Egoist's Militia Villian - Thoughts and Questions

[Toshy]

So I stumbled upon this post, where some mentioned the Occult Ritual Egoist's Militia and immediatly had an idea for a reoccuring villian/antagonist.

While reading it some questions came in to my mind, which in total seemed so many, that I thought a seperate post might be better and here I am.

What the occult ritual basically does, is bonding multiple weapons to a character, which are then treated as if beeing held by that character, but acting independently. As far as I understand what is written, it's kinda busted, but also leaves many unanswered questions.

Egoist's Militia:

School conjuration; Level 8
Casting Time 80 minutes
Components V, S, M (1 pint of the primary caster’s blood, diamond dust worth 5,000 gp),
F (at least four weapons), SC (at least 2 and up to 10)
Skill Checks Craft (weapons) DC 36, 1 success per martial weapon;
Knowledge (arcana) DC 36, 2 successes;
Knowledge (nobility) DC 36, 2 successes
Range touch
Target weapons touched
Duration permanent (D) or until the death of the primary caster
Saving Throw none; SR no
Backlash The primary caster takes 2d6 points of damage per weapon and is exhausted.
Failure All casters take a –10 penalty on attack rolls for 1 month, and all of the
targeted weapons gain the broken condition.

EffectThis ritual must be performed in a place that holds a significance related to weapons, such as an armory, an old battlefield, or a warrior’s crypt. The primary caster begins this ritual by mixing her blood with the diamond dust, smearing each weapon with the mixture, and placing the weapons in a circle around herself. The primary caster then holds each weapon and demonstrates the weapon in a combat performance. After the primary caster finishes her performance with a weapon, she places the weapon into the air in front of her, now held in midair by her force of ego.

Upon successful completion of this ritual, ghostly apparitions of the primary caster appear and grasp each of the weapons before fading, representing the shards of the primary caster’s own ego placed within each weapon. The egoist weapons are treated as if they are held by the primary caster, using her base attack bonus, ability scores, and any relevant feats when calculating their attack and damage rolls, but the weapons function independently from the primary caster. Egoist weapons make attacks on the primary caster’s initiative. When moving, egoist weapons have a fly speed of 100 feet. An egoist weapon uses the statistics of the base weapon and retains its magical enhancements and material properties. For every 2 Hit Dice the primary caster has, an egoist weapon has a hardness of 10 and 5 hit points (magical weapons maintain their additional bonuses to AC and HP). When an egoist weapon is reduced to 0 hit points, it is destroyed.

All casters who were part of the ritual can issue simple commands to the egoist weapons, and the weapons follow these commands to the best of their abilities. If an egoist weapon completes its task and does not receive further orders, it remains in its location until it receives additional orders. The primary caster can dispel an individual egoist weapon as a standard action. This ritual can be used to create more than four egoist weapons. The DC of each skill check increases by 1 for each weapon beyond the fourth added to the ritual.

1 - No (total) weapon limit:

You need at least 4 weapons as part of the ritual resulting in 4*2d6 backlash-damage, but you can use more weapons, which would increase the backlash-damage by 2d6 and all skill-check DCs by 1 per additional weapon.
But since the duration ist permanent and nothing in the description states that when used again, previously bound weapons become unbound, you could in theory just repeat the ritual every day (assuming you have the money for components and weapons) to bind an infinite amount of weapons to you leading to an infinite amount of attacks, or am I missing something?

2 - AoO/Cover/Flanking:

Since the egoist's weapons can act on the initiative of, but move independently from the "wielder" I suppose they would count as creatures, kind of a summoned animated object. So would the egoist's weapons be able to take attacks of opportunity? Would they grant soft cover? Could they flank or grant flanking to other creatures? Do they block movement as normal hostile creatures (assuming they are at least of small object size)?

3 - Class Features:

The descriptions says the egoist's weapons profit from the "wielders" attributes, and feats when calculating attack and damage rolls. So the weapons would be able to use let's say Vital Strike. Since it's not mentioned I assume they don't profit from class features of the wielder - e.g. they won't be able to trigger sneak attacks if bound by a rogue, correct?

4 - Iterative Attacks:

The egoist's weapons use the "wielders" base attack bonus and are treated as i beeing held by him. If he has a high enough BAB that would grant him iterative attacks, do all bound weapons also get iterative attacks?

5 - What about ranged weapons?:

Leaving aside the above mentoined questions, the attacks of - let's say a bound sword - are simple melee. But since the description doesn't specifiy that only melee weapons are viable targets for the ritual, that brings up some more questions.

Bows/Crossbows: Since the ritual only binds the weapon and no quivers or even hands to pull them out of one, a bound bow would be useless. Unless the bound bows have the Endless Ammunition enchantement or something similar, in which case the would make ranged attacks from where they are "standing". Would those bows than suffer from the normal penalties if beeing in melee range of an enemy?

Thrown Weapons: What about let's say starknives? When you attack with them at range you throw them, meaning you have to retrieve them unless they are for example Returning Starknives. But in this case the weapon would throw itself, so what happens next? Does it magically return to it's point of origin? Does it move with it's attack? If so, when hitting a target it would move adjacent to it. But what if it misses the target? I would say that if it possesses a range increment of 20ft, it would move the full distance of the neede increments in a straight line past its target (if the target is 25ft away, it would need 2 increments to hit and therefore move 40ft - 25 to the target and 15 more past it.

6 - Indestructible?:

As written in the desription the weapons gain 5hp per 2 Caster-Levels at the time beeing cast. While this doesn't accumulate to much, they also gain hardness 10 per 2 Caster-Levels. That would mean a level 10 Character would create weapons with 25hp and a whooping hardness of 50 (or 100 @ caster-level 20) plus any bonuses they might get for beeing magic weapons before the ritual, which would make them nearly indestructible (except for things that ignore hardness or dispel magic).

I thought of making a reoccuring character, some kind of collector, which whill pay handsomely for every magic weapon the PCs might be willing to sell him (outbidding other merchants). If the PCs suspect something shady and investigate, they could find out that he and his accomplices want to overthrow the government and he is collecting weapons to bind to his will to do so, using the above ritual. So if the PCs get suspicious early on he will be a relative easy foe, but the longer it takes for them (and the more weapons they sell him, only caring for money aren't they?) the more of a challenge he will become.

I suppose I could build a challenging Encounter out of it, but I suppose I have to be careful not to make him overpowered, as it seems that could happen easily.
I thought of splitting the weapons in different groups and using them more like "henchmen" instead of simply giving the main guy a bunch of additional attacks that occur on his initiative count, to split the damage potential instead of having a burst of attacks at once.

For those who took the time and effort to read through all the above, I look forward to your answers and any thoughts you might have.

[Belafon]

1. Yup, you can cast it multiple times
2. Probably none of those. I think of the weapons acting like a spiritual weapon (with the differences spelled out in the ritual).
3. No class features, but they would use the Primary Caster's strength score for attack/damage bonuses. Or Dex score to attack if the PC had Weapon Finesse and the weapon was finessable.
4. Yes
5. I would not allow ranged or thrown weapons. Even with Endless Ammunition there's no wielder to take the free action of nocking the weapon.
6. Yup, pretty tough.

A couple of other unanswered question

7 - What kind of weapon?:

The skill checks line says you must make one DC36 check per martial weapon. However nothing in the text of performing the ritual mentions martial weapons. Which leaves four possibilities:
1. (reasonable) - you can only use martial weapons
2. (reasonable) - it's an editing mistake and you can use any type of weapon
3. (possible) - it's a typo and should say "melee" weapon
4. (munchkin) - if you only use exotic (or simple) weapons you don't have to make the checks

8 - What kind of action to command?:

Redirecting a spiritual weapon, an aqueous orb, or even handling an animal are all move actions. It should probably be a move action to issue a command to a single weapon. (That would also be a good reason to use a lot of secondary casters - if it was free to redirect all of them the primary caster could just do it all himself with no loss of action economy.)

The ritual itself is no pushover - multiple DC36 with a maximum bonus from secondary casters of +2. (Of course an NPC has a bonus of +plot to all skill checks, so that doesn't really matter in this case.)

[Toshy]

Belafon wrote:

What kind of action to command?:

Redirecting a spiritual weapon, an aqueous orb, or even handling an animal are all move actions. It should probably be a move action to issue a command to a single weapon. (That would also be a good reason to use a lot of secondary casters - if it was free to redirect all of them the primary caster could just do it all himself with no loss of action economy.)

Mh, as I read it, it sounded to me more like a summoned creature. It shares your initiative but acts independently from you, as written in the description. If treated like a summoned creature which would attacking your enemies, but could be given simple orders (you would ne able to order multiple weapons at once).