Magical Theory - Making Effigies from Different Editions of DnD into a 3.5 Game

[movieholic1977]

Greetings,

This might be a fun question for those interested, however the sheer number of options is quite complex for me to grasp, so this post becomes more about what suggestions you might recommend and why...

Lets start with our 3.5 Game. The game is set in the Forgotten Realms. There are 8 players, 1 DM who is running the saem game for another party. Anything can be allowed, so any Dragon, Dungeon, 3.5 Material, Homebrew, Made up Prestige Class, Anything. I mean to say the DM will have the final say so but just a print out is enough to seek approval which is mostly allowed.

My Race is Human, My Class is Cleric, I am Currently a Cleric 6 / Techsmith 1 ... this allows me full spell progression. My Gondsman is Level 4 and at Level 6 he will be a Merchant Prince running my business. My Deity is Gond, True Neutral.

At My next level i finally qualify for Effigy Master.

However, unlike most Effigy Master handbooks and builds mine has a few ideas perhaps unheard of...

My Deity as a Cleric is Gond, whose plane of existence is the The House of Knowledge, which states that theres a library there that....

The Library of All Knowledge is housed in several buildings scattered throughout the plane. Together, these buildings hold every spell, magic item, song, and fact about the entire universe.

This is pretty powerful stuff to which i am basing my business on.

I plan on buying Plane Shift Scrolls to access this, creating a portal here 2 ways is very expensive...

Once here i realized that EVEN in a 3.5 game that knowledge for old games as well as new games and editions would also be found.

So is there a 1st edition monster that could be made into an effigy? what would it be and how powerful would it be?

What about 4th edition?

Lastly, i believe the best effigy at this point is still a Beholder, perhaps a Tiny one which is super cheap and enables an Antimagic Field to be used against mine enemies or party or whatever.

So again what i am seeking is what specific monsters at my next level, which would be Caster Level 9, based on Cleric 6 / Tech 1 / Effigy 1 and remember Tech 1 boosts cleric by 1 so its 6 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 9 which means any 9 Hit Die monster or less

Can someone clarify what happens if you can make a 9 HD monster but its only a 4 HD creature? do you boost or raise its levels? do you advance it?

What about having 9 HD and you see a 10 HD creature are you unable to make this?

As an added bonus if you need me to make a Skill Check, clerics of Gond in 3.5 are unmatchable, heres why. I have 2 wands on me, 50 charges each, One Guidance of the Avatar which adds + 20 Competence bonus to a skill check, and Divine Insight which adds 5 + Caster Level to any Skill Check as an Insight Bonus....thats + 33 to any skills. Since i worship Gond whose portfolio has spells and gifts that boost skill checks, this syncs up perfectly

So skill checks? done...

I forgot to add what type of effigies can be made... these are:

"Effigy" is an acquired template that can be added to any corporeal aberration, animal, dragon, giant, humanoid, magical beast, monstrous humanoid, or vermin (referred to hereafter as the base creature). An effigy uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.

An effigy loses all supernatural special attacks, spell-like abilities, and extraordinary special attacks for which a target's saving throw is based on the effigy's Constitution (since the creature no longer has a Con score). It retains any extraordinary special attacks that do not allow a saving throw (such as rake, rend, or constrict) or any for which the target's saving throw is based on the creature's Strength (such as trample) or Dexterity (such as a howler's quills).

So a Tiny Beholder would have an Antimagic Field on at all times unless i command it off, use of finger of death per round, which is save or take 3d6 + 13 damage, constructs work normally within this field, and so on

And its an Aberration so that helps also

This is just one example of many possibles...what do you think? ohh you want me to get an exotic saddle and ride it? not sure if the townsfolk will like that....but i could 

Further clarifications...

    What D&D books you can use? Any and All with specific attention to monsters to be made into effigies from any edition or 3rd party source material

    What type of character you want it to be? The one with the "what kinda monster is that? ohh its a 2nd edition monster converted to 3.5 and its awesome

    What levels will this character be played at? All until the end of the current campaign

    Any house rules or particular details about your DM or the other characters in the game? The other pcs dont care as much as i do, and i wish they were made into effigies but what can you do

    What specifically you are looking for help with? A list of specific monsters to be currently made or eventually made to have a flow sheet of cool choices

I have tried to be as clear as possible but sumtimes theres not enough coffee to answer everything clearly please let me know your thoughts and ideas

Thanks in advance,

For the love of the game,

Michael Lyons

[SorO_Lost]

By default, obviously you can't make effigies out of creatures that don't exist. And if they're not printed they don't.

You can ask your DM about allowing new creatures in, be it creatures you made up the stats for, your DM did, found in a 3rd party publisher of part of Eberron. A good place to hit up would be EN's Creature Catalog which covered a lot of exactly what your wanting, writing 3.5 stat blocks of old creatures. Poke around on there and see if your DM will ok anything you like.

Lore wise, you may have some 5th dimensional problems with swiping creatures from Eberron or w/e. It's a good opportunity to flavor them as extra-specially unique creatures, your character's prized master creations of his art.

[ketaro]

The Effigy template removes all the Supernatural attacks, spell-likes, and Extraordinary special attacks with a save based on Con. That means no Eye Rays. Which also means the Beholder literally loses any ability to attack and it doesn't even gain a slam attack from the template as it is no human or humanoid shaped.

Yes, the thing about Con-based saves for special attacks is explicitly only in regards to EXTRAORDINARY special attacks; it does not apply to Supernatural & Spell-Likes. Thus you lose ALL Supernatural & ALL Spell-Like special attacks AND you only lose Extraordinary special attacks that rely on a save that scales off Con. This is reinforced as the following sentence continues further on this point of which Extraordinary special attacks are lost or kept by explaining how ones with no saves or only Str or Dex-based saves are kept.

The Effigy template also removes ALL special qualities of the base creature, thus your Beholder will not have All-Around Vision, Darkvision, an Antimagic Cone, or even Flight! Yes, you Beholder Effigy will actually lose it's ability to move but hey, it'd gain DR!

[SolEiji]

Now I want to stat out the Ballholder, the most useless beholder.  It can't even fly so it rolls around on its face.  That's why it's so angry all the time, imagine walking on your face!

[SorO_Lost]

imagine walking on your face!

You normally have to pay for stuff like that.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

 


Stacking templates onto the Effigy, is the standard trick.
Basically an Animated Object on t.o.-ish steroids.
Ultra high STR and a number of carry over racial abilities.

idk enough about Techsmith or PF to comment.
1e or 2e would be houserules, which can lead you wherever you and your dm wanna go.

4e would squeeze all of it's stuff into it's usually categories
and would probably not help at all, without massive houseruling.
That said, wotc 4e C.O. has a few nifty tricks that could be adapted to this idea.
Intelligent Item personality, were to be played by the DM, and "help" the owner once per gaming session.

[Endarire]

imagine walking on your face!

You normally have to pay for stuff like that.

I'm very confused here, SorO.

[SorO_Lost]

People pay to be trampled on and if you are going to do it your self you'll want a yoga instructor.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Thinking like the Boris The Animal bad guy from Men In Black 3.

Now I want to stat out the Ballholder, the most useless beholder.  It can't even fly so it rolls around on its face.  That's why it's so angry all the time, imagine walking on your face!

hmm ... I had a whole fluff line of thinking, that starts with an annoying Beholder disease.  One of it's eyestalks becomes inconsistent (paranoia).  Then it's stops working at all (rage).  More stalks start to succumb to the same thing (categoric insanity).  Then some of the stalks fall off, dead and wilted (all time conspiracy).  Finally even the Central Eye shrivels off, leaving the former beholder with just 1 functioning eyestalk left.  The Great Mother has Cursed us, versus The Great Mother's Greatest Enemy has Cursed us.  Side effect, the beholder's body shrinks to small size perhaps since it doesn't need so much of it's old self with just that silly little single eyestalk.  It's limited to 10' levitating, but now gets blown around by the wind (how embarrassing).  So yeah it's got to roll around to get anywhere (so dizzy - which way is fu^rbloostidar&noxr direction).  The personality of the beholder has to change radically, with some of it's extended brain gone.  It has to go live amongst it's former slaves (ultimate punishment), just to survive.  And stay away from it's old fellows, who now consider it to be "The Sign Of Total Apostasy", worthy of an extermination campaign.

Typically chooses an illusion spells class to make it look like this ---> 

[snakeman830]

Random question: what about Extraordinary special attacks that have saves based on Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom?  Are those retained?

Complete Arcane is a bit unclear, but I think Frightful Presence and other Cha-based special attacks should be retained, though their usefulness takes a plunge thanks to a Charisma score of 1.

[ketaro]

Random question: what about Extraordinary special attacks that have saves based on Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom?  Are those retained?

Complete Arcane is a bit unclear, but I think Frightful Presence and other Cha-based special attacks should be retained, though their usefulness takes a plunge thanks to a Charisma score of 1.

It explicitly calls out keeping only those based on Strength and Dex.
That's not really "unclear" in what is kept now is it.

[snakeman830]

Random question: what about Extraordinary special attacks that have saves based on Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom?  Are those retained?

Complete Arcane is a bit unclear, but I think Frightful Presence and other Cha-based special attacks should be retained, though their usefulness takes a plunge thanks to a Charisma score of 1.

It explicitly calls out keeping only those based on Strength and Dex.
That's not really "unclear" in what is kept now is it.

It also explicitly calls out Constitution-based saves as being thrown out.  This leaves Int-Wis-Cha based attacks in a sort of limbo where they aren't called out as being lost nor retained.  The errata doesn't correct this either.

[ketaro]

Maybe that'd be valid if you could find any other mindless (Int: --) construct with stuff based on a stat is doesn't have, Wisdom, and a 1 Charisma.
The intent is pretty clear. The RAW is pretty clear. No CON stuff, yes STR & DEX stuff, yes no-save stuff.

[snakeman830]

Iron Golems (mindless constructs ) have a Con-based save on their Breath Weapon ability, so clearly a creature can have a save DC based on an ability score they do not have.  Effigy specifically calls out Con-based abilities as being lost, of course, but the precedent is there.  I don't know of any Int or Wis based special attacks, but Frightful Presence is a not-uncommon Ex special attack based on Charisma.

But, Effigy is really unclear as to whether or not it would be retained.  Str and Dex based are definitely so, no-save definitely, Con-based are definitely not.  Int, Wis, and Cha-based special attacks are not called out as being lost, but they are not ruled out as being retained either.

[Chemus]

the text says: "...An effigy loses all supernatural special attacks, spell-like abilities, and extraordinary special attacks for which a target’s saving throw is based on the effigy’s Constitution (since the creature no longer has a Con score). It retains any extraordinary special attacks that do not allow a saving throw (such as rake, rend, or constrict) or any for which the target’s saving throw is based on the creature’s Strength (such as trample) or Dexterity (such as a howler’s quills)..."

Either it loses all Su and Sp abilities, and all Ex SA's that have a Con-based save, or it only loses the abilities that have a con based save. It looks to me that the intent is that it loses everything but Ex SA's that have no Con-based save. However, the comma grouping on the first sentence makes the text unclear, and the second sentence does not reference Su or Sp abilities at all, which keeps it murky.

[snakeman830]

And of course, the example's base creature has no Sp or Su abilities, nor any special attacks that even allow a save, so it's completely worthless for clarifying that paragraph.