Yuki-On-Na

[oslecamo]

Yuki-On-Na


HD:d6

Level	Bab	Fort	Ref	Will	Feature	Maneuvers Known	Maneuvers Readied	Stances Known
1	+0	+ 0	+2	+2	Snow Woman Body, Maneuvers, Icy Lips, Snow Woman Magic, +1 Cha	2	2	1
2	+1	+ 0	+3	+3	Lose the Way, +1 Cha	3	2	2
3	+1	+ 1	+3	+3	Deceiving Beauty, +1 Cha	4	3	2
4	+2	+ 1	+4	+4	Paralyzing Glance, +1 Cha	4	4	2

Skills:6+int modifier per level, quadruple at firt level, Class skills are: Apraise, Bluff, Craft(any), Concentration, Diplomacy, Disguise, Escape Artist, Intimidate, Hide, Listen, Knowledge(any), Move Silently, Perform(any), Profession(any), Sense Motive, Spot, Survival, Swim

Proefeciencies: Simple Weapons

Features:
Snow Woman Body: The Yuki-On-Na  loses all other racial traits and gains fey traits (basically low light vision) plus the Cold subtype. She's a medium sized creature with base speed of 30 feet.

In addition she gains a  Natural Armor bonus equal to her Cha mod.

Maneuvers: the Yuki-On-Na learns and readies maneuvers of the Crystalized Silver and Border of Life schools as shown in the table. Her iniator level is equal to her Yuki-On-Na level and she can only learn maneuvers of a level no bigger than half (IL+1).  Whetever good or evil, a Yuki-On-Na is a random spirit and thus at the start of her turn she can choose to attempt to recover her maneuvers. Roll a 1d4:
1-All maneuvers recovered but the Yuki-On-Na performs a complex dance and only take a 5-feet step until the end of her turn.
2-Half expended maneuvers recovered, rounded up, the Yuki-On-Na makes a moderate dance and cannot take her standard action for the turn.
3-Half expended maneuvers recovered, rounded down, the Yuki-On-Na makes a simple dance and cannot take her move action for that turn.
4-One expended maneuver recovered, the Yuki-On-Na can take all her normal actions for that  turn, just taking a few simple dance steps.

At 4th level, the Yuki-On-Na can swap  one of her older maneuvers with a new one she qualifies for from the Crystalized Silver or Border of Life schools.

If a Yuki-On-Na multiclasses into Eternal Royal and picks Crystallized Silver,  both classes stack for IL purposes. However, she replaces the Eternal Royal recovery method with the Yuki-On-Na one.

Maneuvers Readied: The Yuki-On-Na can choose and prepare her readied maneuvers with 5 minutes of meditation. After each battle, 1 minute of meditation is enough to recover her maneuvers if no victims are at hand to freeze.

Icy Lips: The mouth of a Yuki-On-Na may look inviting at distance, but will deliver cold death to those that get too close.  Either as a standard action, aoo, or at the end of a charge she can make a melee touch attack that deals 1d10 cold damage. At 5 HD and for every other 5 HD  the Yuki-On-Na has, this cold damage increases one size category (2d8 at 5 HD, 3d8 at 10 HD, and so on).

Ability Increase: The Yuki-On-Na gains a permanent +1 to Charisma at each level, for a total of +4 charisma at 4th level.

Snow Woman Magic: The  Yuki-On-Na can use Disguise Self, Comprehend Languages and Detect Toughts as SLAs each 2/day per HD, save DC 10+1/2 HD+Cha mod.

Lose the Way: At 2nd level once per hour, a  Yuki-On-Na can touch a victim and make him or her completely unable to find his way anywhere for the next 3d6 hours. The  Yuki-On-Na must succeed on a melee touch attack as with her Cold Touch. The affected character cannot use the intuit direction aspect of the Survival skill to avoid becoming lost. The victim cannot even find her way out  of a closet whitout assistance, just moving in circles inside the same area if left to themselves, though she is perfectly capable of following other characters she can view.

At 5 HD racial abilities like a dwarf's stonecunning or an elf's detect secret doors stop working as well for the duration.

At 9 HD even magic  divinations fail to show any path.

At 14 HD supernatural abilities to find the way fail as well. If the victim isn't found by some friendly creature  before the duration is over then they disapear forever unless the  Yuki-On-Na wishes otherwise.

At 20 HD the victim can only follow somebody else if they remain adjacent and even then moving at half speed. Racial, magic and supernatural abilities are unable to find those creatures positions from more than 1 mile away unless the  Yuki-On-Na wishes to.

If all  Yuki-On-Na  levels were taken, she can use this ability one more time per hour at 6 HD and another use per hour for each extra 4 HD from there.

Deceiving Beauty: Snow may be pretty, but it will take your life and that of your companions if you're not careful. At 3rd level the  Yuki-On-Na gains a Deflection bonus to AC equal to her Cha mod while while both unarmored and either unarmed or weilding the favored weapon of one of her martial disciplines. In addition the  Yuki-On-Na can now perform a coup-de-grace with her Icy Lips as a standard action whitout provoking attacks of opportunity.

Paralyzing Glance: A yuki-on-na can paralyze creatures with a look. This is similar to a gaze attack, except that the yuki-onna must take a standard action, and those merely looking at her are not affected. Anyone the yuki-on-na targets
must succeed on a DC 10+1/2 HD+Cha mod Will save or be affected as though by a Hold Monster spell with CL=HD. The ability has a range of 30 feet plus another 5 feet for each HD taken from here. Whenever an opponent sucessfully saves against Paralyzing Glance or proves immune to it, the  Yuki-On-Na can recover one expended maneuver of her choice.

At 13 HD even creatures normally immune can be affected by this, but they gain a +5 bonus on their saves.

(click to show/hide)

Anomander's a pretty nice guy that helped me in a lot of my online D&D stuff, so his requests get priority.

He already had requested the Frostwind Virago so I guess he has a weak spot for ice chicks.

Well, the  Yuki-On-Na is literally the  original snow woman from Japanese folklore, luring people into snowstorms for them to get lost and die or ambushing them herself, and that's when she isn't simply going all the way to your house and either convincing you to open the door or taking it dow herself to turn you into cold bodies. However she also seems to have a more motherly side, having a weak spot for young pretty boys and actually sparing loving dads. Legends aside, Oriental Adventures and Frostburn didn't gave her much on the way of stats,with just Paralyzing Glance being her main combat ability, followed by a 1d10 cold touch and a flavourful ability for making others get lost that is denied by having a buddy nearby.

Maneuvers for the rescue! Crystallized Silver seemed like a natural, and then added Border of Life to spice it up, due to the whole “person who died on a snow storm rises as a  Yuki-On-Na to inflict the same fate on others”. Angry spirits and stuff. Eternal Royal sinergy to round it up with +4 Charisma, strong skills and a couple good saves.

The Frostwind Virago doesn't have the pesky fire vulnerability, her Luring Call  actually has uses  in combat and and has broader acess to Crystallized Silver thanks to Winter Inspiration.

So if you want to play a spirit from the cold and death, the A  Yuki-On-Na's for you!

[Anomander]

That's very thoughtful, man. I really appreciate. 

Maneuvers aside, it is a pretty straight conversion, and well executed.
A few things I'd like to confirm;

Is the maneuver recovery method meant to be a constraint?
Getting kills isn't normally happening often, nor is it something that she would have a lot of control on. A PC in a team might get her kills stolen by her team-mates and thus denied a maneuver recovery, and even then it is but a single maneuver.
It also makes combat difficult for the benevolent Yuki-On-Nas.

As for the second recovery method, is it meant to recover maneuvers only when the target avoids getting paralyzed? It might seem strange to hope your attempt fails so that you can get a maneuver back or lead to the Yuki-On-Na to depend on the availability of an ally of some kind that is immune to paralysis to recover maneuvers. Maybe a pet construct of some kind.

On Icy Lips, the fact that you mention how it can be used (standard action, aoo, or at the end of a charge) makes it seem like it is a special ability rather than a natural weapon. If it was a natural weapon, just mentioning that it is one would have been enough to cover how it can be used. It being a special ability rather than an actual attack would limit how it can be used and how it interacts with other abilities. IE, it wouldn't be possible to use it with most maneuver/spell that requires a melee attack (touch or otherwise, since the maneuver/spell might require a standard action but the touch attack requires another standard action of its own) and it wouldn't be possible to buff it with abilities and spells that enhance weapons (both manifactured and natural). I notice now the Frostwind Virago has the same possible issue with her touch attacks.

I like how you wrote Lose your Way but I'm a bit worried with how it can sort of become a no-save hit-and-lose effect. Even though they have limited uses, are more or less useless in combat and that they strike me as the kind of creature that would try to avoid melee combat despite having a good touch attack. Unless it is used on the last one-three enemies remaining and the party can leave together quick enough to prevent them from following them it probably won't see much use. It might come up more often when the Y-O-N is the encounter, in which case she can just use it and leave for the sake of being an annoyance to the party more than anything else.

As for the paralyzing glance, I find it pretty powerful compared to the Nymph's (though perhaps it is normal considering they have spellcasting).

Thanks again.

[oslecamo]

Is the maneuver recovery method meant to be a constraint?
Getting kills isn't normally happening often, nor is it something that she would have a lot of control on. A PC in a team might get her kills stolen by her team-mates and thus denied a maneuver recovery, and even then it is but a single maneuver.
It also makes combat difficult for the benevolent Yuki-On-Nas.

Well it's not exactly easy coming up with new recovery methods.

Replaced it with a new method more focused on their wild nature.

As for the second recovery method, is it meant to recover maneuvers only when the target avoids getting paralyzed? It might seem strange to hope your attempt fails so that you can get a maneuver back or lead to the Yuki-On-Na to depend on the availability of an ally of some kind that is immune to paralysis to recover maneuvers. Maybe a pet construct of some kind.

Well, it was suposed to be a win-win scenario where either you take out an opponent for the fight or you recover a maneuver.
But the new base recovery method should mean the Yuki-On-na is never so desesperate to start staring at pet bots.

On Icy Lips, the fact that you mention how it can be used (standard action, aoo, or at the end of a charge) makes it seem like it is a special ability rather than a natural weapon. If it was a natural weapon, just mentioning that it is one would have been enough to cover how it can be used. It being a special ability rather than an actual attack would limit how it can be used and how it interacts with other abilities. IE, it wouldn't be possible to use it with most maneuver/spell that requires a melee attack (touch or otherwise, since the maneuver/spell might require a standard action but the touch attack requires another standard action of its own) and it wouldn't be possible to buff it with abilities and spells that enhance weapons (both manifactured and natural). I notice now the Frostwind Virago has the same possible issue with her touch attacks.

Natural weapons aren't touch attacks or deal only energy damage (see: fire elemental slam).

But yes, they aren't suposed to be combined with maneuvers precisely because they're touch attacks by default or to be combineable with weapon enanchments, because again touch attacks by default.

The Reth Dekala has the Awaken Vilefire Blast that can be explicitly combined with maneuvers, but is also suposed to be more of a martial specialist.

I like how you wrote Lose your Way but I'm a bit worried with how it can sort of become a no-save hit-and-lose effect. Even though they have limited uses, are more or less useless in combat and that they strike me as the kind of creature that would try to avoid melee combat despite having a good touch attack. Unless it is used on the last one-three enemies remaining and the party can leave together quick enough to prevent them from following them it probably won't see much use. It might come up more often when the Y-O-N is the encounter, in which case she can just use it and leave for the sake of being an annoyance to the party more than anything else.

Well, the original ability is a touch attack. And going by the folklore, several Yuki-On-Nas do like to get close and (too) personal.

It's also suposed to be useable as an annoyance, or to apply in the last enemies if you're in an hurry and want to make sure they can't pursue right away.

As for the paralyzing glance, I find it pretty powerful compared to the Nymph's (though perhaps it is normal considering they have spellcasting).

Precisely.

Thanks again.

Glad you liked it!

[Anomander]

I had added an extra question, so I'll put it here:

In Deceiving Beauty, I am confused by the line explaining when the benefit applies:

"...while unarmored and unarmored or just wielding weapons from her martial disciplines."

Is it meant to say that it applies when she is either unarmored or armored while using one of her martial disciplines' favored weapon? In the later case it may more or less be active all the time since one of the favored weapons of Border of Life is Unarmed Strikes.
Or perhaps you meant "while both unarmored and either unarmed or weilding the favored weapon of one of her martial disciplines"?

Natural weapons aren't touch attacks or deal only energy damage (see: fire elemental slam).

But yes, they aren't suposed to be combined with maneuvers precisely because they're touch attacks by default or to be combineable with weapon enanchments, because again touch attacks by default.

I'm pretty sure that a monster's touch attacks are natural weapons. Most specters got incorporeal touch attacks that are their natural weapons. Even if they apply energy damage or even ability damage or other effect.

I didn't meant that they would be usable in spells/maneuvers requiring a normal attack as opposed to those requiring a touch attack, but I get your meaning.
A touch spell only requires contact, which is why they can trigger even if they are applied with an unarmed strike attack, so I imagine in those situations these touch attacks also involve some form of contact and would thus qualify.

For Lose the Way I was mostly wondering if its minimal usefulness in battle might make the second level sort of feel like a dead level but I see you gave it an extra stance there, probably to compensate (even though the likely level 1 stances aren't useful for long, though there is always multiclassing after 1st level).

New recovery method: Voluntary confusion? It is original for sure but unless it is alone, and even then, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to ever recover maneuvers this way.
Confusion is a very dangerous status effect that will rarely be worth the benefits. Even if every maneuvers were recovered from it.

[oslecamo]

I had added an extra question, so I'll put it here:

In Deceiving Beauty, I am confused by the line explaining when the benefit applies:

"...while unarmored and unarmored or just wielding weapons from her martial disciplines."

Is it meant to say that it applies when she is either unarmored or armored while using one of her martial disciplines' favored weapon? In the later case it may more or less be active all the time since one of the favored weapons of Border of Life is Unarmed Strikes.
Or perhaps you meant "while both unarmored and either unarmed or weilding the favored weapon of one of her martial disciplines"?

That last one, edit it in.

Natural weapons aren't touch attacks or deal only energy damage (see: fire elemental slam).

But yes, they aren't suposed to be combined with maneuvers precisely because they're touch attacks by default or to be combineable with weapon enanchments, because again touch attacks by default.

I'm pretty sure that a monster's touch attacks are natural weapons. Most specters got incorporeal touch attacks that are their natural weapons. Even if they apply energy damage or even ability damage or other effect.

Where does it ever say they count as natural weapons? I don't ever remember anyone claiming you can pick "improved natural attack:Shadow Incorporeal Touch". That happens to be a Su ability in their combat stats.

I didn't meant that they would be usable in spells/maneuvers requiring a normal attack as opposed to those requiring a touch attack, but I get your meaning.
A touch spell only requires contact, which is why they can trigger even if they are applied with an unarmed strike attack, so I imagine in those situations these touch attacks also involve some form of contact and would thus qualify.

For Lose the Way I was mostly wondering if its minimal usefulness in battle might make the second level sort of feel like a dead level but I see you gave it an extra stance there, probably to compensate (even though the likely level 1 stances aren't useful for long, though there is always multiclassing after 1st level).

Yeah, I put the extra stance in there for that. They both scale in their own way as well.

New recovery method: Voluntary confusion? It is original for sure but unless it is alone, and even then, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to ever recover maneuvers this way.
Confusion is a very dangerous status effect that will rarely be worth the benefits. Even if every maneuvers were recovered from it.

Ok, let's say you choose an enemy:
-10% chance you attack them, which is what you wanted to do anyway.
-10% chance of doing what you want. Free maneuver recovery!
-30% chance of dance dance revolution. Not ideal, but you're no worst than adaptative style.
-20% chance of fleeing away. Well, you wanted to keep away from melee didn't you? Again kinda adaptative style.
-30% chance of attacking nearest creature. Well, you still get to pick your attack, so if it's an ally just bitch-slap them with an unarmed strike, they won't be too hurt by it, if you hit them at all.

So that's 20% chance of still geting to attack, 50% chance of working like Adaptative Style, 30% chance of dealing some nonlethal damage to an ally, not too shabby I guess. Ok, will improve it to recover all maneuvers.

[Anomander]

Where does it ever say they count as natural weapons? I don't ever remember anyone claiming you can pick "improved natural attack:Shadow Incorporeal Touch". That happens to be a Su ability in their combat stats.

It may be written more directly elsewhere but it does by stating Incorporeal Attack in the creature's attack list instead of in its Special Attacks (sometimes it is in both). There are only two kinds of attacks, natural weapons and manufactured weapons, and they aren't manufactured.
Look at the Wraith. Incorporeal Touch is listed as an attack. The special attack is the constitution drain, but not the incorporeal touch attack itself.

So that's 20% chance of still geting to attack, 50% chance of working like Adaptative Style, 30% chance of dealing some nonlethal damage to an ally, not too shabby I guess. Ok, will improve it to recover all maneuvers.

I think you do not understand the horror of being confused, which makes sense considering I recall you stating you didn't think confusion was that bad when I made the Joystealer. I'll explain.

(click to show/hide)

This character is not unlike the Forstwind Virago in playstyle and, since I've played one, I can tell ya it isn't so far from your typical sorcerer game plan.
You keep in range to do your stuff, move in when you must to get in range then get the hell out. Avoid melee combat at all costs. Have some trick in case you do end up trapped into horribly lethal melee combat (say, some scary intimidation). Because your maneuvers don't care for friendly-fire, you have to position yourself according; behind ally lines enough to avoid getting charged in, spaced out enough to be able to get your attacks in safely.

Now, you are in your typical encounter, there is a bunch of mooks and one large miniboss badass swinging some deadly reach weapon and it loves to throw harpoons around. You learned by previous similar encounters that, hey, if that thing manages to hit you 3 times you're probably dead. 2 if he's lucky, 4 if he's not. So you stay the hell away from it, of course, but now you're out of maneuver and all you've got to help your team is your paralyzing glance that requires to get somewhat close, a fancy touch attack or touch attack trick that definitely demands that you get too close and that's about it. Perhaps the situation is even worse and that miniboss is some kind of big skeleton guy, some mummy or other thing that is probably resistant to your paralysis glance. That's sorta good since you can use it against it to recover a maneuver and hope you didn't spend a round without being useful to get maybe too close to danger for the sake of being useful on next round. Those harpoons do look really menacing.

So you think perhaps recovering maneuvers at a distance might be the way to go. Good thing you aren't in melee combat when recovering maneuvers or you'd be stuck another round in melee.
10% to go into melee suicide or spend the entire round using a bad ranged weapon attack. Now you have no choice but to always have some ranged weapon at hand because you really don't want melee suicide. You suck at ranged weapons so you'll probably spend a fullround action and swift action to make a ranged attack you'll miss anyway.
10% to not waste your round doing something either utterly stupid or nothing at all.
30% to do nothing at all, so you basically spend a fullround action and a swift action to recover maneuvers. Could be worse.
20% to run away and make it harder to help your team next round. Unless you can't flee the room without moving toward the caster, in which case you do nothing. Safer than the other options, at least.
30% to attack the nearest. Hopefully with a ranged weapon to avoid melee suicide in case the nearest creatures aren't your allies. Nonlethal damage not being optional unless you find a ranged weapon dealing nonlethal damage and you cannot discern friends from foes while confused, but hopefully you'll just waste you entire round missing your ranged attack instead of making your allies wish you weren't around or had spent that feat on Adaptive Style.

So 10% chance of free maneuver recovery, sorta like an Eternal Royal.
70% chance to spend a fullround action and swift to do nothing useful but maneuver recovery, 30% of which might damage an ally. Assuming you have a ranged weapon to avoid melee suicide when you recover maneuvers.
20% chance to spend a fullround action and swift to do nothing useful but maneuver recovery, but might make it harder to help your allies next round while perhaps making it safer for yourself (assuming the enemy doesn't have great movement options, in which case you just isolated yourself and made it easier to get killed).
Confusion is usually a real problem, especially when you aren't ready for it, or if your attacks can actually hurt your allies or if you're the team's tank and they need you to not run away.

So in the best circumstances, this is 90% similar to Adaptive Style, except you waste your swift action as well.
Which means the feat is a must if only to save on those swift actions and have some control on how useless you are for one round. Unless you keep a pet around to glare at.

Finding new recovery methods is getting difficult and it will only get harder unless some recycling is done. It could instead be simply that you use a fullround action dancing to get your maneuvers back, like adaptive style (perhaps with a limiter to make it different, like instead of all maneuvers it is a number equal to the charisma modifier), or spending a standard action doing dancing or something specific to recover a number of maneuvers equal to half your Yuki-On-Na level (minimum one) or some Perform (dance) check, recover maneuvers when you do a specific combat action, like Feinting, Demoralizing, Total defense, Aid Another (maybe not this one but it could work for alignment-based recover for benevolent martial creatures). Well, just trying to help with some ideas.

[veekie]

Supplementary to the confusion thing

Any confused character who is attacked automatically attacks its attackers on its next turn, as long as it is still confused when its turn comes.

Have a mook attack the confused character before the end of each turn.

[Anomander]

It doesn't make that confusion more problematic since it only lasts 1 round.

[oslecamo]

Where does it ever say they count as natural weapons? I don't ever remember anyone claiming you can pick "improved natural attack:Shadow Incorporeal Touch". That happens to be a Su ability in their combat stats.

It may be written more directly elsewhere but it does by stating Incorporeal Attack in the creature's attack list instead of in its Special Attacks (sometimes it is in both). There are only two kinds of attacks, natural weapons and manufactured weapons, and they aren't manufactured.
Look at the Wraith. Incorporeal Touch is listed as an attack. The special attack is the constitution drain, but not the incorporeal touch attack itself.

You give Wotc too much credit for following their own rules.

Take a look at the Kolyarut. It not only has a Slam, it can fire Enervation rays on its attack block, and then can also perform iterative Vampiric Touches. Since they're iterative, they can't be natural weapons, yet they're certainly not manufactured weapons either, yet they're right there on the Attack and Full Attack sections.

Then there's also the sample acolyte of the Skin from Complete Arcane, that has his Eldritch Blast listed on the attack section. Not a natural or manufactured weapon either I believe.

I think you do not understand the horror of being confused, which makes sense considering I recall you stating you didn't think confusion was that bad when I made the Joystealer. I'll explain.
...

Whatever, I give up. Whole new randomized recovery method added to replace the previous one.

[Anomander]

Your examples however have those attacks listed in their special attack section.
They can thus have a special mechanism because they are an ability by themselves, rather than an actual weapon.
Incorporeal touch attacks aren't listed in the special attacks, only special effects that are added to them are, like ability damage/drain.

It is also pretty consistent across their material, which sounds more pertinent than the occasional exception.

Whatever, I give up. Whole new randomized recovery method added to replace the previous one.

This is actually pretty awesome! Great idea. Thanks and sorry for being a pain.

[oslecamo]

On the contrary. The Acolye of the Skin has Eldritch Blast on the Attack block next to the Morningstar, but has neither listed on the SA section, just Fiendish Glare and Poison.

[Anomander]

Eldritch Blast has its own entry as a special ability since it has the (Sp) descriptor, which indicates it is a spell-like ability rather than an actual weapon.