought the dude was crazy and dangerous.

And even today there are all of two reasons (as I understand it) that soldiers aren't allowed to loot their fallen enemies at all:
1-they're not allowed to
2-Ever since Nam we've been aware of the possibility of a booby trapped weapon.

If it weren't for those two things, I'm pretty sure our modern fighters would be looting enemy bodies, maybe not for human bits, but certainly for any advantageous equipment.

it seemed like you were referring to it in your preamble.

I don't think I was but my train of though it a hard little bugger to track.

Problems:

1) CR = Knight level means you will never have parts of any monster that is greater than CR 10. That's shitty and it makes you a hobo.

2) Class is way too short. 5 levels is good, 10 levels is also good. You only get 10 Knight levels, so something to fill up the rest would be nice.

3) Biggest problem ever and makes the whole thing worthless:

You didn't define what abilities crafted items give the Knight at all.

Do those Poison Daggers count as regular daggers of that size with spider poison?

Do they count as doing the damage of the Spiders Bite (but with Knight strength) and poison?

Are they automatically magic?

What about the Hide? What about the webs?

Bottom line.

You need to pick one:

1) Give the Totem Knight abilities at certain levels, but say it comes from killing things. IE DR X/- from layered coats of weres and outsiders. Regeneration from trolls. Fly speed from Big old weirdly strapped Wings from a Dragon.

2) Give him the Ex abilities of the monsters he killed when he equips them. And then Su abilities later.

This is Polymorph, and it is a bad idea.

3) Draw up complex lists, IE:

Level 1 Hide: Troll Gives regeneration.

Level 2 Hide: Minotaur, gets a Gore attack, and +10 Natural Armor.

Level 3 Hide: Dragon, counts as one size category larger, immune to energy of Dragon, +5 Natural Armor, DR 5/-

Level 1 Weapon: Claws of the Tiger, Act as Magic Spiked Guantlets, but also give Pounce.

Stuff that isn't Hide or weapon:

And then say: Can make level 1 stuff at Totem Knight level 1.

Can make level 2 stuff at Totem Knight 4, 3 at level 6, four at level 9.


But one thing you definitely need to get rid of is your Craft skill fetishization.

If someonebodies stick is "Uses dead monsters to do cool shit" they should automatically be treated as having a +Infinity Craft Monster Part skill, because that's how they get their level appropriate abilities, and they should not be forced to burn skill points to get class abilities.

The craft skill is not useful here, it is not cool or interesting, it is just shit.

They should just make monster parts that only they can use, and that's it. Period.

1) CR = Knight level means you will never have parts of any monster that is greater than CR 10. That's shitty and it makes you a hobo.

Read the Knight Ability. You keep leveling as if you were a Knight. Of course, this is under a hefty assumption that the RoW Knight does go to 20 and beyond but you simply stop getting abilities except by PrCs.

As for only three levels.... well, yeah, I got nothin.

The rest of what you said just means I have to come up with items for every monsters which can be a bitch squared but it's also gonna be hella fun.

God_of_Awesome wrote:

1) CR = Knight level means you will never have parts of any monster that is greater than CR 10. That's shitty and it makes you a hobo.

Read the Knight Ability. You keep leveling as if you were a Knight. Of course, this is under a hefty assumption that the RoW Knight does go to 20 and beyond but you simply stop getting abilities except by PrCs.

As for only three levels.... well, yeah, I got nothin.

The rest of what you said just means I have to come up with items for every monsters which can be a bitch squared but it's also gonna be hella fun.

RoW knight is a ten level class. It's spelled out quite clearly in RoW that the "Knight" archetype is a low level concept and needs to be completely replaced (PrC) after a certain point.

ubernoob wrote:RoW knight is a ten level class. It's spelled out quite clearly in RoW that the "Knight" archetype is a low level concept and needs to be completely replaced (PrC) after a certain point.

Fix'd it.

Technically, you should also change it to say "The Totem Knights CR should equal to or greater than the monsters CR."

Because 1) As it is written now, a level 7 Totem Knight can't actually work with Troll skin, because it's not equal CR.

2) there is no reason to punish further anyone using LA stuff, for whatever reason.

Fix'd.

Currently making a write up for what you can do with the bodies of creatures Large on down. See, I could figure out shit for how a Huge critter like an Aboleth works.

I've edited the Corpse Crafting ability. Instead of using the monster's CR, each item will have it's own individual rating.

Unusable items must be preserved for later use.