Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Koridel 08-31-07, 02:47 PM	I've been trying to make this race DnD compatible for several years now, but I can never get it to a point I'm happy with. I've used the race for an NPC once or twice, one that was never meant to be attacked, merely a messenger of the gods, that sorta thing. But anyway, on to the specifics of this race. I call them the Animagi, I actually plan to write a series of books based around the last surviving animagi, but that's beside the point. Its a race of humanoid shapeshifters capable of taking the form of any natural animal, (basically anything you could see in a zoo in the real world) so no beasts, magical beasts, dragons, dire or legendary animals. In edition to this, Animagi have much more sensitive senses than any other race, granting them a Listen and Spot bonus even higher than that of the elves (+4 maybe), and the Scent ability. Skill bonuses in Survival and perhaps Handle Animal also seem completely acceptable to me (or maybe just making them class skills no matter what the class, kinda like Speak Language is always a class skill for the Changeling race). I'm thinking no ability score adjustments, as the shifting and senses are off-balanced enough. Now I know what everyone is going to say, it overshadows the Druid, and yes, at lower levels it does, but as a druid grows in level she gains the ability to take on forms an Animagi could only dream of unless he trained as a Druid, which I think I may make a restricted class for the race itself. Also, to offset the similarity to the Druid I was thinking that instead of gear fusing into the new form as it does with the druid it drops to the groound around the new form, meaning Animagi are less likely to carry valuables unless they want to lose them by shifting. Now, I wanna try to do this in one racial HD, probably favored class Ranger. If the LA seems to be too steep for a 1HD character I will accept ideas to build it as a monstrous class progression similar to the Doppelganger in Races of Destiny.
Tedronai 08-31-07, 03:09 PM	How often and for how long can they shift? What existing mechanic does that shift mimic? I would suggest a slightly modified Alter Self (so as to allow them to take the forms of animals, rather than humanoids) usuable a number of times /day equal to half their total HD, at a caster level equal to their HD, minimum 3. What do you mean by a 'restricted class for the race itself'?
Koridel 08-31-07, 03:13 PM	It closely mimics the Druid's wild shape, only allowing animals though. I was thinking at will, but probably a full round action to make it more limiting. But that can be tweaked I suppose. (maybe allow some of the diminutive vermin, [spiders, etc]) Restricted class, meaning animagi can't become druids, lets say Druids are jealous of or dislike the animagi and refuse to let them join their order.
Strogg 08-31-07, 03:18 PM	I would say with one racial hd (i would go with 1d8) i would give it LA 1-2 but nothing higher. as for the shape shifting make it a full round action. If you want why not make it have one or 2 racial levels? for example at first it gets 1d8 scent and shape shifting and a couple bonuses and second level it gets the rest
Tedronai 08-31-07, 03:32 PM	The problem with allowing it to mimic Wildshape is that, depending on the wording, it would allow them to benefit from Natural Spell. That in itself is not much of an issue, but if combined with the ability to transform into Tiny or even smaller creatures, this race is bound to be an incredible stealth caster.
reaper5081 08-31-07, 03:35 PM	neat idea, how often would the shape change be available?
Dog_O_War 08-31-07, 03:36 PM	Is this ability completely developed from birth or is there a sense of skill involved? Here is what I'm thinking as a starter if it involves any amount of skill (my notes will be italised); Animal Shift(su): the animagi can shapeshift their form into any animal equal to their hit dice x2. (this allows a generous selection of base animals to begin with without going overboard with power). In there new form they have all of the animals' physical stats, racial abilities, and extrodinary abilities, but lose all of their their own (except the ability to Animal Shift.) If they had the ability to cast spells they retain this ability, but then fall under the same restrictions as a druid does when he Wildshapes. Supernatural abilities are also retained, but may be restricted due to this new form. Animal shift is a standard action. (What I will suggest is that this be kept as a times/per day thing to help keep balance. If this is not what you want at all, then I will suggest a con check every shift, with an increasing DC. This DC would be attemptable once per round, and would reset with 8 hours of rest). Animagi have a +2 racial bonus to spot and listen checks, and to survival checks. Low-light vision. Keen Senses(ex): Animagi have such heightened senses that they are able to see twice as far as humans in daylight, 4x as far in twilight, and only recieve a -1 to listen checks per 20feet, instead of ten. (this is like giving them a greater bonus to spot and listen without actually having the +[x] there). Scent(ex): Animagi have the scent ability. This type of race would most certainly have a level adjustment, maybe in the +2 or +3 area. Edit: final note; this race would only have class hit dice, which is a good thing as it greatly benefits skills.
Koridel 08-31-07, 03:39 PM	So, by your suggestions, it would look something like this. - Meduium: As medium creatures, Animagi have no social bonuses or penalties due to size. - Animagi base speed is 30 feet. - Humanoid (Shapechanger): Animagi are humanoids with the shapechanger subtype. They retain this type and subtype regardless of whatever form they assume. - Low-Light Vision: An animagi can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. - +4 racial bonus to Listen and Spot checks. An animagi's senses are much keener than even those of elves. - +2 racial bonus on Survival checks. An animagi is skilled at surviving in the wild. - Animal Shift(su): the animagi can shapeshift their form into any animal equal to their hit dice x2. (this allows a generous selection of base animals to begin with without going overboard with power). In there new form they have all of the animals' physical stats, racial abilities, and extrodinary abilities, but lose all of their their own (except the ability to Animal Shift.) If they had the ability to cast spells they retain this ability, but then fall under the same restrictions as a druid does when he Wildshapes. Supernatural abilities are also retained, but may be restricted due to this new form. Animal shift is a standard action, and any carried gear, magical or mundane falls away from the new form or is destroyed by an expanding form, such an animagi becoming a bear or similar form larger than its natural form. This does not qualify the animagi for feats that have wild shape as a prerequisite. - Scent: Animagi have sensitive noses, and can usually track something by the scent it leaves. - Automatic Languages: Common and Animagi. Bonus Languages: Elven, Halfling, Sylvan, Gnoll, Ignan, Auran. Animagi commonly learn the languages of creatures they may come across in the forests or surrounding areas. - Favored Class: Ranger. A multiclassed animagi's ranger class does not count when determining whether she takes an experience penalty for multiclassing. - Restricted Class: Druid. The world spanning order of the druids will not allow the animagi into their order, and no druid will ever teach their secrets to an animagi. Therefore no animagi can ever become a druid. - Level Adjustment: +2 This seem fairly balanced?
IdleAltruism 08-31-07, 03:48 PM	Ok you want a race that can become any animal. Ok first off what you are trying to do could never be accomplished with a LA +1 or an ECL 2. For starters, what do you want this race to be able to do from the start? Can adults turn into T-rexes at will? Will they eventually be able to do this? The problem with this sort of thing is it doesn't fit at all well with D&D mechanics. Early game this would be way to powerful, late game you would be incredibly underpowered. The only reason druids wildshaping is good late game is because they can cast spells with it. Something that spreads over such a broad range would be extremely difficult to balance. You are better off making the race you want and saying they are druids, the variant from the PHB2 would work perfectly for this race. If you must have the race naturally do this, you are going to have to add alot more HD and LAs. They won't make good PCs(like so many other creatures) but you could potentially balance them out well enough.
Dog_O_War 08-31-07, 03:53 PM	I'm just saying what I posted above is a start; this will require play-testing on your part. With that I would suggest a play-test for levels 1,3,7,9,13,15, and 19. you'll probably have to fiddle with it as you discover new challenges, but with the progression I have offered this is a real balance as animals have a weak hit dice versus CR progression which keeps them in the sane range of things.
Koridel 08-31-07, 03:55 PM	Dinosaurs are not allowed. As I said, things you could see in a zoo in the real world. Tigers, wolves, bears, natural sized spiders, falcons, things of that nature. I'm willing to drop the Scent ability, perhaps make it into a Lesser Scent of sorts. I know Scent is a little much for PC races after all.
Koridel 08-31-07, 04:08 PM	- Meduium: As medium creatures, Animagi have no social bonuses or penalties due to size. - Animagi base speed is 30 feet. - Humanoid (Shapechanger): Animagi are humanoids with the shapechanger subtype. They retain this type and subtype regardless of whatever form they assume. - Low-Light Vision: An animagi can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. - +4 racial bonus to Listen and Spot checks. An animagi's senses are much keener than even those of elves. - +2 racial bonus on Survival checks. An animagi is skilled at surviving in the wild. - Animal Shift(su): the animagi can shapeshift their form into any animal equal to their hit dice x2. (this allows a generous selection of base animals to begin with without going overboard with power). In there new form they have all of the animals' physical stats, racial abilities, and extrodinary abilities, but lose all of their their own (except the ability to Animal Shift.) If they had the ability to cast spells they do not retain this ability. Supernatural abilities are retained, but may be restricted due to this new form. Animal shift is a standard action, and any carried gear, magical or mundane falls away from the new form or is destroyed by an expanding form, such an animagi becoming a bear or similar form larger than its natural form. This does not qualify the animagi for feats that have wild shape as a prerequisite. Dinosaurs, Dire Animals, or Legendary Animals though classified as animals in the MM are not an allowable form using this ability. Only vermin of Tiny size may be assumed, nothing larger. (and even tiny may be pushing it) - Lesser Scent: Animagi have sensitive noses, and can easily recognize most scents, however, with this comes sensitivity to strong odors. In the presense of particularly strong odors an animagi must make a Fortitude Save or become nauseated. - Sensitive Ears: Animagi have keen ears, but this comes with its drawbacks as well. Any abnormally loud sounds within 30 feet of the animagi required a Fortitude Save or the animagi becomes temporarily dazed. - Automatic Languages: Common and Animagi. Bonus Languages: Elven, Halfling, Sylvan, Gnoll, Ignan, Auran. Animagi commonly learn the languages of creatures they may come across in the forests or surrounding areas. - Favored Class: Ranger. A multiclassed animagi's ranger class does not count when determining whether she takes an experience penalty for multiclassing. - Restricted Class: Druid. The world spanning order of the druids will not allow the animagi into their order, and no druid will ever teach their secrets to an animagi. Therefore no animagi can ever become a druid. - Level Adjustment: +3 Upped the LA, and added a couple more drawbacks to the improved senses, and specified some limitations on the shifting.
Sleepwalker13666 08-31-07, 04:14 PM	So, by your suggestions, it would look something like this. - Meduium: As medium creatures, Animagi have no social bonuses or penalties due to size. - Animagi base speed is 30 feet. - Humanoid (Shapechanger): Animagi are humanoids with the shapechanger subtype. They retain this type and subtype regardless of whatever form they assume. - Low-Light Vision: An animagi can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. - +4 racial bonus to Listen and Spot checks. An animagi's senses are much keener than even those of elves. - +2 racial bonus on Survival checks. An animagi is skilled at surviving in the wild. - Animal Shift(su): the animagi can shapeshift their form into any animal equal to their hit dice x2. (this allows a generous selection of base animals to begin with without going overboard with power). In there new form they have all of the animals' physical stats, racial abilities, and extrodinary abilities, but lose all of their their own (except the ability to Animal Shift.) If they had the ability to cast spells they retain this ability, but then fall under the same restrictions as a druid does when he Wildshapes. Supernatural abilities are also retained, but may be restricted due to this new form. Animal shift is a standard action, and any carried gear, magical or mundane falls away from the new form or is destroyed by an expanding form, such an animagi becoming a bear or similar form larger than its natural form. This does not qualify the animagi for feats that have wild shape as a prerequisite. - Scent: Animagi have sensitive noses, and can usually track something by the scent it leaves. - Automatic Languages: Common and Animagi. Bonus Languages: Elven, Halfling, Sylvan, Gnoll, Ignan, Auran. Animagi commonly learn the languages of creatures they may come across in the forests or surrounding areas. - Favored Class: Ranger. A multiclassed animagi's ranger class does not count when determining whether she takes an experience penalty for multiclassing. - Restricted Class: Druid. The world spanning order of the druids will not allow the animagi into their order, and no druid will ever teach their secrets to an animagi. Therefore no animagi can ever become a druid. - Level Adjustment: +2 This seem fairly balanced? While it does seem balanced to me, I would suggest putting a cap on the hit dice of the animal in they can change into around 5th level, meaning a maximum of a 10 HD creature. You might also want to limit the shapechanging to a type of creature, for example at level 1 he chooses cat, as he levels his is limited to cat forms, he may eventually be able to become a lion or tiger, but never a bird or bear.
Dog_O_War 08-31-07, 04:27 PM	I wouldn't give them lesser abilties as you have described because creatures that often have such things (like a trogoldyte) already have negatives built into the mechanic. Also restricting the druid class doesn't seem to make much sence to me; if anything that should be their favored class because of their inherintly close tie with nature. Also I wouldn't give them such a hefty bonus to spot and listen as this can get unbalancing, and is redundant if they are in a form that grants them a +8 right? Remember that they lose this bonus, scent, low-light vision, etc... when they animal shift; they gain back these things if the animal has them (most animals do). If you are not allowing them to turn into dire animals or vermin larger than tiny, then I would reduce the LA to +2 as their shape-shifting potential maxes out at 6th level with the elephant (barring aquatic creatures of course). The elephant (11HD) is a CR of 7, which is reasonably close to the characters' actual level when he can achieve this form - and thus a pretty even trade for losing all of his other extrodinary and racial abilities. Edit: I forgot to mention in the above post is that he would retain his own hit dice and hit points for the perpose of effects affecting hit dice.
Koridel 08-31-07, 05:01 PM	- Meduium: As medium creatures, Animagi have no social bonuses or penalties due to size. - Animagi base speed is 30 feet. - Humanoid (Shapechanger): Animagi are humanoids with the shapechanger subtype. They retain this type and subtype regardless of whatever form they assume. - Low-Light Vision: An animagi can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. - +2 racial bonus to Listen and Spot checks. An animagi's senses are much keener than even those of elves. - Keen Senses(ex): Animagi have such heightened senses that they are able to see twice as far as humans in daylight, 4x as far in twilight, and only recieve a -1 to listen checks per 20feet, instead of ten. - +2 racial bonus on Survival checks. An animagi is skilled at surviving in the wild. - Animal Shift(su): the animagi can shapeshift their form into any animal equal to their hit dice x2. (this allows a generous selection of base animals to begin with without going overboard with power). In there new form they have all of the animals' physical stats, racial abilities, and extrodinary abilities, but lose all of their their own (except the ability to Animal Shift.) If they had the ability to cast spells they do not retain this ability. Supernatural abilities are retained, but may be restricted due to this new form. Animal shift is a standard action, and any carried gear, magical or mundane falls away from the new form or is destroyed by an expanding form, such an animagi becoming a bear or similar form larger than its natural form. This does not qualify the animagi for feats that have wild shape as a prerequisite. Dinosaurs, Dire Animals, or Legendary Animals though classified as animals in the MM are not an allowable form using this ability. Only vermin of Tiny size may be assumed, nothing larger. (and even tiny may be pushing it) - Sensitive Ears: Animagi have keen ears, but this comes with its drawbacks as well. Any abnormally loud sounds within 30 feet of the animagi required a Fortitude Save or the animagi becomes temporarily dazed. - Automatic Languages: Common and Animagi. Bonus Languages: Elven, Halfling, Sylvan, Gnoll, Ignan, Auran. Animagi commonly learn the languages of creatures they may come across in the forests or surrounding areas. - Favored Class: Ranger. A multiclassed animagi's ranger class does not count when determining whether she takes an experience penalty for multiclassing. - Restricted Class: Druid. The world spanning order of the druids will not allow the animagi into their order, and no druid will ever teach their secrets to an animagi. Therefore no animagi can ever become a druid. - Level Adjustment: +2 Lowered the Listen and Spot to +3 rather than plus 4, so its still better than elves, but only slightly. Removed Scent all together, as most of the animal forms will have it, but left the Sensitive Ears. Lowed the LA again due to suggestions. The Druid restriction is to add flavor as well as limit the shifting powers of the Animagi significantly. If an Animagi became a Druid his Wild Shape would be practically useless until he gained the ability to go Dire, plant, or elemental. Plus, since the Animagi can naturally do what most Druids must train for years to do there is a bit of jealousy on the part of the druids, making for some interesting roleplaying possibilities.
Dog_O_War 08-31-07, 05:29 PM	hehe you're on right now checking this thread aren't you? That is kind of the point when it comes to the race and druids; it allows a druid to shift earlier and gives the race the benefit of extra forms at higher levels. This may seem redundant and useless, but take a look at the elf and its weapon proficiencies; good if you don't have levels in a class that grants them (or restricts them in the druids' case) but utterly useless if you have such a class. The double stacking of the shapeshifting is balanced out by the fact that they overlap, not stack. Also, to restrict the character class choice doesn't really add flavor, as they got rid of this in the change from 2nd to 3rd because it reduced flavor. To say that members of a particular group of the race can't become druids because of cultural differences (like a group of city animagi whom hate nature and would blight it rather than look at it) is flavor; good optional flavor. By resticting the character option for your players you are choosing their soup for them, to use a metaphor. Finally, reducing the distance they have penalties to listen checks and increasing the distance they can make spot checks is like giving them a better bonus; an elf can't spot something more than 120 feet away (given the pitched circumstances it requires) where as the animagi can spot things up to 240 feet away; making them the better spotter without having to give them crazy bonuses. That is where I was going with that (the increased range on spot and listen checks). Ofcourse it is entirely up to you. By the way, what do they look like, these animagi, when they are not in an animal form?
Koridel 08-31-07, 06:00 PM	Animagi look entirely human. One major difference however, ALL animagi have black hair streaked with silver, no body hair and can't grow facial hair. All animal forms taken by the animagi have the same black and silver coloring, meaning they stand out among animals that don't match the coloring. (an animagi who became a cheetah for instance would be black with silver spots rather than the normal cheetah coloration) Common eye colors are brown and green, and variances there of, with grey and blue being very rare. They stand about as tall as humans, but most are slender like elves. The universal hair color makes them stand out a bit, which I like for my personal lore, but that can be changed for other DMs personal preferences.
Holy_Beholder 08-31-07, 07:23 PM	Dinosaurs are not allowed. As I said, things you could see in a zoo in the real world. Tigers, wolves, bears, natural sized spiders, falcons, things of that nature. I'm willing to drop the Scent ability, perhaps make it into a Lesser Scent of sorts. I know Scent is a little much for PC races after all. So you are limiting it to currently alive animals right? Maybe you could restrict it even more. For instance it would take a full minute to change, and they would be limited to one class of form(mammal, reptile, etc) Maybe they should have to spend as much time in human form as in animal or something.
ragoftag 09-02-07, 02:05 PM	Good luck with this! I tried a small sized, 'shifting animal-ish' race but could not get a handle on it. This is much better already. Could I suggest starting from a 'Shifter' base? This would make an interesting 'source race' from which Shifters are descended, losing much of their progenitors' powers. Nice alternative to the 'were-critter' origin. A shifter could even move in that direction. A question: How long do the shifts last? A limiting factor as an alternative to LA? Fluff suggestion: Have the Animagi retain non-mechanic evidence of the last form she was in for some time afterwards (e.g. cheetah-spots). I like the possibilities this race invokes!