Tools of Mischief

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Ultimate Intrigue has plenty of feats, spells, and magic items that help your character get herself into all sorts of trouble—and out of trouble as well!

The Brilliant Planner feat lets you make a fund that you can use to pull out the item or resource you need in a particular situation, which can be pretty useful in clutch situations. The fighter gains several new combat feats that enhance his bravery (both against all mind-affecting effects and against social attacks like feint and demoralize) and even allow him to share his bravery with nearby allies. Legendary influence lets mediums choose one feat for each legend and accept influence to gain the feat they chose when they channel that legend (so you can pick things that only help you with one legend, like Selective Channel for hierophant, which has channel, Arcane Armor Training for archmage, and so on). Feats like Subtle Enchantments are great for manipulating others (in this case, it makes it harder to notice the target is enchanted with Sense Motive and gives a 50% that a target who succeeds on the save doesn't notice it had to make a Will save). The three new styles are Fox Style, which lets high-Int characters master feinting, dirty tricks, and the like, Owl Style allows martial characters to use their fighting skill to maneuver around the battlefield fluidly, and Street Style lets urban characters create combo attacks using the environment around them. And that's just a few of the feats you'll find in the book!

On to spells: Intrigue spells in general lend themselves to sneaky and clever usage, but there's plenty of choices for all sorts of characters, even the most straightforward ones. One of the cool new things for spells is the ruse descriptor, which allows you to cast a spell that seems to be another spell unless the person identifying it succeeds by 10 or more. Things like the false resurrection spells, where you pretend to bring someone back to life but actually revive the body with a possessing demon or devil inside, hollow heroism, which works as normal for a while, but then you can change the effect from +2 to -4 at any time, and treacherous teleport where you send the other passengers of the teleport somewhere different than where you go. The entice fey spells allow you to bargain with fey and potentially earn their service and conditional favor lets you call take-backs on a beneficial spell you cast, so you could say "Sure, I'll cast this spell and remove your blindness, but only as long as you promise to follow the paladin code." There's all sorts of other fun measures and countermeasures in the spells so that PCs and their foes can escalate things like reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance, and then there's such fun spells to show off the bling of your magic, like resplendent mansion, which creates an actual mansion on a flat area that last for weeks!

Illustrations by Roberto Pitturru, Jaime Martinez, and Mark Molnar

Finally, items: There's a variety of fun nonmagical intrigue items like a book with a hollow compartment in it and a wrist-launcher that shoots darts, as well as some suggestions of some top tools of the trade from Ultimate Equipment. Some of the cool magic items include a shield that can pick a lock for you while you stand by the door fighting with your other hand, a weapon property that makes your weapon invisible, an armor that lets you redirect divinations meant for someone else to yourself, an erasable book that appears innocuous but secretly records everything people say around it, a pouch that erases the writing within it if anyone else tries to open it, a deck of cards with various doors on them that turn into doors when you put them on a wall, and the quick-change mask, a consumable that lets a vigilante instantly switch identities in a tight spot, and that's just a few of them.

Next week I'll cover the various special subsystem in Ultimate Intrigue, like verbal duels and influence, so be sure to keep a careful eye out; the blog might be plotting a heist to nab your prized McGuffin while you read it!

Mark Seifter
Designer