Cursing a name?


Advice


Fairly common trope if you say the name the person who's name it is knows and more importantly knows where you are.

Voldemort did it, Bloody Mary has a similar the dark one in Once Upon a Time has the same trick.

Is there a way in pathfinder?


Not really, no. "Name" magic is very common in myths but not well-supported in Pathfinder.


When 3.5 went into detail about deities it specified that a deity is aware of any area its name is spoken in, so in Faerun you were thinking twice before cursing a deity by name.
Can't think of anything like that in pathfinder.


Trap the Soul works better if you say their name, but that's very high level.


You could have a contingency active whose trigger criterion was "Someone says my name." If you wanted to be strictly within the rules of contingency, the linked spell would have to be remote viewing, since that seems to be the only scrying spell that with a target of "you." However, if you wanted to fudge the ability a little bit, you could make the contingent spell scrying or any other long-distance viewing spell.

Part of the fun in that scrying version is that someone could say the name, then you could secretly roll the Will save against the scrying. They would never know for sure if they had attracted the attention of The One We Do Not Name. With remote viewing there is, of course, the limitation of it being a psychic impression, but that is open enough to interpretation that a PC could never be sure exactly HOW knowledgeable TOWDNN was.

*EDIT: If you're GMing this, you could also fold this ability into an item worn by TOWDNN, to avoid having to recast contingency every time someone slipped up and said the name.

*EDIT 2: The other way around the limitations of contingency is to have the companion spell be any other self-affecting spell. Then TOWDNN knows that someone has named them (because shield or whatever just went off, and casts scrying with the target of "the person who just named me." Note that scrying takes an hour to cast, so there is some lag time between saying the name and being seen--this can work to good dramatic effect.


quibblemuch wrote:

You could have a contingency active whose trigger criterion was "Someone says my name." If you wanted to be strictly within the rules of contingency, the linked spell would have to be remote viewing, since that seems to be the only scrying spell that with a target of "you." However, if you wanted to fudge the ability a little bit, you could make the contingent spell scrying or any other long-distance viewing spell.

Part of the fun in that scrying version is that someone could say the name, then you could secretly roll the Will save against the scrying. They would never know for sure if they had attracted the attention of The One We Do Not Name. With remote viewing there is, of course, the limitation of it being a psychic impression, but that is open enough to interpretation that a PC could never be sure exactly HOW knowledgeable TOWDNN was.

*EDIT: If you're GMing this, you could also fold this ability into an item worn by TOWDNN, to avoid having to recast contingency every time someone slipped up and said the name.

*EDIT 2: The other way around the limitations of contingency is to have the companion spell be any other self-affecting spell. Then TOWDNN knows that someone has named them (because shield or whatever just went off, and casts scrying with the target of "the person who just named me." Note that scrying takes an hour to cast, so there is some lag time between saying the name and being seen--this can work to good dramatic effect.

A slight problem: they will know if they succeed the save. However, if they fail, they don't know if they failed of if they are beneath his effort to even try.

Also, can you have a whole bunch of people say the name at the same time, causing the contingencies to distract the villain?


The Sideromancer wrote:
A slight problem: they will know if they succeed the save. However, if they fail, they don't know if they failed of if they are beneath his effort to even try.

This presumes that the PC knows how TOWDNN does what they do. Otherwise, all they know is that an hour after they said the name, they "feel a hostile force or a tingle, but cannot deduce the exact nature of the attack."

The Sideromancer wrote:
Also, can you have a whole bunch of people say the name at the same time, causing the contingencies to distract the villain?

This also depends on knowing how the villain does what they do. But I would argue that (a) that's a bit meta-gamey and (b) if TOWDNN is sufficiently terrifying, how are you going to convince a bunch of people to inverse-Spartacus them? Who's going to go first? Even if you try it all at the same time, who is going to be brave enough to take that risk? And how do you coordinate all those people?

If no one knows how TOWDNN knows when the name is said, and the only information available to PCs is that whenever the name is said, terrible things eventually happen, there is no reason in-game to assume that it is the Rube-Goldbergian spell chain I've suggested.

You could argue that with enough research or knowledge, the PCs could reverse-engineer it--but I really feel like that's meta-gaming again. If there's only one person in the world (world=the PCs experience in a campaign) who can do this mysterious, horrible thing, then it is probably one of those secrets TOWDNN would guard very carefully, and researching how to do it would attract their attention as surely as saying the name.

*EDIT: In fact, if you set this up early enough in the campaign, it is virtually assured that the PCs won't have access to the knowledge or spell-casting ability to know how this works. Which makes it a good repeatable way to scare them and keep TOWDNN involved without their direct presence.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'd probably make it a ninth level occult ritual. It's generally associated with heavy-hitters like Voldemort or the devil. Some restrictions might be that it only works in reference to you, not somebody who shares your name, and it might require your name to be said three times. It's a permanent national or global divination effect, and since that's beyond the scope of spells, it should be a ritual.


As a follow on to the whole "Will save an hour later" idea, there could be horrible consequences for this. For instance, the PC says the name. An hour later they feel a creepy probing. An hour after that, the person closest to them in the world fails a save. Within 24 hours, a horde of orcs (or whatever TOWDNN's lowest minions are) destroys the town where that person lives.

"Say my name again. Go ahead."


lol it's not a villain just seems like a kewl/intense idea

To avoid the casting every time someone says your name thing perhaps it would be more fun for their to be like a little nursery ryme type thing that is known to summon person X. Like the black sacrament in the dark brotherhood.

EDIT: it's actually for a high level witch I theory crafted a while back.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

You make an interesting point... why is it that no one good ever shows up when you say their name? Like there's never anyone advising: "Oh yeah, just say this guy's name and good stuff will happen."

Oh, right. That would last about 10 seconds and then everyone would be yelling the good guy's name all at once to ask for help getting stuff off a high shelf or chop some wood or help their home team score a goal... and the enraged powerful person would smite the jabbers out of them all and the name would become unmentionable.

People. Can't have. Nice. Things.


quibblemuch wrote:

As a follow on to the whole "Will save an hour later" idea, there could be horrible consequences for this. For instance, the PC says the name. An hour later they feel a creepy probing. An hour after that, the person closest to them in the world fails a save. Within 24 hours, a horde of orcs (or whatever TOWDNN's lowest minions are) destroys the town where that person lives.

"Say my name again. Go ahead."

How would they get that information (location, close associates)if the scrying fails?


The Sideromancer wrote:
How would they get that information (location, close associates)if the scrying fails?

There are so many possible answers to this... I'll stick with one.

The same way they scryed on the first person. Scrying on "the person who just said my name" is not categorically different than scrying on "the person closest to the person who said my name an hour ago."

Admittedly, not knowing anything about either of those people except that they said your name or were close to someone who said your name is a healthy boost to the Will save. But the point of the exercise is possibility, not that it is a certain fact of absolute happening every single time. The answer to the question of "is there a way of doing this in Pathfinder" is "yes, and here's one way that it might work using the rules of the game."

If you don't want this to work in your game, that's cool, but why spend time tearing down someone else's ideas? I'm genuinely confused as to the purpose of that.


quibblemuch wrote:
The Sideromancer wrote:
How would they get that information (location, close associates)if the scrying fails?

There are so many possible answers to this... I'll stick with one.

The same way they scryed on the first person. Scrying on "the person who just said my name" is not categorically different than scrying on "the person closest to the person who said my name an hour ago."

Admittedly, not knowing anything about either of those people except that they said your name or were close to someone who said your name is a healthy boost to the Will save. But the point of the exercise is possibility, not that it is a certain fact of absolute happening every single time. The answer to the question of "is there a way of doing this in Pathfinder" is "yes, and here's one way that it might work using the rules of the game."

If you don't want this to work in your game, that's cool, but why spend time tearing down someone else's ideas? I'm genuinely confused as to the purpose of that.

I was mainly curious, was forgetting they could just manually scry in addition to the contingent ones.


The Sideromancer wrote:
I was mainly curious, was forgetting they could just manually scry in addition to the contingent ones.

RAW they'd have to manually scry anyway--contingency only lets you link spells that you cast on yourself. If I were GMing the idea, I'd probably fudge that part, for drama's sake.


Sad face Witches don't get contingency .-.
She'd have been neutral for what it's worth and probably have taken pains to make clear that whilst not evil she is also not patient.


As a samsaran, you could take the alternate racial trait that gives you arcane spells from other lists...


1 person marked this as a favorite.
quibblemuch wrote:

You make an interesting point... why is it that no one good ever shows up when you say their name? Like there's never anyone advising: "Oh yeah, just say this guy's name and good stuff will happen."

Oh, right. That would last about 10 seconds and then everyone would be yelling the good guy's name all at once to ask for help getting stuff off a high shelf or chop some wood or help their home team score a goal... and the enraged powerful person would smite the jabbers out of them all and the name would become unmentionable.

People. Can't have. Nice. Things.

Chronicles of Chrestomanci (or something of the sort) had that. It was less getting bothered all the time and more of a deus ex machina issue. He'd show up when called and sort everything out.


I recall a prestige class back in 3.5 (Possibly as far back as 3.0) that has this as its Lv. 10 Capstone. Think it was called the Eldritch Master

In short, the spellcaster instantly knew whenever anybody spoke her real name, and was given enough information to scry on them, though she learned nothing else, and she could ignore it as she desired.

Pretty sure I saw it in Dragon Magazine.


yes there is.. It's from the Oracle Class, Old Gods Mystery

By My Name You Shall Call Me (Su)

As a creature attuned to the eldritch corridors of power, you can hear your name spoken aloud, even over great distances. If another creature speaks your name, you may observe it as if you had cast scrying. At 15th level, you may also choose to move to the speaker's location as if through greater teleport. You can detect creatures speaking your name to a range of 100 miles per oracle level. You must be at least 7th level to select this revelation.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Advice / Cursing a name? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.