What are some good "punishment" spells?

[Yqatuba]

Say you have an evil sor/wiz who is some kind of ruler or alternatively just an abusive (redacted). What would be some good "punishment" spells? Preferably ones that don't do any hp damage but still hurt a lot so they don't risk killing the victim? Symbol of Pain and bestow curse seem best for this. Pain strike is good but does nonlethal damage, meaning a weak person might still die from it.

[Scott Wilhelm]

Use Prestidigitation + Bluff to make the character think you are disfiguring them. Maybe a dab of Acid here and there...

[Scott Wilhelm]

Punishment

[BENSLAYER]

Just a quick search later :

Minions do not need dental:

* [3] Cackling Skull - bring out the ol' punishment noggin!
* [3/5] Charnel House [Evil] - disturb them with "semi-real gore"; then once they recover inform them in a blasé manner that their favourite pet was the Material Component ... Mwahaha!
* [3] Vision of Hell - for when they finally realize that having a pet is a bad idea.
* [1/3/4/5/6/7] X Hallucination Spells - make them think that you- I mean, their partner has forsaken them. That or the thing in their nightmares has been granted flesh and come for them ... OvvO
* [1] Hide Bruises - beat them without having to be distracted by their resultant appearance. That plus inducing dysphoria over their appearance/how they feel.
* [2] Illusory Maze - amuse yourself by making the tasks they perform more difficult than they need to be, then feign shock, disappointment and condemnation. Best when they are genuinely loyal but not particularly perceptive.
* [3] Loathesome Veil - make 'em sick!
* [6] Night Terrors [Evil] - make sleeping a traumatic affair that turns them into a pliable minion ...
* [3] Phantasmal Affliction/[4] Phantasmal Asphyxiation/[6] Phantasmal Putrefaction - just a whole lot of mental scarring, right here folks!
* [2] Blindness/Deafness - it does what it says on the tin; if their performance improves for the quarter, and they reach their target Soul quota, then you may deign to return their senses.
* [3] Stinking Cloud - just look at the Material Component options. Then apply it alongside [5] Permanency to their living quarters ... using their accumulated pay/savings. :)
* [1] Scarify - ensure that no-one heals them with anything except this after Combat, cultivating a loss of self image and forcing them to endure pain a second time from the imperfect healing process.
* [3] Eruptive Pustules - a less permanent, yet more sore, "attack" on their appearance.
* [0] Ghost Sound - for when they are almost as powerful as you, so you simply want to test the waters ...
* [4/6] Green Caress - make them suffer slowly. You can remove the Effect, arrange for another disappointing minion to contract it too, or simply let it ride out. If they suffer the worst of it, at least your palace gardens will have more greenery. If you begin to miss them you can always make them part of the furniture, quite literally in fact. ^.^
* [2] Harmless Form - turn their prized companion into a joke.
* [2] Steal Voice - permanently condemn them to sounding meek and bumbling their spellcasting.
* [2/3] Kalistocrat's Nightmare - this will require them Failing to identify the Spell, (easy with the right minion), then giving them their reward/payment to go off and check.

Finally, for when you just need a momentary respite from their feeble, desperate excuses to be spared - [1] Forced Quiet.

[Spencer Souris]

Cast the spell Light on them. And then keep casting it on them everywhere they go.

[deuxhero]

Bestow Curse?

[Coidzor]

Here's a few.

A small listing:

Conditional Curse is a 5th level Sorcerer/Wizard spell. It's basically Bestow Curse, but it triggers if they do something you don't want them to do. It's permanent, and I believe you can layer them to bestow different punishments for different transgressions.

Conditional Favor is a 2nd level Witch spell. It has to be paired with another spell that the creature would want cast on it, and it lasts for 1 day per CL.

Crafter's Curse is a 1st level Sorcerer/Wizard spell. It's a punishment that lasts for days that harms a craftsman's ability to make their livelihood.

Crafter's Nightmare is a 2nd level Wizard and Witch spell. It's similar to Crafter's Curse, but involves a potential to deal 1d6 damage and instead impacts an area instead of a particular creature. So the two can stack and Crafter's Nightmare allows one to more feasibly affect an entire workshop.

Itching Curse is a 1st level Wizard and Witch spell. It's a minor thing, and only lasts for hours, but it's still not pleasant.

Undine's Curse is a 1st level Wizard and Witch spell. It's relatively minor and lasts for hours, but would have a certain intimidation factor.

Claim Identity and its Greater version are a 4th level and then 6th level Wizard spell and a 3rd level and then 5th level Witch spell. They take away a humanoid creature's face or turn them into a perfectly conscious and aware porcelain mask. For hours.

Sun's Disdain is a 2nd level Witch or Wizard spell. The Mass version is a 5th level spell for both Witches and Wizards. It's permanent and gives light blindness. Can't kill but is hugely inconvenient and makes them easier to kill in combat if their weakness is exploited.

Accursed Glare is a 3rd level Witch or Wizard spell. It lasts for days and it lets your allies get in for some real public shaming via Intimidation checks.

Knell of the Depths is a 2nd level Witch spell and a 3rd level Wizard spell. It permanently curses people to sink in water. Sort of like Psychonauts meets One Piece if you're familiar with either.

Curse of Befould Fortune is a 3rd level Witch, 4th level Wizard spell. It's permanent. It makes someone unlucky and removes their ability to Take 10 or Take 20. You can basically destroy a person's ability to earn a livelihood this way, especially if you throw a Crafter's Curse and Crafter's Nightmare on them, too.

Curse of Burning Sleep is a 4th level Witch or Wizard spell. It sets them on fire when they go to sleep for the first time after the spell is cast on them. It does deal damage, though, and then them being on fire will do damage until they're put out.

Curse of Dragonflies is a 3rd level Witch, 4th level Wizard spell. It's permanent. It's a huge inconvenience to creatures that can fly, but otherwise not of real note.

Cursed Treasure is a 3rd level Witch, 4th level Wizard spell. It permanently curses someone who touches a treasure they're not supposed to. Has to be recast every time someone takes the treasure or opens the container and removes things from it, though.

Fair is Foul is a 2nd level Witch, 4th level Wizard spell. It's permanent. It makes them deformed. Haven't checked the list of deformities, but I assume it's pretty undesirable to be deformed in such a manner.

Infuse Effigy is a 4th level Wizard spell. It's permanent and can have a variety of effects, and can involve killing people close to the chosen target in order to make the relevant effigy.

Mischievous Shadow is a 4th level Witch or Wizard spell. It lasts for days. It curses an area. Mostly affects STR and DEX skills, attack rolls, and spellcasting, though.

Black Spot is a 4th level Witch, 5th level Wizard spell. It's permanent. It will slowly kill someone by doing Con damage, but you can always choose to get rid of the spell before then.

Curse of Disgust is a 5th level Witch or Wizard spell. It's permanent. It makes the target disgusted by and try to avoid some specific trigger. Like, say, their spouse. I believe multiple can be layered to make them basically unable to function in society.

Flexile Curse is a 3rd level Witch, 5th level Wizard spell. It's permanent. It basically makes it so that the target can't wear armor for long periods of time and is more vulnerable while in armor than other creatures.

Pox of Rumors is a 7th level Witch or Wizard spell. It lasts for days. It makes them the subject of nasty rumors that eventually can result in them being imprisoned or run out of town or lynched.

Irregular Size is a 3rd level Witch, 4th level Wizard spell. It's permanent duration. You atrophy their arms, legs, or wings. Or all 3 if you cast it several times.

Calcific Touch is a 4th level Wizard spell. It does Dexterity damage and slowly turns them to stone, acting as Flesh to Stone permanently if their Dex is reduced to 0.

Contagion and its Greater version are a 4th level and then 6th level Wizard spell and the Greater version is a 5th level Witch spell. They're instantaneous. They inflict a disease, which can have a variety of effects, some potentially lethal, some not.

Life of Crime is an 8th level Wizard spell. It's permanent. It basically makes a creature unable to survive in society.

Night Blindness is a 1st level Witch or Wizard spell. It lasts for days. It makes light less bright, which is, admittedly, most inconvenient to people who spend time indoors or who are awake after sunset.

Puzzle Box is a 3rd level Witch or Wizard spell. It's permanent when cast on objects. It lets you curse objects so that they're hard to use or to figure out how to use.

Mindwipe is a 4th level Wizard spell. It inflicts negative levels for days. These negative levels can't kill, but they can render the subject catatonic and are probably fairly unpleasant even without that.

Depilate is a 1st level Witch or Wizard spell. It lasts for days. Mostly impacts the creature's ability to do social skills and such. Only works on creatures with either hair or fur.

Reckless Infatuation and Unadulterated Loathing are both 3rd level Witch or Wizard spells. They both last for days. One of them makes a creature obsessed with another. The other makes a creature the opposite of obsessed with another. Casting the spells on a pair of creatures will lead to a most unpleasant time for the one being chased around by the one with Reckless Infatuation.

Eldritch Fever is a 3rd level Witch or Wizard spell. It instantaneously inflicts the Eldritch Ague spellblight on someone that makes it difficult to cast spells.

[Ventnor]

Mark of Justice seems like a spell ripe for this kind of abuse.

[Pan, definitely not a Kitsune]

Coidzor wrote:

Here's a few.

** spoiler omitted **...

Minor correction regarding Conditional Curse:

It's not dormant until triggered by the condition, its immediately active and lifted by the condition.

Still decent punishment, since the condition can be along the lines of "Fix this mess you made!"

[Scott Wilhelm]

Geas and Quest

[Set]

Bestow curse is great, since it can be customized (with GM permission).

Curse someone to take nonlethal damage or be sickened with pain or shaken from a combination of fear and doubt or whatever whenever they do proscribed thing X (or don't do required thing Y), for a form of soft control, for instance.

Or curse them to be dependent on or vulnerable to something in the environment that you control (equip all your guards with that substance you make them vulnerable to, or limit their wanderings by, for instance, cursing your Irriseni peasant minions to suffer heat exhaustion if they ever leave the near-freezing environs of Irrisen, so they literally *can't* run away, like some kind of damaging form of agoraphobia or a magical 'electric dog collar').

Curse them to be addicted to something in your area, such as even your presence! (Although that last one can backfire tragically, if they hack you into bits so that they can each carry a bit of you close to their hearts for ever and ever... Plan carefully with your creative curses!)

It's not terribly high level, and has no costly material requirements, so it's a good choice for tossing around willy-nilly, as opposed to higher level options like geas/quest or mark of justice.

Bestow curse can even be a fun way to give a villain 'super powers' that aren't normally available, by cursing his enemies to take damage or suffer some debuffing condition if they ever hear him say a certain word or phrase, or if they ever raise arms against him. The party fights some low to mid-level spellcasters in service to the evil duke mid-adventure, and don't realize that they've been hit with various curses, because the curses have, until the big fight at the end, had no effect. Now they face the duke, and anyone attacking him takes nonlethal damage equal to any damage done to him (cursed to 'share his pain') and when he mutters a phrase ('Night be upon you!'), a separate curse lying in wait activates to strike them blind. Suddenly the evil duke, with no magical powers or spellcasting of his own, seems to be evoking magical effects, if only because he has had his flunkies soften up potential foes earlier in the campaign, perhaps before they even were known to be enemies! (He might have this done to anyone he sees as a potential threat, and he's a little bit paranoid, and perhaps makes far more enemies than he normally would through this paranoia...)

[Yqatuba]

Oh, what about arcane mark? Not as bad as most of them but you could use it to write "Idiot" or something across their face or somewhere else it's hard to hide. And there's not even a saving throw.

[Claxon]

I'm a fan of killing the perpetrator and raising their corpse as an undead (to prevent them from being easily resurrected). It really has the tinge of "I really freaking hate you".

[Pan, definitely not a Kitsune]

Have them wear an nice sash, with a easily-readable inscription reading "Sash of Honor".

However, this inscription is protected by Illusory Script - the wearer is allowed to read it, but everyone else just sees strange markings and is targeted by a suggestion spell telling them to "kick the wearer".

[Yqatuba]

Claxon wrote:

I'm a fan of killing the perpetrator and raising their corpse as an undead (to prevent them from being easily resurrected). It really has the tinge of "I really freaking hate you".

Well, ya, but I'm looking for ones that don't do damage or kill them. shooting them in the face with Acid Arrow says "I really freaking hate you" as well but would probably kill them if they are just a low level commoner/expert.

[CougarShadow Press LLC]

Phantasmal Asphyxiation from Horror Adventures seems like a fun punishment spell. Taunt them while they gag themselves unconscious.

[zza ni]

age them?
if it was good for Darkstorm it's good enough for me (although the man was a Dufus. he did have some style)

[Quoth13]

It's rounds/level but fleshcurdle is a good deform target with no damage spell

[Kitty Catoblepas]

The Inquisitor spell, Brand (http://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedPlayersGuide/spells/brand.html) does 1 point of damage and leaves an "indelible rune or mark of no more than 6 characters" for 1 day/level (Greater Brand is permanent).

It's also on the spell list for the Zorro- ...er... Hexcrafter Magus (since it has the [curse] descriptor, detailed here (http://legacy.aonprd.com/ultimateMagic/ultimateMagicAppendices.html#curse) ).