Drychnath's page

I am looking to play a Gnome Illusionist as a Paranoid Wizard. The inspiration is, loosely, the environment of Glen Cook's Black Company series, where sorcerers of whatever stripe were a secretive, murderous lot planning to usurp one another's power. I would like to spend considerable effort avoiding such possible machinations. The question is, at earlier levels, how best to go about it?

I think the most obvious solution is, while low level, to simply stay below the radar. I would think I could achieve that by obfuscating my role in party victories, and some judicious downtime use of Magic Aura and the like.

My question is, what could reasonably be done for levels 1-6, that is between not attracting attention to the character and the classic unkillable paranoid wizard shenanigans at higher levels of which I am so fond of reading?

Edit: Grammar

Consider the following feats of mind prowess that could be useful: the ability to focus surface thoughts on a definite topic (circumstantial bonus to Concentrate when faced with telepathy or other mind reading); the ability to willfully believe an illusion known to be false (making various Illusion spells explode in terms of personal utility); the ability to concentrate on two or more things at once.

I don't see anything similar in my 3.5 collection as it stands, though I don't have the books for Arcane options in Pathfinder. Can someone recommend a source? Or are they too useless/ absurdly game-breaking to consider?

I set to wondering, when planning new spells for some wizard I'll doubtless never play to research, about the power levels of various achievements that the game world permits but the PCs usually do not undertake. Rituals to awaken dead gods or open terrible portals, the manufacture of a dread weapon, turning the peasants into abominations, things of this nature a often confronted by PCs while in sub-epic levels despite not having access to ready-made magic or convenient knowledge of any where near that sort of power.

The reasons the bad guys get to attempt such shenanigans seem pretty straightforward: they invest their treasure and research in accomplishing these bigger-picture aims, rather than the pretty specific kill-you-in-the-face habits of PCs.

So does anyone attempt to do these sorts of things, or their good or neutral equivalents, as PCs, or permit them as DMs?

Whenever I think of a charachter concept for a wizard, and often for other casters, I imagine some huge magical project that will serve as a centerpiece of their professional achievement.

But what about other things that commonly feature in stories? Like a weapon crafted to slay a singular individual. Or other one-off magical rituals and large spells. Because of the time and money entailed, even very modest projects like this fall outside the scope of the average adventure, but the second I'm a caster in a campaign that is remotely sandboxy, I'm having a chat with my DM about these things.

I have an interest in creating a character who pursues mental discipline and higher perception.

The first question is, which class would be best for this purpose? The two obvious solutions are Wizard and Monk. The Wizard was my first thought, having obvious uses for and abundance of mental discipline feats, and magic itself can serve as a stand-in for elements of perception. Monk comes in a close second, by virtue of the various unique qualities of the class and its general flavor. Some fashion of cleric or related Wisdom caster comes in third, but I find it least favorable as a consequence of drawing power from an outside source, rather than through comprehension or internal discipline.

The theory is generally to take feats that maximize or alter Concentration, in particular, as well as certain Knowledge (Arcana or Religion), and any sort of Perception enhancements.

I suppose for the Monk I would be curious whether it would be possible to transform him into an anti-caster of some sort; whether there is a Perception feat chain that would, for example, allow some sort of detection of magic.

Has anyone an obvious preference and solution?

Despite my best efforts searching, I have come up with very little, and that little leads to broken links. So I turn to the community for help.

First, some personal background: Former 3.5 player, never played Pathfinder, started looking into it after 4th Edition turned me off so hard. Presumably will carry on planning for Pathfinder unless Next wows me. I have no game or dungeon master from whom to seek approval, I just like having a variety of concepts in the chamber, should I have the opportunity to pull the trigger.

Second, some character background: Elf Wizard, called 'the Apostate'. Expelled from a prestigious academy of magic with close ties to the priesthood of [insert Elvish god of nature/natural order] for disrupting a presentation of a representative of the temple by engaging the priest in a debate. During the course of this debate, the character repudiated the conventional concept of 'the natural order', asserting that a larger or more fundamental order applied and that consequently the lives of monsters such as aberrations, oozes, outsiders, and others have equivalent value to that of humanoids and animals approved by the priesthood specifically and Elvish culture generally. Hence the nickname.

Third, the problems I am having: the alpha problem is that I would like the character's ultimate ambition to be the creation of a new creature. I am having trouble finding a pre-existing set of feats, or spells, or magical apparatus amongst the literature for the purposes of making this a functional mechanic in the game. Epic spells exist that I have found for creating whole creatures that are old, which are then permanent rather than summoned; I had rather hoped that 'wait for epic' wouldn't be the answer, but it wouldn't shock me.

The beta problem is what sort of wizard to make the character. A solution to the alpha problem would simplify things by allowing me to specialize in whatever school the core spells are or feats require, but lacking such guidance I am forced to consider it in light of what sort of research avenues would be most appropriate. Based on the Creation subschool falling under Conjuration, a conjurer would seem appropriate. Secondarily, should using other creatures as base stock be a more prudent route, Transmutation could apply. Lastly, and my first choice by virtue of being different and provocative, is Necromancy, as the creation of new life would seem to be heavily influenced by the study of the nature of life and death.

Necromancy was my first choice, simply because it reinforces the provocative nature of the character, and most people who make necromancers go deep down the Undead route. I thought it made the most sense for creating an Aberration creature as the end result.

Conjuration is my last choice of the three, namely because I have other conjurer concepts that both endorse and flout the expected primary focus (summoning). It would probably, by virtue of Creation, be the best option for creating a wholly new Animal or Humanoid, thematically.

This leaves Transmutation smack in the middle; I have no other transmuter concepts to speak of, and it seems the best suited to making some kind of Magical Beast (as this seems to be the most common type of creature explained away via the 'mad wizard' origin), although this feels slightly derivative as I would be recombining old monsters into new monsters in the most expedient solution, and half breeds abound anyway. This isn't as provocative a concept; I had envisioned the character as carrying out the all-life-is-similarly-valuable shtick to just shy of absurdity. It pleases me to be able to construct reasonable challenges within the context of the norms of D&D, and this feels like a bit of a cop-out.

Thoughts?