The setting: the party is in the last room of a crypt in which the cultists are trying to summon Orcus into the world of Golarion. The portal is still small and needs more sacrifices to grow large enough for Orcus himself, but he can still strike through with an ethereal whip (weakened due to a poor "connection" to this world) and grab corpses to turn into undead minions that it spits out back out of the portal at the end of the turn. The portal leads directly to Uligor, home of Orcus, and the cleric decided to stick his hand through in an attempt to reach a cultist on the other side, rather than walk around it.
Now, I have a few ideas myself as to what the effects should be, which I will outline, but I wanted to see if anyone has some creative thoughts to add to the mix. Note the players are all level 1 and are in the middle of a pretty hefty combat.
The cleric's hand will suffer an accelerated rate of decay, as if it had been decomposing for years, withering to a rotten stump that is rendered useless. He won't feel the pain, or anything quite frankly, but will shocked at the results when he removes his hand from the portal.
The cleric will be granted a unique perspective of the world around him, one that causes all things living to appear dead and those that are dead to appear in the form they took in life. The sky will be gray and bleak and buildings crumbling and desecrated. (How long this will last I don't know...)
*Insert Idea Here*
When designing the encounter, I thought to myself, "Should I come up with a consequence of falling or reaching in? ...Who would be so foolish." And immediately moved on =/ That'll teach me to assume.
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i would make his hand into a foot.
or
give his hand intelligence and an angry disposition. nothing worse then a hand that pimp slaps you on a regular.
or
turn it into stone, wood, iron, or ice
or
have it become infected with pure evil, have lines of venom begin traveling up his arm and towards his head. every time he commits a morally questionable act, or something against his faiths dogma,it pushes the venom one step closer to his head, turning into a demon, devil, or undead.
Give the hand an unlife of its own.
Awesome.
'Infect' him with negative energy affinity.
The arm becomes an undead graft with a dubiously useful feature.
The character develops nightmares. His will save suffers a penalty.
An evil lesser geas.
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Shop smart...shop S-Mart
If given a "benefit" as suggested, I'd suggest that the benefit doesn't manifest until they're past the portal. Otherwise you run the risk of the entire party putting their hands into the portal and having evil touchy hands of doom (and some despair) added to the entire parties list of capability. On a side note, if they did such a thing, could call them the "Dead Hands" as a group name.
Another suggestion would be to have him possible get pulled in.
Or perhaps he is given a geass or sort of latent command through a strange tattoo engraved on him and now he has to make a save against or else hinder the party in some way the next time they face this threat.
Example: He's given a sort of tattoo with a latent command or suggestion spell that activates the next time they are close to a portal. The suggestion / command could be to help the cultists, defend them, etc....
A curse (for whatever time) that auto changes his healing capabilities, if he has any, into harming abilities. just wait till he tries to heal his allies.
but if you do that, you have to give him a free chain saw handShop smart...shop S-MartHere.
Only if he cuts it off.
My webfu is too weak to quickly find good footage of Left Hand from Vampire Hunter D... but possibly like him, but more 'come to the dark side'...
I like the undead graft idea for a few reasons.
1.) It's more interesting than "you lose a hand to a glorified Portal Cut".
2.) It doesn't gimp the Cleric.
2a.) But it DOES provide him with some measure of RP related horror...most Good and Neutral Clerics have a hatred of undead and no desire to become one. So even the thought that maybe, just maybe, the hand's influence could infect his entire body eventually can lead to some interesting stuff.
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When designing the encounter, I thought to myself, "Should I come up with a consequence of falling or reaching in? ...Who would be so foolish." And immediately moved on =/ That'll teach me to assume.
First rule of GMing, never rule out a possible PC action solely on the basis of it being a monumentally bad idea.
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I don't see why sticking your hand through a portal should result in any strange happenings. It's just another plane, the worst that could happen is that a creature on the other side snags his hand and pulls him through.
place your hand in portal the David
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Okay fine, if the plane has some harmful traits there might be a risk involved. You might not want to stick your hand into a portal to the elemental plane of fire for obvious reasons. Likewise, a portal to the elemental plane of earth could lead to solid rock (earth elementals have earth glide) which could result into your hand materialising in solid rock with all the nasty consequences. (Or you would just hit a wall.)
Unless the plane is extremely harmful to humanoids, I don't see why anything should happen. So can anybody tell me what the planar traits of Uligor are?
I like the idea of the hand becoming sentient, having a mind of its own, and trying to counteract the Cleric (and his party members). After all, Orcus is the Prince of Undeath, and Undeath does involve Spirits of the Dead. What if an Evil Spirit manifests itself into his hand, similar to that of an Oracle Curse, or something more?
It won't manifest itself at first, because several symptoms of evil don't take place until after the fact, and for the purposes of Evil, it's generally quite fitting.
Let them think that nothing has happened, let it fade out of their minds, and then when the next going gets tough or the Cleric has to do a decisive action involving that hand, such as making an attack, casting a touch spell through that hand (I'd suggest you mark down which one for future reference), the Hand interferes in some way: Drop items held, discharge on self or into some other object, does nothing, etc. Think Intelligent Item V.S. Wielder/Wearer for other great ideas.
Later down the road, the Cleric is forced to develop ways to counteract the hand itself, and he has a few options; cut it off, rendering the limb useless unless he decides to try prosthetics, find magics or runic seals to contain the compulsions of the hand, or undertake a quest to purify his body, eliminating the soul that inhabits his hand, of which won't be easy, especially with the Hand doing its best to maintain a grip on it.
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Caulibor thrust his arm forward into the swirling orange disc, grasping to clutch at the fleeing faithful-of-Orcus.
"Wait! What are you..." the streetwise ex-thief Shanil spurted, moments too late. "...doing?"
The priest, seeing the cultist out of his reach turned to his friend, oblivious to the gravity of the situation and innocently answered her, "I was trying to catch that guy. Why?"
"Caulibor, that's some kind of... I dunno... inter-dimensional rift. It's like a big nostril to Hell or Heck or the Elemental Plane of Dog Farts or something. Somewhere really bad, where Orcus is lounging around, scratching his demon-junk and eating crunchy baby-skulls while his loser worshipers try to drag him off the couch and onto Absolom."
Ever trying to impress the young lady, Caulibor feigned a casual demeanor while repressing a sense of panic. He replied, "it's not so bad. I can feel my fingers. I'm wiggling them, I think. Maybe... maybe I'll PUNCH Orcus in the nose."
"For you", he added mentally.
This gave Alavontez - the Quasit party member with a wizard familiar - the dry heaves. Telepathy wasn't always a good thing, and the twisted creature had landed on the cleric's shoulder to get a better view of the carnage to come.
"You're totally screwed, man. You're going to pull that out, and there's going to be a pony stuck on the end of your wrist. Seriously, this is bad. The last time I saw this happen, the guy yanked his arm out really fast and instead of his hand coming out, it sucked the bones out of his whole arm out, into some other world. I mean, you just don't realize how agonizingly horrifically painful it's going to be when you pull your wrist out and discover that it was plugging a hole and a zillion beetles come crawling out all over you and start eating you. I mean, it hurts like heck, yeah, but then you'll scream and they crawl in your mouth and eat your tongue and lungs and stuff. Totally, totally screwed. I wanna watch."
Sweat started pouring down Caulibor's brow, leaving clean rivers amongst the trail-grime otherwise covering him. He bravely grinned to Shanil, nonchalantly pointing with his (free) hand at the demon. "Pessimist", he concluded.
Shanil approached warily and started studying the gaping wound between worlds that appeared to be eating her companion. Drawing upon her supply of tools and gadgets that never seemed to be used twice, she probed at the rift, trying to learn what could be divined. Two amputated iron rods later, she concluded her efforts and gave Caulibor the news.
"I don't think the thing with the pony on the end of your arm will happen."
"What should I do", whined the trapped cleric, then added in a more manly tone, "I mean, what should I do?"
"Well, Teknom and Billithong are going to want help fighting those guys sooner rather than later, so... I think you're going to have to just pull out and hope for the best."
"Yesssssss", whispered the quasit, not really caring if anyone noticed.
"Who's Billithong again", asked Caulibor, obviously trying to delay the inevitable.
"Keep up, he's Alavontez' pet wizard. The elf? With the big staff? Casts magic missile at the darkness all day long?"
"Wait, he casts spells at the darkness, during the day?"
"Yeah, I don't understand it either, and neither does Teknom, but he's just a plainsman and I'm a simple city girl, so how are we supposed to understand super-brainy wizardry stuff? Now are you going to tug your arm out of that hole or what?"
"Yesssssss", begged Alavontez.
"This wizard is the guy with the robes with the stars on them? Carries a book the size of Teknom's greataxe? Mumbles loudly to himself every morning RIGHT BESIDE ME while I'm trying to pray? The one who keeps using shocking grasp and asks me to pull his finger? The guy who replaced all my 'property of Caulibor' labels on my clothes with explosive runes? That guy?"
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's all the Quasit's idea though. Wait! You just said something really important!"
The cleric, grasping at hope gazed into Shanil's eyes, then inevitably became distracted by their aquamarine hue and said nothing in return.
"Pullllllll!", the Quasit insisted.
"Shush, you. Caulibor just said something. Now what was it? Ah, yes. I think it was something about 'property of Caulibor' labels on his clothes. So lame. So very, very lame."
Caulbor was shaken to his core by this, the latest expression of scorn, and dropped his gaze in shame. He moved to hide his face behind his hands, unwilling to let Shanil see his reddening skin.
"Ooooooh, does it hurt?", Alavontez asked, genuinely concerned.
"What?", the despondent cleric asked? He then realized that he had unthinkingly withdrawn his arm from the turbulent tangerine gateway. Where his wrist once ended in a hand complete with useful fingers and a thumb, only a cauterized stump remained. Panic struck and Caulibor screamed, "no!"
"That's too bad," the Quasit concluded, considering his question answered.
Caulibor backed away from the portal in horror, clutching at his maimed appendage, wishing to his god to allow him to wake from this nightmare moment unharmed.
"My hand. My hand is gone", he sobbed, for a moment forgetting his campaign to impress Shanil.
"Well, I wouldn't say gone, really Caulibor. And for the record, that is SO COOL!"
"Wait, what?"
"Your hand. Look. It's right here, floating in the air. It popped out of that rift right as you backed up and sat down to cry. Wiggle the fingers some more because that's SO COOL!"
"Boring," Alavontez disagreed, then flapped off to find someone more deserving of his scorn.
Fighting off shock, the cleric shot an insulting finger-gesture at the receding demon... with his detached, floating, disembodied hand.
"So cool," Shanil reiterated, quietly in awe.
Cauliborn thought to himself, "maybe, just maybe this doesn't totally suck."
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My suggestion:
The cleric can now direct his hand anywhere within 15 feet of him that he can see and there is line-of-effect to. He can deliver touch spells via the floating hand as usual. The hand can carry objects much like mage hand but is not limited to non-magical items. This is a supernatural ability and moving the hand requires a swift action. The hand cannot be used to assist in wielding a two-handed weapon or any other action that requires being attached to his arm, but it can carry a shield if doing so is within its weight limit. Each night (but not simply in darkness), there is a 5% chance that the hand absents itself from the cleric's presence and control, while it goes elsewhere to engage in the Prince of Chaos' tasks. Whenever it returns on a morning after such a jaunt, there are disturbing signs of foul play or misdeeds, ranging from it being crusted in dried blood to each finger wearing an expensive gem to it carrying an important document (like perhaps a "send help fast, we're under siege" letter it has intercepted).
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"Did you just pat my ass", Shanil demanded?
Cauliborn blinked, enigmatically, and shrugged.
Caulibor thrust his arm forward into the swirling orange disc, grasping to clutch at the fleeing faithful-of-Orcus.
"Wait! What are you..." the streetwise ex-thief Shanil spurted, moments too late. "...doing?"
The priest, seeing the cultist out of his reach turned to his friend, oblivious to the gravity of the situation and innocently answered her, "I was trying to catch that guy. Why?"
"Caulibor, that's some kind of... I dunno... inter-dimensional rift. It's like a big nostril to Hell or Heck or the Elemental ...
I vote for this.
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Give the hand an unlife of its own.
Something like this, maybe along the lines of the Blackened curse? -4 to attacks that use the hand but the ability to cast some extra spells or such.
And if he can't stand it well then, as others have already linked...
"It got into my hand and it went bad, so I lopped it off at the wrist."
What Anguish said.
I think this game really lacks support for characters with cool demon arms and the like. Don't let this opportunity pass you by!
In addition to the above examples look to Soul Calibur, District 9, and Bionic Commando of what to do with the hand or what to do if it gets chopped off.
Depending on how your cleric friends wants to play it, either some slow corruption or Mark 9:43 action will both be crazy badass.
In fact I really want to do something like this to my players now...
Give the hand an unlife of its own.Something like this, maybe along the lines of the Blackened curse? -4 to attacks that use the hand but the ability to cast some extra spells or such.
And if he can't stand it well then, as others have already linked...
"It got into my hand and it went bad, so I lopped it off at the wrist."
Exactly this. Give the character a free level in the Oracle class, and the Blackened curse. Even though he only stuck one hand in the effects could easily spread across his body to the other arm/hand. The very description of the Oracle class says: "These divine vessels are granted power without their choice, selected by providence to wield powers that even they do not fully understand." It doesn't get any better than that. The character gets a free second level when they might not have normally, (which comes with the benefit of new powers), but gains the deficiency of the Blackened curse, AND it becomes a great story element. Even though the character will try to do good, his actions will somehow betray him, and evil will result. Plus it is a killer story hook. The character could spend a lengthy part of his campaign life searching for a way to remove the taint of Orcus. It creates limitless potential for story awesomeness.
Wowza! Lots of responses! I knew asking here would yield some great ideas. I have a lot to consider and boil down. I really like the life of its own concept, as well as the Blackened curse from the oracle class. I will have to think on this while I sleep. Thanks everyone.
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The arm is sliced off by the whip at the center of the forearm. The wound also instills the remaining arm with a brutal wave of negative energy, cursing the arm feel extremely numb and cold, a condition that cannot be healed by normal magic. The character looses 2 points of dexterity and 2 points of constitution as long as the arm remains as it is. The arm also cannot be regenerated as long as the curse is present and the curse cannot be removed by way of normal magic. A wish or some kind of special quest could remove the curse.
The setting: the party is in the last room of a crypt in which the cultists are trying to summon Orcus into the world of Golarion. The portal is still small and [. . .] leads directly to Uligor, home of Orcus, and the cleric decided to stick his hand through in an attempt to reach a cultist on the other side, rather than walk around it.
Give the Cleric a negative level if he is at least level 2, and have it automatically "touch of corruption" per HD of the cleric the first person it touches that is alive a number of times per day using the cleric's level as the Antipaladin's level.
Any deaths cause are unintentional and therefore do not affect the cleric's alignment or connection with his deity, but if he finds some sort of way to redirect the power of the hand to a positive energy source--a monumental task this should be, not even something easily done--then he can change it from Touch of Corruption to Lay on Hands permanently thereby gaining the class feature.Also, just because it is Orcus, the master of the undead, anyone killed by the Touch of Corruption should raise as a bloody skeleton under the control of Orcus. Let these start as undead that the evil god can control via permanent possession at will, and multiple possessions at that, but be unable to do anything with.
This lets the cleric be responsible for his actions while also meaning that he must work to correct the issue. If he cuts off the hand it gains regeneration 5, and after 1d10 days regrows the clerics entire body to become an antipaladin that ruins the cleric's reputation while empowering Orcus to possibly make a small army of bloody skeletons from the local towns' commoners.
I love that Evil venom in veins hand, but not as an intelligent hand but something like this.
Slowly over time the hand drive the character more chaotic and more evil naturally till by the end of the effect say 30 days in game (one full moon cycle) the character has the following changes if he fails 2 will saves (one for evil and one for chaos, assuming he is neutral or lawful or good) at a high save. If they fail both they become Chaotic evil as well:
-After the transformation their deity automatically shifts from whatever faith they had to Orcus. If a divine class like a cleric, allow them to choose new domains to fit the change in deity. But before Orcus grants them spells they should have to prove the faith in game to do something to appease the demon lord.
-Other benefits are unintelligent undead creatures will not attack the character as they see him as one of them, but will retaliate if struck first.
-negative energy heals and regular healing harms the character
-The character can go out in the day time but automatically gains the fatigued modifier whenever in the sun.
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Being stung by a demonic parasite and eventually giving birth to little demonlings is even nastier, but why would Orcus be keeping such a creature near his whipping hole?
"I stuck my hand through this inter-dimensional portal where a deity was trying to enter our reality and now I'm pregnant with demon babies."
That is probably not the story your character's are interested in exploring.
i once walked into a portal i wasn't supposed to go into during a campaign...by character walked back out the other side completely naked! (this was a random on the spot d% roll the DM made). upon realizing what had happened, my character was immediately overly frustrated with the dungeon we were in, humiliated by what had happened, and calmly walked out of the dungeon and the campaign, retiring from this awful career choice he'd made as an adventurer...
i say make him rue the day he ever chose this line of work...
I would have Orcus rip it off. Then it miraculously start growing back. Then he has to start making will saves via geas to do evil things...like kill babies and do stuff better than a rogue.
or
He starts unknowingly getting his spells from orcus and goes on the slip n slide alignment change.
I'm personally in favor of having there be no direct consequences from the portal.
Of course, if the player is spending that much time there, he is likely to be mistaken for the next corpse to be animated :)
If this is what your players do at level 1... what are you going to have for them at level 10 or 15?
Maybe I need to up the tension of my early game.
Ok, so it seriously--SERIOUSLY! ALL CAPS!--boils down to how you want to run this.
First off sticking your hand into a portal that you do not know the end-point of is ludicrously reckless--I wanted to say stupid.-- If you are a nice DM, then nothing happens. You can literally take this anywhere to make it fun:
His hand could become an intelligent item.
He could gain a split personality disorder where he is always tired because when he goes to sleep an illusion forms where he was and he goes on a murder rampage with disguise self making him look like OTHER party members.
He could permanently detect as evil--or more specifically his hand. If he has a good aura the two clash if someone can see both.
Undead are DRAWN to him, call him "master" but only try to kill him.
He could randomly take non-lethal damage while fighting because his hand spontaneously punched him in the face--ignore the fact that he might be wearing a shield.
If you want to show him that making extremely, ahem, 'poor' choices has major consequences then Orcus pulls him through the portal, he dies.
Alternatively he could have to make a will save each day when he wakes up from sleeping, DC starts at 10, and increases by 1 each day. When he fails ORCUS is in control of his body but is luckily limited to this 'filthy mortal pig body.'
Whenever he attacks an enemy he has a +10% miss chance (add to concealment or 0 depending on if enemy has concealment) because the hand is tickling him inappropriately.
On a roll of a 1 the hand attempts a disarm roll (full CMB) against his CMD. If it succeeds he is disarmed and the hand drops whatever it was holding, E.G. a shield.
All evil monsters might instinctively know where he is.
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The setting: the party is in the last room of a crypt in which the cultists are trying to summon Orcus into the world of Golarion. The portal is still small and needs more sacrifices to grow large enough for Orcus himself, but he can still strike through with an ethereal whip (weakened due to a poor "connection" to this world) and grab corpses to turn into undead minions that it spits out back out of the portal at the end of the turn. The portal leads directly to Uligor, home of Orcus, and the cleric decided to stick his hand through in an attempt to reach a cultist on the other side, rather than walk around it.
Now, I have a few ideas myself as to what the effects should be, which I will outline, but I wanted to see if anyone has some creative thoughts to add to the mix. Note the players are all level 1 and are in the middle of a pretty hefty combat.
The cleric's hand will suffer an accelerated rate of decay, as if it had been decomposing for years, withering to a rotten stump that is rendered useless. He won't feel the pain, or anything quite frankly, but will shocked at the results when he removes his hand from the portal.
The cleric will be granted a unique perspective of the world around him, one that causes all things living to appear dead and those that are dead to appear in the form they took in life. The sky will be gray and bleak and buildings crumbling and desecrated. (How long this will last I don't know...)
*Insert Idea Here*When designing the encounter, I thought to myself, "Should I come up with a consequence of falling or reaching in? ...Who would be so foolish." And immediately moved on =/ That'll teach me to assume.
3.) Idle Hands :) (the movie with seth green and the other chuckleheads)
And this is why you always carry a club or 10-foot pole: for prodding things with. Saved my butt in the Tomb of Horrors, with that Sphere of Annihilation and all that. The other party running it simultaneously had a guy stick his hand in it...
I was under the impression that simply entering Uligor would not cause any bodily effects, other than the fact that it's teaming with undead...