Talk:Succedaneum (3.5e Race)

Ratings

	Foxwarrior likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	This limited type of alternate form seems pretty fine as its only real racial feature, although it's too bad that the occasional serious boon from imitating a powerful person means that you need that major penalty there. Possibly skip the skill check penalty at least, so impersonation doesn't get overly harmed.

	Tarkisflux dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.
	Let's see... Attribute penalties that don't matter because you can just replace them with magic jar lite, a non-humanoid type for several low level spell immunities, and an upgrade to large size that wipes your attribute penalties (with minor restrictions) at 5HD. All for basically no cost, as there's no RHD or LA. Sign me up for shooting this down.

Physical Ability Score Penalties

Alternate Form means they'll never actually use their physical ability scores at all, you know. --Foxwarrior (talk) 05:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Ugh, yeah, there's some holdover stuff from the original design material I tried to maintain after its adoption. I've been wanting to overhaul this for a while but motivation has been nil.

I guess this is more of a policy question and should be placed elsewhere, but whatever, here goes: How far does an article have to change before it becomes its own thing after its been adopted? Like, what's the cutoff point on revisions? I have one adopted article that I've kept as "adopted" because it contains "they're good with animals" from the original article but everything else is (down to core concept) different. This article contains none of the original text and since I'm probably going to overhaul it again, would it be better for me to just claim it as my own creation at that point (all my adopted articles are all "based on the concept of..." rather than containing original text)? I realize adopting an article is a gray area thing as is but, after making the judgement call and seeing that the article in its current form and past form share no common fabric, would it be okay to just put myself as the author?

Also, thanks for pointing out the flaws. I hate letting stuff like that slide. --Ganteka Future (talk) 20:06, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Adopter vs. co-author vs. author is a pretty gray area, but here's how I'd break it down:

• Adopter - article is largely unchanged, you're just curating it and making minor mechanical tweaks
• Co-author - article is as much yours as theirs at this point
• Author - article is basically all yours at this point, and little if anything of the original remains; not substantially different from never adopting in the first place and just making your own thing with inspiration (original author may still deserve contributor credit in some cases)

So I'd probably just claim authorship of it at this point and drop the adopter bit, listing them as a contributor or co-author depending on how much is retained. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Edit - if you're not comfortable with that, just make your own thing and renounce adoption of this one. Which will probably get it deleted, but otherwise maintains original author's intent. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:00, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Okay, this article is now under my own authorship. It's changed so drastically from its original form that it's safe to just call this "I wrote it." Thanks for the breakdown.--Ganteka Future (talk) 03:30, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Version 3

Learning Fun Time: Dictionary: Succedaneum

Oh man, big changes today here folks. Gone are ability score modifiers. Racial features in general are pretty trim... perhaps too much. I wanted to include some other fun flavor ability but couldn't think of one. Anyways, the meat (Soul Imprint) got a little better cut to it now. Hopefully this alleviates abuse while allowing it to be usable. Night Form is gone since that was always odd/"character design prohibitive" and clashed with the core design of the race anyways. The flavor text also got some heft added and I finally fixed the pluralization error. Also, all the racial feats got overhauls (with a few deletions and expansions to make them available to a broader selection of characters). Any feedback is welcome (as always). --Ganteka Future (talk) 03:30, 17 January 2014 (UTC)