Author Topic: Divine Fortes  (Read 938 times)

Offline Stratovarius

  • Forum Host
  • Administrator
  • *****
  • Posts: 7678
  • Arhosan Emperor
    • View Profile
Divine Fortes
« on: April 24, 2018, 02:25:19 PM »
Divine Fortes
Each of the gods and cultures of Arhosa has their own unique style towards prayer, and that bleeds over into how they access the magic of the gods. Through study and skill, the Ecclesiast has learned how to adapt those teachings and techniques to their own needs and style of seedcasting. In order to select a particular forte, he must know the seed or seeds listed under prerequisites.

  • Healer's Gift: Flonha healers, as well as the rest of their society, were renowned for their ability to heal, and for the kindness and gentleness that permeated the culture. Diseased people would make a pilgrimage from all over the world to be treated at the hospitals of the Flonha. However, as has been the case with many of the few cultures based around kindness and self-sacrifice, they were swept under by a warlike neighbour who saw them as easy prey.
    • Prerequisites: Mending Touch
    • Effect 1: Whenever the ecclesiast heals a creature, he may choose to voluntarily sacrifice up to one hit point per class level. The target gains an extra two hit points of healing per hit point the ecclesiast sacrifices. The ecclesiast also receives a +1 bonus per hit point taken to any Concentration checks he must make during the casting of the healing spell. This healing cannot raise a creature above its normal maximum hit points.
    • Effect 2: Once per day as a standard action, the ecclesiast may heal a creature up to 10 hitpoints per class level. This is a supernatural ability.
  • Theft of Cripples: Magical energy crackled from the spires of the Chral Kala in its heyday, siphoning off of the energy of all those who lived with its domain, feeding that energy into carriers and storage for the use of the few, proud rulers of the city. Haughty men, others died so that they might live.
    • Prerequisites: Damnation of Age, Ruination, or Blackening Whip
    • Effect 1: The rulers of the Chral Kala stole the souls of their peasants, in order to revivfy their old and failing bodies. The ecclesiast gains 5 temporary hit points for every negative level he bestows, and 2 temporary hit points per point of ability damage he deals. In addition, whenever the ecclesiast deals negative energy damage to a creature, he heals an equal amount of damage (up to a maximum of his normal hit point total).
    • Effect 2: Lust for eternal life and power never ending drove the rulers of the Chral Kala onward, forcing them into ever more extreme means of staying alive. Whenever afflicted by a disease or a poison, the ecclesiast becomes immune to all other sources of ability damage or burn.
  • The Illness Beneath: Bright lights sparkled along the golden rooftops of Setras Ra, brilliant spheres of captured light, illuminating a city of splendour and exquisite tastes. What it did not reveal was the lust and corruption eating away at the heart of the land, two forces brought together within the hearts of the rulers, men of charitable dispositions and secretive and immoral liasons.
    • Prerequisites: Compelling Command, Righteous Wrath
    • Effect 1: Hidden within the life of the city, rot and foulness abounded, and must be cast out. Whenever the ecclesiast strikes a creature with a spell that uses both Compelling Command and Righteous Wrath, the save DC of the spell is increased by 1.
    • Effect 2: Sometimes it is necessary for the whip of the gods to descend upon the inequities of man. Whenever the ecclesiast casts a spell from Righteous Wrath, if he used Compelling Command in the previous round, the spell point cost of the spell is reduced by one. Likewise, whenever he casts a spell from Compelling Command, the spell point cost is reduced by one if he cast a spell from Righteous Wrath the previous round.
  • Verdant Tide: Nature has often been ignored amidst the expansion and breadth of civilization, but is a force that has, perhaps, done more to shape the course of history than any before or any since.
    • Prerequisites: Verdant Flora, Fauna Unleashed
    • Effect 1: Plants and animals are simply two sides of a single, coherent nature, that interacts far more than any would suspect. Any spell the ecclesiast casts which normally targets only plants may also be used on animals, and any spell he casts that normally targets only animals may be used on plants.
    • Effect 2: To become one of the very things that is studied appeals greatly to the ecclesiast. He can wild shape as per the druid class feature, with an effective druid level equal to half his ecclesiast level, except that he may also transform into a plant creature.
  • That Which is Not Dead: Buried underground, in deep subterranean crypts, the kingdom of the Marleath thrived and grew, constantly digging and creating new buildings and tunnels. Armed with an array of dead servitors, raised from the body of every citizen of the city who passed the age of fifty, only the Patriarch Ve Angau stood eternal, a cold and restless Lich, who felt no love for the living, and viewed them as broodcattle to birth more to be slain.
    • Prerequisites: Deathwalker
    • Effect 1: Imbued into the claws and teeth of the undead servants of the Marleath was a vicious bite that would destroy those who wandered into the kingdom from outside. Whenever an undead the ecclesiast summoned via Deathwalker successfully strikes an opponent with a natural attack, the opponent is affected as if by the ghoul touch spell, at a caster level equal to the ecclesiast's.  The save DC is 10 + 1/2 spell points spent + the undead's Charisma modifier.
    • Effect 2: Ve Angau never believed that a creature was useless, that there was always something useful even a corpse could become. By touching a dead creature as a standard action, the ecclesiast may summon a facsimile from the great beyond. Treat the summoned creature as the dead creature in all particulars. The ecclesiast must be able to pay the spell point cost to summon the creature, and the creature must have an appropriate CR to be summoned.
  • Faith's Defense: Those of the Ghoel valued faith above all else, faith in their single, overarching diety. That monolithic faith drove them onwards, pressing outward into the surrounding lands until they encountered those of another faith. Each converted, through death or through life, until the other gods saw their civilization as a true threat to all of their existences. Faced with the combined wrath of the gods, the Ghoel redoubled their own faith, knowing that they had come close to toppling the balance in their god's favour. It was all for naught, as attrition and the ageless, remorseless hate of the gods ground their civilization down, eventually burying their great city beneath a giant slurry of molten lava.
    • Prerequisites: Burning Sun, Perception Intensified
    • Effect 1: Righteous and powerful in their faith, the priests of the Ghoel suffered no unbelievers to live, smiting them whenever found. Whenever the ecclesiast slays a creature of a different alignment than his own, he may cast a spell using Burning Sun or Perception Intensified that round as a swift action.
    • Effect 2: The Ghoel did not attach doors to their structures. Rather, their god gave those of strong and abiding faith the ability to walk through the walls of the earth, and many would test their faith by staying amidst the stone for as long as they could. Stone and brick prove no obstacle to the ecclesiast, who can see through and move through any wall made of stone with 1 ft. or less of thickness.
  • The Heavens Above: The Ferthyr spent their time in contemplation, studying the meaning of pain, of denial, and of how that affected arrival into the realms of the gods. Eventually, they began to understand that traffic between the realms of earth and sky was not merely a one-way street.
    • Prerequisites: Demonbinder
    • Effect 1: A traveller from above comes down. The ecclesiast gains the ability to cast a spell using Demonbinder as a swift action, once per encounter.
    • Effect 2: Travellers are made welcome by those who have bid them arrive. Outsiders summoned by the ecclesiast are advanced one hit dice.
  • Fettered Strength: Possessed of a most startling trait, the Pybyr could weaken themselves in order to store the energy for use at a later time. Pybyr would collapse in their homes, emaciated, only to emerge hours later, their muscles swollen, as they went to work at smithing a stubborn metal rod. Some of their racial makeup can be gleaned through the works of their cities, and the ecclesiast seeks to gain that for himself.
    • Prerequisites: Heroic Form, Courageous Will
    • Effect 1: By stunting their strength and sapping their balance, the Pybyr saved their energy for battle. As a free action, the ecclesiast may voluntarily take a number of points of ability damage no greater than his class level to any stat for as long as he likes, storing that energy away for later. When he chooses to use the stored energy as a free action, he gains an enhancement bonus equal to the number of points of ability damage taken to the same statistic, which lasts for a number of rounds equal to one-half the rounds he cursed himself with the ability damage. Use of energy in this way is tiring, and when the ecclesiast loses the enhancement bonus, he is exhausted for an equal number of rounds. The stored energy must be used within 24 hours or be lost, and the ecclesiast can only have energy stored for one ability score at a time -- if he stores energy from a new ability score, the old energy is lost.
    • Effect 2: Able to focus all of their will and energy into a single point, the Pybyr would use this in only dire circumstances. Once per day, the ecclesiast may gain a +10 ft. bonus to speed, a +4 untyped bonus to all abilities, and an extra standard action for one round. At the end of this round, he collapses, exhausted and nauseated for the next five rounds.
  • The Dead That Lie Not Still: It was long rumoured that existed a race of people to whom death was merely a stopping place on the eternal cycles of life, and it has finally come to the attention of the ecclesiast that they did indeed exist. Known by the name of the Edfryd, they possessed the qualities of the phoenix, able to die, only to be reborn.
    • Prerequisites: Blessed Life, Cleansing Gesture, Adaptation
    • Effect 1: The Edfryd were a violent people, in part because they knew it was of no matter to the person whom they struck, for it they died, they would merely return to life. Whenever the ecclesiast would be reduced to -10 or fewer hit points from hit point damage by an attack, spell, or effect, he may make a Will save equal to 10 + the total damage dealt as an immediate action. If he succeeds, he returns to life the next round as if a true resurrection spell had been cast upon him. He also gains a +2 bonus to attack, damage, armour class, and all physical statistics for one round, as he is invigorated in the return of his spirit. The ecclesiast cannot use this ability if he is unconscious or sleeping when the condition is met.
    • Effect 2: Even those who had died, and were not seen to spring back to life, were often able to be resuscitated by others among the Edfryd. Should the ecclesiast fail his save against hit point damage, or be killed in another fashion, if his body is materially intact after 2 hours, he returns to life as if a raise dead spell had been cast on him. The ecclesiast loses only half the normal XP from this.
  • That Which Is Not There: Mere ephemeral beings, the Pellennig danced and swum amidst the Astral plane, able to see what was before and behind them, and never in danger because of such. Their god had given them the gift of foresight at the cost of their bodies, and that was how they remained, half-present, but knowing all things that passed through their scope. Perhaps they still exist, although that, for certain, is not known.
    • Prerequisites: What Might Be, Where Things Lie, Unknown Worlds
    • Effect 1: Visions of the past and the future filter into the mind of the Pellennig, and it is that knowledge that the ecclesiast seeks. Once per hour, the ecclesiast can use augury as a spell-like ability to determine his next course of action. In addition, any spells that the ecclesiast casts using Where Things Lie have their spell point cost reduced by 1.
    • Effect 2: A creature that perhaps would be happier with no body, and living in a place of no where, and no when, its half-present state a perpetual curse. The ecclesiast can become incorporeal by spending 5 spell points as a standard action. This lasts for one hour, and he gains a fly (perfect) speed equal to his land speed.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2018, 11:55:16 PM by Stratovarius »