Weekly Wonders—Eldritch Archetypes, Volume V: Archetypes of Dagon (PFRPG) PDF

It’s Better Down Where It’s Wetter!

The eldritch, the strange, and the weird are often relegated to the domains of villains and NPCs in fantasy, with the good guys being the ones who stand in the way of the dark things that remain just beyond our perception, which we can never truly understand. But sometimes, it can be fun to take on the mantle of the otherworldly, and to embrace the alien terrors of the cosmos. Each installment of Weekly Wonders: Eldritch Archetypes contains five archetypes for eldritch characters—those that are weird, alien, and otherworldly, who don’t fit in with normal society—as well as a cleric domain devoted to a specific mythos entity or race.

For this book, we focus on Father Dagon, and his progeny, the deep ones. Although Dagon himself is not featured in the most famous story about deep ones, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," both he and his ilk are well known terrors lurking beneath the waves, sending aquatic envoys to quiet coastal towns to unleash who knows what sort of mischief upon the surface-dwelling races. Each of the archetypes in this book builds on themes of aquatic adaptation, monstrous features and appearance, a strange call to the sea, and terrible transformations into deep ones. This book contains the following archetypes:

• The shore strider, an arcanist archetype that draws magical power from proximity to the ocean, and can mentally command ocean life.
• The deepspawn broodmate, a hunter archetype with deep one lineage, who trades in the standard animal companion for a deep one companion, instead.
• The channeler of the deep, a medium archetype very much at home in the waves, and which can mentally possess aquatic creatures.
• The deep one ancestry, a psychic discipline, for those whose powers come from a familial connection to the spawn of Dagon.
• The benthic infiltrator, a vigilante archetype who doesn’t just don a mask, but sheds his human disguise to rampage as a horrible monstrosity from the deep.
• A bonus cleric domain devoted to those who worship Father Dagon.

Whether you're about to embark on a campaign of eldritch horror (such as the official Paizo adventure path dealing with strange and alien entities), or you just want an excuse to play a servant of the unknowable and uncaring cosmic entities of the Cthulhu mythos, this book has lots of tantalizing options to offer. Even GMs can get in on the fun, as several of the archetypes here are perfect for insane cultist NPCs as well, and can make for exciting and memorable encounters.