For people who like to cut...

Here's a prestige class for 3.5 or, with some tweaks, Pathfinder I designed way back when. It's kind of totally broken, but also kind of totally awesome. A friend of mine playtested it, and the (fairly obvious) flaw in it is giving monster abilities to players in Dungeons and Dragons opens up some real issues, as the Polymorph spell shows us. That said, I tend to think its cool enough to offset that - I was never a fan of the changes to Polymorph, even though I fully recognize its a significant balance issue.

On a side note, I realize my devotion to 3.5 is perhaps a bit stubborn and non-progressive of me, but honestly I think it is a far better system than 4th, so I'm waiting for 5th edition and hoping it turns out better. I like Pathfinder too, but the differences are small enough and I am familiar enough with normal 3.5 I'm hesitant to make a full transition.

Anyways, here it is:

MASTER TAXIDERMIST

Hit Die: d8.

Requirements

To qualify to become a master taxidermist, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Feats: Trophy Hunter

Skills: 8 ranks in Craft Taxidermy, 4 ranks in Craft (Weaponsmithing), 4 ranks in Craft (Armorsmithing), 4 ranks in Handle Animal

Class Skills

The master taxidermist’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Nature, the Planes) (Int), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str).

Skill Points at Each Level: 6 + Int modifier.

Table: The Master Taxidermist
Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special
1st	+0	+0	+0	+2	Creepy Demeanor
2nd	+1	+0	+0	+3	Craft Arms
3rd	+2	+1	+1	+3	Craft Skin
4th	+3	+1	+1	+4	Enchant Arms and Skin
5th	+3	+1	+1	+4	Assume Monstrous Ability (1)
6th	+4	+2	+2	+5	Assume Monstrous Quality (Extraordinary)
7th	+5	+2	+2	+5	Craft Friend
8th	+6	+2	+2	+6	Assume Monstrous Ability (2)
9th	+6	+3	+3	+6	Assume Monstrous Quality (Supernatural)
10th	+7	+3	+3	+7	Assume Monstrous Magic

Class Features

All of the following are Class Features of the master taxidermist prestige class.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A master taxidermist is proficient with all simple slashing weapons, all natural attacks, light armor and medium armor, but not with shields.

Creepy Demeanor (Ex): A master taxidermist adds half his class level as a bonus on Intimidate checks. Also, if his charisma modifier is negative, he may choose to instead treat it as if it was positive for the purpose of intimidate checks. If a master taxidermist is publicly displaying a trophy on his person, this bonus on Intimidate checks is equal to his class level.

Craft Arms (Ex): A master taxidermist can salvage body parts from his fallen foes and use them to attack his enemies, if properly prepared. A master taxidermist can, with a successful Craft(Taxidermy) check DC 10+the dead creature's former hit dice, salvage a body part for use as a weapon. He can salvage body parts from any creature he can make a trophy from. This weapon deals damage as a natural attack of that creature of the taxidermist's choosing, or of the creature's normal unarmed damage if it lacks natural attacks. It takes one hour per hit die of the creature to salvage a body part for this purpose. A failed check only takes ten minutes, but ruins the body part that was being salvaged for further use. The creature must have been dead no longer than one day per rank in Craft (Taxidermy) the master taxidermist possesses. Weapons so created can only be wielded by the master taxidermist who salvaged them, and are automatically considered masterwork. A master taxidermist can wield the natural weapon of a creature of its size as a light weapon, one of a size category larger than him as a one handed weapon, and one of a size category two larger than him as a two handed weapon. Natural weapons of creatures smaller than the character cannot be used. None of the natural attacks secondary abilities or attack improving feats (such as improved grab, poison, or weapon focus) apply, with the exception of Improved Natural Attack; such a salvaged attack continues to deal extra damage. For example, a human Fighter 5/Master Taxidermist 2 could salvage and wield a medium viper's bite as a light weapon, dealing 1d4 points of damage plus the master taxidermist's strength modifier. Unlike normal natural attacks, these weapons are considered manufactured for all purposes and thus can be enchanted as normal and used for iterative attacks, and cannot be affected by spells such as Magic Fang or feats such as Multiattack.

Assume Monstrous Abilities (Ex): When salvaging a natural weapon, the master taxidermist may choose one extraordinary ability that improves the natural attacks of the creature he is salvaging from that that creature possesses, such as Poison (ex) or Improved Grab (ex) or Augmented Critical (ex), and have it apply to his salvaged weapon. He can only do this when salvaging a new weapon, and the benefit does not apply retroactively to previously salvaged weapons.  For example, a Fighter 5/Master Taxidermist 5 who salvaged a medium viper's bite could have it deal its poison (1d6 con initial and secondary damage) on a successful bite. Any save DCs are equal to 10+class level+Intelligence modifier. At 8^th level, he can add two such abilities to a weapon.

Craft Skin (Ex): A master taxidermist can salvage the skin of a fallen foe to use as hide armor for himself. A master taxidermist can, with a successful Craft(Taxidermy) check DC 15+the dead creature's former hit dice, salvage the skin of the creature for use as armor. He can salvage skin from any creature he can make a trophy from. This armor is automatically considered masterwork. It has an armor bonus equal to that of the creature's natural armor bonus, but not in excess of the master taxidermist's class level. It functions in all other ways as masterwork hide armor. It may only be used in this way by the master taxidermist – for anyone else, it functions as normal hide armor, but without any armor bonus. A master taxidermist requires four creatures of his own size to create armor for himself; for every size category below the creature is, double the required number to make the armor, and for every size category above, half the number. At 5^th level, any armor created acts like leather armor, at 7^th level it acts as padded armor, and at 9^th level it does not count as armor (although it still takes up the armor slot on the taxidermist's body).

Assume Monstrous Quality (Su): When salvaging a skin, the master taxidermist may choose one extraordinary special quality of the creature to be imbued into the resultant armor. Doing so is costly, however; a master taxidermist must spend 100 gold per hit dice of the creature, squared, (100xHD^2) in special materials and 1/25^th of this in XP in order to do so, and the ability is considered a magical quality of the armor, and thus does not function in anti-magic fields and can be dispelled. Examples of abilities that can be gained this way are damage reduction versus materials or damage type or regeneration or fast healing. Damage reduction to magic or alignment types cannot be gained this way, as they are supernatural. At 9^th level, he may add a supernatural special quality, but this costs 1000 GP per hit dice, squared, instead, and he is still limited to only one such ability per armor.

Enchant Arms and Skin (Su): The master taxidermist gains the ability to enchant his salvaged weapons and armor as if he possessed the feat, Craft Magic Arms and Armor. He must still pay all costs associated with said feat, but he may waive any spell-based prerequisites.

Craft Friend (Su): The master taxidermist gains the supernatural ability to reanimate a corpse through taxidermy. This acts like his other two salvage abilities, except he creates an effigy of the creature instead of a weapon or armor, and the DC is 20+the creature's hit dice. He still need not pay for such. The creature cannot have more hit dice than he has ranks in Craft (Taxidermy), nor can it have more hit dice than the base creature, however. He can have only one such effigy activated at one time, however; if he makes more than one, he may switch between the them as full round actions, the other remaining completely helpess and unable to take any actions. Regardless, a taxidermist's effigy only functions while within one mile of him.

Assume Monstrous Magic (Su or Sp): A master taxidermist can salvage a trophy from a fallen foe to gain some of its power. A master taxidermist can, with a successful Craft(Taxidermy) check DC 25+the creature's hit dice, salvage a body part that grants him the ability to use a single supernatural or spell-like ability of the creature in question. Unlike his other salvage abilities, however, these items tend to be rather fragile and wear out easily; thus, it only grants him the ability for one day per master taxidermist class level (10 days, unless the character is epic). A master taxidermist may only salvage one such trophy from a given creature, and can only have one such trophy at a time. A master taxidermist must follow all usage rules the creature must for said ability (so a master taxidermist who salvaged a balor's wish could only use it once per year, and if said balor had already used his wish that year, could not use it at all).