Says the person adding manifesting to 100% of their monster classes and wanting to add acfs like there's no tomorrow.
Either way I'm not against extra monster versions (chimera's got two in the index and everything), so if you want to do simplified versions of something sure go ahead. Adding extra options isn't even in the guidelines anyway.
I can rework Crysmal to be PLAs with cooldowns or daily uses that approximate PP usage, you know. Or, indeed, make a simplified version that has a set progression of abilities. Or give a baseline build for a typical Crysmal, and one for a slightly-better Elite array variety.
As for AFCs, I've kinda decided to shift a bit away from pure Psionics. The reason for going with Psychic Warrior as the first pick was, essentially, to keep to having them as mostly melee. The blasting inclusion is mainly to add a form of reliable ranged damage, which Psychic Warrior usually lacks. Now that I think back on it, I'm thinking that Wilder would be better for the inherent Manifesting, with the additions to learnable powers being the core of the Natural Attack pick list from Psychic Warrior. Would actually not take all that much in the way of editing, either...
As a result of shifting away from pure Psionics, I've considered having a somewhat more conventional racial substitution level setup for Spirit Shaman, flipping the anti-spirit abilities and spirit patron abilities over to Spirit-benefiting abilities and some Psicrystal fluff. Switching Chastise Spirits to a multi-target heal is a bit of a start, though I'm not sure how to word it to replace the Weaken Spirit "upgrade" to the effect. Shifting the Protection From/Circle Against Spirits features to something beneficial would be a bit hard, but doable. Getting Psionic or crystaline flavor in to justify being for Crysmal specifically is really the hardest part. Maybe have part of the healing be temp HP from making a "shell" of hard crystal, then have the Weaken Spirit replacement function give Natural Armor and/or Constitution bonuses? Then outright replacing the Protection From/Circle Against Spirits ability with something that allows for mixed Psionic/Divine use would shore up having it be about Crysmals by having it be both Earth associated and Psionics associated.
I might also rework the Psychic Warrior substitution levels to also be closer to the normal form, with replacements being delaying and slowing progressions at low levels to have it be both consistent with the low-level replacements of most of the racial sorts and with having ongoing costs for ongoing benefits. Of course, reworking the wording to apply stacking properly to the offset Wilder casting would be rather annoying, but workable.
...Any suggestions for a third class to give a racial AFC that is neither Psionic Manifesting or Divine casting? I'm honestly tempted to go with Warlock, as it
has item crafting built in, but the amount of stuff to overhaul would get pretty crazy. Artificer is victim of needing it to be Psionic Artificer, which needs a bundle of work put into making it fully functional because Psionic items have a tendency to be more restricted than magic items, and the rules for Psionic Constructs are utterly abysmal. Although the chance to make Psionic equivalents to Homunculi would be nice.
There's a trait in the traits/feat thread to start small, and even a flaw to go another size smaller from start.
...there was actually a bit of an argument about how those two stacked that never got resolved, wasn't there? And the trait(or flaw, not quite sure which) has the issue of automatically setting size to Small, no matter the starting size. Which is kinda problematic/silly when you can jump four size categories in one level.
Eerr, just re-use the same stat-block?
The problem is more about the fact that they need to make a statblock for the Colossal broodmother
and another for the spawned minions,
as well as track the HP of all those Swarms. Huge amount of bookkeeping for a single monster.
Tell that to any summoner/necromancer/druid.
The core 3.5 succubus also has the infamous 30% chance to summon a much stronger demon, meaning either she wasted a turn or suddenly the battle becomes much harder out of nowhere.
Balor can just summon another Balor.
...once more, I realize that how fundamentally broken 3.5 is is beyond what I could ever expect. I should have learned my lesson from witnessing the attempts to get Pun Pun to have a stat so high, he'd unarguably win against something with an infinite amount of that stat(Aleph 1, as opposed to the standard Aleph 0 infinity).