Consuming Scales

**Descriptors:** Fleshwarp

**Class:** Daevic, Eclipse, Huay, Promethean

**Slot:** Belt

**Saving Throw:** none

*Your skin splits into razor-sharp scales, both protecting you from harm and shredding any foe you pull into a grapple.*

Shaping this veil converts your skin to a hardened carapace of serrated scales. These scales act as light armor, granting you a +4 natural armor bonus, and imposes a -2 Armor Check Penalty, a +8 Maximum Dex Bonus, and a 20% Arcane Spell Failure Chance. This bonus to natural armor stacks with other sources. You are always considered to be proficient with this veil, even if you lack proficiency with light armor.

Whenever you successfully grapple a creature, you can cause the scales of this veil to engulf the target, lifting off your body in a carpet of serrated edges that deals 1d4 points of slashing damage and embedding themselves in the target’s flesh. This damage counts as a bite natural attack for your effects that increase the damage of your natural attacks (such as the Essence-Honed Flesh feat or an *amulet of mighty fists*). The embedded scales grant you a +4 bonus on your attempts to maintain the grapple, and to your CMD to resist a target breaking free of the grapple. Whenever you successfully maintain a grapple, you may cause the scales to deal this damage to the target again in addition to the normal effects for maintaining a grapple.

Armor impedes the functions of this veil (including other veils that count as armor): you take the worse of the veil’s and your armor’s Armor Check Penalty, Maximum Dex Bonus, and Arcane Spell Failure Chance, and you only benefit from the higher of either the armor’s bonus to AC (or natural armor, for other veils similar to this one), or the scales’ natural armor bonus when determining your AC.

**Essence:** For each point of essence invested in this veil, the damage dealt by the veil on a successful grapple increases by +1. For every two points of essence invested, the veil’s natural armor bonus increases by +1.

When invested with at least one point of essence, the damage dealt by this veil is considered to be magical for the purposes of bypassing damage reduction. At 3 points of invested essence, you may take a point of essence burn when you successfully grapple a creature to suppress any magical bonuses to Escape Artist or to checks to escape a grapple the creature might possess, and any ability similar to *freedom of movement* affecting the target for the duration of the grapple. At 6 points of invested essence, this improves to affect the target as the *dimensional anchor* spell as well, preventing them from escaping your grapple via teleporting or other similar effects. These abilities are supernatural effects.

**Chakra Bind (Belt):** **[D13, E18, Hu16, P16]** Binding this veil to your Belt chakra causes the veil to reorganize the interior of your body into a churning mass of razor sharp scales, allowing you to fully engulf and shred any foes you grapple. Whenever you successfully maintain a grap- ple, you can choose for your scales to engulf and consume that creature. While consumed, the creature takes damage from this veil at the beginning of each of your turns, and is considered to be pinned. You no longer suffer from the grappled condition while consuming the target, and no longer need to main- tain a grapple against them each turn. The consumed creature can still attempt to free itself by escaping the grapple. You can still spend actions to maintain a grapple against a consumed creature, but you must still perform a grapple check to do so. You can use a move action to move the consumed creature and yourself at half speed without requiring you to roll to maintain a grapple, and when you finish your move you choose the adjacent square for your consumed target to be moved to. If you attempt to place your foe in a hazardous location (such as into a dangerous magical effect, or over a significant drop), the con- sumed creature receives a free attempt to break your grapple with a +4 bonus. You and other creatures can still attack the consumed creature, or target it with abilities that require line of sight. You can only have a single creature being consumed by this veil at a time.