Welcome back to the Island of Misfit Game Development Decisions. I put D20 into one big category since it's likely to span editions: After all, it's arguable that Pathfinder is Dungeons and Dragons 3.75. Today we are talking about Pathfinder, though.
Monstrous Physique
So this spell line is part of the replacement for the overpowered blanket spell Polymorph Self in 3.X. It got partially split into many different spells based on types: elemental, beast, dragon, giant, monstrous humanoid. That sort of thing.
Here's the fucking problem. Monstrous Physique III and IV, 5th and 6th level spells respectively, lets you assume a laundry list of special abilities, as well as size huge or diminutive. This is important because assuming size huge over size large gives you an extra +2 strength as well as obviously granting more powerful natural attacks. Awesome. Here's the list of size huge monstrous humanoids in the first two monster manuals.
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And no, that's not an Invisible Stalker joke. I struggled to even find a huge monstrous humanoid in the 3rd and 4th monster manuals. In fact, if I did some research I'm betting a lot of these special abilities it grants don't ever appear on a monstrous humanoid. Since you have to pick a pre-existing monster instead of just taking your stat bonuses and choosing, I dunno, two or three special abilities, the entire Monstrous Physique line is fairly useless and only serves to give a weapon user a few extra points of damage by turning him into any old large thing with two hands. You might as well make it one spell called Turn Into Gargoyle, because that's one of the few decent and viable choices.
Brute
Alright, so Ultimate Intrigue has a "Vigilante" class. It basically turns you into Batman, complete with a bunch of social-focused Bruce Wayne abilities, and a bunch of combative and skill utility Batman abilities. You even have to switch identities to use them. It even goes so far as to allow your two identities to have different alignments as well. I personally think this class is kind of dumb, but people seem to like it and it doesn't wreck tone that badly.
It has an archetype where instead of being a costumed vigilante, you turn into a big strong brutish creature.
DID PATHFINDER REALLY FUCKING NEED AN INCREDIBLE HULK ARCHETYPE?
Everything about this hurts my brain. The brute character even has to worry about transforming after being struck or getting too angry. The one saving fucking grace for this stupid thing is that the example picture isn't fucking green.
Edit: While this was sitting around waiting to post, I found a Brawler archetype that's all about throwing your shield at people. Paizo. I swear to God.
Tome Eater
So Occult Adventures is a pretty cool book. Really. It has a bunch of cool tone-setting stuff like spiritualists, mediums(both real ones AND con artists!) and occultist hedge-mages. It also has a bunch of the exact kind of cheesy shit I love, like phrenology and cranial binding. It's a really enjoyable book full of fun classes and abilities, and like Ultimate Intrigue I really recommend the book, overall.
Tome Eater is an Occultist archetype. I thought it was kind of interesting, because it focuses around destroying magical books and scrolls to gain their power, but it didn't come with the stupid anti-magic hangups that awful god damn barbarian prestige class did in 3.0 did. I hated that thing but I always kinda liked the idea of destroying potions, wands or scrolls for a different effect than they were made for, so this really appealed to me. Then, I turned my head and saw its associated artwork.
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Turns out the name of the Archetype wasn't as metaphorical as I thought. God Bless Ivan Troitsky, because that's actually a really great picture of the stupidest thing I've ever seen. I can only imagine his thought process on being told to create this. There's no way he had this on hand. I can see in my head: some Paizo executive demanding that the picture associated with Tome Eater has to clearly convey the class and turning down Ivan's first five drafts. Frustrated, Mr. Troitsky pulls a George "The Animal" Steele and goes "You want it? You fucking got it." and just like Vince McMahon, Paizo says "Perfect!"
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