Hey guys and girls!
I need some help building a "decent" character out of a monster race. From DnD 3.5 Savage Species book (page 154) I want to make an Aranea. I have a great character idea, but unfortunately the power level comes up short for survivability and use.
I have a couple ideas:
Really focus on the monstrous form with lots of feats and such for increasing the SLA's and monster natural attacks.
A hit and run melee character, for this I am thinking a monk, possibly Spellthief. The issue is we do not have a "tank" in our party, and are mainly rogue types. Low hit dice and low AC are an issue, which is why i was considering monk to get the AC bonuses.
A caster specializing in crowd control and confusions. For that either run with the sorc theme, or possibly warlock.
I have 32 points to spend on attributes, and start at level 11. As much as I hate to do this... can you craft, or help build, any of these? Right now I barely have time to play and have been playing other systems, so my 3.5 is a bit rusty. Spending hours going through books and such is not really an option, but I am really focused on the character concept and I want to make it work.
Thanks for your help!!! Any suggestions are totally appreciated. I can post more about the Aranea if needed, but I don't know how much copyrighted material is okay to post here. 
The Aranea (which I want to go with) has 7 monster levels to use before I can take any character levels... I get some cool stuff, but not "enough". It's only 3d8 HD, with a +3 BAB and horrible saves... In exchange I get a spider form, a human form and a hybrid form, cast spells as level 3 ssorc, web and some stat bonuses. I wanted to maximize the Spider form and get some cool natural attack bonuses. I thought about druid for the spells, but I just won't have the HD or be a high enough level caster. I wanted to do monk, but again my AC and HD will not be high enough to make a difference. Plus, I will be such a low level monk it won't mean much.
I am considering the Enlightened Fist PrC, but I need a BaB of +8... lol So basically that won't happen. That would advance both my monk and sorc... but again nothing at this level that would be worth it. Come on guys! I know you are smarter than I am about this!
Maybe I can make him an Aranea Bard... Cha would be good, I'd get extra crowd control and... well there has to be something. I am not planning on any offensive spells. My saves DC won't be high enough to make them worth it, but same I guess for crowd control. That's why I wanted to get some feats for increasing the web dc.
Anything we can think of to increase my damage or attacks in spider form?
lol It's tough. I've been trying to figure this out for a while, and don't want to give up on it. Any help is appreciated.
My advice will be to go with a warblade character... potentially picking one shadow hand stance and the shadow blade feat.
Warblades don't greatly benefit from irrelative attacks so low BAB and high attack ability suits them fine. In the round you are refleshing your maneuvers or when you are initiating pseudo dual wield maneuvers - you can use your bite as well. Half your HD count as initiator levels so the situation is not so grim as with a spellcaster. I think Tempest_Stormwind had a thread regarding monster character builds with ToB material - you can find it in his signature. The Aranea is hardly a perfect candidate for that, but its better than bard for sure. It is probably a good idea to pick few bloodline levels in order to increase your initiator level as well. Ideally you need 4 IL before picking warblade since that opens some of their best maneuvers for you, but that might be a bit too hard for you.
Aranea 3 (7)/Spellthief 1/Warblade 1 with intermediate air elemental bloodline (for example) can make for a semi-decent character, although personally I would consider 2-3 levels in some of the Paladin variants to fix your terrible saves with divine grace and good Cha modifier.
Regarding suitable maneuvers - you want White Raven Tactis and Iron Heart Surge... everything else is pretty much whatever suits your fancy.
RPGBG is referring to Kung Fu Witchcraft, which was actually RT's discovery, not mine. But it won't work for PCs - it relies on monsters being chosen by CR, not by ECL, to work. (Players set their limits based on Effective Character Level, which is HD + LA. Monsters are picked based on CR, which is often significantly lower than ECL; the trick comes in picking monsters with great stat modifiers (read: high LA) and lots of hit dice (read: high starting IL) for a rather low CR, and having a disproportionately strong monster martial adept.) This isn't adaptable to PC-controlled monsters. (And even if it was, the aranea is a bad candidate. The best Kung Fu Witchcraft candidates have significantly higher HD than their CR, and kickass martial ability scores (minotaurs, giants, and lycanthropes are good examples). Araneas have fewer HD than CR and generalist ability scores.)
DM14548 wrote:
Ok! So first... thank you so much for the thoughtful, and lengthy response. I have been really struggling with coming up with something that will work. Let me explain a little about the character and party first...
We are playing an "evil" group. Some are really evil, some not so much. Definitely not good. We are on the "bad" side of the continent. We are level 10. I am coming off playing a lizardman cleric that was absolutely my favorite charcater ever in like 30 years of playing. I was the only defensive tank and the healer. We have a halfling ninja, a ranged ranger, a fireball wizard and some weird sorc/paragon human that runs around a lot and basically casts spectral hand and shocking grasp. That's a whole other story.
Basically I need to fit into the sneaky stuff, and do not have to be good. In fact I cannot really be "good". I am going to be an acolyte of a homebrew Spider god. I want to be one fo 2 things:
1. A wandering scholar who is building a "web of fate" for the spider god. Because the PC's do not have a party spokesman and are involved with a lot politically (and my last character was the opposite) I want to be personable and diplomatic... though of course hold drak secrets bwahahaha So skill points are big. 
This is also where the bard thought came in.
2. Secretly an assassin for the temple. I was thinking of going Ghost Faced Killer here, but again Power Attack is needed and not optimal. This means I need to go with a 13 str, or at least 11 and take the +1 at 4 and 8 to get to 13. Not great, since strength will mean sos little to me. I also need a lot of ranks in skills that are cross class for anarea. Here I am thinking of 7 Aranea, 2 rogue/spellthief/bard/ something and then 1 GFK at least to start. Maybe the fearful strike will overcome the inability to major damage or have powerful spells to do major damage. Our wizard, ninja and ranger already do massive damage on strikes. Our paragon does... stuff that are only barely legal (if at all), but that's a player issue and not something we need to go into here.
ANY help at all is totally appreciated. I do not have the ToB. I am working from the basic books, Complete Mage, Champion and Adventurer. He isn't going to allow going to outside of main books because he has been burned in the past by crazy power builds.
Fee
Mobile, will be brief. The assassin *is* the swordsage (don't even consider GFK, it is terrifyingly bad), so I'm sad you don't have access to it. You really should, it is probably the best book printed for 3.5, and certainly the best for adding diversity in melee. For the scholar, have you ever seen War Weaver (Heroes of Battle)? It is a great support mage based around weaving your teammates into an eldritch tapestry that can be buffed very easily and efficiently. This let's you support them while engaging in other things, such as summoning (that would give you guys a meatshield). Don't worry about skill points, magic does the face job better.
EDIT: no longer mobile. Point-by-point.
DM14548 wrote:
Sorry, my fascination with damage is quite because I don't normally play a damage dealer, and I am not really thinking of being a massive damage dealer. I'd rather confound and immobilize and let otherss do that. The GFK was basically for the Frightful Strike, but there is justs so much that I have to modify to even get there makes it just not even worth it... even were it viable on it's own.
I am in the process of obtaining the ToB. I think, from what I have read that Swordsage is exactly what i want. I really like the War Weaver too, but there was something that made me move away from it. I think it was the BaB or maybe the skill ranks needed. the weaver would be cool with the character concept. Again though probably just being a bard would be best.
I am at this point very close to just making a druid and using the Child of Winter from the eberron book to get vermin form and vermin summons. My DM did approve using the aranea from the MM, but I think that still runs a 7 LA (+4 for Aranea, +3 HD). I am assuming that still works that way.
Thanks for the help so far!
Reading up on Swordsage, and you're right... exactly what i want. I just need to talk my DM into allowing it. Shouldn't be an issue though. I'm pretty excited now...
DM14548 wrote:
I was just skimming through and a few things caught my eye. There is slight potential for full spell casting if you want to play an Aranea, however it would take a little work. With three levels of sorcerer, a level of bard, and a major blood line you would be able to meet all the prerequisites for sublime chord from complete arcane. You would be a level shy of maxing out the prestige class (unless your DM allows level adjustment buy-offs which would let you get one more class level pre-epic if I'm not mistaken), and would be able to cast 9th level sorcerer/wizard spells. Just a little food for thought.
Well the whole thing has been torched as my DM has disallowed ToB. He thinkss it will be too powerful and add too much craziness, which he doen't want to have to deal with. I think it' the same reason he disallowed psisonics,s that they "change" the game. I really like the game, and overall he is a fantatic DM. I am slightly disappointed though. I honetly do think part of it is the issues we are having with the paragon thing where we can never figure out exactly what he can do since he seems to do any and everything, and a ninja who is proving pretty tough to handle as well. I made a character anyway and sent it to him, hopefully he changes his mind. If not I am going to try to get the Child of Winter line from Eberron approved and just be a dude who can shift into a spider... I thought of a spider cleric, but he doesn't like Spell Compendium stuff either. 
I may end up just getting my lizardman raised. lol
As my good friend RadicalTaoist said so long ago (well before the Tome was printed, or else it would have been namedropped here too):
It bears saying: if up against a logic-impervious DM who thinks Core is balanced and Psionics (or Warlocks, or Fochlucan Lyrists, or anything balanced that's come out of splatbooks that aren't munchfests like Complete Divine) isn't, then the most powerful way to disprove that is to play a C.o.D. (Cleric or Druid). Noncore material will not be necessary unless you are going for pure overkill (Draconic Wildshape? Divine Metamagic?). So by all means, if you must win that argument, take you C.o.D. to town. Annihilate the opposition. Make the NPCs and other players scream "Oh no, it's C.o.D.zilla!!!!!" in badly dubbed English. Breathe radioactive fire. Knock down buildings. Then stomp out of the burning Tokyo that is the ruins of the game and swim off into the ocean, seeking a DM with some basic cognitive functions.
Once upon a time I would have also forbid the use of ToB but that was mostly because I did not own the book and it can be harder to understand that which you can not interact with. However, once you've seen enough broken spellcaster builds, many of which have no "questionable" legalities, it can change your mind about what it can take to play a melee character. Playing at "crazy levels" also points out how nuts spellcasters are compared to the basic melee types.
Bloodlines are probably something I'd still forbid (as Tempest points out they can be massive power boosts that are 'cheap' in terms of overall character resources) and I've never allowed Flaws (UA) as they are so often the tool of the min/maxing optimized powergamer.
StevenO wrote:
Well, good news is he relented and allowed it, with some modifications. He thinks it's too powerful to be able to meditate to get abilities, so they are all like wizard spells and one use only. I think that means I can prepare one more than once, which is cool. Either way tonight was my first attempt with the character. I went all illusion and ray of enfeeble with spells, and took Spiked chain + Improved Trip ettc.
I didn't do tons of damage, but I was able to threaten and stay mobile. At level 10 I only have 50 hps, but I can crack a 30 AC with my +2 studded leather, dex+wis bonus, Shield spell and a defelction item. That will go up as I have recovered the dex item from my lastt character and will get a better deflection ring. It's all very promising, and best of all the Swordsage abilities were great for utility but did not break the game. We were on an assassination missison and me and the ninja were able to scale the walls of the guys place, where I hadow Jaunted in and he etherealed through the walls to begin the strike. Unfortunately everyone else messed up trying to gett in, so it wasn't a surgical strike but the potential is there.
Really exctied to contonue with the character. I was going to War Weaver, but I think I am going straight sword Sage with maybe another level of Sorc just to get level 2 spells.
DM14548 wrote:
Sorry, but what are IL? Most acronyms I'm good with, but not sure on that one.
The character after one session was pretty fun. Not overpowered at all, as far as I could tell, though it was obvious the DM was a little perturbed. There was a lot of "oh and what does THAT one do again?" with an eye roll... lol However after a couple rounds when i hadn't overwhelmed everything and ran out of maneuvers it settled down. He keeps saying he wants progression "as a sorcerer", which would e more balanced... But honestly I didn't do nearly as much damage as the rogue or wizard, and my best asset was avoiding being hit. Plus Improved trip with my spiked chain kept the enemy wizard locked down. I think one thing that helps is we don't play with a map or grid, so it's a little more freeform combat. That allows me to say "spider stance, climb the walls" and not have to worry too much about counting actual squares up a wall and on a ceiling, which would be really hard.
I do think I am going to go straight Swordsage for a while and see how it works. I fully expect to be squished in a couple sessions, so I want to maximize my time. Plus with aranea and 32 points i have decent stats, so it's really balanced. This means that I have a decent bonus to wisdom, helping on damage and AC. In fact, my AC currently sits at a 30 with all bonuses, just below where my "unkillable" lizardman cleric was. Of course I have about half the hit points... lol
Either way it's awesome, and thank you so much for all your help. I thnk it's proof that in this system even the most "impossible" concept can still work out very well and be fun.