Oh, evil lords dwelling in the abyss of this forum, I summon thee.
I have been playing Pathfinder for a few years, and while I got to experiment with some ageless classic - falchion crit flying barbarian, knife-master Unchained Rogue, Shocking Grasp magus, etc - I'm growing bored with the mundane options.
The primal satisfaction of hacking a monster to pieces, smug contempt of blasting it from afar, manical glee of stabbing some thug in the kidney... Maybe I'm in a blue period, but I'm beginning to find that distasteful.
Fortunately, I'm barely scratching the more advanced classes and stumbled upon some interesting option in AP (like Feysworn or Mortal Usher). This is giving me some hope to find someone a tad more exotic and grandiose for a special occasion.
How would you go about making a character so deeply horrible that people would just fall to their knees, puking their brains and scratching their face off? Something so bizarrely alien its mere presence is anathema to life?
I explored a few leads for "visually disturbing" characters but none have turned to be quite viable:
- Madness bomb alchemist: will probably run out of bombs before anything drops to 0 Wisdom
- Tentacle grabing eidolons: multi grapple is baaaaad.
- Evil Cleric Dhampir: channeling negative energy to heal yourselves and harm those around you is fun, but not that "horror-ish" and could use some more punch.
What I'm looking for is (ranked from most to less appealing):
- Area effect (preferably centered on you) dealing damages or inflicting fear effect (either is good)
- Regenerating HP by harming something (cookie point if you get to devour the soul of... ahem, I'm digressing).
- Locking enemies near you when they would prefer to avoid your vincinity.
If we could avoid 3rd party, that'd be awesome. Otherwise, not looking for anything PFS legal, just something I could work with with an understanding DM given I point to the appropriate ressources.
I mean, if you want them to literally puke. I have a bunch of grapple builds based around the following feat chain
Racial Heritage[Ogre](1st), Great Fortitude(1st), Corrupted Flesh(6th), Improved Stench(7th), Pungent Stench (9th),
essentially it gives your character
•At 9th level You have Stench (60 ft, DC 16+Con mod, 15 rounds)
•Your Stench ability will nauseate opponents and sicken them. Sickened applies a -2 to most actions and nauseate will prevent them from being allowed to make a grapple check to break free.
One of the things about this build that normally is a drawback is that there's no way to "turn off" the stench effect. This means that every 24 hours everyone you're travelling with has to make a save.
If you want a character that is just visually unappealing there is the prestige class Bloatmage. Your character becomes disgustingly fat in exchange for increased spellpower. If you don't like the class but do like the aesthetics of it you could just take the feat Bloatmage Initiate which is useful for most builds based around casting spells.
You might also look into things like Flesh Crafting, Demonic Implants, and Necrografts.
@LordKailas,
you can use potions and/or wands of Negate Aroma to hide your Stench. A ring of Amplify Stench replaces the need for the Great Fortitude and Pungent Stench feats. This goes unusually well with the Warded Against Nature drawback.
@Sir Stabalot,
An AntiPaladin does the whole fear aura thing pretty well.
A Soulthief Vitalist might work for regenerating HP whilst harming others.
Anything that has access to Sneak Attack can go down the path of Weapon Focus, Dazzling Display, Skill Focus Intimidate, Signature Skill Intimidate, Dastardly Finish, Dreadful Carnage... make everyone around you cower in fear, then start coup de gracing fools, which scares more people, making them cower, it's a vicious cycle... the Rogue Talent Mien of Despair is seemingly meant for this business.
you can use potions and/or wands of Negate Aroma to hide your Stench. A ring of Amplify Stench replaces the need for the Great Fortitude and Pungent Stench feats. This goes unusually well with the Warded Against Nature drawback.
Negate Aroma is a good find since it's dismissable. This would allow your character to walk around town without pissing off the locals. From a practical standpoint you would probably still want to subject your party to it every morning or night so that they are immune to your stench during combat.
As for a ring of amplify stench, if the DM allows such an item that's fine. I generally try to avoid recommending custom items since its too easy to abuse such things. As you pointed out, the one magic item would replace the need for 3 feats (since you wouldn't need Improved Stench either).
Take a look at the psychic, specifically the hallucigenist discipline.
There's vampiric spells and weapons, but they're none of them very strong.
How would you go about making a character so deeply horrible that people would just fall to their knees, puking their brains and scratching their face off? Something so bizarrely alien its mere presence is anathema to life?
The pre-Errata Oozemorph broke the laws of every reality by having a completely and utterly undefined base form; how much more brain-melting can you get than by seeing something that simply cannot exist in any plane of the Great Beyond? And if you want a different definition of deeply horrible, just look how weak and bland the post-Errata version is...
holy vindicator of Shax with the Demonic Obedience feat and enough hd to gain the 2nd boon (around level 16 which should also be the peak of the prestige class.)
among the things you get\do:
-you spontaneous bleed and instead of loosing hp you gain fast healing and a hefty buff. (up to fast healing 5. basically any battle you go into turns to a blood bath. and a lot of it your own :)
- the blood make your smite worse and sicken people.
-your channel sicken people and deal more damage while you bleed.
-when you kill some1 you can immediately death knell.
- you can immediately cast bestow curse\doom when you crit or are crited
- from 3rd up to level 8 of prestige class any cure u cast on self is empowered. from 8+ it's maximized.
should take antipaladin(of Shax) for levels before prestige class to max this out.
Daaaaaamn, an hemophile regenerative antipaladin does sound nice.
Will take a look at both versions of Oozemorph; I read the name here and there, but don't know the class, to be honest.
Problem with psionics is that most DM outright ban them. But I really like the class, so might try to negotiate with a kind DM someday
And the stench build looks really fun for an upcoming horror one shot. Thanks :)
I apologize: the Oozemorph suggestion was a joke; don't actually use it. The pre-errata version was literally unplayable by RAW, and neither pre- nor post-errata are worth trying to make viable. I think several people have attempted to make something like what a lot of us wanted the Oozemorph to be, though, so you might poke around at 3rd Party stuff for that.
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Daaaaaamn, an hemophile regenerative antipaladin does sound nice.
It is not. The bleed=fast healing thing only works once per day: once you're fully healed, it stops. You can see the full and proper description of this ability under the "Exalted" paragraph.
Those described under "Demoniac" are obsolete versions of the boons, first reported in a campaign setting supplement (Book of the Damned, vol 2) published in 2010.
Later on, the boons were better codified and structured into the various PrCs. Demon Lords' boons were then re-written using the same Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel template as all other deities' boons in a definitive Book of the Damned, published in 2017. During this process, Paizo has also apparently fixed some balance issues that might have existed in the preliminary version. The preliminary nature of 2010's boons is clear by the level of approximation of their descriptions, compared with 2017, and lack of references to the corresponding PrCs.
To answer your question, I'll go with a Ratfolk Vivisectionist riding his own hand in combat. I call him Manus.
Pick the Scurrying Swarmer and Hand Detachment feat chain. Pick Tumor Familiar, Feral Mutagen and Vestigial Limb discoveries. A single level into Spirit Binder Wizard gives your hand-familiar a soul and a feat (Power Attack?).
Make your hand-familiar Mauler, so you can ride "it", and thanks to Scurrying Swarmer you get automatic sneak attacks. The hand is quite strong, which makes it particularly good at fighting (and grappling) too.
I think seeing a pestilent rat-child plopping his hand on the floor from a rachitic arm, with this hand suddenly becoming alive and growing to the size of a man, and then the rat-child jumping on the man-sized hand, riding it while disseminating chaos and destruction...I think seeing this would be quite unsettling to some.
Daaaaaamn, an hemophile regenerative antipaladin does sound nice.It is not. The bleed=fast healing thing only works once per day: once you're fully healed, it stops. You can see the full and proper description of this ability under the "Exalted" paragraph.
Those described under "Demoniac" are obsolete versions of the boons, first reported in a campaign setting supplement (Book of the Damned, vol 2) published in 2010.
Later on, the boons were better codified and structured into the various PrCs. Demon Lords' boons were then re-written using the same Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel template as all other deities' boons in a definitive Book of the Damned, published in 2017. During this process, Paizo has also apparently fixed some balance issues that might have existed in the preliminary version. The preliminary nature of 2010's boons is clear by the level of approximation of their descriptions, compared with 2017, and lack of references to the corresponding PrCs.
don't know. don't have the books. i do have the so called official site i linked above, where it is still an option if you only take the feat which call out the obedience boon in the deity's list. so i guess it depend on the gm. by raw it should works as is as long as you don't go into the exalted prestige class.
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don't know. don't have the books. i do have the so called official site i linked above, where it is still an option if you only take the feat which call out the obedience boon in the deity's list. so i guess it depend on the gm. by raw it should works as is as long as you don't go into the exalted prestige class.
Come on.
Just read the Demonic and Exalted paragraphs from the site you linked:
1: Killer's Finesse (Sp) true strike 3/day, invisibility 2/day, or keen edge 1/day
2: Life in Blood (Su) You treat bleed effects as fast healing. For example, if you suffer an effect that causes bleed 5, you do not take any damage from the effect and instead gain fast healing 5. This effect ends whenever you are fully healed.
3: Murderer's Wrath (Ex) You gain sneak attack +3d6. This increase to sneak attack damage stacks with sneak attack damage you may have from other sources. Whenever you inflict sneak attack damage with a slashing weapon, you inflict +2 points of damage per sneak attack die.
1: Killer’s Finesse (Sp) true strike 3/day, invisibility 2/day, or keen edge 1/day
2: Life in Blood (Su) When your veins are opened, you revel in the glorious pain and exalt in the knowledge that you are closer to your unholy patron. Such wounds do not imperil your life but instead invigorate you. You treat bleed effects as fast healing. For example, if you suffer an effect that causes bleed 5, you take no damage from the effect and instead gain fast healing 5. This ability activates automatically the first time each day you suffer a bleed effect, and it continues until you are fully healed. After that point, the ability ceases to function and does not work for 24 hours, during which time bleed effects affect you normally. If you are affected by multiple bleed effects during the time in which this ability is active, you always gain fast healing equal to the most powerful bleed effect.
3: Murderer’s Wrath (Ex) Your training and worship has honed your bloodletting skill with knives, axes, and other cutting implements. If you don’t already have the sneak attack ability, you gain sneak attack +5d6. Whenever you deal sneak attack damage with a slashing weapon, you deal 2 additional points of damage per sneak attack die.
They are the same abilities, just one is approximated and has been published in 2010 (when D&D 3.5 was still considered officially PF-compatible), the other one is much more refined and published in 2017. Do you really, really, honestly believe that they are both intended to coexist, and are not one the obsolete version of the other?
well the prestige classes from the books got revised (like souleater) and you can't find the old one in the official site (u can still dig it out in the d20pfsrd). since the obedience is still there im guessing it's still allowed, or it would have been revised as well.
the fact that the exalted doesn't need to wait to level 16 to gain his 2nd boon feel like an offset to the fact the feat's 2nd boon is stronger. (basically im saying they nerfed it if you want to take the short-cut and get it sooner. as it was too strong to gain at the level the exalted would get it. but with the feat progression it's not that powerful for it's level)
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well the prestige classes from the books got revised (like souleater) and you can't find the old one in the official site (u can still dig it out in the d20pfsrd). since the obedience is still there im guessing it's still allowed, or it would have been revised as well.
the fact that the exalted doesn't need to wait to level 16 to gain his 2nd boon feel like an offset to the fact the feat's 2nd boon is stronger. (basically im saying they nerfed it if you want to take the short-cut and get it sooner. as it was too strong to gain at the level the exalted would get it. but with the feat progression it's not that powerful for it's level)
Except the 2010 version of the 3rd boon, Murderer's Wrath, is actually worse than the 2017 one. So what's the deal? Exalted gets a nerfed 2nd boon because it's early access, but also gets a better AND early access 3rd boon? How convenient!
you can assume what you want, but :
1 raw im right .
2 when Paizo want to replace something they say so. like in the crane feats, the witch doctor, the juju mystery and, as i mentioned, the prestige classes of the book of the damned themsleves.
the fact that they didn't bother saying "look the Demonic Obedience feat is replaced with the Fiendish Obedience" mean they are 2 separate things. the 2nd of which give the exalted benefit you insist on. but the 1st feat was never nerfed and is still an option to take.
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1) Raw makes no sense, as there are two versions of the same thing that are conflicting with each other. So you have to use your head rather than mindlessly invoke raw.
2) The 2017 version of the Demoniac replaces the 2010 one, with no FAQ/errata on Paizo's behalf. Following your logic, then there would be two versions of the PrC, one working with Fiendish Obedience and using Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel boons, and the other using Demonic Obedience using Demonic boons. But this is not the case. Why? Because new versions of X replace old versions of X.
Similarly, the 2017 version of Shax, including its boons, replaces the 2010 one. Why do you think there is NO mention to the Demonic boons in deities' entries in 2017 Book of the Damned? If, as you say, the Demonic and Exalted boons are meant to coexist, they should be both reported within Shax's description in 2017 Book of the Damned: guess what, they aren't. Or do you really believe that it was Paizo intention to deliberately split the information about a single deity across two different books published 7 years apart from each other?
People at Paizo in 2017: "Yeah, I know we are copy-pasting literally everything in Shax entry from back 2010, like descriptions, portfolio, domains, favored animal and color, but what if we just keep out the Demonic boons? Yeah, and maybe instead we add another set of boons with the same names, but better described and balanced, that however do not overrule the old ones. This way, if someone wants to refer to Shax, they will have to look at two different books. Yep, makes total sense."
If this is not enough, then let's look at another random deity from the same books, say, Abraxas. Both Demonic and Exalted boons are reported in AoNprd but, guess what, they are identical. So, following your logic, we have two sets of rules for same ability, that do NOT overlap, but just casually happen to be identical. Makes sense. So someone worshipping Abraxas picking Demonic Obedience will eventually get the same boons of an Exalted, but if they worship Shax they'll get slightly different ones.
I mean, it's clear to me that you don't want to admit the flaw in your argument at this point, but at least it will be clear to readers looking for clarifications on the matter.