Editing Fleshcrafting (section)

==D&D==
Fleshcrafting has been used in the background of various monsters and even races since [[Dungeons & Dragons]] was first a thing. The [[Flesh Golem]], the [[Broken One]], the [[Bulette]], the [[Owlbear]] and many more are usually said to be the result of mad [[wizard]]s or dark [[artificer]]s playing around with the secret of life. Heck, even [[Mongrelfolk]] have been portrayed as fleshcrafted once or twice; the [[Darklord]] of G'henna has the ability to transform worshippers of [[Zhakata]] he doesn't like into mongrelfolk.

In [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 2nd edition, PCs were pretty much restricted from using this style, although the Anatomist [[kits]] for the [[Necromancer]] ([[Wizard]]) did eventually allow the player to build flesh golems and, technically, the [[Xixchil]] could touch upon it through its racial ability to self-improve by grafting on armor and weapon-limbs. Several unique NPC monsters also existed to represent victims of flesh-crafting experiments. For [[Planescape]], [[Monte Cook]] had his villain Tapheon do a lot of this in "[[Hellbound: The Blood War|Squaring the Circle]]". Tapheon used "The Despoiler of Flesh": a rod made from human tongues sewn together, which grants its wielder the ability to mutate others more or less as they see fit. 

In 3rd edition, PCs could actually get involved in this themselves. The principles of creating grafts were first introduced in the 3.0 [[Fiend Folio]], and they were deceptively powerful.  While offering modest bonuses like a +4 to natural armor or +2 Constitution, grafts occupy a whole set of item slots just for them, with your other magic items being worn on top of them, AND grafts work in an antimagic field. In 3.5 ''[[Lords of Madness]]'' presented the Graft Flesh item creation feat, several new [[aberration]] grafts, and the Fleshwarper, a [[Prestige Class]] specialized in augmenting itself and others by grafting on bits of defeated monsters. The [[Half-Golem]] template technically represents one branch of fleshcrafting study. The [[Book of Vile Darkness]] [[splatbook]] brought Monte's Despoiler of Flesh as a Major Artifact. [[Fleshcrafter]] was also a class presented in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Strictly speaking, the most famous magic items in the whole game are grafts: the [[Artifact]] known as the Eye of Vecna and and its counterpart the Hand.  Dragon Magazine 318 makes the obvious-in-retrospect connection to [[Pirates]], presenting magic peg legs, hook hands, and eyes with drawbacks that all but force you to keep them covered with an eyepatch when not using their specific powers, using Fiend Folio's rules.

Meanwhile Monte was off doing his own book of weird-science: ''Chaositech''. It becomes a big deal in his [[Ptolus]] setting, the [[Galchutt]] arc in it anyway.

Fleshcrafting appears extensively in the Eberron setting, being the specialty of the Daelkyr and their minions, and the source of all aberrations in the setting. Even one of the races called out as masters of grafting and flesh crafting in d&d, mindflayers, are a product of flesh crafting. They run the gamut of the standard grafts seen in the fiend folio, cool fleshy armor, a ball of meat that mutates anything you put in it, and whole new races made of the various goblinoids. A few other factions get in on the fun, but fleshworking is the Daelkyr's specialty and they're better at it than anyone else.

Magic of Eberron adds a new rule to limit grafts' potential cheese: sacrifice.  Grafts take a toll on the host's body that cannot be healed while the graft is attached, usually represented as permanent hit point drain, though a penalty to saves or even ability scores are the sacrifice for certain grafts.  To make matters worse, MoE does away with the Graft Flesh feat in favor of a slew of individual feats for each type of graft, like Elemental Grafter and Eldeen Plantgrafter.  [[Races of the Dragon]] follows the Magic of Eberron rules for its draconic grafts, adding the Wyrmgrafter feat.

In [[Eberron]] fleshcrafting is mostly associated with Dealkyr and their insane cultists, responsible for the creation of most aberrations and a sizeable chunk of monstrosities in the world. Notably, some of the classic aberrations like Chokers, Neogi or Beholders in Eberron are products of Dealkyr fleshcrafting, as are Dolgrims and Dolgaunts, which are iconic aberration mooks of Eberron. Some Dorfs of Mror Holds took fleshcrafted weapons and symbionts as trophies from their fights with the legions of fleshcrafted aberrations during their ongoing war to retake their ancestral Realm Below, and some of the clans appropriate the art of fleshcrafting to fight the enemy with their own weapons in the best traditions of Radical Inquisitors. Some clans like Soldorak and Narathun embraced fleshcrafting whole-heatedly, cladding their elite soldiers in living armour and arming them with symbiotic weapons, even creating living equivalents of most popular magic items (symbiotic items are easier to create and they even reproduce naturally, so they're cheaper, but they drink your blood/hit dice every day to sustain themselves and can only be detached from you with magic, so there's pros and cons), seeing it as just another powerful tool no better or worse than metal or magic, while more traditional clans see symbionts as abominations and fleshcrafting as inherently evil and corrupting. Like everything in Eberron it's up to each DM to decide which side is right (if any).

In [[Pathfinder]], several archetypes for the [[Alchemist]] make use of Fleshcrafting, whilst it is an "artform" mastered and wielded by both the [[drow]] and the [[derro]]. The drow in particular have created a number of unique, horrific monster species through their established procedures for warping living organisms to their liking.

The [[Ravenloft]] fan-wiki divides Fleshcrafting into two branches; Biomancy (magical & psionic fleshcrafting) and Bio-Engineering (mad science fleshcrafting).