Author Topic: Engineering races  (Read 3102 times)

Offline ImperatorK

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Engineering races
« on: May 31, 2013, 03:21:47 AM »
Sometimes in fiction or in D&D fluff there is this thing were a race (or a unique creature) is created (magically, scientifically, alchemically, or whatever) by another race. For example War Trolls are normal trolls that were bred and magically modified to be perfect soldiers by some greedy mages.
My question here is: mechanically, what level, classes, abilities, skills or whatever would you require (at the least) for something like that to be reasonably possible?
I'm asking because in my future game I will deal with such a scenario and I don't know how to build the NPCs who are actually doing this stuff.
Also while you're at it, do you know any more examples of this? Another one I know is Saruman creating his uruk-hai (but that's a little different from D&D).
« Last Edit: May 31, 2013, 03:24:24 AM by ImperatorK »
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Offline linklord231

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2013, 01:58:14 PM »
There's the Epic spell Origin of Species, but that's Epic.
You could use the Savage Species rules for transformations, but I'm not sure if that's precisely what you're looking for.
I think Pathfinder has some rules for creating new races, but I don't play PF so I don't actually know.  At the very least, you could use the Eidolon rules. 
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Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2013, 02:30:59 PM »
Um, no, I'm not asking about creating races. I'm asking about the guys who create races, how would you stat them up and what minimal level and abilities would you say are appropriate/reasonable for them.
That Epic spell is Epic because it creates a new creature out of nothing. What I'm talking about is creating a new race or creature by making magical experiments on or carefully breeding creatures.
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2013, 05:15:13 PM »
Well, you can do the Savage Species rituals with Wishes, so that's a good place to start.
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Offline Slaughterhouserock

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2013, 05:27:48 PM »
Also while you're at it, do you know any more examples of this? Another one I know is Saruman creating his uruk-hai (but that's a little different from D&D).

Owlbears were, supposedly, created by a wizard.

Quote from: MM Entry
Owlbears are probably the crossbred creation of a demented wizard; given the lethality of this creation, it is quite likely that the wizard who created them is no longer alive.
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Offline SolEiji

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2013, 01:56:44 AM »
I'm make it where crossbreeding, rather than straight creation, is a product of both unusual effort (magic, potions, etc) and TIME, which is why your usual adventurer isn't doing it.  For something like an owlbear, it would be years of producing unusually large owls and unusually slender bears, then years more getting them genetically compatible, through frequent transmutations of various sort (insert your own McGuffian).  In theory the actual components aren't too out of reach for a wizard but the time it takes is unreasonably long for adventurers.
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Offline Amechra

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #6 on: July 08, 2013, 03:18:36 AM »
14th level, if you allow Homebrew.
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Offline dither

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Re: Engineering races
« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2013, 05:57:32 PM »
You could compare the magical critters to say, computers. We as people, can only create machines that think so well -- science and engineering give us cars, trains, automobiles, and multiprocessor computing machines. We have biology that permits us to treat and prevent a variety of different diseases and even engineer a few simple ones.

Figure that the capacity of the "created" magical race is limited by the "creating" race, unless you're allowing for a lot of time for "evolution" of a sort to kick in -- the race that created warforged probably didn't expect them to achieve sentience over the course of the Last War, but about what level do you think they had to be to dream them up and manufacture them?

You might treat them like the Leadership feat -- generally speaking, you have a minimum level of 6th to take the feat, and your cohort is about 2 levels lower than you (if you're really Charismatic and meet a variety of other requirements). A safe bet might be in making the creators about twice the level of the creation.

A 10th-level golem for example, might be created by a 20th-level mage. You can modify this one way or another based on how many mages (or other archetype) are responsible for the creation -- as is probably the case with the warforged example. Many, many magewrights probably collaborated under the guidance of a couple higher-level artificers.

The more commonplace (and subsequently low-level) the race is, the more powerful the creator ought to be -- or the more time ought to have passed. Generally speaking, you could assume that "time makes more things possible," and while a lone half-fiend might be a CR 8 and uber-powerful, with successive generations only certain traits might be passed on, until only the most immediately-useful-for-survival traits stick with a CR 1 race (like tieflings).

Ultimately, those couple "plus-twos" to a couple ability scores will be the most useful -- and then you have a new race with a unique power. Maybe the tieflings were started by CR 20 pit fiends, but with a couple centuries they've become widespread in the world.

So yeah, consider how much time has passed since their creation, and how widespread they are.


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