New specialties, or "why should casters get all the fun species feat combos?"

[paddyfool]

Blood warrior
EDIT: replaced by Monster

(click to show/hide)

You draw power from your heritage, and use it to break heads.
Bonus feat: Any 1 Species feat (2 points)
Stand Together: You gain a +2 morale bonus to Defense
and all saves when at least 2 adjacent characters share your
Species. (2 points)
Crunch! Your STR based damage rolls inflict 1 additional damage. (1 point)
Extra proficiency: You gain 1 extra proficiency (1 point)
Unbreakable: Each time you suffer attribute impairment, it decreases by 1 (min 0) (1 point)

Monster
Grr. Arg.
Bonus feat: Any 1 Species feat (2 points)
Paired Skills (Athletics and Intimidate): Every time you gain skills ranks in Athletics you also gain ranks in Intimidate, but not beyond your max rank. (2 points)
Crunch! Your STR based damage rolls inflict 1 additional damage. (1 point)
Relentless Attack: You gain the Relentless Attack trick (1 point)
Unarmed Proficiency: You gain the Unarmed Proficiency (1 point)

Paragon
You exemplify the most notable aspects of your people(s) and culture(s)
Bonus feat: Any 1 Species feat (2 points)
Noble Blood: You may purchase noble renown for 20 Reputation per Rank (2 points)
Heroism: During dramatic scenes you gain a +1 bonus to all attack and skill checks (1 point)
Broad learning: You gain 2 additional studies (1 point)
Origin skill: Choose 1 additional origin skill (1 point)

Any thoughts?

EDIT: More species-feat granting specialties can be found under the following links:
J.N. Walker's Grand Specimen.
Deral's Virtue and Vice
Pawsplay's Favored Soul

[Crafty_Alex]

Heh, I've had "Pureblood" rattling around in my noggin for a few months...just waiting for the right time to dump it on the boards

[foproy]

my only real issue are the names, something just does not sit right.

[Krensky]

Well, namewise, the first echos US white power and neo-nazi rhetoric.

[paddyfool]

...

It was meant as more of a pun on "Brood warrior", although I never really liked it that much.  Any other name ideas for what is, aside from the species feat, quite a generic melee combatant specialty?  "Monster" would fit what many people would use it for...

EDIT: although if I went for "Monster", I'd want to swap out Stand Together for something like this:

Paired Skills (Athletics and Intimidate): Every time you gain skills ranks in Athletics you also gain ranks in Intimidate, but not beyond your max rank.

EDIT 2: Done.

EDIT 3: Now I'm tempted to swap out the extra proficiency for an appropriate trick, e.g. "Relentless Attack".  Good idea/bad idea?

[Krensky]

Paddy, I didn't mean to imply anything about you by it, and it is an obscure element of lingo, which is why I didn't mention it at first.

[Catodon]

Haven't the time to really think about these yet but I really like the ideas. Grand Specimen (by JN Walker) earlier this year was also good. It is nice to have a few to choose from.

[paddyfool]

No worries.  It led to me thinking again about melee characters who'd want an extra species feat, and I've now had fun designing a specialty especially written for melee monster PCs, whether they be two-headed trolls or winged hydras.

EDIT: As a further tweak, I've swapped out Unbreakable for Unarmed Proficiency - the former is useless for Ogres, and the latter useful for any species with a natural attack, as well as being appropriate for many monsters without one.

[Catodon]

...
EDIT: Catodon informs me this has been done at least once before, as seen here.

actually not really, just as Vanguard and fighter are different each of these grant a species feat and are related concepts but each also encourages different kinds of characters. Grand specimen could be a magnificent gold drake or storm giant, monster makes me want to create Grendel for FC, and a paragon could support a prince from a line of ancient god-kings. Everyone will have different ideas sparked by each of these.

If anything we could do with even more species feat granting specialities. How about 'born into shadows',  or 'prophet' .

[Deral]

I want to contribute, but I really don't want to post this twice, I put up my specialties here: http://www.crafty-games.com/forum/index.php?topic=4540.msg95183#msg95183