Alraune Paragon (3.5e Racial Paragon Class)

Alraune Paragon
For the discerning plant-thing who wants more from their tendrils and... plant-ness.

Making a Swaglord Alraune
Alraune paragons enjoy expanded and better use of their tendrils, improved resilience, and some sweet spell-like abilities. They can choose the flavour of plant they will be (not literally this is not that kind of game) - a boon to their friends or a bane to their foes.

Abilities: Spore power DCs scale with Constitution; spell-like ability DCs scale with Charisma. You're also getting some benefits for your tendrils from this class, though, so maybe you want to actually get some Strength or Dexterity.

Races: Only alraune can really benefit from this class. Sure, any race can tape some origami petals to their butts and tie ropes to their arms and pretend to be an alraune, but it'll get harder to fake it when they start to be expected to emit woogy spores from their anther and bloom.

Alignment: Pffffffffffffffff.

Tome of Prowess Class Skills (6, &times;4 at 1st level)

Class Features
All of the following are class features of the super-cool alraune.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Whips and whip-like weapons of all kinds, Simple Weapons, and Light Armour.

They enjoy a damage increase on both their tendrils, bumping them up from 1d6 to 2d4. Whether this is just because their tendrils get raspier, thorned, or they get better at murdering people with them is entirely up to interpretation.

They enjoy a bonus to their armour class equal to their alraune paragon level plus their Constitution modifier; this is unusual in that it is reduced to half this amount as a natural armour bonus if they ever put steel pants (armour) on or something.

 : As a standard action spell-like ability, alraune paragons of second level or higher can shake what their mama gave them and imbue themselves and everyone around them with vital energies! Woo! This grants the alraune and all adjacent targets 5 temporary hit points per hit die of the alraune; these hit points wear off after one minute. An alraune paragon can do this three times per day, plus an additional time per day for every paragon level she has above 2. So, 6 times a day at level 5.

An alraune paragon can't have this AND full bloom. This is D&D, you're either Neutral Good or you're Always Chaotic Evil. Sorry.

 : As a standard action spell-like ability, the alraune paragon can encourage plants within a Close range spread from herself (she counts as a plant, remember, so this might get weird) to grab people and generally be completely bothersome. The effects of this spread mimic entangle using her hit dice as her caster level, and can be used three times per day plus an additional number of times per day equal to her paragon levels above 2.

 : An alraune of second level or higher learns how to recover her strange planty powers through her strange planty doings. For every hour spent rooted and chilling in a place she'd gain the benefits of her photosynthesis in, an alraune paragon can restore one spell-like ability use to whatever spell-like ability she selects. Only spell-like abilities granted by the alraune swaglord class are affected.

 : Alraune paragons of third level and higher start to experience changes in their body. They might start to notice bees, and have probably seen some sort of dusty residue left behind on things their anther have touched. Creepy puberty metaphors aside, at third level, alraune paragons gain the ability to emit clouds of pathogenic spores! There are a few varieties of spores, the specific type is chosen at the start of the day after the alraune has woken up. Pollen Spores are something between poison and disease; immunity to one of these things gives the target a +4 bonus to Fortitude saves versus effects, immunity to both confers full immunity. Pollen Spores work like inhaled poisons.

All spores are emitted in a 10' spread around the alraune; she is immune to her own spores. Spores always check against Fortitude saves, and their DCs always scale with Constitution. Shaking out a cloud of spores is a standard action, and the spore cloud lingers for 1d4+1 rounds after it's been shaken out. The spore cloud affects line of sight and is dispersed like a fog cloud. Currently-active spore type can be changed through fifteen minutes of chilling in sunlight (or an equivalent thereof) and letting supernatural meiosis do its thing.

 : After a failed fortitude save, affected creatures are fatigued for one minute. A subsequently failed fortitude while this spore fatigue is in effect save tacks on the entangled condition for one minute, as well.

 : After a failed fortitude save, affected creatures bleed for a number of rounds equal to the alraune paragon's level. Bleed damage is equal to the alraune's Constitution modifier or hit dice, whichever is greater; the alraune heals for this same damage when it is dealt. Targets are allowed to save to end the bleeding effect on their turns, and taking any amount of fire damage ends the effect. Only creatures with metabolisms can rightly care about this sort of thing; therefore a lot of Undead and Constructs couldn't care less about this.

 : After a failed save fortitude, affected creatures are dazed for one round.

 : After a failed fortitude save, affected creatures are sickened for one minute. A subsequently failed fortitude save while this spore-sickness is in effect makes the creature nauseated for one round instead. How fun.

They grip better and are sometimes, apparently, stiffer. This gives the alraune paragon's tendrils the Constrict special ability, letting her deal their damage to targets she's grappled with them.

 : More helpfully-minded alraune paragons of level 4 or higher can, with a standard action spell-like ability, shake the physical characteristics their parents imbued them with in order to fill adjacent targets with more invigorating, less damage-ablating natural energies. This petal dance gives affected targets a bonus to attack rolls and saves equal to the alraune paragon's hit dice divided by 4 (round up), and a damage bonus equal to three times that value. The duration on this effect is one hour. An alraune paragon can do this once per day, plus an additional number of times for each paragon level she has above 4.

As with flower dance and full bloom, an alraune paragon can't have both petal dance and flower hazard. Sorry. Kinda. Not really.

 : More obnoxiously-minded alraune paragons of level 4 or higher devise better and cooler methods or ruining peoples' days with plants. This functions like full bloom, with the following changes: Attempting to escape is a standard action, rather than a swift action, targets who try to escape and/or attack the plants take 2d6 points of slashing/piercing damage from the razor-thorns on the obnoxious plants, and targets who try to escape and fail provoke an attack of opportunity from the alraune paragon's tendrils. Flower hazard is usable once per day, plus an additional number of times for each paragon level the alraune has above 4.

 : Alraune paragons of fifth level have reached the top; they are so cool. How cool, you ask? Cooler than a cucumber, because cucumbers can't generate pathogenic spores and then hurl them as grenadelike weapons with a 10' range increment that trigger a fog cloud of obnoxious effects. Said fog cloud lasts for 5 rounds, barring wind dispersing it. An alraune paragon can only hurl one sporebomb every 5 rounds.

 : In addition to the previous effects, targets who fail a fortitude save against apex sleep spores fall asleep for one minute per hit die of the alraune paragon, as with the sleep spell. There is no HD cap to this ability.

 : Apex leech spores are better about eating creatures; after a failed fortitude save, affected creatures bleed for a number of rounds equal to the alraune paragon's level. Bleed damage is equal to the alraune's Constitution modifier plus the higher of creature's hit dice or the alraune's hit dice; the alraune heals for this same damage when it is dealt. Targets are allowed to save to end the bleeding effect on their turns, and taking any amount of fire damage ends the effect. Creatures without metabolisms are still inconvenienced by the spores and tiny plants taking root in their bodies; the alraune does not get healing from them, but she still "bleeds" them for non-apex leech seed damage.

 : After a failed fortitude save, affected creatures are stunned for one round. How exciting.

 : In addition to the previous effects, affected targets take 1 point of Charisma damage per round while the spore-sickness is in effect.

She now threatens squares 10' to 15' out from herself! Unwitting fools moving unguardedly through that area are subject to AoOs from the alraune's obnoxious tendrils. This will, in fact, be just like one of their Japanese animes.

Playing an Alraune Paragon
Religion: Feylike alraune paragons are probably going to raise their anther for whatever froofy nature deities you have in your setting. Whorlbound alraune paragons will probably just think nature is a pretty neat thing.

Other Classes: Druids and similar classes probably think strangely/highly of alraune paragons, since they're plants. Other than that, alraune paragons are quite literally just developed plant-monster(girls)! Misconceptions are bound to exist.

Combat: Despite their slow speed, alraune paragons gain a lot of obnoxious battlefield control and utility through this class. They can latch onto and hurt targets they grab with their tendrils, help stave off death, put people to tired, and even murder everyone with plants. They're a little dangerous to be around, since all their effects don't arbitrarily decide friendly creatures are immune.

Advancement: Once an alraune paragon is done being all the plant she can be, the sky is the limit! Assuming the sky is filled with classes that are probably ranger, druid, totemist, spirit shaman, elementalist, or elemental weird. But really, I'm not going to sit here and tell you how to play your class. If some alraune paragon decides to run off and become a flame alchemist for good reasons, they can do that. I don't care.

Swaglord Alaraune in the World
"Choke the life from them."

Alraune paragons are basically a monster class designed to make monsters better monsters, except players will be taking it because players should be able to play cool monsters too. They fit in the world in places that Alraune themselves fit into the world. In Whorlbound, they could very well be blight-infused people who maybe shouldn't have spent so much time in the Blighted Weald, or they could possibly be someone's science experiment in Nissen or Sagepool.

Daily Life: Wake up, be a plant-person, go to sleep.

Notables: Bridget, though he's in another dimension.

Organizations: Alraune aren't particularly organised. They can be, but I'm not saying they must be. They aren't a church or anything, and they probably stick to the outskirts of society because they're weird and they need sunlight and clean soil and water.

NPC Reactions: "Goodness, how uncouth! That aquamarine-fleshed young maiden in that flower is completely naked! Hail, young lady! Put on a shirt!!" - Gustav von Hroust, Riftborn Explorer.

Y'know. That kind of thing. They're monsterflowergirls.

Awesome Alraune Lore
Characters with ranks in Knowledge/Study: Nature or Geomancy can research coolkid alraune to learn more about them. When a character makes a skill check, read or paraphrase the following, including information from lower DCs.

Alraune Paragons in the Game
Sample Encounter: BLOOD HARVEST: Some humanoid plant monster has been harassing the farmlands out to the rand(COMPASS_DIRECTION);! It's stringing up farmers, bustin' up plows and chiffarobes, and says it won't stop until the military-industrial complex stops ransacking the land!

EL whatever: ECL 5