Looking for a detrimental class / ability / race feature.

[Ualaa]

I'm trying to design a villain, who will magic jar/mind switch from one host to another.
The villain has some kind of a class feature, feat, or ability, which uses the caster/manifester's own health to fuel their power.
Unfortunately, using their power has detrimental side effects, such as causing them to be diseased, weakened, dying, or whatever.
So they periodically switch to a new host.

Is there anything like that in Pathfinder.. (I think there was something in BoVD to that effect).

[Rynjin]

Hrrrmmmm...

Blood Money lets you cut yourself for components.

Bloatmages use blood magic, but are fat, and constantly slowed. You can refluff that easily as him just being sickly and diseased, so he can't move swiftly. They're also susceptible to bleed effects.

Give them a special ability (since it's essentially a new monster of some sort) that lets them ignore their condition for, say, 1d4 months before it starts affecting their new host or something.

There's always the Oracle's Curse, with the aforementioned "can ignore detrimental effects for X months upon switching" dealy.

Lame, Blackened, and especially Wasting are especially good Curses for this.

[Ualaa]

Thanks, I'll take a look at those.

[Sarcasmancer]

What you're describing sounds like the Ultra-Humanite.

This is going to involve homebrewing and maybe that's not the answer you're looking for but: how about this body-swapping ability comes from a magic item (minor artifact, probably) which is highly radioactive (it's made out of Blightburn, or whatever) and has to be worn next to the skin (or implanted in the brain, whatever). So the villain has immortality but the item "burns out" the host over time and they have to keep switching.

[Zhayne]

He's an NPC. You don't have to design him how you design PCs. Just make stuff up. Or unless you're intending for him to take long-term control over a PC, don't even bother statting it up ... it's a plot device power.

[Rynjin]

While generally I agree, I also find it fun to find ways to do this within the rules, or close to it myself, so he may too.

[Sarcasmancer]

@Ualaa if you're interested in pursuing the idea further the way I described it: maybe the problem is not that the host body becomes diseased or weakened (although it does eventually decay down to the skeleton, maybe the magic allows the mind to continue animating the corpse) so much as that it becomes harmful (by radiation or however) to other living things around you. And what fun is immortality if you can't be around anything living?

Maybe the first encounter with this villain is as a glowing green skeleton in a lead-lined sealed bunker underground, where he's been isolated away from potential host victims for centuries.

[Rynjin]

So he's Blight?

[Sarcasmancer]

Rynjin wrote:

So he's Blight?

or Atomic Skull. I just like skeletons & green glowing things.