User:Brainduster/Alraune, Variant (3.5e Race)

Author: brainduster (talk) Date Created: 12 Nov 2013 Status: Probably usable. In testing. Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Alraune (Variant)

Slow-moving plant-people with creeper tendrils and a couple balance considerations. Like what's said on the Other Page, the alraune is a plant. They’re sort of like Dryads: usually green (or sometimes blue, yellow, pink, red, purple... or whatever) in skin colour, they usually appear as pretty humanoid girls, though they're not above looking like somewhat feminine androgynous people. Something like this, this, this, or this. (You probably shouldn't click those at work.)

This is only from the waist up, though – their bodies appear to be emerging from a giant flower, with long, winding vines beneath, trailing on the ground below and behind them, propelling them forward with a gait between slithering and shuffling.

Sleeping and rooted alraune tend to be curled up within some interior portion hidden in their lower bodies; this pretty much just makes them look like giant, bizarre flowers. An alaraune's fragrance is between her and God; you can say your/all/some alraune smell nice or like rot-flowers pollinated by flies. The power is yours! Aside from the mentioned favoured classes (which, really, are just "fitting" classes), alraune paragon is a pretty fitting option.

• Plant (Augmented Fey): Alraune are humanoid-shaped plants. Sure, some are shaped like cute girls in pretty flowers with hidden murdertendrils, but they are still pretty much fundamentally plants at the end of the day. The fey/humanoid selection depends on if they're their own separate species or some offshoot of garbled human(oid)s in your preferences. Fey retain iron/steel vulnerability and weapon finesse, humanoids can get hit with a steel sword and not instantly die. 
• Medium: As a Medium creature, an alraune has no special bonuses or penalties due to its size.
• Alraune base land speed is 15' feet.  
• Modified Plant Traits: Alraune are similar to but not quite like plants. They retain the Photosynthesis, Speak With Plants, and Tap the Earth abilities, which is pretty sweet, but they also have specific fiddly bits, and are subject to precision damage and critical hits. They have brains and personalities and generally require a good night's sleep. Due to their pseudohybrid nature, Alraune are also subject to normal diseases. 
• Tendrils: Alraune have creeper tendrils which they can use like fleshy knife-whip natural weapons. All alraune have two of these; they deal 1d6 Bludgeoning/Slashing damage, can be used with a reach of up to 15', do not threaten any squares, can be used to do trip attacks, and provoke attacks of opportunity when used against adjacent opponents. These tendrils have Improved Grab; if an alraune hits a single target with both tendrils in a turn, she can use Improved Grab against a creature of her size or smaller, rather than only smaller.

Tendrils can be sundered; they have 10 HP and 5 Hardness for a medium alraune and can't be used if they're at 0 HP. Ability damage healing restores HP to damaged tendrils equal to ability damage healed. Regular HP restoration at maximum health (usually wasted) instead can be used on the alraune's damaged tendrils, divided up as one sees fit. Tendrils with less HP than their hardness have a −3 to attack rolls.

Even though an alraune has these two murder-tendrils, she still has arms and hands and can wield things. Tendrils can be enchanted like weapons. 

• Weird Body: As is the case with about 75% of the races I write up, alraune have weird bodies and have to pay double for armour. And armour that fits them probably won't be in stock. Get dunked. In the words of Dungeon Crawl: "Armour fits poorly on your strange body. Also you smell."
• Automatic Languages: Common, I guess? Sylvan? Lorax? Whorlbound Note: Rifttongue, Kiilite, Maldesian, Akhenate, or something unsensible and weird if you're playing a plant-butt who's never been around any actual civilisation.
• Bonus Languages: This is between you and the lord. Whorlbound Note: nope
• Favored Class: Druid, Totemist, Spirit Shaman, Elemental Weird
• Level Adjustment: +0
• Effective Character Level: 1

"Vital" Statistics

Table: Alraune Random Starting Ages

Adulthood	Simple	Moderate	Complex
16 years	+1d4	+2d4	+3d8

Table: Alraune Aging Effects

Middle Age1	Old2	Venerable3	Maximum Age
100 years	150 years	200 years	+infinity years
At middle age, −1 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha. At old age, −2 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha. At venerable age, −3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha.

Table: Alraune Random Height and Weight

Gender	Base Height	Height Modifier	Base Weight	Weight Modifier
Male	55"	+2d8	140lb lb.	× (2d3) lb.
Female	56"	+2d10	150lb lb.	× (2d4) lb.

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