orbitalflower

Apotheosis prestige classes

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In retrospect, one of the weirdest standard D&D third edition rules was the transformational or apotheosis type of prestige class, an advanced character class that turned the character into some radically different creature. These began in the excellent Tome and Blood (2001) and only got weirder from there.

Due to a phenomenon I like to call completionism1, T&B’s invention of the apotheosis prestige class inspired several similar prestige classes whose goal seems to be turning you into different monster types. Generally speaking, the character acquires their new type as the capstone ability at the end of a ten-level prestige class.

Monster types

Aberration

The Alienist is aberration-like, but only gains the Outsider type.

D&D lore suggests that mind flayers were originally humans who transformed, and that’s something you can do by applying the mind flayer level progression in Savage Species, which is balanced level for level. The drawback is that it’s a fifteen level class for only 8d8 hit dice. Hence, something like the Fleshwarper makes more sense.

Animal

Animal isn’t a popular target for transformation, aside from classes like druid who can transform temporarily into animals. Animals can’t hold weapons well, and the type itself is essentially low-intelligence; animals who gain high intelligence generally become magical beasts. A prestige class to turn into animal type is therefore very unlikely.

Beast

This type was removed in D&D 3.5.

Construct

I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a mechanical prestige class to become a robot or golem-like creature by mechanical enhancement. These already exist in magic items (Arm of Nyr) and monsters (half-golem).

Deathless

Deathless is a rare “undead, except good instead of evil” type that appears in Book of Exalted Deeds. That book is the prime example of completionist design, creating good-aligned mirror versions of content from Book of Vile Darkness even when it made no sense (good disease, good poison, etc).

Dragon

Dragon Disciple was popular, but it took up ten levels, whereas the half-dragon template took three.

Elemental

Elementalist is a general prestige class for spellcasters to become fire, water, air or earth elementals; winterhaunt is for cold. There’s still room for new classes of specific elemental types or relating to specific elemental creatures. Winterhaunt further opens the completionism/expansionism to good-aligned specialist elemental classes.

In addition to the four core elements (air, earth, fire and water), there are the old-school para-elemental planes where those planes overlap (ice, magma, ooze and smoke). However, of those, smoke is incorporeal and hard to balance, and ooze is already somewhat covered in the oozemaster prestige class.

Fey

Giant

Giant is generally unsuitable for player character transformations. It’s just a really tall humanoid. You would gain reach and not fit into dungeons any more. The mundane nature of giants makes it difficult to provide magical justification for a transformation.

Savage Species has a six-level ogre progression that could be used to simulate an existing character somehow growing huge. It gets four of six levels in hit dice, equivalent to poor base attack but more than compensated for by Strength and Constitution bonuses, natural armor and large size with reach.

Humanoid

Most player characters are already humanoid. You could transform into a different humanoid, but it’s not a type-changing class, which is the point of this list.

Magical beast

It’s difficult to make another prestige class that turns a human into a beast.

Monstrous humanoid

Ooze

This prestige class really covers it for ooze, both specific oozes and general abilities of ooze. The only way you could be more ooze is to abandon all semblance of humanoid form, such as the bone ooze, a gargantuan lumpy sphere that just rolls over people and absorbs all their bone.

Outsider

Despite this being the largest category by far, it also has the most room for expansion. You can in practice have the ability to transcend into any individual plane, as with planetouched races. You can have one for every layer of the Abyss or each of the Nine Hells, one for each deity, one to become more like each notable outsider, one of each alignment, and so on.

Plant

Undead

A wizard class for transforming into a standard lich is a neat idea, but the issue is that standard lich is worth level adjustment +4, making it difficult to spread across levels. For comparison, Dragon Disciple (LA +3) was ten levels, and that investment crippled the spell ability of any actual sorcerer main who tried to take it.

Arcane casters benefit the most from being undead, since their hit dice rises to d12. On average, an undead with d12 and no Con score is as good as a wizard with d4 hit dice and 18 Con.

Vermin

Subtypes

Air

Elemental Savant implies that you have this subtype if you take this elemental path, but doesn’t explicitly state it.

Angel

This is a specific celestial race and not something humanoids generally have the option to become.

Aquatic

Archon

This is a specific celestial race and not something humanoids generally have the option to become.

A lawful-aligned Risen Martyr (Book of Exalted Deeds) is considered an archon upon reaching level 10, although doesn’t doesn’t specifically gain that subtype.

Augmented

This is applied automatically to a creature who changes type due to a template or the like.

Chaotic

Alignment-fixing subtypes are rare.

Cold

Dragonblood

Earth

Elemental Savant implies that you have this subtype if you take this elemental path, but doesn’t explicitly state it.

Evil

Extraplanar

Unlikely to be acquired by a prestige class. Extraplanar subtype applies to a creature who is not on their home plane. Generally, even if a character becomes outsider type, they also have the native subtype, meaning they can’t be banished. The only way to gain this by a prestige class is if it repatriates your home plane to some other world.

Fire

Elemental Savant implies that you have this subtype if you take this elemental path, but doesn’t explicitly state it.

Goblinoid

None.

Good

Alignment-fixing subtypes are rare.

Incarnum

A type introduced in Magic of Incarnum, which only applies to that book. It can be acquired by taking any class that grants incarnum-based powers.

Incorporeal

Too powerful for a player character to gain permanently. You’d be immune to most damage and be able to pass through walls. Not even the ghost sourcebook Ghostwalk has this subtype.

Lawful

Alignment-fixing subtypes are rare.

Native

Widely applied by any class that grants outsider type. It prevents you from being banished while on your home plane, and you can automatically assume you’re native to your home plane even if you’re an outsider.

Reptilian

None.

Shapechanger

Swarm

This would be a very peculiar transformation. It’s not entirely without precedent; the Worm that Walks is a mass of undead worms in humanoid form.

Water

Elemental Savant implies that you have this subtype if you take this elemental path, but doesn’t explicitly state it.

Footnotes

  1. Completionism is the uninventive, but useful process of extrapolating a set of existing game content out to its logical conclusion, for no real reason but to fill in gaps in that set and create new content easily. For example, the neutral evil yugoloths seem to exist simply as a counterpart to the lawful evil devils and chaotic evil demons. We might also call this general trend “expansionism”. ↩