Talk:Slaymate (3.5e Race)

Oh no, copyrighted content in my wiki?
Not to worry, citizens! Absolutely no text was taken from Libris Mortis, the book that had the Slaymate creature. The ideas are the same, but I kept none of the mechanics, other than the metamagic special ability. Unless Wizards wants to go after me or this wiki for using the word "Slaymate" or "Pale Aura" (okay, that one was two words) we should be fine. (Giant in the Playground has an entire thread about turning monsters into Monster classes, which use the names of monsters from non OGL books, and also use ability names that are from non OGL books, so I am 90% sure that there won't be a problem.) I made this race before, but with text copied from Libris Mortis. I learned from my mistake, and this is the product of my learnings.

Also, because nobody else made a Slaymate on this here wiki, do you think it is nessasary to write Dire Reverend Variant?The Dire Reverend 06:10, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
 * No, the "Dire Reverend Variant" is unneeded. Only use such if somebody else has taken the homebrew name you want. --Havvy bot 08:31, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Regardless of whether or not you took any mechanical bits from it, names can be copyrighted too. I don't know if that was, but for example you couldn't make an Illithid (Variant) since the name is copyright by WotC and we'd get sued for that. Check whether this has been copyrighted too ASAP? --Ghostwheel 08:24, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you sure about that? Just using the name is sue-worthy? Because people from Giant in the Playground made a Half-Illithid on 07-03-2010, and Rich Burlew has yet to take it down due to WotC complaining about it (and Giant in the Playground is hard on people breaking copyright rules on their site). So this means either using a name copyrighted in a way that you're not making profit off is not copyright infringement, or WotC does not mind that people use their copyrighted name. That is, if the name "Slaymate" is even copyrighted. Also, if just using the name of a Copyrighted item would result in being sued, shouldn't the whole Bleach D20 section be brought down? (This is sarcasm, please don't take BleachD20 down.) The Dire Reverend 08:52, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Ghostwheel is thinking of Trademarks, which is a totally separate issue. Trademarks are significant when we are talking about competing content. Order of the Stick makes a joke about the Mind Flayer, specifically here: . Note that in the previous comic they he totally jokes about Mind Flayers without getting sued. The point is: trademark is what you really have to worry about. Copyright just means don't copy it. I think this is ok (legally). --Aarnott 15:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * If somebody from Wizards of the Coast complains, this is a wiki, and things can be changed...anyways, I think this falls under Fair Use guidelines anyways...but those are so badly described it's impossible to tell. --Havvy 22:32, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Mechanic questions and their balance
Here are some questions I have to ask: The Dire Reverend 08:09, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Was it a good idea to make the Slaymate immune to it's own Pale Aura?
 * I want to keep the claws, but do you think having a bite attack as a secondary weapon be a good idea? The original Slaymate had a bite attack with a disease.
 * Would a feat that increased the Pale Aura's Metamagic benefit to an additional school of magic be a bad idea? What if the Slaymate chooses Necromancy as the additional school, the benefit stacks with the original, so the Slaymate can lower the Metamagic cost by 2?
 * Would a feat that doubled the Pale Aura's range be a bad idea?
 * Would it be a good idea to place both feats together?
 * Should I bring back the disease from the original Libris Mortis Slaymate creature?
 * Since the Slaymate was a human, should he/she get the bonus feat and the bonus skill points per level that humans get?


 * In order:


 * Yes, it was probably a good idea to make it unable to benefit from its own aura. It may be bad enough if you have a group of slaymates that can all piggyback off of each other's auras, but that's really only an assessment of its potential abusiveness, not anything concrete.
 * Keep the claws, but there's no real need to have a bite. It wouldn't add much anyway and would likely not be very useful with all the penalties you would accrue for multi-weapon fighting. Since they're related, I'll just say here too that the disease is pretty much useless as anything but a roleplaying device. So while you could add it, it wouldn't add anything of mechanical significance to the race in my opinion. At this juncture, I don't even care about the claws as far as this race is concerned.
 * Pretty much the same answer as the first. It's potentially abusive especially given the kind of metamagic things casters are already capable of. Necromancy is usually not considered one of the more abuse-worthy magic schools until you get save-or-dies. Others may lend itself a little bit better, since there are certain metamagics that are OK for auto-use (like increasing blasting damage) while others are much more tricky. I can't really give a specific example off the top, but giving that kind of open-ended casting versatility makes the slaymate clearly superior to just about any other race imaginable except maybe those that give bonuses to key spellcasting stats.
 * Range wouldn't be so bad, unless you argue that it's only because it's perpetuating the principle. If you're allowing the ability in the first place, a feat to increase range is more than permissable. I wouldn't put it with the previous feat idea though.
 * This race is win enough without the bonus feat. That's really the only thing that anyone cares about when playing a human anyway, so redoubling its usefulness would really be stretching the limits of a race.


 * Because they used to be human, I would strongly recommend considering making a slaymate a template rather than a race. An LA +0 template, maybe with abilities that were less easily conducive to metamagic awesomeness. It may not be the worst thing ever, but the base slaymate is bordering on cheese in my opinion since just about any necromancer can have one with little difficulty. With this, you can probably get one as a cohort, and if you play as one too you can both boost each other. It causes problems. - TG Cid 22:16, 6 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I forgot to add that Pale Auras do not stack on each other onto the page, so an army of Slaymates will not be as awesome as it could be. The feat to increase the usefulness of the Pale Aura was just an idea. The whole idea behind the Slaymate is that it has the pale aura, so removing it would take away all the Slaymate's appeal to Necromancers. Also, I had the idea to make it a template, but then I decided against it. The Dire Reverend 09:41, 7 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Reducing metamagic is broken. If I were a wizard, I would purchase a slaymate slave as a magic item. Seriously. And that is just weird. Changing it to improve caster level by 1 for all necromancy spells within X feet would probably be more reasonable. That would also be much more LA +0 worthy, which also makes the race more playable. --Aarnott 15:58, 7 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The general consensus is that the Pale Aura is cheese, so sadly I think that I have to take the suggestion to increase the caster level instead of reducing the Metamagic cost. When writing this out, I thought that reducing the Metamagic cost by one would not be a big deal, but I am not a min-maxer, nor do I think like one. So, I have to make changes to make this race worth around a LA +1. Also, would you like to see this as a race or a template? The Dire Reverend 03:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Why has nobody deleted me yet?
Just wondering. :) The Dire Reverend 06:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC)