... what do they see?
I read most of the Campaign Setting and APs, and I was both player GM in some of these campaigns. 'cause I love RPG interpretation and "plot twists" I asked myself questions about Golarion's villains and antagonist.
Whether it is a murderer's guild leader, tragic and delusional demonic cultists, ancient king-wizard or elder and mythical beings like Baba Yaga and demon lords, each one has to also feed the least of fears.
I know that some of the main villain are immune to the fear and mind-affecting effects - this is not meant to be a thread in which one tries to circumvent these immunities to use this spell. No, I'd like to know what would be, for each of the most powerful and feared evil of this setting, the representation of their fear.
You create a phantasmal image of the most fearsome creature imaginable to the subject simply by forming the fears of the subject's subconscious mind into something that its conscious mind can visualize: this most horrible beast. (...)
Have you ever asked this question? What do you think??
... what do they see?
You don't know. As the spell description says, "Only the spell's subject can see the phantasmal killer. You see only a vague shape."
I suspect that neither you nor your character would actually find it scary at all -- it might well be a large bowl of oatmeal, because only the subject has that immediate and visceral reaction dating back to when they were three years old and their elder brother almost drowned them in a bowl of oatmeal (while mummy and daddy just sat back and laughed). It might even be the sort of thing that the subject of the spell themselves doesn't fully understand, because they've managed to forget (read, "block") why they don't like oatmeal and prefer waffles.
It's like the boggart in Harry Potter -- what one person finds terrifying, another may simply find annoying, or even romantic. ("Why is Professor Remus Lupin afraid of the moon?")
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Karzoug's is a tax collector with infinite power.
... what do they see?You don't know. As the spell description says, "Only the spell's subject can see the phantasmal killer. You see only a vague shape."
I suspect that neither you nor your character would actually find it scary at all -- it might well be a large bowl of oatmeal, because only the subject has that immediate and visceral reaction dating back to when they were three years old and their elder brother almost drowned them in a bowl of oatmeal (while mummy and daddy just sat back and laughed). It might even be the sort of thing that the subject of the spell themselves doesn't fully understand, because they've managed to forget (read, "block") why they don't like oatmeal and prefer waffles.
It's like the boggart in Harry Potter -- what one person finds terrifying, another may simply find annoying, or even romantic. ("Why is Professor Remus Lupin afraid of the moon?")
I know - after all, this is my curiosity. I just wanted to know what could be the greatest fear of Baba Yaga or other villains :)
We end up getting a few hints as to what Barzillai Thrune's ultimate fears are...
Hahahaha!
Karzoug: A horde of penniless paupers swarming him, taking everything.
Queen Illeosa: Her face in a mirror, swiftly showing the ravages of age until she is a withered, terrible crone.
Allevrah Azrinae: The god Nethys, cursing her for her fall.
Jhavhul: Ymeri choosing Nefeshti as her consort, then the two of them mocking the efreeti and leaving.
Ecarrdian Drovenge: His sister stabbing him in the back, then claiming Westcrown for herself.
Nyrissa: The same jabberwocky that was sent to kill her by the Eldest.
Vyr-Azul: Ydersius's skull shattering irrevocably.
Adivion Adrissant: Immune to mind-affecting effects. If he weren't though, I imagine lich Adivion's greatest fear would be transforming back into a living man. All his work undone.
Soto Takahiro, the Jade Regent: Emperor Shigure, alive and well, claiming the Jade Throne once and for all.
Kerdak Bonefist: I never got a good feel for this guy. By the end he was more dictator than pirate. So I'm going with... spiders.
Clockwork Reliquary: Immune to mind-affecting effects. As for Xin himself, he ended up deeply paranoid. So maybe a band of assassins or even the Runelords of his day come to strike him down. He also hated chaos, so perhaps his army of clockwork automatons going berserk.
Queen Elvanna: Baba Yaga.
Deskari: A can of Raid.
Hakotep I: Immune to mind-affecting effects. If he weren't, perhaps one of the great flying Shory cities. Even in miniature.
Unity: Its own rusting obsolescence, or perhaps being trapped in a tiny, bricked device.
Volstus: A human with an orb of giantkind.
Barzillai Thrune: Being mocked by beautiful women. Though really, his deepest fear is dying with no legacy and no one remembering him.
Alexeara Cansellarion: An angel castigating her for her failing faith, and the uselessness of her crusade.
Count Haserton Lowls IV: Cats.
You know, it's so weird that after all of these years, a list of final AP villains would come to include an LG pally.
Each of the murals on the walls depicts the demon lord Deskari mutilating and savaging a different deity-Iomedae, Sarenrae, Torag, Desna, and Shelyn.
So Deskari's ultimate fear might be the above deities savaging him.
I like what you wrote for Barzillai (since he definitely has some issues with women), I think it might also make sense for an elderly clone of him to manifest before his eyes before aging to death and dissolving into dust before being blown away in the wind.
Alexara's true fear, even moreso then an angel castigating her, would be Iomedae herself appearing to condemn and execute her. Like the controversial scene in Wrath of the Righteous, except in her case she just...dies.
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Um, hello! Paladin! I don't have any fears.
I already know I'm going to Heaven.
Irovetti: His beloved weapon comes alive in his hand and eats him alive and screaming.
D. Thrune: a pirate slaver, Bonefist himself perhaps, manacles in tow.
Rasputin: Iosef Stalin comes to collect him in person, shielded from his mighty magic.
As a subset question, if the big bad fears nothing, how can fantasmal killer even work?
Sociopaths and Psychopaths might never be affected.
Last time I checked, people with Antisocial Personality Disorder still feel emotions.
Nope, nothing about being incapable of feeling fear. Phantasmal killer works fine.
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Must check my disorders more thoroughly.
Edit - completely correct. They do have emotions. However some of them can become very blunted to the point they never experience extremes and can't respond to them.
The entire point of Phantasmal,killer is to induce such an extreme response to fear it kills you.
Makes a pretty cool bad guy who is so blunted emotionally that Phantasmal killer can't effect him. Maybe that's his modus operandi even. He's so desperate to feel fear, or any real emotion, strong enough that he kills people with that very spell, hoping to catch a glimpse of what terrors are beyond his ken.
Must check my disorders more thoroughly.
Edit - completely correct. They do have emotions. However some of them can become very blunted to the point they never experience extremes and can't respond to them.
The entire point of Phantasmal,killer is to induce such an extreme response to fear it kills you.
Makes a pretty cool bad guy who is so blunted emotionally that Phantasmal killer can't effect him. Maybe that's his modus operandi even. He's so desperate to feel fear, or any real emotion, strong enough that he kills people with that very spell, hoping to catch a glimpse of what terrors are beyond his ken.
What if the bad guy deliberately "mindlinks" with his victims in some fashion just before nuking them with a phantasmal killer in an effort to see what they see?
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Even better Turin. Even better.
This could make a great serial killer game. Maybe he mind melds so well that normal means of communicating with the dead are useless. The victim sees his worst fears but also experiences someone watching him die at the same time.
Maybe the murderer traps the souls as well, to meld with at later times to relive the deaths that came closest to allowing him to feel fear intensely.
The souls can't resurrect, and Pharasma hasn't seen them to pass judgement. Indeed they are locked outside the normal influence of the gods.....for the moment.
"The treatment also completely scorched my nerve endings so I don't feel pain. In fact you might say, I don't feel anything at all" - Francis (AKA Ajax), from Deadpool.
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Unless your immune to cold. Or immune to psychic effects, or immune to fear, or emotionally blunted.
Notice in their case they had to,deliberately spell out how magic affected Your bad guy. That's because it's not the norm. They wrote the exception into,their rule.
You could just as easily write the other way in as well.
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Actually I think if they describe him as totally devoid of all human emotions, then they really did need that extra fact. The information provided in the villains text allows DMs to make calls on what can and can't work.
However, to make things easier, when designing a villain like the one I was describing above, I guess you can just add the Ex ability (immune to all emotional effects) or some such thing. Perfectly fine for DM call really.
Not even all that powerful really. There's so many more ways to kill a baddy.
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Actually I think if they describe him as totally devoid of all human emotions, then they really did need that extra fact. The information provided in the villains text allows DMs to make calls on what can and can't work.
However, to make things easier, when designing a villain like the one I was describing above, I guess you can just add the Ex ability (immune to all emotional effects) or some such thing. Perfectly fine for DM call really.
Not even all that powerful really. There's so many more ways to kill a baddy.
I think it's fine for a GM to say "This villain is incapable of human emotions, and is immune to all emotion-based effects as a result." Or really, make him/her/it immune to anything the GM wants.
A PC on the other hand? No, I'd definitely draw the line there. If a PC wants to be immune to emotion effects, there's always the android race.
100% agreed.
I know - after all, this is my curiosity. I just wanted to know what could be the greatest fear of Baba Yaga or other villains :)
Baba Yaga? Baba Yaga Nana.
/cevah