Azer
Hit Die: d8
| Lvl | BAB | Fort | Ref | Will | Feature |
| 1 | +0 | +2 | +2 | +2 | Azer Body, Heat, Practical Craft, +1 Str, +1 Con |
| 2 | +1 | +3 | +3 | +3 | Living Forge, Spell Resistance, Flame Native, +1 Str, +1 Con |
Class Skills (6 + Int modifier per level, 4x at 1st level): Appraise, Climb, Craft, Hide, Jump, Listen, Profession, Search, Spot, Use Magic Device
Proficiencies: Azers are proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor and shields (except tower shields). Azers gain proficiency with armor, weapons, and shields they craft, even if they were not proficient with the item before they crafted it.
Azer Body: The azer loses all racial traits and bonuses and gain the Outsider type and traits as well as the fire subtype. This makes the azer immune to fire and vulnerable to cold (+50% damage received from cold attacks).
Azers are medium creatures resembling a flaming dwarf, they have a land speed of 30 feet.
Azers gain a 1 point increase to their strength and constitution scores at both class levels.
Azers also gain natural armor equal to their constitution bonus.
Heat (Ex): An azer's body is intensely hot, allowing him to do extra fire damage to enemies she physically touches. All of the azer's melee attacks (with weapons, unarmed strikes, or natural weapons) do additional fire damage equal to the azer's HD. Azers protect any weapons and equipment they use from this heat. The azer deals heat damage to foes it grapples as well. Every grapple check causes the creature or creatures in grapple with the azer to take the azer's heat damage. The azer can suppress his heat as a free action at any time, even if it is not his turn, and can return it to full effectiveness with another free action on his turn.
At 5 HD the azer's heat affects any creature touching him, anyone who strikes the azer with any melee attack takes fire damage equal to the azer's HD. This includes melee touch attacks, weapon attacks, natural attacks, and unarmed strikes.
At 10 HD the azer can choose to radiate heat out 5 feet from his body, affecting all squares within 5 feet of him. Creatures take full heat damage upon entering the affected area and creatures remaining in the affected area take heat damage once every round.
At 15 HD the azer's heat affects all squares he threatens with melee attacks.
At 20 HD the azer's can choose to apply heat to every sort of attack the he makes, even if the attacks didn't originally include damage.
Practical Craft: Due to their unique fire-based physiology azers as a race had to adapt technologies to suit them, lest they accidentally damage all they create. This led them to master many different crafts and to create things that accommodate their heat. For the purposes of crafting, crafting prerequisites, and item prerequisites, all azers have a crafting caster level which is always at least equal their HD. Thus a 6th level azer fighter and a 6th level azer wizard would have the exact same caster level for all craft checks and for meeting the prerequisites of item creation feats and items.
At 3 HD an azer craft well enough that their simple constructions seem magical. An azer with 3 HD can ignore spell prerequisites for crafting items by adding the combined caster levels of all required spells together in a special craft check.
To meet the spell prerequisites of creating an item without knowing the spell, the Azer makes a Craft check DC 10 + the combined caster levels of all required spells. So an item that requires the crafter to know
haste would add 5 to the azer's craft DC, because
haste is a 3rd level spell and thus requires a caster level of at least 5, so the craft DC would be 15. If the item required both
haste and
polymorph an azer could add 14 to the craft DC in order to ignore the spell prerequisites because
polymorph is a 5th level spell and thus requires a minimum caster level of 9, and
haste requires a caster level of 5, so the two added together are 14, making the craft DC 24. The azer makes this check once per item at any point during the time normally required to create the item. Failure wastes no materials, you cannot attempt the check again for 24 hours, halting production of the item by a day. You can take 10 on this check by devoting a day's worth of effort (Normally you devote 8 hours a day, taking 10 means you did nothing else all day), but you cannot take 20.
At 6 HD an azer can weave their own fire immunity into any item they craft. By adding 10 to the craft check DC an azer can make their crafted items completely immune to fire damage.
At 10 HD azers can take 10 on the craft check to ignore spell prerequisites with no increase to the time required.
At 12 HD azers can emulate other races with a successful craft check, allowing them to make items normally only other races can make. Doing this adds 15 to the craft check DC.
At 20 HD azers can take 20 on all craft checks with no increase to the time required.
Living Forge (Ex): The heat coming from an azer's body and immunity to heat assists him with crafting, allowing him to keep items hot for longer periods of time and mold hot items with his bare hands rather than crude tools. Even flammable materials like wood benefit from this because wood hardens with the right amount of heat, and often even when heat doesn't sound useful azers have found ways to apply it. Azers gain an alchemical bonus on all craft checks equal to their HD, and may ignore the need for some tools and facilities at the DM's discretion (heating the end of a spear, for example, would not require the azer to make a fire since they emanate fire).
Azers can also choose to over-clock themselves and spend more than 8 hours a day crafting a particular item. This allows them to cut reduce crafting times. Since outsiders do not sleep and often fight each other, there is an increased sense of urgency when neither side of a war has to rest. Many of the most devoted Azer smiths choose to push their minds and bodies by working 16 hours a day on an item and then taking 8 hours to rest. Success means they cut the time required to craft items in half.
Spending more than 8 hours working on the same item carries the penalties of a forced march (PHB, 164). Since craft checks are done in 8 hour increments, the azer's second craft check requires them to make a DC 26 (10 + 2 for every one of the 8 hours) fortitude save or become fatigued. The third requires them to make a DC 42 fortitude save, and so on. Overworking one's self also carries additional penalties. Any time the azer would become fatigued they also become unfocused, which means they take equivalent penalties to all their mental ability scores (Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma; fatigue normally only affects physical ability scores of strength and dexterity). Even if an azer gains immunity to fatigue, crafting overtime means they still take penalties to their mental scores on all occasions when they would normally take penalties to their physical ability scores. When they would normally become exhausted they also become disoriented, which means they take a -6 penalty to Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Once again immunity to fatigue or exhaustion does not protect the azer from becoming unfocused and disoriented. 8 hours of rest removes all negative conditions. Azers cannot take 10 or 20 when overclocking themselves.
Spell Resistance (SR): Azers have spell resistance 11 + HD. They can lower or raise their spell resistance as a free action at any time, even if it isn't their turn.
Flame Native (Ex): Native to the Elemental Plane of Fire and constantly radiating heat, Azers are naturally talented with fire effects. All azers are considered two levels higher than their character level for the purpose of level-dependent fire effects. Any spells, powers, maneuvers, or other effects that inflict level-dependent fire (Such as a d6 per caster level) effects or have the fire descriptor are included in this ability.
At 10 HD the bonus levels from this ability double. At every 10 HD after the azer's 10th HD the bonus levels double again.
Comments:
I focused on the crafting because it seemed to me that a race that could make a brass kilt had to have some mad crafting skills, and they would have to have them to make anything work with their heat.
I did not focus on the heat because it's fire damage and making it irresistible didn't make sense to me. So it's kind of a cool bonus but not worth building a class around it.
I also had trouble with how combat-centric I should or shouldn't make the Azer, since it's a 2-level class and the one in the MM isn't even definitively anything, I figured I'd just focus on the crafting and give him a good chassis to build on later. This way you have a solid outsider race with some unique abilities, but all the other options are still on the table for you to build what you want.
Done by Bloody Initiate from BG
