Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Living Constructs in Pathfinder

One thing I miss about version 3.5 of The System That Shall Not Be Named is the idea of a living construct.  My own campaign setting is a fantasy steampunk world that includes a race of living constructs called Sapients that were originally built by humans and intended as slaves.  At the time, I borrowed the stats of another living construct race from a well-known 3.5 campaign setting, but I'm currently trying to rebuild the race from scratch to fit better into my own campaign.  I'd like to post them here for comments.  Note that at the moment they aren't necessarily balanced for use by PCs, and I wouldn't recommend allowing players to choose Sapient as their race without careful balance considerations.

Sapient Racial Traits
  • +2 to one ability score and -2 to another ability score, or +2 to two ability scores and -2 to two other ability scores: Sapients are often highly specialized for a particular function.
  • Favored class: A sapient may choose any one favored class.
  • Built-in weapon: Sapients may have one or two one-handed melee weapons built in.  These may be retracted when not in use.  Sapients are automatically familiar with their built-in weapons, even if they are not familiar with other weapons of the same type.
  • Metal: Sapients are made of metal, which gives them a natural armor bonus of 2.
  • Darkvision: Sapients can see in the dark up to 60 feet.
  • Fast: Sapients have a base speed of 40 feet.
  • Relentless: Sapients take no penalties from fatigue or exhaustion, and do not require sleep.  They are not affected by spells that cause magical sleep or fatigue (although unlike Elves, charm spells affect them normally).  Like other races that do not require sleep, Sapients must meditate to regain their spells.
  • Magical: Sapients require magic to live, the same way most races need air.  Sapients suffocate (per suffocation rules) in ares where magic doesn't work (such as anti-magic zones).  They experience no ill effects from lack of air.
  • Inorganic: Sapients do not eat, and cannot become sickened or nauseated.
  • Environmental Adaptations: A Sapient takes no damage from hot or cold environments.  Instead, they function at a reduced capacity, with a -4 penalty to Strength and Constitution and a -10 feet penalty to base speed.  A sapient may be built specifically to withstand hot or cold temperatures, in which case one set of penalties is eliminated and the other set is doubled.
  • Living Construct: Sapients are healed with repair spells instead of healing spells.  Sapients do not bleed any fluid, per se, but when reduced to less than zero hit points, they leak magical energy until stabilized.  This is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a bleed effect for other races, and so they are not immune to bleeding.  They may be stabilized with any repair damage spell.  Furthermore, Knowledge: Engineering replaces Heal for all healing skill checks made on a Sapient.
  • Electricity Resistance: Sapients ignore 10 points of electricity damage.  A Sapient hit with an electrical attack must make a fortitude save at a DC of 5 plus the damage done or be slowed for 1d4 rounds.
  • Corrosion Vulnerability: Sapients do not heal acid damage naturally, although it may be repaired with any repair skill or a Treat Deadly Wounds check with Knowledge: Engineering.
Note that Sapients have a speed bonus and certain immunities that might make them a bit stronger than other characters.  I'm not necessarily convinced that their additional weaknesses (to corrosion and anti-magic zones) make up for these benefits (although I don't think they would be enough to modify the CR of an NPC).  I'd be interested to hear what other people think about this.

Sapient Template 


Sapients are sometimes built in non-humanoid forms.  The Sapient template can be applied to any corporeal monster without class levels:
  • Supernatural abilities: The creature loses all Supernatural and Spell-like abilities.
  • Type: The base creature's type becomes Construct, and it loses any subtypes it had.  A sapient retains its constitution score and bonuses despite its type.
  • Intelligent: Sapients are sentient.  A sapient's intelligence score is 8 or the base creature's, whichever is higher.
  • Metal: Sapients are made of metal, which gives them a natural armor bonus of 2.  This bonus increases by 2 for ever size category beyond medium.
  • Darkvision: Sapients can see in the dark up to 60 feet.
  • Fast: Sapients have a base speed bonus of 10 feet over their base creature.
  • Relentless: Sapients take no penalties from fatigue or exhaustion, and do not require sleep.  They are not affected by spells that cause magical sleep or fatigue (although unlike Elves, charm spells affect them normally).  Like other races that do not require sleep, Sapients must meditate to regain their spells.
  • Magical: Sapients require magic to live, the same way most races need air.  Sapients suffocate (per suffocation rules) in ares where magic doesn't work (such as anti-magic zones).  They experience no ill effects from lack of air.
  • Inorganic: Sapients do not eat, and cannot become sickened or nauseated.
  • Environmental Adaptations: A Sapient takes no damage from hot or cold environments.  Instead, they function at a reduced capacity, with a -4 penalty to Strength and Constitution and a -10 feet penalty to base speed.  A sapient may be built specifically to withstand hot or cold temperatures, in which case one set of penalties is eliminated and the other set is doubled.
  • Living Construct: Sapients are healed with repair spells instead of healing spells.  Sapients do not bleed any fluid, per se, but when reduced to less than zero hit points, they leak magical energy until stabilized.  This is, for all intents and purposes, the same as a bleed effect for other races, and so they are not immune to bleeding.  They may be stabilized with any repair damage spell.  Furthermore, Knowledge: Engineering replaces Heal for all healing skill checks made on a Sapient.
  • Electricity Resistance: Sapients ignore 10 points of electricity damage.  A Sapient hit with an electrical attack must make a fortitude save at a DC of 5 plus the damage done or be slowed for 1d4 rounds.
  • Corrosion Vulnerability: Sapients do not heal acid damage naturally, although it may be repaired with any repair skill or a Treat Deadly Wounds check with Knowledge: Engineering.
This template has not been heavily playtested, but at the moment I would estimate its CR to be the half of the base creature's hit dice, rounded up.  I will update this as the template is tested in play.

1 comment:

  1. How did this game go. Did this end up as balanced as you hoped it would be.

    ReplyDelete