Marruspawn

[Nanshork]

Deific Genesis is clunky but I'm not sure how else to implement it and have a progression to Abomination Ascendency.

The reroll mechanic is kind of awkward, yes. I'd suggest just making it so that if you roll less than half, you get bumped up to half.

 

Done.

[Nanshork]

I'm going back and looking at my old stuff.

Bumped up the skill pre-req for Marruspawn Abomination by 1 so that the Divine Rank kicks in at level 20 instead of 19.

I apparently had a half a sentence in the Zyme post so I cleaned that up.

[Stricture]

I'm happy you bumped this, I had forgotten about it.

The abomination should really be an Outsider (Native). It is not only that it say so in its entry but, all Abominations are Outsiders.

[Nanshork]

I really doubt that the Marruspawn Abomination is related to the Abominations in the Epic Level Handbook, but you are correct that it does explicitly say it so I've adjusted the monster class.

[Stricture]

I really doubt that the Marruspawn Abomination is related to the Abominations in the Epic Level Handbook, but you are correct that it does explicitly say it so I've adjusted the monster class.

The following text:

"
Abominations are mistakes—the unwanted, unforeseen
offspring of misguided deific concourse. Abortions of
spirit, abominations live on, nurtured by their quasi-deific
powers and the pure, undiluted hate of their forebears and
all naturally formed creatures.
"

Appear both in the entry for Abominations in the Epic Level Handbook and in the Marruspawn Abomination in Sandstorm.

The lore fits very well too.

[Nanshork]

Eh, I'm not really concerned about it one way or another.

[Stricture]

Well it sort of matters since it determines which rules you are going to use.

For example according to the Epic Level Handbook the speed is slightly off.

The Abomination has a 60' base speed in Sandstorm since it is of medium size and it has an effective divine rank of 0.

But of the entry creatures only the Marrutact is of medium size, the Marrusault is large (80' speed) and the Marrulurk is small (50' speed).

[Nanshork]

I'm using the rules for the monster as written in the statblock.

The Abomination as written keeps the speed and size of the Marruspawn used to turn into it, as normal for a prestige class in this project.

Edit: Until 4th level, where speed increases to 60 feet (obviously).

Yeah, I'm definitely only concerned with the statblock itself, the ELH Abominations don't have a subgrouping in this project.

[Stricture]

Then giving the Marrulurk a size increase (to medium) when it enters the Abomination class might be a good idea.

The way I interpret it as written is that the Marrulurk starts at 20' speed until the fourth Abomination level when it increases to 60' speed and then the speed decreases to 50' when it gets divine rank 0 on the fourteenth Abomination level.
Unless one argues that the fourth level speed increase overrides this, which one might, specific trumps general after all. If such is the case a clarification might be in order.

Either way a size increase would most likely be the easiest solution, especially if you want to preserve the original statblock. This would remove the need for a clarification and preserve both the original size and speed.

[Nanshork]

The way I interpret it as written is that the Marrulurk starts at 20' speed until the fourth Abomination level when it increases to 60' speed and then the speed decreases to 50' when it gets divine rank 0 on the fourteenth Abomination level.

I missed that Divine Rank changes speed.  To match the statblock it would just be simpler to explicitly remove the speed change from divine rank altogether.

I'm less concerned about preserving original size as we'll still have medium and large even if I get rid of small.  I can see a case for it in general though.

Okay, here's the plan.  I'm editing in that the Abomination's speed doesn't change due to divine rank (there's precedent for this with divine rank in the rules).


I'm on the fence about a size change.

[Stricture]

To my mind you seem to be a bit inconsistent about this whole issue.
The original statblock for the Abomination (in Sandstorm) has a 60' speed because it is of medium size and it has divine rank 0 not despite it. If it was of small size it would have a speed of 50'. If it gained an HD it would grow to large size and have a speed of 80'.
Now changing the rules governing divine rank would seem to me to be the opposite of preserving the original statblock.

This was why I proposed to increase the Marrulurk's size at some point. It would bring it in line with the base creature and seemed to me to be the easiest way to preserve the original statblock without making an exception to the rules. If you are going to make an exception anyways there is no need for the size change, and if you make the size change there is no need for an exception.


As to the speed, why would you not permit the speed change?

The Marrusault would get a 20' speed increase at level 19. Nice, but does it even matter?

The Marrulurk would loose 10' speed at level 18. It has UMD I am sure it can manage that disadvantage somehow.

Or are you worried about people increasing their size and getting huge movement speeds? They can do that at level 18 at the earliest. And if they want to do something funky with that why not let them?

It just seems like you are making an exception for no particular benefit.

[Nanshork]

Having speed based off of size is in my mind a little too much for a system of homebrew where it's extremely easy to pump up your size.  In fact, having speed based off of size in general is something that I think is ridiculous so I have no interest in implementing that into the Abomination.

I'm not making an exception for a benefit, I'm making an exception to fit how I think the class should be.  My vision of the Abomination doesn't involve rules that I think aren't worth dealing with.  It's pretty much as simple as that.

Also, the original statblock of the Marruspawn Abomination doesn't have Divine Rank.

[Stricture]

Fair enough, it is your writeup after all.

Concerning the divine rank question.
Are you referring to the fact that it lacks abomination traits? If you are, then I would respond that I assume that it is because the writer used the SRD during the writeup, and the SRD is pretty easy to misread on that point. But technically you are correct, it does not have abomination traits so it do not have a divine rank and it is not an abomination. Seems like a rather uncharitable interpretation though, since it has pretty much every other abomination ability in some form or shape.

[Nanshork]

We have very different views on how much writers of splatbooks worked on integrating their creations with the core D&D rules, especially when racial abilities were added in to give it the abilities of Divine Rank without actually giving it Divine Rank. 

I will agree that I have uncharitable opinions of most people.

[Stricture]

Which abilities are we talking about here? Because I don't think it has any abilities related to Divine Rank.

I don't think we do, since the mistake could have been easily avoided by reading the Epic Level Handbook's section on Abominations.

[Nanshork]

Which abilities are we talking about here? Because I don't think it has any abilities related to Divine Rank.

The racial ability for Max HP per HD for example (called Touch of the Divine no less).  Divine Rank gives you max HP per HD.

I don't think we do, since the mistake could have been easily avoided by reading the Epic Level Handbook's section on Abominations.

It's pretty clear that splatbook authors don't always read other rulebooks to make sure that things are consistent, especially since the ELH is technically 3.0 material (with a 3.5 update).

[Nanshork]

I missed that Divine Rank 0 gives Deflection bonus to AC based on Cha.  I've edited that in, the Abomination's Cha isn't going to be high enough for this to be a huge difference.

[Nanshork]

On another topic, I'm thinking of adjusting the Abomination's ability to make iterative attacks to match the Rapidstrike feats (basically make normal claw attacks, then get iteratives afterward).  It's a net gain of one attack.

Thoughts?