DrunkInRlyeh's page

Hey all, I'm looking to build a living grimoire inquisitor, and I realized I have no idea what I'm doing.

The character concept is basically an investigative journalist who looks to expose corruption and writes in an underground newspaper that serves as a foil to privately owned propaganda papers in her city.

The stat array (4d6 drop lowest) is 13, 11, 14, 13, 10, 15. I'm leaning Witchborn Changeling, but I'm amenable to human if I need the spare feat.

An int-based inquisitor screams skill monkey, so that'll be my focus, most likely. Combat-wise, I think I'd prefer to melee, but if there's a build to throw the book at people, that sounds like hilarious fun.

Her god is a homebrew (details below)

Name(s): Jephas Storm-mind; Spark Everburning; He Who Knows

Alignment: CN

Description: Jephas is the god of discovery, invention, storms, knowledge, inspiration, revelation, art, mania, and genius. He is most often depicted as an eccentric old man with crackling lightning for hair.

Jephas Storm-mind is the sudden insight, the flash of inspiration, the birth of a new idea. He values innovation and knowledge above all else; hoarding information is anathema to him. Flighty, capricious, and easily distracted, Jephas has little time for the affairs of either the gods or the mortals, choosing instead to spend his eternities on experimentation in his infinite laboratories.

Domains: Air, Artifice, Chaos, Knowledge, Madness, Travel

Subdomains: Lighting (Air), Construct (Artifice), Whimsy (Chaos), Thought (Knowledge), Truth (Madness), Exploration (Travel)

Any advice you lot could give on domain, spell selection, and/or feats would be most appreciated. Thanks in advance, and apologies for the wall of text.

Air elemental bloodrager? Full BAB, fast movement, 3/day add 1d6 lightning damage to attack

Definitely Lich for me.

-I'm ugly anyway, so vamp preservation isn't doing me any favors
-No way am I giving up garlic.

Depends, I think, on how she wants to play (beyond just on a spider). Cavalier and the aforementioned Verminous Hunter are both good options. I've played a goblin verminous hunter who rode around on his giant mantis named Horsetrim and had a grand old time.

Obviously, if you're DM, you can handwave or cleave to the rules as much as you want. Personally, I'd have her take the Monstrous Mount feat and call it a day.

I'd also homebrew some sort of harness so that she could remain mounted while the spider climbs up walls and s@$#, but YMMV

I'd like to pitch "Iconoclast" as potential class name.

Ratfolk alchemist. I'll show them all. I'll show them all how to party.

I've never had a problem, but my groups don't tend to cleave too closely to Golarion lore. Our goblins were usually more on the Ravnican Izzet-Warcraft spectrum. Still unstable, still pyromaniacal, but perhaps more capable of cohering with a typical adventuring party.

Really, I see it as a matter of how elegantly the lore can be changed to justify goblin PCs as more than an outlier. Hopefully it's more substantial than "a Goblin PC is One of the Good Ones™"

I love the concept.

The round-limited mutagen analog is a cool way to draw in alchemist abilities while differentiating them. I'd suggest maybe allowing for cognatogen bonuses too, given its limitations. Maybe I want to be a hyper-intelligent ooze!

Glutton for Magic seems like a pretty elegant way to deal with ooze-gearing issues. Amulet of Mighty Fists is the only thing that would cause me a double-take. I feel like that could be exploited. You should also be careful with the wording of the ability, because "the bonus it would bestow becomes permanent" would cause all sorts of stupid RAW v RAI arguments.

I like that this archetype is spontaneous, but I do wish it had the option to poop out a little ooze biscuit empowered with an extract a la infusion.

Malleable form is cool; I love the idea of bringing in evolutions (though I'm not familiar enough with the full list having never built a summoner). I do think this is the piece most ripe for exploit. No worse than a baseline druid, but I could see some shenanigans.

Acidic Ooze- it seems like most of the Oozeform builds toward physical skills, so an INT-based bomb seems kind of meh, especially since it's limited to acid. My reco would be to add mutations that alter the ooze you shoot a la discoveries, but then you really are designing a new class.

OVERALL:

I love the concept and totally want to play one.

SUGGESTIONS:

Seems pretty MAD given the INT bonus to AC and the focus on slime-slams. Alchemists are great because they're versatile. Maybe build in some room for an INT-based slime?

Riffing on the spontaneous casting element, what about an ability that converts an extract slot into a ranged touch damage attack a la arcane blast?

It's really approaching its own class, but a custom list of evolutions could make this coherent and make it shine.

Well done :D
(Also, I'm a bit drunk, so any comments about balance are to be taken with a grain of salt)

Think of it as an iterative attack with the off-hand weapon. When a character reaches +6 BAB, they gain an iterative attack. First swing at full attack bonus, second swing at -5 (+6/+1 [with mods]).

Two-weapon fighting gives you an additional attack with your off-hand weapon. Improved two-weapon fighting gives you the equivalent of an iterative off-hand weapon (thus the -5).

It's best not to get too bogged down in the choice of wording in the rules; that way lies madness.

A full attack from a PC with ITWF should look like:
+6 (mods)/+1 (mods) [Main hand]...+6 (mods)/+1 (mods)[Off-hand]

I hope this helps. I'm a bit drunk, so apologies if I completely misunderstood the question.

0 - Mending
1 - Polypurpose Panacea
2 - Darkvision
3 - Fly
4 - Dimension Door
5 - Telekinesis
6 - Permanent Image
7 - Greater Teleport
8 - Mass Charm Creature
9 - Time Stop

Talk to the player. It's entirely possible he's not the right fit for the group.

We haven't been using background skills in my campaign, but I wish we had. My players are luckily pretty skill-heavy, so they don't feel bad about sinking a couple ranks into Profession (cobbler) for RP, but I wish I'd known about the system from the get-go.

I wonder how much of a pain it'd be to make the transition mid-campaign.

Alchemist takes it for me. I love the mad scientist vibe, the crazy versatility in terms of builds, and the ability to bomb something into a fine mist while cackling both in and out of character.

Runners up are mostly INT-based, with occultist, magus, and witch high up there. The major exception would be shaman, because I like naturey casters but don't care for wildshape.

Sounds neat. I'd happily give it a go.

If handled with due respect and nuance, it's an interesting concept. Big "if," though. I wouldn't personally be comfortable/confident enough in my ability to pull it off to warrant giving it a go.

And, as mentioned, the rest of the group really needs to buy into it.

From reading about the player in question from the OP I'm not concerned about anything in game. Threatening to harm someone in real life because 'they might fall in love' with an imaginary being the player has an unhealthy obsession with and a distinct lack of social skills is the problem.

I'd be more concerned about the player 'going postal'.

This. It's been repeatedly mentioned that he was a long-time friend. Was his behavior this erratic in other areas of life? Sounds like the dude legitimately needs help.

I've always been a fan of combining a Beheaded with a pair of Isitoqs and a few Crawling Hands.

Given the Egyptian theme, you have a lot of animals you could riff on. Zombified/mummified/skeletonized crocs and hippos would be terrifying.

First thing through my mind would probably be "I shouldn't have dumped Wisdom."

Lets start with Fidelity and branch out from there. If you're married and loyal would it be considered cheating if you were not in your own body? There's about 101 ways to do that, but for sake of argument it's a cloned body (or something equally benign with all the kinks worked out) that you posses for awhile. Personally, I can see an entire industry built around possessing temporary bodies to do all kinds of crazy stuff with no real danger to the original body.

Body Modification: How much is too much? Maybe I want wings.

I think the definition of fidelity changes a bit (and may have already in our mundane world). Cheating on someone isn't just boning someone/thing else; it's a violation of the (spoken or unspoken) agreement about parameters in a relationship. People have open marriages IRL, and I wouldn't consider that being unfaithful so long as their behavior remained within agreed-upon parameters.

So, is possessing another body and getting it on with a stranger cheating? Only if you partner isn't cool with it. If you're defining it strictly as "anything extramarital," I'd say it counts as cheating because a lot of spells involve souls, so there must be some baseline "self" that carries over.

As far as body modification goes, we already accept variation based on personal taste as to how much is "too much." It might be fun to throw polymorph parties, though...

Hello friends,

I'm DMing a campaign for three friends, all of whom are new to tabletop (though we've been playing for ~a year). Because of their lack of system mastery, I homebrewed some mildly overpowered classes tailored to their tastes and usually throw in an NPC ally to balance the party out. We're also using the Automatic Bonus Progression rules from unchained (albeit slightly modified).

That said, I was hoping you could help me by suggesting fun/interesting items appropriate to a sixth-eighth level party. They're about to delve into a lich's tomb (said lich has already been slain), so bonus points if it's appropriate to a evil spellcaster's lair.

Their classes boil down to the following:

-Sneaky-stab rogue with 6th-level CHA divine casting based largely on Mesmerist list. Roguish social skills, but none of the trap stuff and less skill-monkey utility

-Full BAB monk with a resource system similar to Kineticist burn and a shapeshift mechanically similar to Alchemist Mutagen; demon theme

-Gunslinger meets Bloodrager meets Occultist; full BAB, 4th-level INT casting, with a rage analog and spells based on chosen schools. Provides the trapfinding/knowledge wonk stuff.

Weapons are largely taken care of, but any other suggestion for fun magic stuff is welcome. Could be consumable, wondrous item, whatever. I'm not super concerned about WBL because they don't know what they're doing, but I want to reward them for some awesome RP in the previous session.

Any and all suggestions appreciated :D

Ultimate Combat has an entire system devoted to the performance element of arena-type fighting. Might be a good addition.

Thanks all. Glad to get your thoughts and hilarious mental images.

I've heard "teef-ling," "TIGH-fling," "tehf-ling," and any number of other permutations. Is there an official answer to this? Or at least a consensus?

I'm spitballing, but I could see implementing evolution points for mutations to either an animal companion or to wild shape. Druids taking a specialized Radiation Domain could have evolution points for wild shape, while those taking an animal companion would have it apply to that.

Alternately, you could adapt some of the Hunter's animal aspects and treat them as mutations, instead, thus allowing both the druid and his pet to mutate.

You could also take some inspiration from Alchemists' mutagens.

I like the idea of a bear with tentacles, though. That's what I'm focused on.

Set wrote:

DrunkInRlyeh wrote:

That also resulted in a custom class, one that imprisons outsiders within his body rather than letting them escape to the outer realms. The outsiders constantly vie for control of him and offer pacts that grant him a ton of power, but if he accepts too much corruption, things get ugly in a hurry.

That could be some freaky awesome flavor for a pact binder or medium character, that the vestiges or spirits he channels represent wicked and / or capricious entities (demons, fey, wicked ancestor spirits, etc.) bound within his body (perhaps via some elaborate tattoos or scarification) by his people, making him sort of a living prison for these spirits that plagued them (and also justifying why they send these people away, to keep them the heck away from the community / tribe / whatever).

The Fiend Keeper Medium archetype is basically all about this.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. That's definitely a cool archetype. Mechanically very different from what I'm shooting for, but glad to know it exists nonetheless.

If you've got time to burn, I'd recommend Two Serpents Rise and Last First Snow both by Max Gladstone. They both deal (as do the rest of the books in the sequence) with a clash between arcane and divine. The two mentioned are specifically about a city that's sort of Mayincatec in flavor, but they manage to avoid or at least subvert most of the obvious stuff.

Currently in the midst of designing some custom classes for a high-power campaign.

So far in the works is a rogue/divine caster hybrid with a heavy economics theme, a monk who draws powers from outsiders he traps in his body/soul, and a gun-focused 4-level arcane caster.

Also considering a necromancy-themed hunter/summoner type with a semi-customizable undead companion, but that's barely reached the notes-on-a-napkin phase of design yet.

"Unfettered" by curse, magic, or wound? Or "unaffected" by? Even a liberal reading of "unfettered" leaves open a ton of options to screw with them. Also, does this entity tend to twist wishes generally, or only, as per OP, to the detriment of the wisher? Most of the ideas that spring immediately to mind impact the "wishees" as it were.

One I brewed for a friend was a CN half-elf rogue whose (human)father was the high Cleric of a LN deity of commerce, trade, and markets. Through a combination of linguistics and knowledge (religion), the rogue translates an apocryphal text that reveals that the aforementioned deity is actually true neutral, and his portfolio also covers things such as thievery.

After all, the god of markets is necessarily the god of black markets, too.

The rogue was originally going to pick up some levels in inquisitor (sanctified slayer), but I wound up homebrewing a class for him that's got the social bits of rogue, some divine casting, and a pile of arcana-style abilities that are all, ALL, based on terrible economics puns.

The other guy in the party is a monk from an order dedicated to preventing outsiders from interfering in mortal affairs. That also resulted in a custom class, one that imprisons outsiders within his body rather than letting them escape to the outer realms. The outsiders constantly vie for control of him and offer pacts that grant him a ton of power, but if he accepts too much corruption, things get ugly in a hurry.

I'd third Bloodrager as a solid choice.

Another option is the Battle Host archetype for the Occultist. Fairly reliable front-liner with a very limited array of spells, so you don't have to worry too much about getting bogged down.

That said, I'd go Bloodrager given your list. Just wanted to offer an alternative :]

A small but vocal group (with a nutty but charismatic leader) that agitates for rights for so-called "non-sentient" undead. Most of the group is living, there may be a few intelligent undead in it, though most intelligent undead are offended by the implication of equality between themselves and the unintelligent ones. (Think of freedom/equality movements on Discworld.)

This is something I'd save for later in the city's development, but I love the idea. My players like the non-combat parts of play a lot, so I'm sure having them navigate that space would be great for them.

Also considering a necromancer who brings Terry Pratchett back from the dead :'[

A merchant who not-so-secretly works for a LG church located in a neighboring country. The churches Paladins have been so successful in combating evil menaces in the country that the church secretly purchases undead to release into the countryside in order to keep the paladins from getting bored.

You might also want to grab a copy of Hollowfaust: City of Necromancers, published by White Wolf as part of their Scarred Lands 3.0 setting. It's a LN city ruled by necromancers that steadfastly refuses to give the LG churches of the setting a reason to declare a crusade against it. You can get a PDF copy from DriveThru RPG for $9.00 currently.

Illicitly buying undead to train paladins...that's bonkers-awesome. Because the city is still developing, I hadn't even considered the sales of the undead. Definitely something to ponder.

And thanks for the reco. I'll definitely pick it up, though the neighboring territories have already started a few crusades :0

You know what I think you're missing? An expansionist militaristic sect!

It should be lead by a charismatic (but not maybe super smart, sounds like the main leader is brainy, opposition is good) person, someone who wants to spread their way of life, through war if necessary.

Perhaps one of the ways through which you acquire zombies is through poaching battlefields and this leader thinks said operations are shameful and beneath such mighty magic wielders to whom the world should bend at the knee.

They don't have to just be mustache twiddling evil though, they could believe that after war they could bring a Utopian society to the world.

I would make a bones oracle whose magic is particularly vicious, people who are touched by her dark energies have their skin rupture and tear (bleeding wounds), her very touch can be agony even without the use of spells (Deaths touch). I'm saying her because I see her as a her but it could easily be a he.

Also you need someone to mine Onyx, you could put the onxy mines in her families hands, that way the counselors are handcuffed, they have a need for her to be kept on her good side. Being charisma based her ability to channel would be more potent than any of the counselors so the threat of her seizing control of key undead is a real danger.This way the their is political unrest and a sense of drama in their society. The PCs can pick a side.

Woo hoo civil war

*[:D] There's already some in-built conflict on the council, but civil war is a great idea. However, it's not a bones oracle but a bones shaman, and I want him (though now I'm thinking "her" [too many males on the council (though a female PC may rise to have a role)]) to be the most agreeable of the lot. However, all of what you said could work for the sorcerer who has already been established as a jerk.

Said sorc is built for bad-touch mayhem, and he's got the force of personality to rile people up. The Onyx mine idea is perfect, though. Do they choose to let a wanker run things (and thus ensure smooth running of their adoptive city) or do they stand up against him (and potentially jeopardize what they've worked to build)?

*cough*

Anyway, I like the idea of incorporating undead in various but weird ways to improved mundane living. You don't even necessarily need to have it make sense rules wise. A community where this sorts of things are accepted should allow for deeper investigation into what can be accomplished through necromancy.

I'm particularly interested in how art and literature might change within such a community. Whether some undead are utilised in strange art projects and maybe even performances. Imagine a necromancy circus, for example. Or a museum where the skeletons of dinosaurs and other animals come to life for demonstration of how they might have moved in real life. Lots of places to explore there.

This cracked my skull wide open. I hadn't even considered the impact on the humanities. This society would necessarily look at death differently than most. Would there be ancestor worship? Would the undead be venerated or maligned?

Also, the phrase "imagine a necromancy circus" is going to force me to write a novel.

WONDERFUL. I do appreciate love for the less...accepted of the arcane fields of study. Particularly a community in which such things are so normalised.

As they should be.

The first step is most important of all. Trade and commerce. Undead can provide many forms of free labour and an untiring work force. More importantly, with no threat of death, they can perform otherwise dangerous forms of work without risk. Production can be round the clock. Task intelligent undead with managing positions. Strike pacts with necromancers for reanimation services and allowing for space in their necromantic repertoire for commercial purposes by making them shareholders in businesses.

Remember that creatures large and small can serve well as minions, and you should always consider how incorporating undead in day to day life can benefit the community. Burning Skeleton rats can serve in kilns, forges and baker ovens as an endless fire source. By providing tools for even the simplest of commoner to create their own burning or freezing skeletons, or simple services to bind such creatures to an owner, there can be a market for such wonders as fridges, household fuel-less ovens, heaters and stove-tops. Fast zombies make grand couriers, manual labour and draft animals.

And imagine.

Flesh made mobile can be made malleable. Imagine what incredible devices could be made from the untiring flesh of the dead stitched together and programmed accordingly. Factory lines crafted from roiling flesh. Vehicles created from necrografts. Household appliances enhanced with necrotic improvements. Buildings made partially of flesh and bone. Mortar made with animated muscle and marrow. Repairs and improvements to these goods simple through commonplace necromancy. The place of the tradesmen replaced by the subservient of darker gods. Artisans the workers of animation.

Yet we must ensure this economy can spur onward. Where will these raw materials come from? Simple. From imports, of course. When there is a market for bodies, there...

*[all of that wonderful stuff] I've considered the economic impact of an untiring workforce, but the incentive for other necromancers to come sign on somehow escaped me. This is a golden opportunity!

Currently, the city uses some pretty advanced spellwork to transfer heat; the catacombs are a walk-in freezer that keeps corpses fresh, and the stolen heat is used to power forges, heat homes, etc. Granted, it's a bit unstable, so there are the occasional explosions.

However, you've made me realize I haven't taken the concept far enough. Necro-industrial revolution is exactly where I wanted to go, and you've given me some delightful ideas on that front. Not to mention necrocraft.

As far as expansion, well, there are nearby settlements that aren't happy to have necromancers nearby, and they've been flinging paladins at us like mad. The council has also begun drawing up a trade agreement with a nearby city that has a "lucrative" battle-to-the-death arena...

A sewer magnate who uses skeletons to clean and patrol the sewers. Unfortunately he's greedy and short of money and has animated a few more skeletons than he can control, and there are occasional attacks on citizens, which the King of the Golden River tries to cover up. (Yes, he also gets money by ... processing ... the things that enter the sewer -- urine for tanners, sludge to fertilize the fields -- he's got fingers in way too many pies.

A couple of street-kid sorceror-necromancers that steal control of each other's undead dogs and sparrows. Sometimes they have packs following them around.

The wereshark druid in the bay who is getting really tired of all the undead body parts and fluids coming out of the streams and sewers and has plans to do something about it. These might involve lots of water elementals.

The ghouls in the graveyard who are starting to get hungry because everybody has been animating corpses instead of burying them. (Both of them are also clerics of a death goddess, though not very high-level; they think the proper ending of a funeral is a feast after the other attendees have all departed. They know a lot about the town history since they've been there from before it was a town, and might be inclined to share some useful knowledge as long as they're guaranteed a regular feast.)

The restaurant that serves blood pudding on a regular basis. (There are some bloody skeleton boars hung up on hooks in the basement who keep dripping into the cauldron...)

*[sewer magnate] Ooh, I love the idea of the, well, s@!+ty jobs being relegated to sub-par necromancers and that being a problem. I'd thought of the waste-as-fertilizer angle but forgot about urine's part in tanning, so thanks for that.

*[street kids] Equal parts creepy and adorable; I love it!

*[wereshark] There's no bay nearby, but there is a river. I could see some folk downstream getting ornery (not that they weren't already). Definitely room for accidental plagues, though.

*[ghouls] Currently, a certain percentage of imported corpses are earmarked for consumption, but that could easily shift based on politics, and using them as a potential source of intelligence is brilliant.

*[blood pudding] The party has been subsisting on nasty mushroom stew. I think they'd welcome literally anything else.

An "orphanage" where zombie children shuffle around in grey uniforms. The Headmistress is a cleric who controls her charges with channeling negative energy. Visiting days are a grim parody of boarding school parents weekends...

Nothing creepier than undead children. I have just the cleric in mind, and I could see her charging parents to see [what remains of] their children.

OK. Here's a few:

The kebab-seller makes a joke about cannibalism when he makes a sale. It's not true; there's nothing worse than roof rabbit in his produce. He's not a native, having run here to hide from a murder charge, and he's beginning to have a breakdown from all the nerve-racking necromancy around here.

An armorer has what appears to be a pair of skeletons dipped in metal standing guard outside her door. They are animated but the metal 'dip' is actually finely hammered steel, an advertisement of her skill.

A more successful street gang plays knucklebones with real humanoid knucklebones. The leader of the Knucks will pay in coin or more likely favours for knucklebones from the more exotic races.

The top of the wall about some rich person's manor seems to twitch occasionally. There are skeletons imbedded in the wall with only arms sticking out - the rich person doesn't bother having them controlled in any way, they're inclined to attack anything climbing over the wall without any such control.

A mill far away from any stream uses zombie power rather than water power. The zombies tend to wear out, but they provide power to his mill on command as long as they last. They wear out even faster when street urchins work out a scheme to get close enough to give one of them a push into the mill wheel of course.

*[kebabs] I love the kebab-seller; especially that he's not selling human flesh. I'm seeing a Gheed-from-Diablo-II kind of guy slowly realizing that he's in the s+*@.

*[metallo-skellies] The resident smith is actually a forge-mage (handwave magic blacksmith), but armor-coated skellies is a brilliant addition. He has an apprentice one of the PCs has a crush on, maybe she could surpass the master.

*[Knucks gang] I probably oversold it, calling it a city. The population is ~95% mindless undead. But, I expect it to expand, and that's a great idea for a street gang. Plus, I've already set a precedent for selling body parts (though whole corpses are worth more)!

*[Uncontrolled limbs] Oh, man. The utility of uncontrolled undead never even occurred to me. That's brilliant.

*[zombie mills] I actually had a zombie-powered mill already, but I never considered children (at all) let alone the hi-jinks they could get up to.

Thank you :D

I've always thought that to get a populous behind the idea of necromancy, the idea of not sending souls to the outer planes would be a big part of it.

"Here me people, the gods have been using your souls to feed there realms, to grow stronger. The only way we can stop there lust for our dead is to call back our loved ones. To keep them safe, we must Raise them all. Not only that, but we must keep our delusional enemies from letting there dead go."

A charismatic leader of the people would be a key figure.

I'm not using standard Golarion cosmology, so outer realms are a bit less well-defined, but there's no reason the peasantry needs to know that!

I love the idea, and the resident jerk-wad sorcerer would make the perfect charismatic leader to convince the plebs to donate the corpses of their loved ones. It's a relatively new settlement, so there aren't a lot of leyfolk hanging around yet. It's mostly the necromantic elite and their mindless servants, but this is a great way to get "regular" folks on board.

Thank you!

Just, wow. There's not a single idea in this thread that I don't love. Thank you all so much. I'll reply to each individually, assuming I don't hit some post-overflow.

You guys are wonderful :D

How large a council do you want, and do you want other NPCs? (e.g. guy selling mystery kebabs who keeps making off-colour jokes about cannibalism.)

I think I'm actually satisfied with five on the council, though I'm willing to reconsider for a cool enough concept. I'm definitely in the market for other NPCs to flesh the place out, so any and all suggestions are welcome.

I realize it's rather a vague request, but I don't want to constrain it too much. Basically "there's a city of necromancers. What would be a cool thing/person you might see?"

I had a really bad hangover the other day.

I prefer oracles largely because I like spontaneous casting over prepared. In terms of RP, I find Clerics less interesting because they're so tied to their deities.

I also like that oracles get curses and revelations, which are more interesting to me than a cleric's domain powers. It really boils down to what kind of character I want to make, though.

My favorite was a homebrew setting where so much as casting a cantrip would get you burned at the stake (I, naturally, rolled a wizard).

Our party had to steal a ledger from a corrupt merchant, and my character was associated with archaeologists and had a ludicrous linguistics score. I forged a letter about some rare metal to get inside and steal the ledger.

Everything is going well. I'm sailing past on my bluff checks, I get the bodyguard to leave the room. It all goes t$&~ up when I forget an important piece of information that was divulged before I got to the session, so my last words were something to the effect of:

"One more thing, Minister." "I cast Scorching Ray at the ceiling."

Fiery apocalypse for all.

Given royal families' breeding habits, Deep One seems the most appropriate, if you ask me.

I'd like to endorse Slayer as well. It's a ranger/rogue hybrid that is pretty easy to build but has a solid skill base. Studied target gives a minor atk/damage buff and also enhances certain skill checks. As mentioned, sneak attack comes online later, so it might give your player time to learn the mechanics.

It's full BAB, and gets plenty of feats/rogue talents (which can be traded for feats), so there's flexibility in how it goes into combat, but it doesn't get too complicated.

IMO it's one of the best classes for a newbie. I'd recommend it over Investigator only because of the extra layer of complication that extracts bring, but that's based heavily on the player.

I'm looking for some creative help.

So, my PCs, in predictably unpredictable fashion, ran into some necromancers and decided to champion their cause rather than engage in the usual slaughter->loot algorithm.

Many drunken sessions later, this has resulted in them making their HQ this city of necromancers, and I could use some ideas for the leadership thereof. I have tentative ideas for councilors, but I'd greatly appreciate any additional ideas.

This is what I have so far:

I'm basically just looking for some interesting character concepts to flesh out the city. Obviously, there's a necromantic theme, but any and all suggestions are welcome.

Some relevant house-rules:
Necromancy isn't intrinsically evil (but most people tend to assume it is)
Any source book is fine, and I'm open to third-party
Combat efficacy is largely irrelevant (assuming my rogue isn't a jerk), so the more fluff the better

The mechanics of the Tetori have been well covered here, WAAAAY better than I could.

I think the important point is that the OP seems a touch smug about choosing a character that he thinks the GM will hate. At best this is a dick player move. It also may not even be a real thing, we don't have the GMs perspective here. OPs stated intent however is hardly admirable.

For what little it's worth, I don't see any nefarious intent. OP seems to be interested in Tetori but worried that it might make the game less fun. If anything, I'd say that having that concern top of mind is admirable. (but it's hard to accurately infer such things when limited to text)

All that said, I concur with everyone who said to talk to your GM. I'd be fine with a Tetori, but I'm pretty liberal and my players rarely if ever abuse mechanics such that it negatively affects the narrative.

John Mechalas wrote:

You can’t summon a creature into an environment that does not support it, such as causing a water-breathing creature to appear on land or a non-flying creature to materialize in midair

This rule makes sense and all, but I can't help but wish it weren't so.

I cast...RAIN OF PONIES!!

DrunkInRlyeh wrote:

If you're feeling silly, you could make the BBEG be a pipe-playing Bard...

"...the BBEG be a pipe-playing Bard... " wow.... this is cool!

For ideas on how to make this gorram terrifying instead of just silly, see King Rat by China Mieville.