The Gaming Den

They specifically target the body.

I think that the idea is to show that the Dominions 3 Method of power allocation between "flavours" and "schools" of magic is a good idea.

I've also run a Stranger through games (Wiz 9, Conduit 1 (got a Sphere that gave Magic Jar). The character basically casts their Magic Jar, and trapped the soul in their Trinket (a golden bracer studded with sapphires; souls trapped via the Magic Jar went into the gems).

The character used their Magic Jar fairly offensively; but had to be careful to not be too far from their last body. They were one of the only PCs to take a death in that campaign; rushing a boss who was opening a gate that summoned a bunch of wraiths.

Aside from that, the PC made a killing via soul-trapping; but never actually spent their resources, not sure what they should buy, and content with their ability to Magic Jar enemies "whenever".

One of the points we were making was that Necromancy can plausibly do anything if it has a sort of deathish feel to it. So for example while you might immediately think "enchantment" when people talk about controlling fools, you could just as easily think "necromancy" if that control happened to be done with bone manipulation (like Animate Dead) or soul manipulation (like Magic Jar).

-Username17

Tome of Necromancy wrote: The fact that undead don't have a Constitution score means that Ghouls can run for exactly zero rounds before they have to make a Con check (that they automatically fail) to continue (and also says it can "run on indefinitely", a base contradiction that makes us sad).

Emphasis mine.

Where does it say that? I can't find it in the 3.5 MM, and don' know where else to look.

Game On,
fbmf

FrankTrollman wrote:One of the points we were making was that Necromancy can plausibly do anything if it has a sort of deathish feel to it. So for example while you might immediately think "enchantment" when people talk about controlling fools, you could just as easily think "necromancy" if that control happened to be done with bone manipulation (like Animate Dead) or soul manipulation (like Magic Jar).

-Username17

Or evil cancer tumors. Looking at you, book o' questionable latin.

3.5 Monstrous Manual p.312 "Nonabilities" - "A creature with no constitution cannot tire and thus can run indefinitely without tiring (unless the creature's description says it cannot run)"

It's not a contradiction; it's a special case. The most specific text takes precedence, and that's all that's happening with ghoul marathoners.

Think someone can explain to me why the Alignment options didn't talk about Playing With Fire and Mummies? Seems to me like Mummies should be similar to Revanents in Alignment.

I think you've got it in one; rather like Revenants, Mummies, being magically bound to the eternal task of guarding a specific tomb, are Lawful Evil if negative energy is evil, and Lawful Neutral if it's not.

Why wasn't this mentioned explicitly? Most likely because:

1: Mummies aren't a special case; being similar enough to other under types that you could probably extrapolate their situation on your own (like you just did)
2: Mummies aren't a popular player option, being neither something your average player wants to be or to animate.

Hell, the only reason the Energons got a mention is because they're really weird, and thus fell under special case hard. They probably didn't deserve the mention, since there were only five, but there you go.

Energons got called out because they shoot cure bolts at people and don't have any friends, putting them on the Lesser Planar Binding shortlist.

-Username17

Okay, so there actually was a player use for Energons. I stand corrected.

Still, they were certainly the most obscure things mentioned; and it was a valid question to ask why them and not Mummies. After all, when you say 'Mummy', everyone knows what you're talking about, and when you say 'Xag-Ya', they haven't a clue.

On another note, I think I've found a happy medium between Playing With Fire and Crawling Darkness for people who want Negative Energy to be unaligned, but like the ravenous skeletons described in Tome. Basically it's just PWF, but with the caveat that certain variants do act that way and are thus evil.

Are Tome vampires restricted to any creature types?

virgil wrote:Are Tome vampires restricted to any creature types?

No.

D&D has vampire dragons, vampire ixitxachitl, vampire yuan-ti abominations, and so on and so forth. Historically in 3e what they did was to make separate vampire templates for all the different types (vampire dragon template, monstrous vampire template, and so on). But that's dumb. Much better to just remove the restrictions from a single vampire template and walk slowly away.

-Username17

Are there Vampire Cloakers? And do they have double alien minds that even they can't comprehend?

I don't know, but I remember that Dragon magazine did a couple of articles that just described monster team ups, and each time they had a vampire teamed up with some random thing, including a cloaker in one for some damned reason.

Even with the prerequisite of Constitution drain, that seems like it could get weird; I mean, vampire ooze? But now that I think about it...

Double checking again...

Special Attacks: The character can drain blood from a helpless or willing victim, inflicting 2 points of Constitution Drain per round. The character heals 5 points for each point of Constitution drain in this way, and consuming 4 points of Constitution from intelligent creatures is considered enough "food" for one day (and the vampire gains no sustenance from any other food). Humanoids slain by this Constitution Drain may rise as vampires or vampire spawn

Underlined for emphasis. Blech on me and my casual attention span.

Does the swordwraith have a minimum level before existing or taking levels in paragon? Could you conceivably take Whispers of the Otherworld, find a level 3 Warrior NPC mercenary corpse, then animate them into a level 3 paragon?

virgil wrote:Does the swordwraith have a minimum level before existing or taking levels in paragon? Could you conceivably take Whispers of the Otherworld, find a level 3 Warrior NPC mercenary corpse, then animate them into a level 3 paragon?

You could indeed. DR 10/Magic would be pretty boss for a 3rd level warrior, but it's not unprecedented.

-Username17

What's the motivation for making Tasha's Tomb Tainting so low level? I've got a couple players upset at the relative disparity of effort.

virgil wrote:What's the motivation for making Tasha's Tomb Tainting so low level? I've got a couple players upset at the relative disparity of effort.

Tomb Tainting is a 10 minute ritual that costs 500 gp. It's basically a plot device, since you won't ever be able to use it in a meaningfully contested area. The spell slot it takes up isn't a meaningful part of the cost. But since the "evil wizard defiles sacred altar" plot is something that can be played out at any level, there's no need to level gate the effect.

-Username17