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Vebyast
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### [Tome] Spellherd

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Post by Vebyast » Thu Apr 15, 2010 7:11 pm

This is probably a little OP, but here's something interesting I threw together.
Spellherd
"Baa-aaa-aaa-aaa-aa-BOOOM"
Can't think of a good description yet. Giving them an Australian accent would be too meta and far too ridiculous.
Playing the Spellherd: The Spellherd provides very powerful area denial abilities. Using their Spellsheep as powerful mobile threats, they can herd enemies around the battlefield, prevent flanking attacks, and very effectively block choke points. Later in the game, they become effective blasters as well, being able to precisely strafe targets with multiple Spellsheep per round.
Prerequisites:
To become a Spellherd, a character must fulfilll all the following criteria.
Skills: Knowledge [arcana] 10 ranks.
Spells: Able to cast fourth-level spells.
Special: Must have intentionally modified the area of effect of a spell.
Class Skills: the Spellherd's class skills are: Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Knowledge [any listed] (Int), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Spellcraft (Int)
Skill Points per Level: 2 + Int
Hit Dice: d4
BAB: Low
Fortitude save: Low
Reflex save: Low
Will save: High

Level | Abilities
1 | +1 level of existing spellcasting class, Spellsheep
2 | +1 level of existing spellcasting class, Pulsesheep
3 | +1 level of existing spellcasting class, Sheep Beam
4 | +1 level of existing spellcasting class, Wandering Sheep
5 | +1 level of existing spellcasting class, Sheepdog

Abilities:
+1 level of existing spellcasting class: When a new Spellherd level is gained, the character gains new spells per day (and spells known, if applicable) as if he had also gained a level in whatever spellcasting class in which he could cast 4th-level spells before he added the prestige class level. He does not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained. If a character had more than one spellcasting class in which he could cast 4th-level spells before he became a Spellherd, he must decide to which class he adds each level of Spellherd for the purpose of determining spells per day.
Spellsheep: The Spellherd learns to personally control the area of effect of their spells on a very fine level, giving them the ability to do very unusual things with the spells. When casting an area of effect spell with a duration greater than instantaneous, the Spellherd may choose a number of 5' cubes of the area of effect equal to their caster level and split these off as Spellsheep. A Spellherd can have any number of Spellsheep active at any time. When the spell effect that a Spellsheep was split off from ends, the Spellsheep also ends. Spellsheep may not be created from any spell which requires a costly material component or has an XP cost.
As a move action, the Spellherd can order up to one Spellsheep per two caster levels to move as if it had a fly speed of 30' (perfect). Whenever a Spellsheep moves over something, that something is affected as if it had just entered the area of the spell effect. Any single object or character can only be affected once per round per spell effect, no matter how many Spellsheep from that spell effect they are touched by. Any Spellsheep which moves further from the Spellherd than the original spell's range immediately vanishes.
Spellsheep look like the spell they were created from. A Spellsheep created from an Entangle spell, for example, would be a moving area of violent vegetation. Similarly, a Fog Spellsheep would simply look like a chunk of Fog spell.
Pulsesheep: The Spellherd's ability to herd spells becomes more flexible. The Spellherd may now create Spellsheep from area of effect spells with an instantaneous duration. The main body of the ability only takes effect once, but the Spellsheep persist for one round per level, triggering their effect at the beginning of the Spellherd's turn and on anything which enters their square or that they enter the square of.
A Pulsesheep looks different from a normal Spellsheep. It appears as a dim flickering light suitable to the original spell effect, which flares up to resemble a smaller version of the original effect once every few seconds. It sheds light as a torch.
Sheep Beam: The Spellherd learns how to make even more spells into Spellsheep. He may transform any spell which requires a ranged touch attack into a Spellsheep, one Spellsheep per ray. Sheep Beams have a clumsy fly speed equal to half the range of the ray that generated them. If a Sheep Beam runs into a wall, it affects the wall as if it had hit the wall normally, and suffers no ill effects. Sheep Beams may reorient themselves freely as a swift action immediately before moving when ordered to move. Otherwise, they behave as Pulsesheep. A spell which is used to generate a Sheep Beam is actually converted into the Sheep Beams; it does not produce its normal rays.
A Sheep Beam resembles a streak of light, colored and textured as appropriate for the spell effect that it was generated from. For example, a Sheep Beam created using a Searing Light spell might resemble a golden laser beam, while one created using a Scorching Ray would be more like a huge Produce Flame in flight.
Wandering Sheep: If an enemy does something that would provoke an attack of opportunity from a character with 5' reach in the same quare as a Spellsheep, then the Spellherd may have the Spellsheep in question move into the square of the enemy that provoked the attack of opportunity. The Spellherd may use this effect a number of times per round up to his caster level.
Sheepdog: At 5th level, the Spellherd creates an assistant to help him control his flock of Spellsheep. The Sheepdog takes the form of a permanent Spellsheep that has been enchanted as an intelligent magical item.
Creating the Sheepdog takes one day and does not require any monetary or experience point expenditures. As part of enchanting the Sheepdog, the Spellherd must sacrifice one spell slot that is not of the highest level he can cast. If the Sheepdog is destroyed, this spell slot returns the next time the Spellherd prepares spells. The Spellherd may transfer a Sheepdog to a new Spellsheep "body" using the same process (the spell slot used to power the old body returns and a new one is selected). The spell effect used to power the Sheepdog's body must be the same level as or lower level than the sacrificed spell slot, and it behaves as a standard Spellsheep (no spells with costly material components or XP components, for example). This spell effect is selected at creation, and cannot be changed except by transferring the Sheepdog to a new body.
For the Sheepdog's statistics, refer to the table on intelligent item scores and capabilities here. A Sheepdog powered by a 0th, 1st, or 2nd-level spell slot uses the first line of the table, and higher-level spell slots correspond to further lines on the table (for example, a Sheepdog powered by a 7th-level spell has two mental stats at 17, one at 10, has speech and telepathy, and so on), except that Sheepdogs may not have any greater powers or special purposes. The Sheepdog's alignment is always that of the Spellherd that created it, and the Sheepdog isn't jealous of other items and tends to agree with its Spellherd.
The Sheepdog's most important ability is its ability to help the Spellherd herd his Spellsheep. When the Spellherd issues orders to his Spellsheep, if he includes the Sheepdog's Spellsheep in the order, then he can move one Spellsheep per caster level instead of one per two caster levels. The Sheepdog may also issue orders to itself and two other of the Spellherd's Spellsheep as a move action.
Last edited by Vebyast on Fri Apr 16, 2010 5:41 am, edited 3 times in total.

> DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
> 1) Good design practices.
> 2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.

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Dominicius
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### Re: [Tome] Spellherd

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Post by Dominicius » Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:13 pm

> Vebyast wrote:I figure that it's not too broken, because most truly powerful spells are out-of-combat miscellaneous effects (teleport) or single-target (most SoD effects). This class is by far most effective when using pure damage spells, and it's sort of an attempt to bring blasters up to the level of other casters without giving them straight numerical bonuses.

Your design goals are completely different from the class you actually made. It is actually decently balanced except for three things...
Pulsesheep: Backwards wording in the first line.
Improved Pulsesheep: Makes a previously gained ability not suck. But any ability that is gained should not suck in the first place.
Cooperative Spellsheep: Completely broken and overpowered. Needs to be rewritten from the ground up.
Last edited by Dominicius on Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Vebyast
  Knight-Baron
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  Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:44 am

### Re: [Tome] Spellherd

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Post by Vebyast » Thu Apr 15, 2010 11:00 pm

> Dominicius wrote:

> > Vebyast wrote:I figure that it's not too broken, because most truly powerful spells are out-of-combat miscellaneous effects (teleport) or single-target (most SoD effects). This class is by far most effective when using pure damage spells, and it's sort of an attempt to bring blasters up to the level of other casters without giving them straight numerical bonuses.

> Your design goals are completely different from the class you actually made.

Probably. Stuff never turns out how I want it to.

> Dominicius wrote:It is actually decently balanced except for three things...
> Pulsesheep: Backwards wording in the first line.

Fixed.

> Dominicius wrote:Improved Pulsesheep: Makes a previously gained ability not suck. But any ability that is gained should not suck in the first place.

Spellsheep trigger on anything they pass through or that passes through them.
In other news, my brain started working and I realized that this ability is completely pointless. That's two rewrites.

> Dominicius wrote:Cooperative Spellsheep: Completely broken and overpowered. Needs to be rewritten from the ground up.

Probably, but it's not as broken as it looks. Capping it at SL means that we only care about higher-level effects, and there aren't really that many area save or effect spells at high levels. A quick run through the SRD says only two or three. Plenty of save or damage spells, sure, but blasting is underpowered.
Additionally, compare to things like the Tome Soldier. No-save death attacks, enough bonus damage to instagib the most ancient dragons, at-will SoL effects at first level, etc.
I'll do some changing, though, see if I can make it less powerful. Maybe fix the number of passes the sheep can make, maybe cap the number of times per day the spellherd can do it, something like that.

> DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
> 1) Good design practices.
> 2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.

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Vebyast
  Knight-Baron
  Posts: 801
  Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:44 am

###

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Post by Vebyast » Fri Apr 16, 2010 5:41 am

Right, new Spellherd up. Replaced the Cooperative Spellsheep ability with an ability to improve the area denial abilities, and replaced improved spellsheep with Sheep Laz0rs.
I think that I might want to switch Wandering Sheep down to 2nd level, and move Pulsesheep and Sheep Beams up to 3rd and 4th respectively. Opinions?

> DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
> 1) Good design practices.
> 2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.

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Dominicius
  Knight
  Posts: 491
  Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:28 pm

###

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Post by Dominicius » Fri Apr 16, 2010 3:44 pm

Pulsesheep needs to affect the enemy at the end of the characters turn, otherwise any smart foe will just five foot step out during their turn.
Wandering sheep has potential but it needs a remake. Give each sheep a single AoO, a reach of 5 and a BAB of 1 for the purpose determining the DC to tumble past them. In case of a pulsesheep, the spell can affect the target instantly.
Sheep beam is crap, suffering from the same problem as pulsesheep of triggering only on your next turn. Even if that is fixed it is still not very impressive. Its only plus is that it frees you from making a ranged touch attack with your rays (and it still needs to move atleast half its speed or hit the floor so there is a very real chance of it flying over the targets head if it is too close).
Last edited by Dominicius on Fri Apr 16, 2010 3:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Vebyast
  Knight-Baron
  Posts: 801
  Joined: Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:44 am

###

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Post by Vebyast » Fri Apr 16, 2010 3:51 pm

> Vebyast wrote:triggering their effect at the beginning of the Spellherd's turn and on anything which enters their square or that they enter the square of.

[quote="Vebyast]Any single object or character can only be affected once per round per spell effect, no matter how many Spellsheep from that spell effect they are touched by.[/quote]
I should probably modify the wording so that it's clear that Pulsesheep trigger when they're created. Sorry about that.
Making Pulsesheep and Sheep Beams trigger at the end of the Spellherd's turn instead of its beginning is pointless. In fact, it _decreases_ their power.

> Dominicius wrote:Wandering sheep has potential but it needs a remake. Give each sheep a single AoO, a reach of 5 and a BAB of 1 for the purpose determining the DC to tumble past them. In case of a pulsesheep, the spell can affect the target instantly.

That was basically my initial reaction, but then I realized that in a big fight the Spelleherd is going to have upwards of twenty Spellsheep running around. Keeping track of AoOs per Spellsheep would be incredibly annoying.
Also, Pulsesheep already affect things instantly. I think I need to pull that out into its own paragraph.

> DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
> 1) Good design practices.
> 2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.

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