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The quote in the thread title is attributed to H.P. Lovecraft, whose bleak "cosmicist" philosophy inspired the creation of the nihilurge, a new PF base class I've created. Those familiar with my shadewright class will recognize the nihilurge as partly an expansion of the world deformer archetype I created for that class. To a lesser extent, it also vaguely works as a reimagining of my now-defunct alienist base class. The nihilurge has no ties to the Shadow Plane, drawing instead on the powers of the void to warp reality, birth abominations from inanimate matter and mutate the flesh of both her allies and foes. Deity-defying, madness-courting and quite vile, the nihilurge is my idea of a proper cosmic horror-themed base class! I hope y'all enjoy.
The link above contains a Google Drive folder, wherein can be found the main nihilurge document and the document containing the class' selectable abilities, called anomalies. If changes and expansions are made to the class, these will be reflected in the contents of the above URL, which I will continuously update.
Cheers,
- Gears
Oh, two new classes.
The Nihilist is awesome. My only complaint is the Swalloed by the World anomaly. Save or dies are bad. Save or dies riders on another good ability are worse. Save or dies available at 12th level are the worst. Just remove it. Now to check the Unmage.
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I disagree with the above claim about Swallowed by the World - "save-or-die" phenomena have always been part of the game, there's no reason why that should change.
I need to take a lot more time to read this well, but in the meantime, I will say three things:
- I think you can do a lot better with the weapon and armor proficiencies - "all simple weapons and light armor" is about as unimaginative as it gets. You can do better, how about a custom list that actually feels like a list of weapons a Lovecraft character might actually use?
- This class's abilities really should be Intelligence-based. Lovecraft's characters (protagonists and villains alike) were in the vast majority of cases individuals of learning, but seldom as hot in the charisma department (nerds, recluses, pariahs, eccentrics, that sort of character), and no doubt it takes a truly brilliant mind to overcome the illusion that is Reality and wield the madness beneath.
- I'd suggest an "any non-Lawful" alignment restriction. Think about it: Anybody who embraces this class has dedicated themselves to going off the deep end, haven't they? Society's norms aren't going to mean much to them any longer, and they're probably never going to be able to truly belong to any "community" even if they try.
Other than that, this looks very cool and ambitious, and I'd love to try to playtest it at some point!
Thanks for the commentary. Much appreciated.
@mercenario: I freely admit that save-or-suck abilities can be problematic. I understand it's a common practice within certain groups for players playing casters to simply comply with a gentleman's agreement not to use them at all, or do so only sparingly. I personally think they can be very fun and dramatic if not overused. I will note, however, that swallowed by the world is not the only S-o-S ability available to the nihilurge (not nihilist, guys! :P), but all of its S-o-S abilities are completely optional. If playing in a group where wizard and cleric players understand to completely abstain from their S-o-S options or use them only infrequently, I would advise a nihilurge player to treat the S-o-S options available to this class in the same fashion.
@Hiding: The reason for the simplistic proficiencies is that this is a 1/2 BAB class that functions primarily like a full caster. I.e., weapons and armor won't mean a lot to the nihilurge, and thus I didn't make them a focus of its class features. It gains access to practically no abilities which promote weapon use. That being said, I'm sure I could alter the proficiencies to, for instance, more closely mimic those of an investigator, even if it would mostly be a decorative thing. I'm not opposed to doing that, per se.
It's funny. As I was writing up this class, I said to myself, "If IHIYC reads this, the first thing I'm gonna hear from them is that the class should be Int based." :)
I know you have an aversion (not unjustified) to the barrage of Cha-based magical classes that seem to be flooding both the 1pp, 3ppp and homebrew markets of PF. I do share this sentiment to a degree. It is a bit too "easy" to make classes Cha-based, both from a mechanical and a flavor standpoint, because Charisma can sort of "be anything", in terms of power sources, et cetera.
My reasoning for making the nihilurge Cha-based, however, is a little different. They're not intended to be Cha-based in the sense of a sorcerer or oracle, where their power is sort of random and achieved without proper study. Instead, I imagine them as being Cha-based in the same fashion as a bard. They're more like delirious artists than regimented academics.
Now, that being said, all throughout working on this class I've been torn between making them Cha-based, Int-based or both. Your argument is far from unreasonable, and I've been thinking along those lines myself at times. Right now I am a bit torn still, but it's undeniable that both the "evolutions known" and "strange knowledge" class features make the Cha-basis feel rather tacked on. Ideally I would have some class features be based on Int and some on Cha, but that seems really tricky to balance. This class isn't as powerful as a true 9-level caster, yet has the chassis of one, and so will already be a bit MAD due to having to shore up their saves, AC and HP, even if they're SAD class feature-wise. I'll have to mull this over. Possibly switching completely to Int will be the way to go in the end.
I think the lack of alignment restrictions is fine, actually. Personally, I don't like them as I think they unnecessarily limit imagination and roleplaying opportunities, and in the particular case of the nihilurge I also think they're unwarranted. I could totally imagine a weird, obsessive, super-lawful neutral nihilurge, full of strange phobias and compulsions and weird rules she feels she has to follow in order to pursue her eldritch craft. I could also imagine a nihilurge feeling the need to be very strict in her adherence to mores and laws to balance out the maddening powers of the void, so as not to be swept away into utter, inescapable insanity. I definitely understand the desire to add "any nonlawful" or "any nongood" or similar to the class, but in the end I don't think it's going to make the nihilurge any better or more fun to play, so I just think I'd rather not.
I'm glad you think it all looks cool, though. If you try playing one, I'd love to hear about it. It has a lot of rather tricky and odd class features, and it'd be interesting to see how things like the nihilism ability and the granting of evolutions at the price of a Wis penalty work out in actual play.
In other news, I'm probably going to create an Abyss-focused archetype that channel demonic energy to warp the world and creates vile bodies with the fiendish template, as well as one that gains the ability to warp flesh as an area effect and lastly one that gains a permanent lovercraftian horror pet in place of the vile bodies ability. So that's potentially something to look forward to. :)
Cheers,
- Gears
So, I did a lot of soul-searching, sacrificed some innocents to the Black Goat of the Forest with a Thousand Young, and came to the following conclusions regarding I'm Hiding In Your Closet's suggested changes:
1. I've changed the class' proficencies to this: "The nihilurge is proficient with all simple weapons, plus the shortsword, sword cane, whip and either a single one-handed firearm or a single kind of crossbow of her choosing. She is proficient with light armor and bucklers, but not with any other kind of armor or shields."
I think that gives at least a somewhat more "Lovecraftian investigator" feel, and I suppose the nihilurge could (sorta?) bulk herself up with evolutions to be able to fight with weapons, although I'm not entirely sure how viable that could ever be. But even if it's strictly window dressing, I still think it's nice flavor-wise and, hey, every caster needs a back-up weapon sometimes, so I think it all works out.
2. After wrestling with the issue, I've decided to convert the class wholly to an Int basis. All formerly Cha-based abilities are now Int-based, and Strange Knowledge no longer lets you replace Int with Cha on Knowledge skills. I've retained the 4 + Int mod skill ranks, because I don't think it'll be overpowered for these guys to have quite a lot of skill ranks. Their utility is still vastly dwarfed by that of a wizard or witch, so beating those guys in the skill ranks game seems alright. If people think this seems OP or unnecessary, I wouldn't be averse to bumping the nihilurge down to 2 + Int mod ranks.
So, that's what I'm changing. I'm not adding any alignment restrictions, for reasons discussed above, but I hope y'all enjoy. The Google Drive files have been updated to reflect these changes.
Cheers,
- Gears
The problem with Swallowed by the World is that it is an instantaneous Save or Die. (Not a Save or Suck, a Save or Die. You gotta look at it from the point of view of a low reflex character being hit with this ability on the opening round of a fight:
DM: Hey, Fighter roll Reflex.
Player: Ah crap rolled a ten, howe much damage do I take?
DM: No, you're dead.
Player: And I never played with that group again.
Can I at least convince you to do like Suffocation, and give the target a three round count before it dies? Like:
First round if the enemy fails his Ref save he is entangled and takes damage, if he fails again on the second round he is paralyzed, buried to the neck and takes damage again, on the third round he dies. On the first round he can try to escape with a strenght check or Escape Artist roll, on the first or second round someone can spend a standard action to dig him out, making a strenght checkto break the hold, with the trapped creature providing an Aid Another.
Also it should cost an additional void point if the creature is more than two sizes bigger than the Nihilurge. Swallowing a giant should be harder than a human.
I tend to use Save-or-Suck and Save-or-Die kinda interchangeably. I am aware that the ability I wrote flat-out kills you. Pardon the sloppy verbiage.
I definitely don't like the idea of increasing the cost of the ability based on your target's size. That's just going to end up getting silly and way too expensive at higher levels when you'll almost always be fighting massive creatures. They already need to be able to fit into the bit of matter you want to eat them, so there's already a restriction on what size critters this ability can affect.
I would really advise people reading this class to keep in mind that I primarily design my classes to be used by PCs. It's less important to me if they would make super terrifyingly dangerous villains; that's not their major design goal.
Having said that, I'm not averse to certain aspects of your proposed fix, although I think they make the ability a bit too fiddly for my own personal tastes. What I'll do is this, I think:
"The nihilurge can phase a foe into the flesh of the world, potentially killing it instantly. To use this ability, the nihilurge expends 2 additional void points as part of using her world warp ability. This allows the nihilurge to target one creature within 30 feet that is adjacent to a solid surface, at least thick enough to accommodate the creature's body in all three dimensions, which is currently being affected by the world warp. The nihilurge then wills the solid surface to swallow the creature whole, forcing the creature to make a Reflex save. If this save succeeds, the creature is ejected into the nearest open space and takes 5d6 points of magical bludgeoning damage. If it fails the save, however, the creature must immediately make a secondary Fortitude save or else die instantly as its body merges with the surrounding matter. When the world warp's effects are reversed after its duration expires, the creature's mangled corpse emerges in the space where it was swallowed. This ability has no effect on creatures that can earth glide, are incorporeal, or can otherwise survive merging with a solid object. The nihilurge must be at least 12th level to gain this anomaly."
Thoughts? Now it allows two saves to avoid it, and in my experience creatures with crappy Reflex saves tend, on the whole, to have good Fort saves. In a similar vein, creatures with both bad Fort and Ref saves tend to be permanently flying or similar at 12th level. With this in mind, this fix should make the ability a lot less lethal overall.
Cheers,
- Gears
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@VM mercenario: I missed that the ability in question was "make one save or instant death" - while I'm still unsure how I feel about the comparatively new wave of objection to what used to be an accepted high-level danger, realizing that that's what you were looking at does make your objection sound more reasonable.
I just have to respond directly to this one line:
They're more like delirious artists than regimented academics.
Aren't "delirious academics" an option? That's kind of what your quintessential Lovecraft character IS.
A note on alignment: The Law/Chaos axis of alignment is (at least chiefly) an issue of one's beliefs about how society ought to work, their place in it, and even the very concept of society itself - it's not about "OCD vs ADD," as I've seen some characterize it. In fact, my experience as a person with severe OCD, and sharing a family with some strongly ADD people, is that OCD can drive one closer to Chaos out of discontent with both oneself and others, while ADD can drive people closer to Law as a crutch to compensate for one's lack of power over oneself. I believe in alignment restrictions for classes where that shoe fits, they've always been part of the game.
Otherwise, fair enough! :)
Well, with the switch to an Int basis, you've now got your delirious academics. :)
As for the alignment thing, I reckon that's just a matter of taste. I sometimes like classes with very well-defined fluff restrictions (case in point; the nihilurge's whole nihilism ability does possess a whiff of that), but in the particular case of alignment I tend to be more against it. I've always felt that paladins should've been "any good" and antipaladins "any evil", and then adjusting their codes accordingly. I don't care about the legacy of the classes; it would just make them funner to play, in my book. Then you could create LG-only archetypes, or similar.
Anyway, yeah. I think granting a double save to swallowed by the world was the right call. I might still change it to make it even less save-or-die-y later on, but for now it seems more in line with classic SoD fare like phantasmal killer in terms of lethality.
Cheers,
- Gears
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Why? The term 'fluff' simply implies the non-rules-based part of the game, so called because it is mutable and only limited by your imagination. The opposite is 'crunch' because it's rigid and well-defined. In no way does either term involve a value judgment. In my home group, both as a player and a GM, I devote a hell of a lot more time to "fluff" than "crunch". I just like to keep the fluff in my homebrew work relatively generalized and open-ended, so people could use my classes to tell whatever story they want, without being overly tied down to my own conceptions of what a class "should" be.
HE CAN TRY. I HUNGER.
Aha! I see the Nihilurge got to the gazebo first and turned it into a vile body. ^_^
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The term sounds inherently dismissive (even James Jacobs thinks so) - and I also find it a mistake to draw this boundary like you describe, when this system works best when you think of it all in an inextricably holistic fashion. Also, the whole concept of "character class" means from the outset that the game creator is telling you, to a degree, what your character is.
I'm pretty fully on EG's side on this one. I'm far too much in favor of being able to reflavor classes/etc. to suit the character concept to want to encourage more limitations than absolutely necessary.
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It's all about degrees though. Things are never black and white. I'm just trying to outline where on the spectrum I reside as a designer and a player of PF. The Nihilurge is my "Lovecraft-inspired reality warping madness class", not my "Lovecraft-inspired reality warping madness class that cannot be of lawful alignment and also has to worship X,Y or Z Lovecraftian gods and furthermore has to fight with a tommygun because I think that's really thematic".
The nihilurge, to me, represents about as far as I am willing to go in terms of enforcing the roleplaying aspect of a class I create. I might go a bit further in a few other instances (especially with selectable abilities you don't have to use, or in the context of an archetype), but on the whole this class is a pretty good benchmark.
I'm really not sure how to play this game in a "holistic" fashion, if I'm quite honest. Like, before the Bolt Ace came out, a guy in my home group wanted to play a crossbow sniper. But crossbow snipers suck. So we just refluffed and house-ruled a bunch of stuff from other mechanical options until he got a character that a) was a crossbow sniper and b) didn't suck. That's all I mean when I say that fluff is mutable and crunch is not. Where being holistic enters into it I frankly don't grasp. Was I not being holistic as a GM in doing this? I'm just not at all sure what the term entails in this context.
Cheers,
- Gears
Just a small update. I've clarified that nihilurges immune to confusion cannot use warp flesh as a swift action. In the same vein, I've also clarified that the saving throw bonus granted by embrace madness does not apply to saves against effects created by the nihilurge herself. These two fixes make sure that the risk of becoming confused when using warp flesh as a swift action remains constant, and increases as you use embrace madness.
I think this is thematic and it seems balanced since both swift action warp flesh and embrace madness are quite powerful abilities and there being a bit of anti-synergy between them (forcing you to choose between one and the other, as it were) appears suitable. I've updated the Google Drive files to reflect these changes.
In other news, I've started work on an Abyss- and demons-themed archetype, tentatively called the World Wounder, which I will hopefully be able to post here before long.
Cheers,
- Gears
So, another small set of tweaks to the nihilurge. Since I felt like the main class was a bit too jam-packed with freebie class features, I've removed Strange Knowledge as a class feature. It is now instead selectable as an anomaly (titled Weird Knowledge), which can be gained at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th level.
I also changed Embrace Madness so it's gained at 4th instead of 2nd level. I did this because it seems more in line with something like the magus' spell recall ability, also gained at 4th level. I.e. it's really not essential for the nihilurge to function, but is just a sort of nice boost when you need more void points.
Cheers,
- Gears
So, I've uploaded my first archetype for the nihilurge in the Nihilurge Files folder. It's called the World Wounder and is an Abyss-themed archetype that warps reality via demonic energies rather than void-touched ones. Any input welcome!
Cheers,
- Gears
He's a Golarion deity, right? My group's always played in our homebrew setting, so my Golarion knowledge is extremely spotty. Some things I know quite a lot about, but others are a complete question mark to me, like this Groetus chap. He's not related to the Great Old Ones or anything like that, is he?
I could do it, I suppose. It's fun making archetypes for this class. I had kind of been thinking of making the next one a rather radical departure though, by making it a fey-themed archetype that weaves vegetative magic into objects to animate them, channeling the ever-changing energies of the First World to warp reality.
Well, Rovagug I did know a bit about, but Groetus sounds like a cool, weird deity. Although, I have to say, aside from the fact that the nihilurge is sort of blanket anti-divine in its standard form, I do feel otherwise that the base class would do a pretty good job of modeling a worshipper of a god like that. What I'm saying is, I'm not really sure what unique features a Groetus-archetype would have.