Book of Elements (3.5e Sourcebook)/Elementals of Style

Classes for customizable elementals don't work if they don't have some kind of selectable option. But elementals and magic users have no shortage of those, using the stuff in this chapter.

=Character Backgrounds= "What, you think I know him just because we're both from the Elemental Plane of Earth? Do we all look the same to you, too?"

Characters who originate on the inner planes often have completely different origins than those from the material plane. Seriously, every single elemental and genie is itself immortal. Every single mephit is also potentially immortal. So backgrounds for mortals from the war-torn material plane don't necessarily fit immortals from the war-ravaged inner planes. Still, many do. The elemental planes have Fallen Nations, some of which even had Royalty, and whose supporters sometimes form a Resistance. They have Apprentices and masters. They have War, and the wars produce Profiteers and Veterans and Refugees. And, of course, complete Amnesia is as common an occurance on the inner planes as it is on the material. But there are also a bunch of things they can do that people from the material plane usually can't. Some of these backgrounds are also apppropriate for other nonmaterial creatures, such as fiends.

Like the backgrounds in Races of War, many PCs won't want to take a background off a list, and instead will want to write their own. They should get some ability similar in power to these if they do so. Matching the original background to whatever one of these is closest and just handing out the ability is fine. Many PCs, though, will pick one of these backgrounds, either because the player is inspired to put a twist on one of these or is too uncreative to come up with something else, and there's nothing wrong with either.

Called Servant
You were minding your own business on your home plane one day, when BAM, you find yourself on the material plane. You try to move, but don't get very far before you run into an invisible force field. There's a mortal nearby who offers to make a deal with you where you'll be let go in exchange for service. You took that, and for some reason stuck around on the Material Plane afterwards. Maybe you were trapped by something, maybe you're hanging about for revenge. Effect: Called Servants can return to their home plane once per ever as a standard action, as long as they are no longer doing whatever task they were called for (PCs should be from the beginning). Knowledge (the Planes) is always a class skill for you, and you get a +2 bonus on Diplomacy checks with called creatures called by someone else. You're going to meet people who knew the person who called you, or people opposed to the task you were called to do. Since you may have changed sides since your calling, some of them will like you and some won't, and you won't necessarily know which is which.

To Serve in Creation
You were a minion of a genie or other powerful critter of the elemental planes. Now you broke into the material plane and got free. Effect: You have enormous experience in genie culture looking at it from below. You know genie ettiquette extremely well, and so gain a +2 bonus to checks to Bluff genies and to negotiate with bound genies (see the Tome of Fiends). If you were a minion of something other than a genie, you gain these benefits against whoever your masters were, instead of genies. Bluff is a class skill for you no matter what you do.

Strange Aeons
You're old. You might only be older than the elf king, or you might be old enough to not trust this newfangled "dirt." The point is, you're old, and you've done a little bit of everything in your past. Where you come from isn't nearly as important as where you've been, and where you've been includes most of the cosmos. Effect: To take this background, you must be immortal. You've picked up a whole bunch of obscure knowledge over your lifetime, and so have the Bardic Knowledge ability of a 1st level core D&D bard. You can also start with as many professions as you want, for free. Also, you at least have an acquaintance in common with half of the important immortal NPCs in the campaign that you haven't met, and know the same people as many of the mortals. Your old friends and enemies will show up during the campaign to beg for your help or thwart you.

Planar Rampage
Some foolish mortal mage called you to the material plane, and you broke out of their trap and killed them. Effect: When you were pulled to the material plane, all your cool stuff got left on the other side. So you don't get or need to pick out starting equipment. You start with a club, dagger, or quarterstaff if you don't have natural weapons, leather armor if you need it, and similar trivial equipment. You also have enemies, who happen to like the people you've killed on your way out. You're a generally suspicious person, so you get +2 Sense Motive. Also, Disguise and Hide are class skills for you whatever you do.

Eternal Sleeper
You just woke up after a long slumber. Now the world's all different, mortals work metals and all your old friends are gone. Effect: You must be immortal to take this background without a plausible excuse. You share one language in common with modern creatures; all other languages you speak are dead languages. But, since you speak so many dead languages, you gain a +2 bonus on Decipher Script checks, and Knowledge (History) is a class skill for you no matter what you do. Also you may have been in some of the dungeons you will visit back before they were dungeons.

=Spheres= Many characters and creatures, in the course of acquiring elemental power, gain access to spheres. Some of these spheres are the same ones available to fiends, while others are of entirely new varieties. Nearly every sphere available to elemental creatures is restricted in terms of which elements can access them. Many of them are also available to fiends who seek to gain power over the elements, as well, but many aren't. Every sphere has a listing of which elements are able to access it. New spheres that are accessible to fiends will have Fiend listed as one of their available elements.

Elemental Spheres function like Fiendish Spheres, except that each one has some prerequisite element. An Elemental Weird or Genie taking an Elemental Sphere must be of at least one of the Sphere's prerequisite elements. Note that Magma has no spheres listed for it. This is intentional: it can draw Spheres from both the Earth and Fire lists. Some of these spheres can also be taken by fiends; they will be marked with the Fiendish type.

In The Other Tome of Magic, some revisions were made to the key abilities of certain spells. Spells cast from Fiendish spheres, regardless of what book they come from, still use Charisma for save DCs. Spells cast from Elemental spheres, even Elemental spheres from the Tome of Fiends, use Wisdom to set their save DCs. An Elemental Weird would therefore use Wisdom to set the save DC of the Lightning Bolt from their Electricity Sphere and also that of their Fireball from their Pyre Sphere, since even though the latter was originally published as a Fiendish sphere, it is being accessed as an Elemental sphere. Likewise, a Conduit of the Lower Planes would use Charisma for both spells, since even though the Electricity spell originates here, it is being accessed as a Fiendish sphere.

Elementals can also take some spheres from the Tome of Fiends. These are listed, with their elemental prerequisites and any changes that happen when they're elemental spheres, at the end of the list.

It should be noted that when a Sphere grants a bonus spell-like ability at some level, that spell-like ability and the normal one at that level use the same uses. So when a weird with Advanced access to the Metal sphere gains Chill Metal and Heat Metal together, it can use both abilities a total of three times per day, not three times a day each.

Some spheres have substitution options listed for spells in expansion books. If those aren't available, use the given substitution option.

Option: Sphere Heightening
Since the Tome of Fiends has been published, something of a consensus has come about that using underleveled abilities of your spheres not only sucks, but does so for no reason. See, the top end of your sphere powers have level-appropriate save DCs, meaning that they keep pace with your opponents' bad saves. But the spells you've had for the longest don't, and instead become worthless. That sucks. So under this option, all of your sphere spell-like abilities have save DCs of 10 + 1/2 your hit dice + your appropriate ability modifier. This goes for Fiends too, by the way. Merry Christmas.

New Spheres
The new spheres are available as a full listing or on the table below.

Old Spheres
Elementals can also use some spheres that belonged to fiends before, as follows:
 * Cold is accessible by Air, Water, and Ice elementals, and grants those with the cold subtype the ability to, as an immediate action three times per day, become cold enough to ward off outside fires, gaining fire immunity. This lasts for one round. Otherwise they gain the (cold) subtype.
 * Dominion is accessible to all elementals
 * Fire is accessible by Fire elementals. If they have the (fire) subtype (and they do), then instead of gaining it again they can as an immediate action three times per day, become hot enough to ward off outside cold, gaining cold immunity. This lasts for one round.
 * Frostbite is usable by Water, Ice, and Shadow elementals.
 * Pyre is usable by Fire elementals.
 * Stone is usable by Earth elementals.

=New and Revised Spells=

Some spells are introduced for these spheres or for new classes or need to be revised to fit with the other rules in this work. Most of these spells just exist to fill out spell lists rather than to fix critical bugs. Antimagic field, though, is here because it doesn't really play nice with the rest of the game.

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=Elements and Feats= "There are a few benefits to being older than the world."

There are a whole lot of different kinds of feats available to people who want to wield the power of the elements, so its appropriate to explain what these are here.

Elemental Feats
Elemental feats can only be taken by elementals and outsiders from the inner planes, and by other creatures with a close affinity for the inner planes. Shadow creatures corresponding to a set of elemental creatures, such as Shadow Elementals and Khayal genies, count as elemental creatures for these feats. They are a lot like [Fiend] feats, except for elementals. More rules for monstrous feats and monster-type specific feats will be given in the Book of the Wilds.

Spellcasting Feats
A long-awaited counterpart to Combat Feats and Skill feats for magic-using characters, Spellcasting feats grant new powers to spellcasters. Some magical feats make your spells better, while others, like Summon the Legion, give you non-spell abilities. Because magical feats to improve spells that are already good aren't really necessary since those spells are already good, magical feats to improve spells help with areas that aren't much good, like damaging spells.. Some magical feats scale only with the highest level of some subset of spells you can cast, such as damaging spells or spells of a specific school or subschool. The feat text will identify this; if not stated, it scales with any spell. Scaling is based on spells known and spell slots available, so characters who prepare spells need only have a spell slot and a known spell (if they keep a spellbook, this counts every spell they could have prepared when last preparing spells) that meets prerequisites of at least whatever level to get the feat benefits from that level, they need not have any such spells prepared. Magical feats do not scale based on Spheres or Spell-like abilities.

Item Creation Feats
There was going to be a book about items specifically in the Tome series, but it didn't entirely pan out and has now been on hold for three years, with a few chapters released. The next best place to put new rules for magic item creation is probably here in the book about elementals and the magic of the inner planes. Not only since it's the most magical of the book topics to be written for a while, but also since elementals are so often used as tools by spellcasters capable of summoning them, both inside and outside of battle.

The trouble with [Item Creation] feats, as written in core, is that their specializations are all wrong. Seriously, there are like four that are well-defined in what they do, three of which make external spell slots and one of which was meant to primarily make numeric bonus items. The elephant in the ill-defined room is, of course, Craft Wondrous Item, which covers everything that doesn't fit into these incredibly narrow shape-based categories and can, depending on interpretation, make knock-offs of every other feat's items (no, I don't want a Rod of Rulership, I want an Orb of Rulership. Completely different item.  Honest), but other item creation feats have definition problems too. Craft Staff, for instance, manages to make externally-mounted spell slots and still be ill-defined because of the way specific staffs work. Forge Ring is necessary only to make some specific subset of magic items and gain access to two body slots, which were never a good idea to begin with, and Craft Rod is in practically the same boat. Then whenever a new book introduces a new category of item, it would as likely as not also add a new item creation feat for them, no matter how small the category. In 3.0, they went as far as to actually print a Craft Portal feat in an actual book.

Item creation feats have another problem: they always suck for the person taking them. Depending on the campaign's pacing, item creation feats might either suck or own for your party, though. Unless you've got huge piles of downtime, huge piles of gold, and some EXP abuse loop of some kind (just following the default rules EXP rules is sometimes enough, since you get more EXP if you're a level behind), they suck. If you have those, they make your party own by allowing you to turn all the magic items you find as loot into magic items you want for free, and all the gold you find as loot to buy magic items you want at half price. But the character taking them isn't getting any special benefits for their effort. The crafter wizard is getting to buy magic items for half price, but so's the fighter, and the fighter didn't set any character power on fire to be able to do this. Related to this, you can get away from the feat tax by making your cohort, or even follower, take these feats, which is just as good as taking them yourself, so there's actually no reason to take them.

So, the deal with Item Creation feats. The draft of the Book of Gears has good rules, some of which have been tweaked in the Magic Items section of this book. The Book of Civilization will finish the fix started here. The term [Item Creation] feat is left reserved for WotC-style feats, even if you can actually pick up several [Item Creation] feats for the price of a single feat, because they're not worth spending a real feat on unless you're an NPC. Instead, the new item creation feats will be scaling feats based on your highest available spell level, with the [Spellcasting] tag. Item creation feats granted by [Spellcasting] feats count for satisfying prerequisites that call for [Item Creation] feats. Yes, this means you can take "Three or more Item Creation feats," a common prerequisite for advanced crafting feats, as a single feat. This is because Item Creation feats suck. Also, these item creation feats will give a minor benefit with regards to using items to anyone who takes them.

Some of the crafting feats will refer to "kinds" of item, especially wondrous items. Here are all of the kinds: An item can belong to multiple kinds if it has properties from each of them. The ability to craft any of one kind of item as if you had some feat does not extend to multiple-kind items unless you can craft items of every kind that it belongs to, if it matters. Any single ability counts as whatever possibility comes first on the list (i.e., a charged ability is a charged ability, regardless of what it does, a nonportable utility power is nonportable).
 * Charged and Single Use
 * Numeric Bonus (this includes all Book of Gears Minor Items and anything that deserves to be replaced by them)
 * Nonportable (includes technically portable items that aren't generally used while adventuring, like Crystal Balls, and also includes architectural features like portals and traps).
 * Persistent Active (items with no permanent use limit that nonetheless require an action to use, like a Bag of Tricks or a Lyre of Building or a Cape of the Mountebank)
 * Utility (items that are either primarily non-combat in function, passive use, or both, like Handy Haversacks and Portable Holes, but also Carpets of Flying and Decanters of Endless Water)

Leadership Feats and Magic Items
Characters are only allowed to use eight magic items at a time, or fewer if they lead minions into battle. Each cohort, or group of followers or created monsters with an EL two less than the character's level, or smaller, counts as a magic item if they accompany their leader. These minions are allowed one less item for each point of difference between their CR and their master's CR. None of those items can be cohorts or follower groups of their own. You don't have to follow these restrictions if your minions aren't accompanying you. If you send your cohort off to find the Dungeon of Doom while you loot the Tomb of Dread, you don't have to spend any item slots on them.

If, for some reason, you're still using the body slot system instead of the eight-item limit, minions are only allowed to fill half their body slots, and their leaders have to set aside and not use two body slots for each cohort or follower group. Minions can't have minions of their own under this arrangement, either. More complete Leadership rules will be found in the Book of Civilization.

Damaging Spells
It's a documented fact that damaging spells suck. To fix this, some feats here specifically affect "damaging spells", in the hopes of making them not suck. A spell is considered a "damaging spell" if it allows a saving throw for half damage, or if it only deals damage. Example damaging spells include Magic Missile, Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold, Meteor Swarm, and Sunbeam. Other spells might also be created with or assigned the [Damaging] descriptor, which makes them count as damaging spells.

Unless noted otherwise, you can only apply the effects of one [Spellcasting] feat to each casting of a damaging spell. You can, of course, cast the same spell again with a different feat, but you cannot combine two abilities from different feats onto one casting of one spell. This is so that I can balance the feats so that you can take one, be awesome, and spend your other feats on fleshing out your character, instead of having to design them as part of a blaster mage build that takes all of them.

Metamagic Feats
Metamagic feats have a different problem from Item Creation feats, but the solution is actually the same. Their problem is that most of them apply to damaging spells, and charge twice: once in that you have to take the feat, and once in that you then have to pay a spell level increase. Since the spell level increase actually charges for the whole value of applying the feat, metamagic feats are mostly just overpriced. That they're for damaging spells just adds insult to injury, since then you're paying twice for something that would make a shit option not shit if it was free. So the solution is to create [Magical] feats that emulate most of the metamagic feats you'd want to put on damaging spells. If you want to Empower or Split Ray your Enervations, though, you're going to have to actually spend the feats on them. Extend Spell is also a useful feat, since it's reasonably priced and mostly applies to nondamaging spells.

Heighten Spell, though, should probably be given away for free. Better than that, every spell should be counted for all purposes as the level of the spell slot you prepare it in, so a Fireball prepared in a seventh level spell slot is a seventh level spell. It might also be quickened or something. Some games go even more extreme, and set save DCs for spells to always match the caster's highest castable spell level, which is a fine houserule.

There's no reason why sorcerers should eat a casting time penalty for metamagic feats. They're casting their spells spontaneously, and it's not like they're actually taking the established recipe for a Fireball and tweaking it to make it bigger or whatever, they're using their own unique ability to cast a bigger fireball. Really, a wizard doesn't take any casting time penalty for taking a spell they've already prepared and squeezing a Sudden Metamagic feat onto it, which is kinda like what a sorcerer is doing except that they're making the change at the tail end of the casting rather than the beginning, and anyone who has worked on anything will tell you it's harder to make large-scale changes quickly to something that's almost done. So sorcerers and other spontaneous casters don't take a penalty to their casting times when they use metamagic, and they can use Quicken Spell. Whew, that was easy.

Feat Listing
The feats of the Book of Elements are available as a full listing and on the table below.

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