Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Yanome 30 Oct 2012 00:35

Okay, so we know that the Amalgan template happens to be the weirdest template ever, with having no specific LA adjustment and makes us rely on the CR ratings of the two monsters we see.

However, there is a similar template in D&D known as the Tauric Template (Savage Species, page 132). The template describes similarly to the Amalgam template, but unlike the former the Tauric template happens to be a mixture of animal and race. The CR adjustment is 1, and because there's no visible evidence of LA adjustment, that would probably be the LA adjustment as well. So, my question is, since there's a similar template with LA adjustment, should we be giving the amalgam template the same thing as well(That is, an LA of 1 or 2)?

Last edited on 30 Oct 2012 00:40 by Yanome Show more

Re: Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Duralan 30 Oct 2012 21:45

The template in question allows for a MUCH greater degree of freedom than the tauric template.

In bare-bones 3.5 (as opposed to BM) one would suffer from gaining RHD (racial hd) which might balance that savage species option (in most cases at least).
While it leaves some place for abuse (like creating some silly merging of a half-dragon, half-celestial, half-whatever base 'beast part' of the creature which gets added to much less LA happy 'humanoid' part… which by RAW may possibly mean that no LA ensures, just RHD) it pales in comparison to what the amalgafication offers.

The amalgam template is too vaguely described to allow players to use it on their own if only (or actually mainly) because of one very crucial bit in the CR-increase (which translates here directly into LA) section of its:

Challenge Rating: Compare the amalgam to both base creatures and select a challenge rating based on theirs. Then compare the amalgam to creatures with Challenge Ratings up to 3 higher to determine whether the CR you have assigned is reasonable.

Such use could be allowed only on the request-by-request basis, similarly to how we created a new race - kitsugate to be precise - with the use of this template.

Adding a fixed LA for this template is far from desirable when one the one hand you could have people mixing for example aasimars with elves (i.e some modestly powered races) while on the other hand… beasts such as … lets say balor+human (which would get no RHD and similar, idiotic stat gains and some arbitrarily fixed LA in the process) could also emerge from the very same 'tool'.

Tl; dr: A big no for a fixed LA-increase for the amalgam template, template use allowed only on the case by case basis.

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"That's us, defeating evil by being even bigger bastards" - Baltasar Malich commenting the latests exploits of "The Evil Trio" (himself + Altharid and Sidhe Spellweaver)

Last edited on 30 Oct 2012 21:49 by Duralan Show more

Re: Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Yanome 01 Nov 2012 02:45

The template in question allows for a MUCH greater degree of freedom than the tauric template.

That much I can agree on, but the reason I was asking was not because of just adding an LA value to the Amalgam template. Because there's a template that behaves specific to the Tauric template, that does something similar, with NO LA ADJUSTMENT, it makes the Tauric template undesirable to begin with because it does allow a form of LA adjustment(which is, technically, the base Creatures CR + 1). If you're accepting with not adding a fixed LA adjustment for amalgam template.

Your decision, which is to disallow an LA-increase for instead of choosing a request-to-request basis may not necessarily be an ideal solution because it can make other templates become benign and unusable since a combination of templates can bring out benefits that the other templates can achieve. If you're going to allow this sort of decision, then we'd have to go and talk about what we'd have to do with other templates.

Re: Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Duralan 01 Nov 2012 21:14

Your decision, which is to disallow an LA-increase for instead of choosing a request-to-request basis may not necessarily be an ideal solution because it can make other templates become benign and unusable since a combination of templates can bring out benefits that the other templates can achieve. If you're going to allow this sort of decision, then we'd have to go and talk about what we'd have to do with other templates.

it appears that you have misunderstood me, quite greatly.
STATIC CR->PF-LA increase is a no go for the amalgam template.

I never said that the LA increase would be disallowed.
I only said that a plain, static (as in the very same no matter the kind of creatures mixed into the amalgam) LA increase is a no-go if ONLY because of one important bit of rule text incorporated there.

Challenge Rating: Compare the amalgam to both base creatures and select a challenge rating based on theirs. Then compare the amalgam to creatures with Challenge Ratings up to 3 higher to determine whether the CR you have assigned is reasonable.

Can you see the vaguely described rulings ?
There's no precise criteria shown there.

Tis basically "DM's call".

However the DMs of the BM have to act according to the BM rules in general, chars must be made in the accordance with the character creation rules.
There's no other way to create new amalgam-related additions to the wiki, balanced ones that is, than by requesting a specific use of its on the boards.

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"That's us, defeating evil by being even bigger bastards" - Baltasar Malich commenting the latests exploits of "The Evil Trio" (himself + Altharid and Sidhe Spellweaver)

Last edited on 03 Nov 2012 14:29 by Duralan Show more

Re: Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Yanome 03 Nov 2012 08:01

But still, what are going to do with the Tauric Template? Remove it? Nerf it? Keep it?

Re: Amalgan Template: LA addition or just special?

Duralan 03 Nov 2012 16:48

The Tauric template is not really usable in its current state as tis a standard 3.X source and each BM char has to start at lvl 1.
By RAW the template would add racial HD which bumps the ECL.
LA buy-off (or our LA reduction method) cannot buy-back racial HD.

ECL (effective character level) = class levels + racial HD + level adjustment.

The only way to use the template is by either using DM-coins/Wiki-XP or by … once again requesting allowance of some very specific application of its, application which includes removal of RHD.

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"That's us, defeating evil by being even bigger bastards" - Baltasar Malich commenting the latests exploits of "The Evil Trio" (himself + Altharid and Sidhe Spellweaver)

Last edited on 03 Nov 2012 16:49 by Duralan Show more