Flabberghast (3.5e Race)

Author: Zhenra-Khal (talk) Date Created: 11/29/2018 Status: Aghast by completion. Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Flabberghast

A partially-incorporeal undead race, able to grow and manipulate skeletal hands. Based on Dr. W. D. Gaster, from Undertale. Flabberghasts are living undead, able to reproduce like living beings, but being perpetually caught between "normal" life and unlife.

Personality

Typically grim yet curious in nature, the Flabberghasts are scientists and explorers at heart, experimenting with little care for safety or right and wrong.

Physical Description

Flabberghasts appear as human-sized (Though not always human-shaped) skulls, and a pair of skeletal hands, with bodies made of inky shadowstuff. Within the empty sockets of their skulls are usually points of bright light of various color. Usually their skulls are bald, but some possess hair, usually straight, and typically oily black or some other dark color.

Despite this, they prefer to dress sharply, often in suits or elegant-yet-practical lab gear.

Relations

Most creatures are unnerved by Flabberghasts, and rightly so, seeing as they're perpetually-grinning skulls with shadowy bodies that float around tinkering with just about anything and everything that doesn't get away fast enough.

Alignment

Due to their curious yet methodical nature, and their lack of care for right and wrong in the pursuit of knowledge, Flabberghasts tend towards neutrality overall.

Lands

Usually deep underground, where sunlight has never reached, as Flabberghasts tend to have a disdain for light.

Religion

Most Flabberghasts have no use for religion, vastly preferring the pursuit of logic, but those that stumble into the path of belief tend to place their faith in knowledge, magic, life, death and undeath.

Language

Flabberghasts don't normally speak, though with great effort, they can speak in raspy yet musical voices, normally in Common.

Flabberghasts have their own sign language, which other races can learn, but races with less than four hands take twice as long to "speak" what they mean when using this special sign language, known as the Aghast Sign Language, or "speaking in hands". It's also difficult for normal creatures to use, as the individual bones of each hand often tend to separate and rearrange to form some of the required symbols. A creature whose hands aren't floating collections of separate pieces (I.e., pretty much everyone who isn't a Flabberghast) must make a DC 15 Dexterity check every time they try to say something in Aghast Sign Language; If they fail, they mess up slightly, replacing some of their "words" with ones that sound similar - Such as "dug" instead of "dog" or "pork" instead of "orc".

Names

Most Flabberghasts have odd names, with syllables borrowed from Common and Draconic, usually mashed together in haphazard fashion.

Racial Traits

• Undead (Unliving): Flabberghasts are not quite living and not quite undead, but somewhere in between. 
• Medium: As a Medium creature, a flabberghast has no special bonuses or penalties due to its size.
• Flabberghast base land speed is 30 feet. Flabberghasts also possess a Hover speed equal to half their land speed, with Average maneuverability or the maneuverability of any Fly speed they might possess by other means, whichever is better. They use the range of their Hands Aghast ability as their effective reach for the purposes of hovering. 
• Darkvision: A flabberghast can see in the dark up to 60 feet. Darkvision is black and white only, but it is otherwise like normal sight, and a flabberghast can function just fine with no light at all. 
• Hands Aghast (Su): Flabberghasts have the ability to create and animate skeletal hands beyond their normal pair; These Hands Aghast float, detached from their body, and are commanded with purely mental action. Each Flabberghast may create and control 1 hand per point of their highest mental ability score bonus per 2 HD, and these hands have a reach (And thus maximum range) of 5ft per point of the Flabberghast's highest mental ability score modifier. However, these hands cannot make attacks of opportunity outside the Flabberghast's normal reach.

These hands can manipulate things just as their Flabberghast owner does, including effective Strength and Dexterity scores. They can be used to wield weapons and manipulate items, but take normal penalties if fighting with multiple weapons, and you can only apply half your Strength modifier to damage with offhand attacks. Each hand, interestingly, can wear an additional ring and gauntlet or glove beyond the normal 2 allowed to most creatures. However, these additional hands don't, on their own, allow you to make more attacks per round than you normally can - It just allows you to make them with the hands, or different weapons held by the hands.

Hands Aghast can be destroyed; They have an AC of 18 (+8 from being Fine-sized), plus any Dexterity, Dodge, Deflection and Natural Armor bonuses the Flabberghast possesses. Each Hand has Hardness 10 and 2 hit points per HD of the Flabberghast it belongs to, and uses the Flabberghast's type, subtypes, alignment and saves. Crafting a Hand Aghast costs 6,000 GP, 480 XP and takes 12 days, as if crafting a magic item; They don't function for anyone else beyond the Flabberghast who made and animated them, being little more than a well-preserved skeletal hand with arcane markings, and are thus largely not worth trying to sell. 

• Soul Of Bone And Shadow (Su): Flabberghasts are partially made of shadowstuff, and thus possess the Partial Incorporeality trait, causing nonmagical attacks to suffer a 20% miss change when used against them. However, they also suffer 50% extra damage from Radiant damage and other light-based effects. Unlike other Undead creatures, Flabberghasts aren't immune to mind-affecting effects, death effects, energy drain, ability damage, paralysis, poison, stunning, or the Raise Dead and Reincarnate spells; Any spell that would return a living creature to life returns a Flabberghast to their state of unlife, as they were never living (In the normal since) in the first place.

Flabberghasts are proficient with their natural weapons and all simple weapons, but not with any shields or armor. Flabberghasts are healed by both positive and negative energy, but both heal Flabberghasts for only half their normal value. All natural and unarmed attacks a Flabberghast possesses count as magical for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction. 

• Light Blindness (Ex): Abrupt exposure to bright light Blinds Flabberghasts for 1 round, and they remain Dazzled as long as they remain within bright light.
• Automatic Languages: Common, Draconic, Aghast Sign Language
• Bonus Languages: Any, except secret.
• Favored Class: Any
• Level Adjustment: +1
• Effective Character Level: 2

Vital Statistics

Table: Flabberghast Random Height and Weight

Gender	Base Height	Height Modifier	Base Weight	Weight Modifier
Male	6'	+/- 3d6"	100 lb.	+/- 2d12 lbs.
Female	7'	+/- 3d6"	100 lb.	+/- 2d12 lbs.

Age

Being undead, Flabberghasts are ageless, and thus starting ages and aging effects are not listed. If they never died from violence, the world would be flooded with them, but they can choose, at any time, to simply fade into shadow, vanishing until the terms of their return are met.

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