Becoming an Adamantine Golem


Advice


So I was reading an old thread on how to become immortal, and one of the suggested routes was to craft an adamantine golem and transfer your consciousness into it, essentially becoming a sentient magical item. The post didn't go beyond that, though.

I was wondering, how exactly would that work? It seems like a cool life goal for a Numerian wizard, particularly a spellslinger or one with levels in Technomancer.

Character could either be a PC or an NPC big bad. It also wouldn't have to specifically be an Adamantine golem - I just like the image of a big robot mage. Who wouldn't?


As far as I know, there isn't actually a way to do this, although there are ways that get you "close".

Possession or Magic jar basically let you control the body, but its not really you and you will need to cast the spell periodically to maintain control over the body.

Could you link to the thread where this was discussed, because within the base rules it simply isn't possible to actually become a golem.

And, for what its worth golems aren't really robotic at all.

You would probably want clockwork instead.


Yeah, sure thing! It's here:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m880?Immortality#1

Essentially the idea seems to be build a golem, then imbue your sentience into it to create an intelligent "weapon".

And yeah, you're right on golems. It's more the visuals that I like - anything big and metal with some burning smokestacks is along the right lines. But I'm curious about the process period, to be honest. I imagine there's a lot of cool options out there that my players wouldn't expect (assuming the result is overpowered - if it's not I'd cheerfully use this trick as a player myself).

Assuming it's possible, that is.


Claxon wrote:

As far as I know, there isn't actually a way to do this, although there are ways that get you "close".

Possession or Magic jar basically let you control the body, but its not really you and you will need to cast the spell periodically to maintain control over the body.

These are Necromancy, so constructs are immune.


Slithery D wrote:
Claxon wrote:

As far as I know, there isn't actually a way to do this, although there are ways that get you "close".

Possession or Magic jar basically let you control the body, but its not really you and you will need to cast the spell periodically to maintain control over the body.

These are Necromancy, so constructs are immune.

Damn. I forget they have immunity to necromancy.


BrazenRogue wrote:

Yeah, sure thing! It's here:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2m880?Immortality#1

Essentially the idea seems to be build a golem, then imbue your sentience into it to create an intelligent "weapon".

And yeah, you're right on golems. It's more the visuals that I like - anything big and metal with some burning smokestacks is along the right lines. But I'm curious about the process period, to be honest. I imagine there's a lot of cool options out there that my players wouldn't expect (assuming the result is overpowered - if it's not I'd cheerfully use this trick as a player myself).

Assuming it's possible, that is.

So assuming this is the post you are referencing:

Mage Evolving wrote:

Have you thought about placing your soul into a magical Item (ex: turning your character into an intelligent weapon). If you put enough of yourself in there your ego score could be high enough to dominate weaker willed individuals.

Perhaps the kings sword that all monarchs of your nation wield is actually the king.

There is no rules to support what this individual is saying. I think he may have been suggesting a concept, but there simply isn't anything mechanical (to my knowledge) to support this.

The closest you could get is taking the living Monolith Prestige class, which kinda sort turns you into a construct, but not really.

Now, if you just want to to do this as a GM then it just happens. The BBEG basically did something similar to the ritual to make himself a lich, but instead placed his soul into a clockwork as the "phylactery".

But again, there's no actual rules to support it.


Ah, I was afraid of that. Still a viable option for an NPC at least, but looks like it'll take some other path as a player. Or possibly an understanding GM.

C'est la vie - I'll find some other way to become a construct!


The only published Paizo way to become a construct that I know of is the Artificial Ascension psi-tech ability available (through retraining) to 20th level Psychics. It lets you permanently upload your consciousness and soul to a robot. And the Iron Gods AP final volume has guidelines for designing robots that imitate normal constructs. But it's not a thing you can actually do any any sort of normal game.


And honestly, it is one of those things
If you are a player: discuss with your GM to create a ritual, quest for it.

If you are a GM: create a ritual for the PCs to interrupt :)


Not familiar with the Psychic stuff, I'll have to have a gander. Doesn't seem like what I had in mind, but could be pretty cool anyway.

But yeah, seems like transferring your conciousness isn't a thing. That's cool - I can make it a thing in my games, and figure something else out if I ever try to play it. Heck, there's always digging out a Pathfinder version of Warforged and assuming the transformation took place before the game - though it does take away the fun of spending a game tracking down component parts and doing all the research.

I have a weird thing for downtime, I think.

Having the PCs try to interrupt the ritual would be awesome, actually. Especially if I can figure a way of stopping them without it feeling like an obvious railroad...


Actually I take it back. The psi-tech Psychic stuff could be exactly what I had in mind - the original thought was a physically weak Kellid who'd been cast out, and sought to use Numerian tech to build himself a stronger form. That works great.

Aside from the whole utterly-impossible-to-raise thing, that's not conducive to the quest for immortality!


Golems are also generally immune to anything that is stopped by spell resistance, also.

==Bier!


BrazenRogue wrote:

Actually I take it back. The psi-tech Psychic stuff could be exactly what I had in mind - the original thought was a physically weak Kellid who'd been cast out, and sought to use Numerian tech to build himself a stronger form. That works great.

Aside from the whole utterly-impossible-to-raise thing, that's not conducive to the quest for immortality!

I have a thread about that ability over here.

You basically have to house rule a bunch of reasonable stuff that they couldn't consider and answer in the paragraph devoted to this ability, but it should be possible to give yourself some defensive abilities to overcome the risk of death. The most obvious is to assume since you transferred your mind/soul to a robot that you can benefit from your own Necromancy spells and disregard the usual construct immunity to that school, because those things don't ordinarily have souls. That would let you use Possession (Greater), Akashic Form, and Astral Projection to avoid death.

Something I overlooked in the above thread is that ability layers your class abilities, including class HD, BAB, and saves, over the robot's corresponding HP, BAB, and saves, so you're more durable than you think and an absolute terror in melee/ranged combat with an appropriate high BAB/HD robot chassis that has solid combat feats.


That looks like a really interesting thread, thanks man - swamped at the moment, but I'll be giving it a proper nose shortly.

Nobody in my gaming circle is going to shy away from house-ruling anything that seems reasonable, thankfully. Not sure about necromancy, as I'd always thought of it as dealing with flesh as much as spirit, but I could be off on that one. Honestly, I can't imagine many of my lot minding anyway if it doesn't completely break the game/overshadow the others.

Sounds terrifying, anyway. Plus you have lasers. Also, I just noticed that you can take transference as a feat, which means multiclassing isn't a pain. At a glance the spellslinger seems a bit redundant, but a psychic/technomancer seems really thematic.


Just beware our soft dainty hands.


Custom engineered for loving precision.


I thought the process to make a golem, involved a ritual to bind a spirit or elemental to the golem in the first place. That's what brought them to life, unless I read it wrong.

I have a bad habit of over simplifying things, but wouldn't you build the golem as per the guide lines, but instead of binding an elemental or some other spirit to the golem, the PC or NPC becomes the target?


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Nodrog I suppose that you could but that would still result in a normal Golem. Just like a Golem animated with an elemental spirit doesn't think or act like an elemental or keep any of the elemental's abilities.


Nodrog wrote:

I thought the process to make a golem, involved a ritual to bind a spirit or elemental to the golem in the first place. That's what brought them to life, unless I read it wrong.

I have a bad habit of over simplifying things, but wouldn't you build the golem as per the guide lines, but instead of binding an elemental or some other spirit to the golem, the PC or NPC becomes the target?

I doubt it's that easy. It'd be like, instead of Conjure Elemental, you just wanted to Conjure PC. Not really going to work, right?


Maybe this will help?


As cool as the Living Monolith is, it's not really the kind of flavour that I'm after here. I'm thinking more along a mad science route, whereas the monolith is hard baked for stone and Egyptian themes.

Really need to try one at some point, though. Who doesn't want to be an Ushabti?

Binding the character's spirit will probably work quite well assuming certain flanges, I was just hoping there'd be something definitively within the ruleset.


You can become a Lich well before 20th level, a shame there's no way to become an immortal construct in a similar way.


Yeah, that's more or less what I was thinking. It's easy enough to houserule, but it's nice when there's something official in place - it gives you an excuse to problem solve the drawbacks and quest to get everything in place.


One way to (kinda) achieve this would be:

Constuct Armor modification
--> you can wear a construct as an exoskeleton and put it on and off like an Iron Man suit
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/building-and-modifying-constructs
Since it's an Adamantine Golem it's basically indestructible and you have kinda infinite HP

Problem:
Construct must be your size and size enhancements do not stack.

So either take a Large Golem instead of the huge Adamantine Golem and do a permanencied Enlarge person or get yourself a large character before enlrging him.
An easy way to become huge would be a Synthesist summoner.


Yeah, golem armour and synthesist summoners are things on my list of things to play with :)

Neither's quite what I had in mind for this particular theme though - I was thinking along the lines of a spellcast trying to escape mortality by transferring their conciousness. The pyschic's the only one which seems to support that so far (and does it with style at that)


Errant_Epoch wrote:
Nodrog I suppose that you could but that would still result in a normal Golem. Just like a Golem animated with an elemental spirit doesn't think or act like an elemental or keep any of the elemental's abilities.

Perhaps just changing the way you bind the sprint to the body would suffice. As I like the idea of being able to do it, a bit of role play to figure out how to do it properly could be a great short quest in and of itself.

And if people need it to be dangerous/difficult, just take a page from Robocop. Several of the test subjects went mad or killed themselves within minutes of being changed.


I don't have the Advanced Beastiary, but in "The Rise of the Runelords"there is a guy that kind of did it.

Male Azlanti mithral-clad human transmuter 13 (Advanced Bestiary 169)
NE Medium humanoid (human)


Dr Styx wrote:

I don't have the Advanced Beastiary, but in "The Rise of the Runelords"there is a guy that kind of did it.

Male Azlanti mithral-clad human transmuter 13 (Advanced Bestiary 169)
NE Medium humanoid (human)

He was still mostly human....and used sin magic from the lost azlanti empire to transform himself. I don't have his stats in front of me to remember how "complete" the transformation was, but I remember fighting him in RotRL.


What was that 3e PrC that let you turn into a construct eventually? Green Star something?

Gave up a lot of caster levels, tho.


After taking a gander at Mr. Seifter's Facebook page, one of the new "corruptions" from Horror Adventures might be exactly what we've been after.


Das Bier wrote:

What was that 3e PrC that let you turn into a construct eventually? Green Star something?

Gave up a lot of caster levels, tho.

It was also extraordinarily weak.


Not a golem, but you could be a beast bonded witch and spend lots of gold on making a Homunculous as powerful as you can. Then commit ritualistic suicide to shove your soul into it.


Have you looked at the Gearforged race? This is right alnog the goal you are looking for, and its alrdy a pathfinder race. And you can create any look you are going for as well


Dwarftr wrote:
Have you looked at the Gearforged race? This is right alnog the goal you are looking for, and its alrdy a pathfinder race. And you can create any look you are going for as well

That's a 3rd party race, and 3rd party stuff....goes over as well as a lead balloon most of the time.


This is a necro of epic proportions, but for anyone else that finds themselves here on a google search - Mythic contained an item called "Trueforge" that allows a player to do this with a high chance of messing up and the character just dieing, but if you spend a LOT of time and effort and convinced your GM to actually let you find the item, is a way to get this done within existing rules.

https://www.aonprd.com/MagicArtifactsDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Trueforge

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Becoming an Adamantine Golem All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.