Plausible Pseudonym |
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The Bestiary 5 Egregore, a gestalt mind aberration created by a cult using a special ritual, is in my opinion the coolest monster that no one has really talked about, possibly because they mistake it for a monster that you fight rather than an amazing plot device or over the horizon buffing machine to enhance the people you actually fight.
It can cast its spells (unlimited use of Cure Moderate Wounds, limited use of monster Psychic Magic spells (the Bestiary example has Heal, Mass Bear's Endurance, and Mass Bull's Strength up to 3/day in any combination)) on any person who joined its cult mind at any range up to 1 mile.
Everyone involved has an empathic link, so when you jump some cult guards everyone knows there's a problem. The unaffected cultists can start buffing and moving to support, the Egregore can cast its mass buff spells, and then can start spamming Cure Moderate Wounds on anyone it senses is hurt. (Smart cultists would retreat or rotate to benefit from this healing.) Anyone in extremis or important enough (like the cult leader) can get a Heal to rescue them from imminent death. Oh, and any cultist subject to a mind affecting attack can use the Egregore's save bonus as a second chance, and if it fails both another cultist (perhaps sitting safely out of the way somewhere within 1 mile) can choose to suffer the result instead of the target.
There are downsides. If someone moves 1 mile away or dies, they permanently drop out of the cult mind and everyone still in has to pass a Will save DC 20 or be sickened for 1 round. Once the cult members drop below half the original, every additional loss makes the Egregore confused until it passes a Will save DC 20.
So that's the stock Egregore capabilities. It can also fight, but not particularly well, so don't worry about that. Instead, let's talk about the customized Egregores for which there are rules. A minimal Egregore gets 13 HD and three psychic magic spells (6th level maximum) if created by 13 cultists spending 1,000 gp each on the ritual. But add more cultists and you can create a more powerful Egregore Master. Every 2 additional cultists over 13 gets you an extra HD. Every extra 2 HD gets you another spell, and a higher spell level.
So we want a 19 HD that can cast 6 spells via Psychic Magic, each of which can be 9th level from any spell list, would require 25 cultists and 25k gp (GMs have room to increase those numbers, the 2 cultists per 1 HD conversion is the guideline for starting out growth past 13 HD, but it's implied it might grow further at some sort of increasing rate). I'm going to assume monster Psychic Magic still requires expensive components to avoid creating something that can spam 6 free wishes per day. But we can have it hand out Heroic Invocation, Mass Heal, Astral Projection, Etherealness, Greater Communal Spell Immunity, and any standard lower level mass buffs you might care for. If you push it with more HD you can really pack it with lots of spells. At some point I'd probably toss on Telepathic Bond so you can fully communicate with key cult members who can prioritize and direct buff support to the right people as an empathic link with dozens of people is going to get unwieldy in a crisis.
Ok. So what do we do with this? If you're playing it safe you build one to support your stationary cult, frustrating your players a bit and then letting them get to the inner sanctum and fight the weird monstrosity that was making its minions so unexpectedly tough. But why not build one with Gate, so that the entire cult can travel the multiverse as a group, provided they stay within a 1 mile radius of Egregore Master? (Someone in Axis/City of Brass hires the PCs to investigate this new group with mysterious powers that just showed up in town.) Or consider a truly selfish BBEG who conned dozens or even hundreds of followers to help him build a terrifyingly powerful Egregore Master, then plane shifted away with it, so that it severed its connection to everyone but him. (The PCs are hired by the cult to try to retrieve their former leader and collective monster pet so that they can try to reconnect to it via a new ritual and then execute the traitor.)
And so on. What ideas does this give you?
Bloodrealm |
psychic liches
This just made it click that you can make psychic casters (like the eponymous Psychic) into liches. And me realizing that made it click that being undead removes the weaknesses of psychic spellcasting because undead means immune to mind-affecting.
Also, Egregores are True Neutral, so the party can totally make one if they're crazy enough and don't care about the conspicuousness of having a flying mass of brain tissue accompanying them on their journeys.
Plausible Pseudonym |
A cabal of psychic liches with one of these on hand could be fun. I imagine the combined CR of such an encounter would be NUTS! It would be even funnier of the egregore itself was a lich.
The monster entry specifies that: "Each member must be an intelligent, living creature." But having one is GM territory, so allowing a variant because psychic liches are special doesn't seem too much of an issue.