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Topics - kellus

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1
Okay, so I've been thinking about the system in general, and I think there are two big changes I want to make to existing material, but I wanted your guys' input first!

1. Gramarists get invocations, up to 3/3/2/2 from a general utility engineering suite of them:

This means they have something worth sticking around for, and have more options for interacting with their environment than just through gramarie and spectroconstruction. Now they can build and shape stuff out of rock and iron and similar things, and then place gramarie on top of it. I think this kills a few birds with one stone– it gives gramarists something to compete with their PrC options, it ties in with the eldritch blast they already have, and it gives them interesting to do (although still engineering-related) in a combat timeframe (ie: you won't see everybody and their mum only playing it gestalt-style). Least invocations for them count as 1st level spells, lesser 2nd, greater 3rd, revolutionary 4th. I'd also be taking Prime32's note about the spell level of eldritch blast, because...

2. Silver transformers get adjusted for inflation. Specifically, power inflation. People say linear fighters, quadratic wizards, so let's actually use a quadratic progression for spell value! 1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81 ebbs to cast spells from a silverOut, and they get hit hard by inefficiency; silverIn still only produces the linear amount. This is mostly because I literally have no control over the power level of spells; while other features in the system see fairly balanced around each other, all of the biggest problems I've seen come from using silver transformers to create an out-of-whack spell or something for cheap.

Thoughts would be appreciated!  :)

2
The Arcanitect

"Oh yeah, the giant mechanical crab boat? I came up with that. Now, not labeling the levers, that was a stroke of genius."


Image credit SBraithwaite of deviantart.com.

The foundation of all gramarie, of all life, of all everything, is energy. Energy is the stock-and-trade of the cosmos. It's found in the light of distant stars as equally as in every inch of our bodies. Energy is the prime resource, the primary product of everything everywhere. Which is why it sucks that so much of it is inaccessible to us. This is the prime difficulty faced by those who study the transfer and change of energy, transforming it from one useless state into another which can be used for any number of marvels. The best of these academes, known as arcanitects, know more about the flow and transformation of energy than nearly anyone else– enough to know that our universe seems to be running out of usable sources of it. Their goal, perhaps the only goal that matters in the grand scheme, is to discover some way to save the cosmos from the most pedestrian and disappointing fate imaginable: death by disorder.

Requirements: To become an arcanitect you must meet all of the following requirements.
Feat: Craft Wondrous Item
Gramarie: Any two ARCD principles
Skills: Craft (any) 8 ranks, Knowledge (arcana) 8 ranks, Use Magic Device 10 ranks
Special: Must have the eldritch blast class features
Specialization: Must be specialized in Arcanodynamics.

Hit Die: d4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: An arcanitect's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (all) (Int), Listen (Wis), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Arcanitect
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Principles
Craft Conversion
1st+0+0+0+2Arcane conservation, eldritch blast +1d6, essence of arcana (silver)
+0
25
2nd+1+0+0+3Energy equations, essence of arcana (wood)
+1
50
3rd+1+1+1+3Eldritch blast +2d6, essence of arcana (crystal)
+2
75
4th+2+1+1+4Energy equations, essence of arcana (gold)
+3
100
5th+2+1+1+4Bonus feat, eldritch blast +3d6, essence of arcana (copper)
+3
125
6th+3+2+2+5Energy equations, essence of arcana (tin)
+4
150
7th+3+2+2+5Eldritch blast +4d6, essence of arcana (ice)
+5
175
8th+4+2+2+6Energy equations, essence of arcana (mercury)
+6
200
9th+4+3+3+6Bonus feat, eldritch blast +5d6, essence of arcana (lead)
+6
225
10th+5+3+3+7Arrow of time, energy equations, essence of arcana (platinum)
+7
250

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the arcanitect.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As an arcanitect, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Arcane Conservation (Su): Energy moneychanging is the secret behind all gramarie, and an arcanitect leverages this in more traditional realms. Every level, you have a limit called a craft conversion limit, as shown on your class table. Whenever you craft an item, you can use this ability if you have a supply of puissance in order to supplement the normal cost with raw arcane energy. You can convert an amount of XP for these items equal to your craft conversion limit by transforming ten times that amount of puissance during the crafting. You can split up the cost of puissance over the course of the crafting, but you can cannot exceed your craft conversion limit on any one project. This limit is 25 XP (250 ebbs) at 1st level, and increases by 25 every level. Knowledge of this fundamental connection grants you a competence bonus on Knowledge (arcana), Spellcraft, and Use Magic Device checks equal to half your class level. This class stacks with any one previous class to determine your caster level.

Eldritch Blast (Sp): At 1st level and every two levels thereafter, you add +1d6 to your eldritch blast damage.

Essence of Arcana (Su): Arcanitects use the ideas behind gramarie to augment more traditional crafting methods; the skilled arcanitect forsakes neither for the other, but instead blends them together. Whenever you craft an item, you can imbue it with puissant energy, as described in the conservation of arcana class feature (see above). If you have attained the appropriate level of achievement, you can get extra effect from this ability. This additional effect depends on the transformer that is providing the puissance for the process; if the puissance for the crafting comes from multiple, liquid, sources, choose one of the types of transformer used in the crafting to dominate.  At 1st level you can only use puissance from silver transformers for this ability, but as you advance you learn to harness the energy from many different kinds.
  • Silver: This essence retains some memory of the raw magical energy channeled by the silver transformer. The object imbued glows under moonlight or in the presence of moonsilver. It gains a bonus to its caster level equal to your Intelligence modifier at the time of crafting, but no larger than half your class level at that point. This bonus can allow the spell to exceed normal limitations which are based on caster level, such as the maximum dice limit on a fireball.
  • Wood: Wood remembers being alive and thus remembers the flow of puissance. The object imbued seems to be carved from a single continuous piece of wood, no matter what it's actually made from. It can act as a reservoir for puissance, and can hold a number of ebbs of puissance equal to its caster level. If it is used to make an attack roll, 5 ebbs of puissance can be spent from this reserve by the wielder as a swift action to guarantee a critical threat on the attack roll if the attack would otherwise hit. This does not count as a natural 20.
  • Crystal: This is a resonant essence which echoes with the same vibrations as the crystal that provided the power for the crafting. It has strange refractive properties, and glitters as total internal reflection occurs inside of it; its refractive index is at least 2.5, if not otherwise higher. The object imbued hums quietly, and can be persuaded to resonate more frequently, and in certain patterns. If the object is activated with a command word, it can be programmed to speak the command word itself as a logical decision when it is hooked up to a heuristical circuit.
  • Gold: The essence of the sun is retained even through the mere memory of association with gold. The object imbued restores itself in sunlight; every round spend in direct sunlight restores 1 hit point to it. It can also burn with the intensity of the sun; activating this effect is a standard action while touching the object. It begins to consume itself at a rate of 5 hit points per caster level per round, but during that period the DC of any of its effects increases by +3.
  • Copper: Copper is a curious metal, and the memory of its touch is like lightning. The object imbued lets off a static shock every time it's touched or handled, and it attracts smaller metallic objects. If the object is hooked up to an electric current, a daily use of it can be activated with sufficient electric power. This requires 10W of electric power per caster level over a single round, and can only be used to provide up to three extra daily uses per day.
  • Tin: This essence recalls the caustic energies channeled by tin. The object imbued is immune to the touch of any form of alkahest, no matter what it's made of. If the object manipulates water in any way, then after it finishes with its normal use the water is treated as if it were transformed into an amount of acid equal to its previous volume. Note that a 'flask' of acid is traditionally a single pint.
  • Ice: Those touched by ice burn with passionate intensity! The object imbued is always warm to the touch, never falling below a surface temperature of 0 Centigrade. If the object deals damage, whether through a spell effect or otherwise, the damage is transformed into fire damage. If the object is hooked up to a circuit and at least 1 ebb for every 5 points of damage is provided upon activation, the damage is hellfire damage instead.
  • Mercury: This essence is strange and fluid, somewhat like the nature of mercury itself. The object imbued functions normally if reduced to a liquid state, as long as it is not separated from the main volume. It can even be diluted with other liquids, and will still function properly when distilled out of them (a DC 15 Craft (alchemy) check). The object also provides a kind of temporal grounding effect; it continues to function normally during the apparent time of a time stop effect, and if it is large enough for people to fit inside, they are similarly able to act during such time as long as they remain enclosed by the object.
  • Lead: Lead's essence is a paradox; it's the strongest protection known, but also dangerous. The object imbued blocks any effect which is specifically blocked by lead, as if it were made of lead itself. If the obejct somehow deals negative levels, it deals two additional negative levels whenever it would do so.
  • Platinum: Sometimes called the king of metals, platinum's memory retains a connection to the divine. The object imbued can be keyed to a specific faith, and only activated or used by those of that faith. The DC for a Use Magic Device check to activate the object also increases by 10 if the wielder is not of the correct faith; the object also can be used as a symbol for divine energy. Divine spellcasters who use an object imbued with platinum as a holy symbol gain an extra use of every spell level every day (domain-only spells if they're a cleric) which need to be channeled through the platinum-imbued object.
Energy Equations (Ex): At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, you learn an important equation relating to the flow of energy in gramaric systems. This is a discovery which can be applied to your arcanodynamic studies.
  • Bigby's Prime Analysis: This equation describes the connection between voltage and puissance. Physically conductive metal, such as copper, can now be used to transport puissance; if the metal is connected to a circuit, puissance which is placed into one part of it can be drawn out of another part of it on the same turn. Puissant flow degrades, at a rate of 1 ebb lost in every transfer for every 10ft. moved. A given circuit can only draw from one metal connection per round.
  • Drawmij's Algorithm: This equation describes how geoccult poles break down in an area of radiomantic imbalance. Knowing it allows you to  produce the same effect with a less drastic input; sunlight radiating out from your gold transformers now threatens to destabilize geoccult poles the same way that a sunmetal explosion does.
  • Evard's Numerical Analysis: This equation describes the flow of heat into an area filled with cold energy. Cones of cold energy created with a mercury transformer no longer simply evaporate; Evard's last alorithm tells us that the cold energy has to go somewhere, and it ends up forming a sphere with the same volume as the cone. Anyone who passes through the sphere is subject to the intial effect of the cone; the cone lasts for 1 round per ebb. It tends to flow along heat gradients, and moves at 30ft. per round towards the largest source of fire damage in the previous round or, failing that, the warmest location, inside 200ft.
  • Leomund's Inequality: This equation describes a strange fluctuation that occurs when comparing a platinum transformer's action in a separate case involving quasi-deities. Knowing it allows you to have your platinum transformer input nets stop binders from contacting vestiges, as well as its normal uses.
  • Melf's Special Case: This equation describes the alternation of alkalinity with acidity for the special case where a copper transformer is involved. Knowing it allows you to have your copper transformers output basic media instead of acidic media, which deals the same amount of acid damage.
  • Mordenkainen's Transport Theorem: This equation describes the conservation of arcane energy on either sides of a silver transformer. Knowing it allows you to redefine the assumptions most people make about them; thanks to a greater understanding, you can store two spells in the same output transformer, which can be activated independantly of each other, or even simultaneously if twice the combined cost of puissance for the two spells is provided.
  • Nolzur's Identity: This equation describes the fundamental connection between puissance and life, previously only seen in wood transformers. Knowing it allows you to treat any living thing, not just plant material, as if it were appropriate to construct a wood transformer. This works just like normal, but it allows you to turn living creatures or animal matter into 'wood' transformers.
  • Otiluke's Paradox: This equation describes the apparent impossibility of sound developing in silence, based on a view of sound using a model of heat flow. Knowing it allows you to ignore the silencing effect of a crystal transformer, without changing the amount of energy intake. In order to apply this equation, the ambient temperature in the crystal net needs to be above 45 Centigrade.
  • Otto's Last Theorem: This equation describes the emotional aspect to fire in addition to the purely physical. Knowing it allows you to draw 1 ebb per round from individuals under a rage effect or similar condition if they are in the input net for your ice transformers.
  • Tasha's Finite Decay: This equation is no laughing matter; it describes the lifespan of a radiomantic metal. While one of your lead transformers is giving off nuclear energy, it can now explode as if it were made of sunmetal.
Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Bonus Feat: At 5th level and again at 9th level you kind of get screwed since you don't learn a new principle. Instead, you get a free bonus feat with the [Item Creation] tag instead!

Arrow of Time (Su): At 10th level you discover one of the most amazing theorems in arcanodynamic studies, the principle of reverse entropy. Time is only an illusion created by our perception of the universe's flow from order to disorder. This idea, however, lets you reverse the normal decay associated with entropy. Input transformers that you make which normally generate 1 ebb for every 6 points of damage now only require 1d6 points of damage; the exact conversion is semi-random and rolled when energy input occurs. Output transformers which normally produce 1d6 points of damage per ebb now always deal maximum damage.

3
The Prime Mover
"Being he who moves without being moved. A perfect unmoved mover, a cause without cause, and thus one who can build without being built upon in turn. In short, an island of considered rationality amidst the disorder of life."


Image credit A-Teller of deviantart.com

There are people who think, and then there are the thinkers. In the fast-paced modern world that gramarie makes possible, there are few who take the time for true introspection and meditation. Those who do might join the ranks of the prime movers, those scientists and dreamers whose thoughts take them places others couldn't even imagine. The deepest and most profound secrets of the physical world can only be reached with true depth of thought, and a prime mover is as much a philosopher as she is a mechanic or engineer or physicist. Also, she learns how to kill stuff with her brain, because this is fantasy after all.

Requirements: To become a prime mover you must meet all of the following requirements.
Gramarie: Any two ELDK principles
Skills: Concentration 10 ranks, Knowledge (any two) 8 ranks each
Specialization: Must be specialized in Eldrikinetics

Hit Die: d4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifer

Class Skills: A prime mover's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (all) (Int), Listen (Wis), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Prime Mover
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial 
Principles
1st+0+0+0+2Meditant, telekinesis (minor)
+0
2nd+1+0+0+3Elder kinetic, telekinesis (levitate)
+1
3rd+1+1+1+3Telekinesis (force)
+2
4th+2+1+1+4Elder kinetic, telekinesis (thrust)
+3
5th+2+1+1+4Initiate mediant, telekinesis (maneuver)
+3
6th+3+2+2+5Elder kinetic, telekinesis (embiggened)
+4
7th+3+2+2+5Doctorate principles, telekinesis (fabricate)
+5
8th+4+2+2+6Elder kinetic, telekinesis (multitask)
+6
9th+4+3+3+6Master meditant, telekinesis (swift)
+6
10th+5+3+3+7Elder kinetic, telekinesis (simple)
+7

All of the following are class features of the prime mover.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a prime mover, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Meditant (Ex): You think deeply about a lot of things. Even if you don't have power points, you can use the Concentration skill to gain psionic focus. You gain a bonus of 1/2 your class level on Concentration checks whenever you have psionic focus.

At 5th level, this ability improves. Whenever you have psionic focus, you can treat all Knowledge skills as trained, and substitute a Concentration check for any Knowledge check (albeit at a -5 penalty).

At 9th level, this ability improves. By expending your psionic focus when making a Knowledge or Concentration check, you can take 10 on the check even if stress or distraction would normally prevent you from doing so. This includes taking 10 on checks to prepare principles.

Telekinesis (Su): Through sheer force of will, you can move things with your mind. You gain various innate powers, which are only available to you when you have psionic focus. Your caster or manifester level for these effects is always equal to your class level. If these abilities imitate powers, you cannot augment them. Except where otherwise specified, these abilities work like spell-like abilities or psi-like abilities.
  • At 1st level, you can use matter agitation and mage hand[/url] effects at will.
  • At 2nd level, you can use a levitate effect at will. Your weight limit for this effect is 100 lb per rank in Concentration.
  • At 3rd level, you can use a telekinetic force effect at will. Your weight limit for this effect is 50 lb per rank in Concentration.
  • At 4th level, you can use a telekinetic thrust effect at will, and are under a touchsight[/url] effect whenever you are psionically focused. Your weight limit for the thrust effect is 50 lb per rank in Concentration.
  • At 5th level, you can use a telekinetic maneuver effect at will.
  • At 6th level, all of your telekinetic abilities are automatically Enlarged without having to expend your psionic focus in order to activate this effect.
  • At 7th level, you can telekinetically shape things to your desire. You can use a fabricate[/url] effect at will. If you lack the appropriate Craft skill, you can use the Concentration skill to imitate any Craft skill for this effect at a -10 penalty on the check.
  • At 8th level, you can maintain concentration on a number of simultaneous telekinetic abilities equal to your Intelligence modifier as long as you have psionic focus.
  • At 9th level, you can activate any of your telekinetic abilities as a swift or move action instead of a standard action, if applicable.
  • At 10th level this class feature becomes an extraordinary (Ex) ability instead of a supernatural (Su) ability, and the granted telekinetic abilities become extraordinary (Ex) instead of spell-like or psi-like (Sp/Ps).
Elder Kinetic (Ex): At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, you discover a peak of learning known to the ancient meditants about the nature of motion. You can choose one of the following discoveries. If a discovery relates to eldrikinetic engines that you create, you can retroactively apply a discovery to an engine you have built in the past with an hour's work and a matching key skill check to its current value.
  • Aeronautical Savant: Any eldrikinetic engine you create which generates a fly speed can be controlled more finely; this increases the maneuverability by 1 stage, to a maximum of perfect (this even applies to a two-part engine). They also generate a flat 50 more points of Push over their normal amount (if you know both this and the overclock discovery, this modification is applied after overclocking the engine).
  • Artillery Expert: Ballistic engines that you create treat projectiles being launched as if they were one size category smaller than they actually are for the purposes of determining their speed, but one size category larger than they actually are for determining the damage that they deal.
  • Badger Badger Snake: Badgerdrawn engines that you create can be pushed into a frenzy. This is a burst effect that requires 10 times the normal amount of fuel, but it causes the engine and whatever is attached to it to shapechange temporarily into a badger of the appropriate size category. The badger can take a single round of actions, under the control of whoever is controlling the engine. During this turn, its burrow speed is multiplied by 10. At the end of its action, the badger transforms back into its original shape. This is a transmutation effect.
  • Electric Innovation: Lightningleap engines that you create can take advantage of the mutable nature of energy. Whenever a lightningleap engine is activated, whoever controls the engine can choose an alternate energy form from the following types: acid, cold, fire, and sonic.
  • Fish out of Water: Stonefish engines that you create can now allow a vessel to leave the earth medium they travel through. By burning up 5 rounds of stone swimming from the minute normally provided, the stonefish engine can launch a vessel through the air like a Ballistic Engine (except launching the engine, as well). The Push generated for this leap is multiplied by 5 (1,000 points of Push normally available for every leap from every engine in parallel). The engine must be immersed in stone, dirt, or metal at the start of the jump.
  • For the Swarm: Beeform engines that you create are now more intricate. While in bee swarm form, whoever is controlling the engine gains telepathy out to 1 mile for every 200 points of Push generated, but only with bees. They can usurp the bees' senses, as if with a sense link effect, but for every sense the bees have. They can also control all bees in the area, as if with a control plants[/url] effect, but for vermin. Both of these effects last for as long as the engine is in bee swarm form. Intelligent bees can resist the controlling effect with a Will saving throw (DC equal to the Concentration check of the engine).
  • Green Energy: Any eldrikinetic engine that you create can be sustained for one round or one burst with 1 less ebb of puissance than listed in its description (if you know both this and the overclock discovery, this modification is applied after overclocking the engine).
  • Intricate Engineering: Any eldrikinetic engine that you create has its size reduced. An engine that normally requires 1 cubic foot per preparation now only requires a 6" cube per. An engine that normally requires 8 cubic feet per preparation now only requires 1 cubic foot per.
  • Overclock: Any eldrikinetic engine that you create has its Push output increased by up to 20%, but its fuel requirements increase by 50% (including puissance) when you exceed its normal output.
  • Size Matters Not: Any eldrikinetic engine that you create ignores the modifier to Bulk for unusually dense or heavy materials. You can treat any kind of material as being normal density for its size category.
Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

4
The Lode-Bearer
"This is my burden to bear, and no one else's. The fact that it's actually pretty bitchin' doesn't really enter into it."


Image credit SANTI-IKARI of deviantart.com

It's said that in the past, there was an ancient civilization that was much smarter and more advanced than the races today. Whatever that civilization might have been, some accounts refer to the loden, a martial branch of that society which studied the exotic properties of magnets. Thanks to gramarie, today it's possible for those with an interest in magnetism to explore the ancient techniques and lores of that group. These individuals, known as lode-bearers, are the most martial of gramarists, as they study ways to manipulate magnetism to give them an unfair advantage in combat. In order to become a lode-bearer, one must first learn to twist the fabric of space and time, especially in ways that shape magnetic fluxes.

Requirements: To become a lode-bearer you must meet all of the following requirements.
Base Attack Bonus: +3
Gramarie: YGGD 212
Skills: Forgery 10 ranks, Knowledge (geography) 4 ranks, Martial Lore 2 ranks
Special: Eldritch blast class feature
Specialization: Must be specialized in Yggdratecture

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier

Class Skills: A lode-bearer's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Autohypnosis (Wis), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Diplomacy (Cha), Forgery (Int), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (geography) (Int), Intimidate (Cha), Listen (Wis), Martial Lore (Wis), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Lode-Bearer
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial   
Principles   
Maneuvers   
Known
Maneuvers 
Readied
Stances
Known
1st+1+2+0+0Heir to the loden, loden lore
+0
3
2
2nd+2+3+0+0Eldritch blast +1d6, mother lode
+1
4
2
3rd+3+3+1+1Loden lore
+2
4
2
4th+4+4+1+1Eldritch blast +2d6, mother lode
+3
5
3
+1
5th+5+4+1+1Loden lore
+3
6
3
6th+6+5+2+2Eldritch blast +3d6, mother lode
+4
6
3
7th+7+5+2+2Loden lore
+5
7
4
8th+8+6+2+2Eldritch blast +4d6, mother lode
+6
8
4
+1
9th+9+6+3+3Loden lore
+6
8
4
10th+10+7+3+3Eldritch blast +5d6, mother lode
+7
9
5

All of the following are class features of the lode-bearer.

Weapon and Armour Proficiency: As a lode-bearer you are loded for bear and ready to rock. You gain proficiency with all martial weapons. You're also proficient with light and medium armour, as well as light and heavy shields. You are not proficient with heavy armour or tower shields.

Heir to the Loden: The soldiers of the loden were powerful warriors who used magnetic talents to cheat in combat. Be part of that proud tradition. With an hour of meditation on the secrets of the ancients and a DC 20 Forgery check to mimic ancient rituals, you can designate a single metal weapon as your lodenblade (or lodenhammer, or lodenaxe, or whatever). Your lodenblade is your connection to the wisdom of the ancients, and is the channel through which you activate your magnetic abilities. You must be wielding it in order to activate any of your martial maneuvers, loden lores, or stances from this class. You can designate a new lodenblade at any time with another skill check.

By drawing an electromagnetic field around your lodenblade, you can energize it with a static charge. As a swift or move action, you can charge your lodenblade with electricity. All successful attacks you make with your lodenblade before your next turn deal additional electricity damage equal to the damage from your eldritch blast.

Loden Lore (Ex): At 1st level and every two levels thereafter, you discover a secret martial technique to apply magnetic principles to combat. Every time you gain this class feature, you learn one of the following techniques. These abilities mimic the strange magnetic combat styles of the ancients, and depend on successfully copying their techniques. They can be used at will as a swift action by making a successful Forgery check (failure indicates the swift action is wasted). Every technique you learn also grants you a permanent +1 bonus on Forgery checks.
  • Attractive Blow (DC 15): This technique charges your metal weapon with magnetic power for 1 round. If you attack someone armed with a metal weapon during the round, your weapon automatically gets a disarm attempt with a +4 bonus if you beat the touch AC of your opponent with your normal attack. This disarm attempt does not provoke an attack of opportunity. All attacks you make until your next turn have this ability.
  • Heavy Metal (DC 25): This technique causes metal to weigh more heavily on your enemy. You make a single ranged touch attack using your lodenblade against a target made of or wearing substantial amounts of metal, within your ground speed of you. On a successful hit, you deal no damage but the weight of all the metal objects that the target is carrying or wearing is doubled. For every 10 points your Forgery check beats the DC, the weight is doubled again (that is, another x2 modifier using normal additive multiplication rules for D&D).
  • Intercept Projectile (DC 20): You can activate this ability as an immediate action when a projectile is aimed at you. You must decide whether or not to activate this ability after you know that you are being targetted but before you know if the attack succeeds. An unattended metal object weighing no more than 5 lb which is within a 30ft. radius of you leaps into the path of the projectile, protecting you. The attack is resolved normally as if the projectile had been aimed at the metal object instead of at you. For every 10 points your Forgery check beats the DC, you can intercept one additional projectile before the start of your next turn.
  • Magnetic Freefall (DC 25): You gain a magnet speed of twice your ground speed until the start of your next turn. A magnet speed lets you use magnetic fields to quickly maneuver around metal. As a normal move action, you may fall directly towards any ferrous metal object or structure which weighs at least half as much as you. You move directly towards the metal object, even if something nonmetal is in the way. In such a case, you end your movement adjacent to the barrier, in such a way so that it stands directly between you and the metal target. If you beat the DC of this loden lore by 10 or more, you don't have to spend a swift action to activate it. You may target a metal object from a distance equal to your magnet speed. No matter how far you actually move with your magnet speed, it still consumes your entire move action. A magnet speed will allow you to move against gravity, but at the end of the movement gravity begins to affect you normally (although you don't start to fall until your next turn, giving you the chance to keep freefalling if you activate this technique again). Magnet movement is similarly unaffected by rough terrain and the like. Initiating a magnetic movement takes hardly any time at all, and thus doesn't occupy you very much. As such, movement with a magnet speed does not provoke attacks of opportunity for moving through threatened spaces (the enemy's gate is down). A magnet speed may not be used to move to a metal object that you are already touching, no matter the size.
  • Molten Mail (DC 15): This technique calls up ambient metals around you, condensing them into a molten layer of armour which fits you like a second skin. You gain a circumstance bonus to your armor bonus to AC of +1, with an additional +1 for every 5 points you beat the Forgery check by. You gain damage reduction of the same amount, penetrated only by adamantine. The armour lasts until the start of your next turn, at which point the metal sloughs off you harmlessly.
  • Rock and Roll (DC 25): By striking your lodenblade, it produces a resonating tone (or heavy metal music, at your option). This is equivalent to the inspire courage bardic music effect. It lasts until the start of your next turn. The bonus granted by this effect is +1, although for every 10 points you beat the Forgery DC the bonus increases by +1. If you have the inspire courage ability from another source, you can add the bonus to this ability. This effect only lasts until the start of your next turn, although you can use it on consecutive rounds.
  • Thrash Metal (DC 20): You immediately make a ranged touch attack using your lodenblade against a target made of or wearing substantial amounts of metal, within your ground speed of you. On a successful hit, you deal no damage but can make a free bull rush attempt against them.
Maneuvers Known: At 1st level, you gain knowledge of three martial maneuvers. These maneuvers can be selected from the Iron Heart, Shocking Sky, or White Raven disciplines. Once you know a maneuver, you must ready it before you can use it. Your maneuvers are considered extraordinary abilities unless otherwise noted in its description. Your maneuvers are not affected by spell resistance, and you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you initiate them. You learn additional maneuvers at higher levels. Upon reaching level 4, and every even-numbered level afterwards (6th, 8th, and 10th) you can choose a maneuver to replace a maneuver you already know with a maneuver of the same or lesser level which you have access to. This class provides a full initiator level for the purposes of selecting martial maneuvers.

Maneuvers labelled 'supernatural' in the Shocking Sky discipline are extraordinary when you use them, because you activate them by the natural manipulation of electromagnetic fields with your magnetic talent.

Maneuvers Readied: You can ready two maneuvers you know at 2nd level, but as you advance in level and learn more maneuvers, you can ready additional maneuvers at the same time. You ready maneuvers by stretching and practicing swordplay for 5 minutes. You need not sleep or rest to ready your maneuvers; any time you spend 5 minutes attuning yourself with your weapons, you can change your readied maneuvers. You begin an encounter with all your readied maneuvers unexpended.

To recover your maneuvers in battle, you must call lightning from the sky to strike your weapon. This is a swift, move, or standard action which deals electrical damage to everything and everyone within 10ft. of you equal to your eldritch blast damage (Reflex save for half-damage, DC 10 + 1/2 your Hit Dice + your Int modifier), and renews all of your readied maneuvers. This can only be done outside under the sky; otherwise it takes a full-round action to renew a single maneuver. This refreshing technique is an extraordinary ability, special effects to the contrary.

Eldritch Blast: At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, your eldritch blast deals an additional +1d6 damage. Levels in this class stack to determine the caster level and effective spell level of your eldritch blast.

Mother Lode (Ex): At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, you learn a secret art that the loden used to reshape the fabric of the world. You can choose one of the following discoveries. If a discovery relates to an yggdratectural space, semi-space, flux, or demi-plane that you create, you can retroactively apply a discovery to a field you have established in the past with an hour's work and a matching key skill check to its current value.
  • Flux Capacitor: A polarcane flux can have any number of flux traits, although only one of any given kind (for example, you can't have gravity pulling in two different directions). If you have the ability to apply flux traits to other spaces, you can place multiple such traits in them as well.
  • Going Nowhere: To learn this discovery, you need to be able to join semi-spaces together with portals. You can now join a portal to a place that you haven't seen before; this works like a teleport effect, with the same chance of making a mistake in the coordinates of the point you're joining. The portal you create in the unknown space is immovable, and fixed in space once established.
  • Intense Causality: To learn this discovery you must know YGGD 371. Whenever you prepare an YGGD principle, you can twist the fabric of space-time in order to cause one of the following effects:
    • Reduce the time to prepare the principle by half.
    • Roll the skill check twice and select the result you prefer.
  • Keeper of the Keys: You can close spaces without them being destroyed permanently. You can also lock portals to semi-spaces and demiplanes, by touching it and making a Forgery check which meets or exceeds the original. In order to open the portal, a matching Forgery check needs to be made.
  • Plane Sense: By touching a portal, you can tell the size of the space that it connects to and any flux traits or planar traits in effect on the other side.
  • Reverse Geometry: When you set up a flux, you can choose to reverse its dimensionality. Instead of a semi-space which is bigger on the inside than the outside, this is a flux which is bigger on the outside than the inside. This counts as the flux trait; the area is actually two size categories smaller than the space it takes up in the outside world. Anything which enters into the flux is squeezed into that space as if they were in a small constrained area.
  • Usurp Space: By making a Forgery check that matches or exceeds the check of a space you are inside, you become the creator of the flux for all intents and purposes, including joining that space with other spaces.
  • Weird Time: To learn this discovery, you must know YGGD 371. To use it, you must be inside of a demiplane that you created with the Erratic Time trait. By spending an hour and making a Forgery check of equal or greater value to the check of the demiplane, you can reroll the Erratic Time Trait's time flow roll.
Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Stances Known: At 4th level, you gain knowledge of one stance from the Iron Heart, Shocking Sky, or White Raven disciplines. At 8th level you gain knowledge of a new stance from one of these disciplines. Stances labelled supernatural from the Shocking Sky discipline are considered extraordinary when you use them.

5
The Shadowright
"And for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green."


Image credit DolphyDolphiana of deviantart.com

Secrets by their nature lie outside normal knowledge, and as long as secrets exist there will be those who seek only to uncover them. Everything in the world has a reflection, and just as light reflects upon a mirror, so does truth cast a reflection of falsehood. All reflections ultimately wind up in the realm of shadows, the hidden places that sit aside our world. Those who seek secrets from this desolate place often find more than they bargained for– shadowrights are some of those who go looking for reflected truths, and discover more truth than they could possibly handle. These gramarists learn secrets about the colours of the world which reshape the way they see it. For weal or woe, nothing can hide from a shadowright's black gaze...

Requirements: To become a shadowright you must meet all of the following requirements.
Gramarie: Any two KALD principles
Skills: Knowledge (nature) 8 ranks, Spot 10 ranks
Special: Must be exposed to the Plane of Shadow at some point
Specialization: Must be specialized in Kaleidomantics

Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: The shadowright's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (the Planes) (Int), Knowledge (psionics) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Open Lock (Dex), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Shadowright
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial   
Priciples   
Mystery Level   
Shadowsight
1st+0+0+0+2Mysteries, shadowsight
+0
1st
Midnight
2nd+1+0+0+3Colour of magic, shadow seal (red)
+1
1st
Catoptric
3rd+1+1+1+3Shadow seal (yellow)
+2
2nd
Ranging
4th+2+1+1+4Colour of magic, shadow seal (blue)
+3
3rd
Connected
5th+2+1+1+4Shadow seal (orange)
+3
3rd
Thermal
6th+3+2+2+5Colour of magic, shadow seal (green)
+4
4th
Fluid
7th+3+2+2+5Shadow seal (indigo)
+5
5th
Primal
8th+4+2+2+6Colour of magic, shadow seal (violet)
+6
5th
Penetrating
9th+4+3+3+6Shadow seal (black)
+6
6th
Frequent
10th+5+3+3+7Colour of magic, shadow seal (white), shadowrong
+7
7th
Intimate

All of the following are class features of the shadowright.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a shadowright, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Mysteries: As a shadowright you are privy to many secrets of darkness that others might never know even exist. You learn mysteries of shadowcasting; you have a caster level equal to your Hit Dice for these mysteries. At midnight, dawn, midday, and dusk, you can realign your shadow's spirit, granting you different mysteries. You can be aligned to a number of mysteries at a time equal to your Charisma modifier; these mysteries can be used at will. Your maximum mystery level is shown on your class table. The save DC against your mysteries is equal to 10 + your class level + your Charisma modifier. Mysteries are described futher in Tome of Magic. Additional mysteries can be found in the Descent of Shadows project.

Shadowsight (Ex): A shadowright's distinguishing feature are her eyes of blackest night, which see into dark corners of the Plane of Shadows which mortal creatures cannot penetrate. You have a bonus on Spot checks of half your class level, and as you advance you gain many strange and useful augments to your sight:
  • Midnight: At 1st level, you gain eyes of midnight, which render you colourblind. This is not just normal red/green colourblindness, either; a shadowright sees only in shades of grey. Your eyes become a deep and opaque black.
  • Catoptric: At 2nd level, you gain catoptric vision. All of the Plane of Shadow is but a reflection, and now your gaze penetrates such images. Your eyes now see through reflections; mirrors are transparent for you, and your sight is permanently polarized. This eliminates bright light reflected off of shiny surfaces.
  • Ranging: At 3rd level, you gain ranging vision. Your vision becomes something wild and alive, and returns to you. Your eyes can now measure distances. Whenever you look at a surface, object, or creature, you can tell at a glance the distance between you.
  • Connected: At 4th level, you gain connected vision. The Plane of Shadow has many ties to the material realm, and your eyes now see the connections between seemingly disparate things. Your eyes can now see gramaric circuits as a shadow floating in space, as well as the connections that join its components.
  • Thermal: At 5th level, you gain thermal vision. There exists no hot or cold on the Plane of Shadows, only light and dark. You can tell the temperature of anything you look at, out to a distance of 60ft. This thermal sight penetrates objects and surfaces, and allows you to distinguish living creatures inside of the area whose internal temperature is different from the ambient temperature.
  • Fluid: At 6th level, you gain fluid vision. Shadows are fluid, variable things that are dynamic and ever-changing. You can tell the composition of any fluid (liquid or gas) that you look at.
  • Primal: At 7th level, you gain primal vision. The Plane of Shadow is a thing alive, and a piece of it resides inside of every animate thing. You can pinpoint animate creatures within 120ft. of your sight, whether they are alive, undead, or constructs.
  • Penetrating: At 8th level, you gain penetrating vision. Darkness allows us to tell day from night, and now your vision allows you to tell the real from the nonreal. You automatically get a chance for a fundamental disconnect whenever you look at an illusion with a visual sensory component. You only get one such free attempt per illusion.
  • Frequent: At 9th level, you gain frequent vision. Just as fast as the speed of light is the speed of the darkness that it casts. With your sight moving at such speeds, how can mortal barriers obstruct you? As a free action, you can turn this ability on or off; while active, you can see through obstacles within 120ft. of you. You can choose how many layers to penetrate inside of the area of effect. Lead is the only thing that blocks your vision; however, while this ability is active, you give off radiation like a radiomantic metal with the same volume as your body (and can explode like one).
  • Intimate: At 10th level, your sight ascends to its highest form, and you gain intimate vision. All places are one when they are bathed in shadow. Any location you look at is now treated as being "familiar" to you for the purposes of scrying, teleporation, and other such effects, no matter the distance separating you.
Colour of Magic (Ex): Magic has many colours, and only you can see all of its shades. At 2nd level and every two levels thereafter, you learn a special discovery about kaleidomantics from the following list:
  • Unimpeachable Pigmentation Technique: Your filters are exceptionally well stuck in space. Whenever you fix a kaleidomantic filter to a point in space (instead of to someone or something), the Strength DC to move it increases by 5 and every preparation of it can hold an additional 1,000 lb.
  • Charcoal Chicanery: Whenever you construct a black filter, you can program it with an imachinary sensory component that you know. Any attempt to retrieve information from beyond the filter returns instead the illusory sensory component. This is essentially a new way to deliver an imachinary illusion, except instead of being fixed on a point in space, the illusion is based around the filter. By its nature a black filter blocks normal sensory information of all kinds, and thus this illusion works like a combination of an ablative effect and an additive effect. You prepare the illusion on top of the filter for the purposes of time use, although you can use the filter's Spot check instead of the normal key skill check for the illusion.
  • Colourgami: If you're willing to do the math to work out the surface area, you can construct curved kaleidomantic filters instead of flat 2D shapes. You can join them together like normal, but any one preparation of a filter can only have one radius of curvature.
  • Orange Originality: Whenever you construct an orange filter, the filter imprints itself with the first gas to contact it (or you can set a particular gas when you construct it). It becomes selective only to that kind of gas, and is completely permeable to other gases. Concentrations must be accurate to within 1,000 parts per million to trigger the filter.
  • Purple Perception: Whenever you construct a violet filter, the filter imprints itself with living things it comes in contact with. Whenever you (and only you) touch the filter, you can see the face and alignment of every living creature that touched the filter in the last day, in reverse order.
  • Ruby Ruination: Whenever you construct a red filter, heat that's blocked from passage is absorbed into the filter, like an ice arcanodynamic transformer. However, you cannot remove ebbs from it with a circuit or connect it to an output; instead, if the filter ever collapses it releases a fireball centered on itself, with a radius of 5ft. per ebb of heat absorbed, and dealing 1d6 fire damage per ebb. This fireball offers a Reflex save for half damage against the same DC as your mysteries. A red filter like this can store up to 1,000 ebbs of heat before it tops off; any excess heat is nullified like normal.
  • Teal Telemetry: Whenever you construct a blue filter, you (and only you) can tell just by touching it the volume and pressure of water pressing on it.
  • Ultramarine Ultimatum: Whenever you construct an indigo filter, protons and electrons accumulated by the filter can be recombined into their natural state. Whenever an acid is neutralized, the filter gains a number of 'proton points' equal to the damage per round the acid dealt, multiplied by the cubic feet of it neutralized. Whenever a base is neutralized, the filter gains a number of 'electron points' equal to the damage per round the base dealt, multiplied by the cubic feet of it neutralized. When the filter collapses, it spontaneously generates a volume of liquid water equal to 100 cubic feet of water for every pair of proton and electron points it's holding.
  • Verdant Venom: Whenever you construct a green filter, instead of eliminating toxins you can refine them. Fluid poisons that pass through your filter are not made inert, but instead they become more concentrated; as long as there is fluid for the venomous agent to reside in, someone can use your filter to purify such a poison. Refining a fluid poison works by moving part of the fluid through the filter, and thus concentrating the poison in the rest of the fluid. At least half of the fluid must be passed through the filter, and if additional volume of fluid is added to the poison later, the refinement is lost. Refining a poison increases the save DC by 4, and it deals an additional damage die of ability damage.
  • Xanthous Xception: Whenever you construct a yellow filter, you can program a single planetary metal into it as an exception. This metal can pass through the filter as if it weren't stone or metal, while the filter retains its impermeability to every other kind of stone and metal.
Shadow Seal (Su): All colours are but pale imitations of black. Shadow is the purest expression of the colour of the cosmos, and you learn various ways to harness its might. At 2nd level, you learn to seal a colour of magic; this is an area effect that extends around you to a radius of 50ft. Inside of the area, all colour of that type disappears. Prismatic effects and kaleidomantic filters which are composed of that colour might collapse. You can make an immediate Hit Die check (against the caster level of a prismatic effect) or an opposed Spot check (against the Spot check of such a filter) to collapse the coloured effect. You can only try to collapse a given effect once per day, when it first enters your seal area.

You activate or deactivate this ability as a free action, and every time you turn it on you select which colour you want to seal. You gain various benefits from sealing a colour, as its power is locked away inside of you. At 2nd level, you can only seal the colour red. However, as you advance in level, you learn to seal additional colours.
  • Red: At 2nd level you learn to seal the colour red. This grants you immunity to any effect that would change your temperature unless you wish to accept it. You gain fire and cold immunity while sealing the colour.
  • Yellow: At 3rd level you learn to seal the colour yellow. This seal grants you the equivalent of a constant stoneskin effect (caster level equal to your Hit Dice), but only against stone and metal weaponry or objects.
  • Blue: At 4th level you learn to seal the colour blue. This seal grants you immunity to the effects of pressure and dehydration effects.
  • Orange: At 5th level you learn to seal the colour orange. This seal relieves you from the need to breathe. This grants you immunity to drowning and inhaled dangers.
  • Green: At 6th level you learn to seal the colour green. This seal grants you immunity to poisons.
  • Indigo: At 7th level you learn to seal the colour indigo. This seal grants you immunity to the corrosive effects of acids and bases; this works like acid immunity.
  • Violet: At 8th level you learn to seal the colour violet. This seal grants you immunity to positive and negative energy effects unless you wish to accept them.
  • Black: At 9th level you learn to seal the colour black. This seal provides you with a constant nondetection effect, and immunity to sonic damage as well as damaging effects which specify blinding or searing light.
  • White: At 10th level you learn to seal the colour white. This seal provides you with immunity to radiomantic effects, including radiomantic negative levels and radiomantic hellfire damage.
Shadowrong (Ex): At 10th level, you learn the super-duper secret 9th kaleidomantic filter! Knowing this ability allows you to construct white filters; add the following choice to your list of filter colours:
  • White: A white filter excludes radiomantics. It works like lead for the exclusion of radiomantic negative levels and radiomantic hellfire damage. As an interesting side effect, it also blocks detecting effects which are specifically blocked by lead. A white filter is vulnerable to darkness. It collapses if the entire filter is enclosed in an area of total darkness.

6
The Dreamason
"What have your dreams done for you lately?"


Image credit MichaelO of deviantart.com

Many marvels and spectacles exist in the world, but these pale in comparison to the wonders that can only be constructed in the imagination. Every night, countless beings drift off to sleep, and dream of amazing, brilliant ideas which must disappear with the morning like so much dew upon grass. To most, this is simply the way life proceeds. To some, however, this is an unconscionable waste. These gramarists, known as dreamasons, believe that dreams are nature's greatest resource, and that we cannot afford to squander them on meaningless diversions and fantasies. Dreamasons belong to a secret society who work on behalf of all humanity (and monstrous humanity) to harness the power of dreams for the greater good.

Requirements: To become a dreamason you must meet all of the following requirements.
Feats: Body Fuel
Gramarie: Any two HEUR principles
Psionics: Power point reserve of at least 1 point
Skills: Autohypnosis 10 ranks, Craft (basket weaving) 1 rank, Concentration 4 ranks, Knowledge (psionics) 4 ranks
Special: Eldritch blast class feature
Specialization: Must be specialized in Heuristicism

Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: The dreamason's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (the Planes) (Int), Knowledge (psionics) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Open Lock (Dex), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Dreamason
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Maximum
Power Level   
Powers Known   
Principles
1st+0+0+0+2Dreamcatcher (psionic), eldritch blast +1d6, stream of consciousness
1
1
+0
2nd+1+0+0+3Oneirotecture
2
2
+1
3rd+1+1+1+3Eldritch blast +2d6
2
3
+2
4th+2+1+1+4Dreamcatcher (lucid), oneirotecture
3
4
+3
5th+2+1+1+4Dreamaster, eldritch blast +3d6
3
5
+3
6th+3+2+2+5Oneirotecture
4
6
+4
7th+3+2+2+5Dreamcatcher (strengthsapping), eldritch blast +4d6
4
7
+5
8th+4+2+2+6Oneirotecture
5
8
+6
9th+4+3+3+6Eldritch blast +5d6
5
9
+6
10th+5+3+3+7Dreamcatcher (mindfuel), oneirotecture
6
10
+7

All of the following are class features of the dreamason.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a dreamason, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Dreamcatcher (Ps): A dreamcatcher is a special kind of circuit which draws energy from perhaps the greatest untapped source of puissance: the mind. Whenever you set up a circuit with a HEUR principle, you can choose to make it a dreamcatcher. A dreamcatcher draws puissance from intelligent living creatures within the area of the circuit. This draining effect occurs automatically when an applicable creature enters the net, although certain creatures can be excluded from the dreamcatching as a logical decision in the circuit. Energy that has been caught is stored in a 'dream reserve', which is a dispersed energy field in the circuit; it has no physical location. A dream reserve can store up to an amount of puissance equal to 10 times the Autohypnosis check of the circuit in ebbs. However, only an amount in ebbs equal to the check can be moved around in the circuit in any given lump-sum at a time. Instead of spending puissance in the dream reserve normally, an Exotic Intelligence in the circuit can burn it to gain XP, at a rate of 10 XP for every ebb burned. Note, however, that an Exotic Intelligence can only gain XP from creatures within 10 ECL's of its own level. It also can never transfer this XP to any creature, through any mechanism.

As you advance in this class your dreamcatchers can drain different kinds of energy. At 1st level you can only weave psionic dreamcatchers. Once you learn additional dreamcatchers, you can decide which kind to weave whenever you establish a circuit. Whenever you would be able to change the Autohypnosis check of a circuit, you can change the kind of dreamcatcher.
  • Psionic: At 1st level, you learn how to weave a psionic dreamcatcher. This kind of circuit drains power points from living intelligent psionic creatures in the circuit. Every round, creatures with power point reserves inside of the circuit's area of effect must make Will saving throws (DC 10 + your class level + your Intelligence modifier) or lose up to 2 power points each. The dream reserve gains 1 ebb for every power point drained like this.
  • Lucid: At 4th level, you learn how to weave a lucid dreamcatcher. This kind of circuit drains dreams from sleeping living intelligent creatures in the circuit. Every round, sleeping creatures inside of the circuit's area of effect must make Will saving throws (DC 10 + your class level + your Intelligence modifier) or suffer a nightmare (caster level equal to your Hit Dice). The dream reserve gains 1 ebb every round for every creature currently suffering a nightmare inside its area. Removal from the area ends the nightmare immediately, and a creature that saves against the effect is immune to the nightmare for 10 minutes. You can program the details of the nightmare into the dreamcatcher when you set it up, or allow their subconscious to create it.
  • Strengthsapping: At 7th level, you learn how to weave a strengthsapping dreamcatcher. This kind of circuit drains bodily health from living creatures in the circuit. Every round, living creatures with Con, Str, and Dex scores inside of the circuit's area of effect must make Fortitude saving throws (DC 10 + your class level + your Intelligence modifier) or be affected as if with your Body Fuel feat. They take 1 point of damage to every physical ability score, and the dream reserve gains 2 ebbs.
  • Mindfuel: At 10th level, you learn how to weave a mindfuel dreamcatcher. This kind of circuit drains mental capacity from living intelligent creatures in the circuit. Every round, intelligent creatures with Int, Wis, and Cha scores inside of the circuit's area of effect must make Will saving throws (DC 10 + your class level + your Intelligence modifier) or take 1 point of ability damage to each of their mental abilities. The dream reserve gains 3 ebbs every time this happens. Unless otherwise specified, an Exotic Intelligence in the circuit is vulnerable to this effect. Creatures who die from this effect have their souls transformed into puissance, generating a one-time burst of 10 ebbs. However, they cannot be raised from the dead short of a wish spell or similar effect.
Eldritch Blast (Ps): Your eldritch blast continues to improve with your advanced mental powers. It deals additional damage as shown on your class table, and now counts as either a psi-like ability or a spell-like ability, whichever would be more useful to you at the time. You have a manifester level for your eldritch blast equal to your Hit Dice.

Psionics: As an architect of the mind, you have access to special psionic powers. Whenever you achieve a new level, you unlock the knowledge of a new power. Choose the powers known from the psion/wilder power list. You cannot choose powers from restricted discipline lists or from other class power lists. You can manifest any power that has a power point cost equal to or lower than your manifester level. Your maximum power level is shown on your class table, and your manifester level for your powers is equal to your Hit Dice.

The number of times you can manifest powers in a day is limited only by your power point reserve. You do not regain power points every day like most psionicists, but instead you can use your eldritch blast to steal the consciousness of other intelligent beings to fuel your psionics.

As a dreamason, you simply know your powers; they are ingrained in your mind. You do not need to prepare them (in the way that some spellcasters prepare their spells). The Difficulty Class for saving throws against your powers is 10 + the power’s level + your Intelligence modifier.

Stream of Consciousness (Ps): Your eldritch blast is like an extension of your will. Whenever you succeed on striking an intelligent enemy (Int of 3 or greater) with your eldritch blast, you regain a number of power points equal to the number of damage dice dealt with the blast. You add your ranks in Autohypnosis to your power point reserve to figure out how many power points you can hold at any given time. However, you do not gain bonus power points from an ability score, and you do not regain these power points from rest. You have a bonus on Autohypnosis checks of one half your class level, and this special bonus also adds to your power point reserve; other such bonuses to your Autohypnosis skill do not.

Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Oneirotecture (Ex): As you gain knowledge in the secret schemes of dreams, you can apply these advances to your gramarie. At 2nd level and every two levels thereafter, you learn a new discovery from the following list to advance your heuristical calculations and circuits.
  • Backdoor: You (and only you) no longer need to meet the Autohypnosis check required to modify triggers, responses, or control points in a circuit that you (and only you) built. You are always treated as passing these checks.
  • Hidden Code: You can choose for triggers and responses that you place in your circuit to be hidden from normal view, or even appear masked as something else. Someone must beat your Autohypnosis check by 15 or more to see past this camouflage.
  • Moore's Law: The number of logical decisions which an EI that you create can make in your circuits per round doubles. You can take this discovery multiple times, and it follows mathematical multiplication rules instead of D&D additive multiplicative rules.
  • The Most Exotic: You must be at your 10th class level to select this principle, and you must know HEUR 328. Your EI's are now much more resilient than normal; they never have to make saves to avoid being destroyed when components of the circuit are destroyed or removed. They can also be as intelligent as you, instead of having a maximum Intelligence of your own Int less 2.
  • Rabbit Hole: Your heuristical circuits now penetrate the fabric of space and time. If there is a portal inside the area of one of your heuristical circuits, the circuit penetrates the portal. On the other side of the portal, it spreads out in a bubble of the same size as the original size around the portal. The two bubbles are for all intents and purposes the same circuit. Information and puissance can be seamlessly transferred back and forth between them.
  • Variable of Volume: If you work out the maximum volume of your circuit based on the formula of volume being equal to (4/3)*pi*radius^3, you can set up circuits which are other shapes than bubbles. This principles do not have a minimum number of preparations, and the circuit field can be formed into any shape that you like using the volume available to you. The shape must be continuous, and at no point can be less than 6 inches by 6 inches thick.
  • We Are All Connected: You must be at your 10th class level to select this principle. Overlapping circuits that you set up can communicate with each other and connect to nodes inside of each other. Each circuit can only communicate and interact with circuits it is personally overlapping with, not other circuits further down the line.
Dreamaster: At 5th level, you learn the secret to transforming puissance back into psionic potency. Whenever you are standing inside of one of your dreamcatchers, you can tap into the dream reserve and use it to fuel your psionic powers as if it was your own personal power point reserve. However, one power point is lost to inefficiency whenever you activate this ability; this lost power point does not count against your maximum spent on the power.

9
The Connoisseur

"Why, you look positively delicious, my dear! I mean delightful. I mean delicious."


Image credit tTtroy of Deviantart.com.

Connoisseurs are a rare breed which rejects the rules and expectations of civilized humanity and indulge in that most forbidden practice: cannibalism. The master of a hundred humanoid tastes, connoisseurs gradually learn to augment themselves with the knowledge and history contained in their favourite foods. No taboo is too taboo for a connoisseur, who makes use of occult arts which might have been best left forgotten in order to consume the very essence of his prey. And when I say essence, I mean that he eats people and then grows pieces of them on himself. It's pretty gross, not gonna lie.

Hit Die: d6.
Skill Points at First Level: (2 + Int modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier

Class Skills: A connoisseur's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Bluff (Cha), Craft (all) (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (local) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Listen (Wis), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Swim (Str).

The Connoisseur
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial   Gourmand
Level
1st+0+2+0+0Favourite feast, gourmand, swallowed skill
1
2nd+1+3+0+0Succulent spell (0th), thrill of the hunt
1
3rd+2+3+1+1Feeding frenzy
1
4th+3+4+1+1Feat of the flesh, succulent spell (1st)
1
5th+3+4+1+1Favourite feast
2
6th+4+5+2+2Succulent spell (2nd)
2
7th+5+5+2+2Devour vitality, secret spice technique
2
8th+6/+1+6+2+2Succulent spell (3rd)
2
9th+6/+1+6+3+3Devour memories, subsume soul
3
10th+7/+2+2+3+3Favourite feast, succulent spell (4th)
3
11th+8/+3+3+3+3Feat of the flesh
3
12th+9/+4+8+4+4Speed eating champion, succulent spell (5th)
3
13th+9/+4+8+4+4Devour luck
4
14th+10/+5+9+4+4Succulent spell (6th)
4
15th+11/+6/+1+9+5+5Favourite feast
4
16th+12/+7/+2+10+5+5Succulent spell (7th)
4
17th+12/+7/+2+10+5+5Devour defence
5
18th+13/+8/+3+11+6+6Feat of the flesh, succulent spell (8th)
5
19th+14/+9/+4+11+6+6Devour form
5
20th+15/+10/+5+12+6+6Devour youth, favourite feast, hunger eternal
5

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the connoisseur.

A note on the nature of the connoisseur's class features: many of the class features presented below require the consumption of flesh. Although the time required to consume flesh can vary based on the size of the morsel, the assumption in most of the class features is that it requires a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity to eat it. Drawing a morsel from a pocket or something similar is a move action or a free action as normal for the character.

Another note: A connoisseur may not eat her own flesh to activate any of her class features. That's a little too weird, even for me.

Weapon and Armour Proficiency: A connoisseur is proficient with all light armour and simple melee weapons. In addition, the connoisseur is proficient with three martial weapons of her choice to represent her particular hunting style, as well as her natural bite attack. Connoisseurs are not proficient with medium or heavy armour or shields of any kind.

Favourite Feast (Su): The connoisseur develops a taste for the living. Different connoisseurs have different tastes, however. At 1st level, you may select one of the following preferences. When sampling your favourite feast, you gain additional benefits, as described below. You may benefit from your favourite feast a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Constitution modifier. At 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th levels, you may select an additional favourite feast, or gain additional uses per day of a favourite feast which you already have the taste for. You cannot benefit from the same favourite feast twice at the same time, although you can have different feasts active simultaneously.

Any benefit gained from the connoisseur's favourite feast lasts for 1 minute per class level. Activating the benefit of a favourite feast is a swift action used at the same time as the action required to eat the morsel (generally a standard action). If you have more than one favourite feast that could be applied to the same morsel (such as having both the Tongue and Muscle feasts when eating a tongue), you must select one of them to activate upon consuming the flesh.

You may only benefit from a single favourite feast from any particular being. Once you have sampled their flesh, you are compelled to hunt out a more exotic taste to satisfy your continual cravings.
  • Blood: When sampling the blood of a victim, you gain temporary hit points equal to 1d10 + 2 per class level.
  • Brain: When sampling the brain of a victim, you gain a +1 bonus to Will saves, +1 per 3 class levels.
  • Eye: When sampling the eye of a victim, you gain any of the following special abilities that the victim posessed in life: blindsight, darkvision, dweomersight, and low-light vision.
  • Heart: When sampling the heart of a victim, you increase the caster level and save DCs of any spells or spell-like abilities you have available by +1, with an additional +1 per 5 class levels.
  • Fat: When sampling the fat of a victim, you gain a +1 bonus to Fortitude saves, +1 per 3 class levels.
  • Skin: When sampling the skin of a victim, you gain a natural armour bonus of +1, with an additional +1 increase per 3 class levels. This natural armour stacks with any one other source of natural armour.
  • Muscle: When sampling the muscles of a victim, you gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls, with an additional +1 per 3 class levels. This bonus increases by +1 when you're using natural weapons.
  • Sinew: When sampling the sinew of a victim, you a +1 bonus to Reflex saves, +1 per 3 class levels.
  • Tongue: When sampling the tongue of a victim, you gain a +2 bonus on Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Gather Information checks, +1 per 2 class levels. You also gain the knowledge of any one language your victim spoke in life, even secret languages such as Druidic or nonverbal languages such as Drow Sign Language. You cannot use this knowledge to qualify for any prestige classes, feats, or other such venues.
Gourmand (Su): As a connoisseur of many tastes, you will learn how to make the most out of every meal, if you know what I mean. You can eat pieces off of any creature which has died within the last minute in order to try and 'salvage' some of them. This requires a full-round action, and allows you to get a full list of grafts which the creature would qualify for (although you need to ask about likely grafts, it's not like the DM is going to look through the entire graft list and catalogue them for you). Once you have decided which monstrous bit you'd like to salvage, you can attempt to activate this ability as a standard action by making a Fortitude save against a DC of 10 + the target's Hit Dice. Success indicates that you can spend the next hour writhing on the ground in agony as you somehow grow a piece of the monster on your body. Failure doesn't hurt you, but ruins any chance of salvaging monstrous material and gives you an upset stomach for the next ten minutes, during which time you can't attempt to grow any more gourmand grafts. Multiple grafters can remove material from a single corpse, but not for the same kind of graft. It's essentially on a first-come first-served basis.

You only have access to level 1 grafts at 1st level, but at 5th level and every four levels thereafter you gain access to an additional level of grafts. Grafts have body slots, but they do not stop someone from wearing a magic item in the same slot. You cannot, however, have two grafts in the same body slot. Furthermore, you can only have at any one time a number of grafts equal to 1 + your Constitution modifier (minimum 1). If your Constitution is reduced so that you can no longer hold your current grafts, then the grafts are rejected, starting with the most recently acquired. Rejected grafts are destroyed, and all benefits they confer are lost. You can only have a single 5th level graft at a time.

You can remove a graft at a later point, either to regrow a mundane body part (treated as a level 0 graft) or to make way for a different graft. This may or may not impose a penalty (see the Graft Rejection section here for more details). Note that the act of growing a gourmand graft is a supernatural effect, but the graft itself is extraordinary in nature unless indicated otherwise in the graft description.

Your xenoalchemist level for gourmand grafts you have attached is equal to your class level. Taking levels in a class which increases your xenoalchemist level can instead advance this class feature, allowing you to advance the highest graft level you can grow and also the xenoalchemist level of your gourmand grafts.

Swallowed Skill (Ex): By devouring the bodies of your enemies, you absorb some of their memories of life. Whenever you consume the flesh of a being with an Intelligence of 3 or greater, you gain 1 skill point that you may immediately allocate as normal into any skill that the being had ranks in. Every level, you can only gain 6 skill points in this way. You may only gain 1 skill rank from any given being, even if you consumes their flesh multiple times.

The connoisseur may also use this ability to permanently learn new languages the victim knew, although learning a language counts as two skill points from her total available for the level.

If the 1st level of connoisseur is your 1st character level as well, you may gain 4 times the number of skill points (24) at 1st level that you would normally be able to. In addition, while you're working towards second level you can drain up to 4 skill points out of a single creature as a special limited-time bonus offer.

If at the end of a level you haven't eaten your full number of potential skill points for the level, you carry unused potential skill points over to your next level. In effect, you never get 'cheated' out of possible skill points.

At every even level you can choose to reassign some swallowed skill points, taking away up to 3 skill points you've already spent and adding 3 to your unlearned pool for this class feature. If after removing skill points you no longer qualify for any feats, prestige classes, or other such venues you have pursued, you lose the relevant features until you again qualify for them.

Succulent Spell (Sp): The true connoisseur may begin to glean arcane power from her victims. Beginning at 2nd level, whenever you consume the flesh of a being that has the ability to cast arcane spells or use spell-like abilities that mimic arcane spells, you may select a single arcane spell the being knew or had prepared (but had not used) of 0th level to discover as a spell-like ability. You may not select a spell that has an expensive material component or XP cost. Once you know this spell, you may use it once per day per point of your Charisma modifier. The save DC for a succulent spell is equal to 10 + the level of the spell + your Charisma modifier.

You may know one 0th level spell at a time. If you later swallow the flesh of a victim with a spell you prefer, you may trade out spell-like abilities. However, changing spells does not refresh your number of uses of this ability for the day.

At 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 16th, and 18th levels, you gain a new capacity for a spell-like ability, but of a higher spell level, as indicated on the class table. These spell-like abilities follow the same rules as the 0th level spell-like ability you gain at 2nd level. Each of these spell-like abilities may be used once per day per point of your Charisma modifier.

Your caster level for succulent spells is equal to your class level.

Thrill of the Hunt (Ex): At 2nd level, you gain special intuition that allows you to hunt with unfailing speed. You gain the scent special ability and the trapfinding class feature. You may use the Search skill to locate traps with a DC higher than 20 and may use the Disable Device skill to bypass a trap or disarm magic traps. See the rogue class feature on page 50 of the Player's Handbook.

Feeding Frenzy (Su): Connoisseurs are known to go into a feeding frenzy whenever they smell the flesh of a living being. Sort of like sharks, except somewhat more personable. You may enter this state as a free action whenever you succeed on a Survival check to smell a being with your scent ability. While in a frenzy you gain a +4 bonus to your Strength and Dexterity scores, and you also deal an additional 1d6 damage on melee attacks against the target that enraged you, with an additional 1d6 damage per 4 class levels.

This frenzy lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3 + your Constitution modifier, or until you have eaten the flesh of the target enemy, whichever comes first. While under the effects of this frenzy, you are unable to undertake any kind of complicated activity, such as using your succulent spell class feature or making complex skill checks. In addition, you take a -6 penalty to attack rolls against any target that is not the being she has smelled. You can only be in a feeding frenzy against one creature at a time.

While in a feeding frenzy, you also gain a natural bite attack that deals 1d6 damage for a Medium connoisseur. If you deal damage with your bite attack, you may swallow one of the following body parts of the target you attack: blood, fat, skin, muscle, or sinew. Thus, you may use her Favourite Feast class feature, as well as any other class feature that you have access to which requires you to eat flesh, in conjunction with this bite attack.

If you activate your favourite feast class feature while in a frenzy by eating the flesh of the target creature, the numerical bonus provided (if there is one) is increased by +1. You must wait 3 rounds after ending a frenzy to start a new one, or you can spend a full-round action to calm yourself and remove this cooldown period.

Feat of the Flesh (Ex): At 4th level, you gain a special feat slot. Whenever you devours the flesh of a victim, you instantly gleans the knowledge of all of the feats that creature possessed. You may then select any one feat that you meet the prerequisites for, and use this special feat slot to hold it. You gain the benefits of this feat until you select a new feat to replace it. You may use this feat to qualify for prestige classes, feats, and other venues, but if you later lose the feat, you loses all benefits of the prestige class, feat, or other such venues which depended upon it for entry. For more information on losing access to class features, see page 16 of Complete Warrior.

The connoisseur gains an additional special feat slot like this at 11th level and 18th level.

Devour Vitality (Su): By eating the flesh of her foe, a connoisseur of 7th level can channel the life force of her victim. Whenever you eat the flesh of a living being, you gains a number of vitality points equal to the Hit Dice of the creature. Every day you can absorb a number of vitality points equal to twice your Charisma modifier times your class level (2 x Cha x class level). You can channel vitality points you have accumulated at a 1:1 ratio to heal the wounds of yourself or another. This is a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity, but you can channel any number of accumulated vitality with a single touch.

Secret Spice Technique (Ex): Your knowledge of cannibalistic eating practices is quickly growing. With judicious application of special spices, you can preserve a body to make it easier to eat pieces off of. This requires spices worth 5 gp (and of negligible weight), and takes a move action to perform. You must apply the spices to the body of a creature which died within the last minute, in which case it is preserved as if with a gentle repose effect with a caster level of your class level. More importantly, you can attempt to grow gourmand grafts from the creature beyond the normal time limit, and if you fail on the Fortitude save to grow a graft from it you can attempt additional grafts until you succeed on one (although once you fail on a graft that material is effectively ruined). Other grafters can also remove material from the corpse while the effect persists.

Devour Memories (Su): Beginning at 9th level, a connoisseur may access the memories of her victim when she eats their flesh. You may use this ability once per day per point of your Intelligence modifier as a free action when consuming the flesh of a victim. You learn the victim's surface thoughts as if by the detect thoughts spell, and may learn the answers to up to three questions concerning the past of the victim. These must be simple 'yes/no' questions that you decided upon before eating the flesh. If the creature is dead, you can instead spend one use of this ability to activate the equivalent of a speak with dead spell-like-ability, with a caster level equal to your Hit Dice. The only caveat is that there needs to be something left to eat (squishy bits).

Subsume Soul (Su): Some people think of the soul as a nebulous philosophical quandary. You think it tastes like chicken. Whenever you kill someone with a bite attack, you can choose to devour their soul essentially as if with the trap the soul spell. Instead of a gem the soul is stored inside of you. You can later regurgitate it into a gemstone of applicable size and value, which might be useful since you can only have one soul per class level inside of you at a time. You cannot use this ability to force a planar creature to perform a service for you, since by definition they're dead. If you voluntarily give up a soul you've eaten for resurrection or raising from the dead, the victim incurs no level loss from dying.

Speed Eating Champion (Ex): Connoisseurs inevitably develop such fortitude of stomach that they can swallow down their favourite foods faster than you can say 'bite me'. Starting at 12th level, you don't need to bother spending a swift action to activate the benefits of one of your favourite feasts, but instead it's automatically activated when you eat it.

Devour Luck (Su): Beginning at 13th level, the connoisseur may extract the undiluted fortune from her food of choice. Whenever you consume the flesh of a being with a luck reroll that is unused, you may extract this reroll for yourself as a free action. You may have a number of luck rerolls from this ability at a time equal to your Charisma modifier. You may expend these rerolls on any kind of d20 roll, regardless of the outlets that were available to the victim. For more information on luck rerolls, see Complete Scoundrel. If the victim is still alive when she uses this ability, they lose the luck roll that is devoured by the connoisseur for the day.

If you possess any Luck feats, you can instead choose to burn this devoured fortune to regain two luck rerolls, up to your normal maximum. If you choose to do this you must spend the luck rerolls only in ways normally available to you.

Devour Defence (Su): You know what they say: you are what you eat. Beginning at 17th level, the connoisseur gains the ability to gain the arcane resistance of her victims simply from sampling their flesh. Whenever you swallow the flesh of a being with spell resistance, you may use a free action to gain the same spell resistance yourself. This spell resistance lasts until it has stopped a single effect from targetting you, at which point it ends. If you use this ability again before the first effect has been used, only the higher spell resistance applies going forward.

You can alternatively use this to steal a single kind of energy resistance or immunity, which also lasts until it reduces or eliminates a single attack or effect. You can only have one kind of energy resistance, immunity, or spell resistance stored at a single time, although you can change it if you eat another applicable creature's flesh while the first defence is still active.

Devour Form (Su): At 19th level, the connoisseur gains the ability to use the taste of her enemies to become them. Once per day, when you swallow the flesh of a being, you may choose to transform into the being as if by the shapechange spell. You may remain in this form for up to 1 hour per class level, or until you use a swift action to transform back to your natural form.

Devour Youth (Su): There's a bit of a reason connoisseurs get a bad rap. At 20th level, you have learned how to effectively live forever by stealing the youth from your victims. Whenever you eat a live baby, you may decrease your age by 1d4 years. This can restore physical ability points lost from aging, but has no effect on mental ability point increases; since that is based on experience, the time required to gain these ability increases is calculated from your original age. This ability cannot reduce you to below the minimum adventuring age for your race.

Hunger Eternal (Ex): Your insatiable hunger knows no bounds. Once you have achieved 20th level, many strange and unnatural roads open up to you if you are willing to delve deep enough into madness. All of your feat slots now work like your feat of the flesh class feature. This applies to current feats as well as other feats you gain later, including epic feats. You cannot use one of your pre-epic feat slots to hold epic feats, but you can store epic feats in your actual feat of the flesh slots.

A Special Note: The author mostly does not endorse cannibalism, and urges you to not engage in any kind of activity that a member of this class would enjoy pursuing unless you really want to.

Playing a Connoisseur
"There is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none. And when I say "none", I mean there is a certain amount."

If you're going to be playing a fellow who kills people and eats them, you're probably going to have to deal with a certain amount of bad feeling on the part of people who don't like to eat things that can think. Don't worry too much about it, all geniuses are misunderstood in their time. Go ahead and eat those naysayers if it makes you feel better. If you have any kinds of moral issues about eating sapient creatures' faces while they're still alive, I'd suggest a different class. Maybe a druid, so you can turn into a magical pink butterfly and float merrily away. Because this is a class about cutting people up and eating them. Try to get over that.

Anyway, from a game perspective you've got it pretty... SWEET. You're in a super versatile class, which gives you lots and lots of options for customisation. More so than almost any other class in the game (even the factotum), you can get access to damn near any printed ability if you work hard enough at it. Whether you're growing monster powers on your face, stealing people's spells, skills, feats, luck, or whatever, one connoisseur looks vastly different from any other. It's easy to get overwhelmed with options when looking at this class, but take all of the choices as they come. Bear in mind that almost no decision is set in stone, so even if you steal something that ends up not being that useful, you can always snag something else from the next monster. The best advice is to try to eat something from basically every monster you encounter. You never know what useful spell or feat or graft you might be able to salvage from a corpse and twist to your own ends.

In the end, this is a class about taking what the enemy is using and making it your own. If one strategy isn't working, you're very adaptable and able to customise your array of choices to incorporate new strategies or abilities that the enemy is using. You're not only hard to predict, but also very hard to pin down because of your options. Take the time to get familiar with what all you have available at any one time, and remember: an enemy you haven't eaten alive is an enemy wasted!

10
The Masínist
“Before we are citizens, we are children, and it is as children that we come to understand freedom and authority, liberty and duty. I have done my duty. I have bowed to authority. And now I can set aside those burdens for a little while and see what happens.”


Image credit Bluefley of deviantart.com

The sidhe courts have existed for millenia, static and unchanging as the cycle of the seasons or the balance of night and day. For what seems like an eternity, this was enough, the raw power of nature holding the growth and expansion of the mortal races in an eternal stalemate. Recently, however, this careful balance has smashed to pieces as the short-lived races have discovered and industrialized the principles of gramarie in just a few short generations. For the first time in ever, the courts of the fae have found themselves becoming obsolete. Quaint. An old-fashioned bedtime story told to frighten and amuse children they once might have stolen and eaten.

To combat this most unexpected of threats, the kings and queens of the fae desperately turned to the very evil which is pushing them into the dank and hidden places of the world: gramarie itself. In recent years it's become fashionable for the nobility of the fae to employ gramaric experts, to industrialize their own courts before they are pushed into the cloying depths of obscurity and myth. These engineers, known as masínists, are combining the ancient arts of the fae with the mechanisations of gramarie, merging the very Old with the very very new.

(click to show/hide)

Requirements: To become a masínist you must meet all of the following requirements.
Feats: Versatile PerformerCAdv
Gramarie: Any two IMCH principles
Skills: Bluff 10 ranks, Knowledge (architecture and engineering) 4 ranks, Knowledge (nature) 4 ranks, Perform (any musical) 8 ranks
Special: Bardic music class feature, must make contact with a representative from the Faerie court you want to join
Specialization: Must be specialized in Imachination

Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: The masínist's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (the Planes) (Int), Knowledge (psionics) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Open Lock (Dex), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Masínist
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Principles   
Songs of the Sidhe
1st+0+0+2+2Fate in Faerie, songs of the sidhe
+0
The Unquiet Grave
2nd+1+0+3+3Endless possibilities, feysong +1
+1
Riddles Wisely Expounded
3rd+2+1+3+3Court favour, steam-powered songs
+2
The Gentlemen
4th+3+1+4+4Endless possibilities
+3
The Fairy Reel
5th+3+1+4+4Music in the machine
+3
Moon-Lover
6th+4+2+5+5Endless possibilities, feysong +2
+4
Tam Lin
7th+5+2+5+5Iron ring, magic smoke
+5
The Last of the Giants
8th+6+2+6+6Endless possibilities
+6
Stern Embrace
9th+6+3+6+6Noble standing, one heartbeat
+6
Apocalypse Pie
10th+7+3+7+7Endless possibilities, feysong +3, the machine stops
+7
Moonless Fear

All of the following are class features of the masínist.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a vassal of Faerie, you gain nominal training in some typical court weapons. You gain proficiency with the rapier, the elven thinblade, the lance, and medium armour. You gain no proficiency in shields of any kind.

Fate in Faerie (Ex): Masínists are indentured engineers to a Faerie court, and thus you need a patron. At 1st level (actually prior to that, since you need to make contact with them before taking levels in this class), choose a court to pledge your allegiance to. Many courts have alignment restrictions and expect certain behaviours, so choose carefully. Some of your class features change based on your court selection. Six courts are described here: the Day Court, the Night Court, the Seelie Court, the Summer Court, the Unseelie Court, and the Winter Court. Some courts may not be available based on your campaign setting. Check with your DM to see which courts are usable in your setting, or to see if other courts are potential choices; these courts are descibed only as examples and to pull appropriate powers from.
  • The Day Court: The Court of the Day about as close as they get to being pleasant. It's all about chivalry, honour, and glory, and is a quasi-medieval court where the royalty lives in splendour. They have a court of actual noble fae who protect the King and Queen, and are the embodiment of freedom and sportsmanship. Many Day faeries are wild beasts in their true form, but it's fashionable for them to assume human-ish seemings. The Day King is Gwyn ap Nudd, who leads the Wyld Hunt against the mortal races. The Day Queen is Gloriana, the embodiment of moral virtue. To become a servant of Day, you cannot be evil.
  • The Night Court: The spookiest of all the courts, the Court of Night is pretty nasty. Like, really nasty. Night fae are spectres, who have no true form of their own. They flit from body to body, and need to possess mortal forms in order to interact with the real world. To sustain themselves, they slowly murder their victims, draining their blood and other vitals to fuel their magick. The Night King is Raja Jinn Peri, who takes only the bodies of powerful predator animals, like tigers, and sustains himself on the blood of virgin mortal girls. The Night Queen is Rangda, who is incredibly ugly and withered. To become a servant of Night, you cannot be good.
  • The Seelie Court: The most well-known court, the Court of the Seelie is both mischievous and well-meaning. It's basically the juvenile delinquent of the courts; where the others maybe want to end the world or hunt actual people for sport, the Seelie fae are happy just to turn people into donkeys for a while. They're a pretty fun court if you're okay with being pantsed every now and then. The Seelie King is Oberon, who takes very little seriously. The Seelie Queen is Titania, who constantly cleans up her husband's messes. To become a servant of the Seelie, you cannot be square.
  • The Summer Court: The most laid-back court, the Court of Summer is pretty chill. They basically sit around having parties, revels, and orgies all day. Summer fae have it pretty good in that they're basically immortal, and have no real biological needs, so they're free to engage in pleasure-seeking. The indulge all sorts of sensory stimuli; it's very hard to shock these people. The Summer King is Iblees, a hedonistic pleasure king. The Summer Queen is Lilith, a tempting seductress who lures mortals into a mind-numbing lifetime of sensory pleasure as she slowly feeds on their anitu. To become a servant of Summer, you cannot be lawful.
  • The Unseelie Court: The Unseelie court struggles a little bit with it's identity. It mostly bases itself as being diametrically opposed to the Seelie court, which basically means aligning themselves against the ephemereal concept of fun. They spend most of their time punishing mortals for their perceived transgressions and quashing any kinds of enjoyment the races of men might get out of life. The Unseelie King is Lamorak, a fallen servant from on high who now enforces the arbitrary codes of the Unseelie. The Unseelie Queen is known only as the Queen of Air and Darkness, the true power behind the throne; she pursues her complex and unknown agenda in secret against the other Courts. To become a servant of the Unseelie, you cannot be funky.
  • The Winter Court: If Summer is indolent, the Court of Winter is anything but. It's as cold and unforgiving as its season, and the Winter fae have no time for slackers. It's a brutal aristocracy where they basically just want to kill everything. Nothing personal, it's just sort of what they do. The Winter King is Finvarra, a philandering consort king. The Winter Queen is Nicnevin, a harsh queen as cold as ice. To become a servant of Winter, you cannot be chaotic.
After selecting a fate in Faerie, you gain a new component to your alignment based on your selection: either Day, Night, Seelie, Summer, Unseelie, or Winter. Any fey creature can tell this component of your alignment just by perceiving you, as if they were using a detect effect with a caster level of their Hit Dice. This can be concealed or disguised like any alignment component. Your Faerie allegiance also grants you a deeper insight into the half-truths and insinuations of the fae; you gain a bonus on Bluff checks equal to half your class level, and can yourself discern a fey creature's Court alignment by sight as well.

Songs of the Sidhe (Su): As a servant of the Faerie Courts, a musical talent is absolutely required, even of their engineers and technology experts. You continue to advance your bardic music ability; you add your Intelligence modifier and your class level to your effective bard level to determine how often you can use your bardic music ability. As you level up, you learn various fae ballads which can be used with this ability. These ballads work just like normal bardic music abilities, but must be used with an instrument which produces music (or by singing).

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Endless Possibilities (Ex): As a servant of the Faerie Courts, you can glean some insight into the inner workings and infinite potential of fae glamours. At 2nd level and every two levels thereafter, you learn a special discovery about imachination from the following list:
  • Combinatory Illusions: You can choose a new function for your illusions: combinatory. Combinatory illusions can be either static, adaptive, or programmed, but they can also be controlled with logical decisions if they are tied into a heuristical circuit. Normally they work based on their simple function, but when being manipulated they instead (obviously) act as if they were an illusion with the 'controlled' function. If whoever controls the circuit stops making decisions for the illusion, it reverts to its base behaviour.
  • Extra-Real Images: Whoever said that specialization is for insects clearly didn't know what he was talking about; you double down on your illusionary homework, and are treated for the purposes of picking future illusions and for some DCs as if you knew one more IMCH principle than you actually do.
  • Hard to Believe: You can choose to make an illusion outlandish, in which case it's somewhat more obvious that it's absurd (+4 to checks to disbelieve it). On the other hand, if someone falls for it, it's an even more powerful assault on their senses; they take a -2 penalty on saving throws against any fake condition it would cause, and if it ever deals damage to them, the nonlethal damage is increased by +2d6.
  • Intricate Manufacturing: It's sort of like with lasers and water jets except a little more abstract. You can create illusions very carefully crafted down to the smallest detail, known as intricate illusions. An intricate illusion can only target one sense, but it's so well-built that people take a -4 penalty on any kind of check to notice the illusory nature of it. An intricate illusion takes twice as long to prepare.
  • Lurid Lure: You learn a new form for your illusions: luring. This places the veil of an illusion over an area, but doesn't actually change anything about it. Anyone who fails to penetrate the illusion becomes convinced that the object or area in question is in fact disguised using an illusion. Only by testing its 'realness' for themselves are they allowed a chance at a saving skill check.
  • Off the Edge of the Map: Here there be monsters! To choose this discovery, you need to have encountered a monster who has a sense that doesn't actually have a sensory component illusion for it. You can spend two days developing a new illusion sensory component tailor-made to foil that sense. With your DM, pick a skill which would normally be used in the routine use of the sense you are targetting. For example, if the sense you're targetting is the dweomersight of the balhannoth, you might choose Spellcraft as the skill normally used in the function of that sense. The sensory component you create can create any kind of sensory input normally associated with the sense you have chosen. You can pick this discovery multiple times; each time, you must have encountered a creature with a new sense that you want to foil.
  • Supersensory: Illusions with just one sense are like ice cream sundaes with only one topping: depressing and filled with tears. Your illusions are way more exciting: you can make supersensory illusions, which get a free bonus sensory component you know, without having to spend any extra time adding it.
Feysong (Su): The songs of the fae are not the same as the songs of mortal men and women. Inside every chord, every lyric, there is ulterior motive, deception, and glamour waiting to ensnare the unexpecting. Starting at 2nd level, you can substitute a Bluff check for any Perform check you would normally make to use a bardic music ability or a fae ballad, although you still need to play the instrument or sing. When you use this ability in conjunction with the inspire courage ability, the bonus granted by the music increases by +1. The bonus increases by an additional +1 every four levels thereafter. You cannot use this ability while under the influence of a zone of truth or similar effect.

Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Court Favour (Su): You have friends in high (or at least weird) places. As a member in good standing of your Court, you gain at 3rd level a mandate from the nobility to keep on keeping on. This manifests itself visibly in your illusions:
  • Day: The Day Court rewards its faithful masínists with a touch of faerie glamour, also known as a seeming. You can prepare any imachination principle as an immediate action, so long as the illusion is only over your own body, fixed to you as a a spatial reference, and only has a visual component.
  • Night: Terror is the ally of the Night, and this makes itself manifest in your illusions. Instead of a normal function for an imachinary illusion you set up, you can choose for it to be a nightmare. This kind of illusion morphs itself boggart-like into the worst fear of anyone who looks at it. This makes it harder to see through the illusion thanks to the sheer terror of it (the viewer takes a -2 penalty on checks to see through the illusion), and anyone who believes the illusion is overcome with fear. This is a mind-affecting, fear-based ability, and is often used to discover what the subject's worst fear actually is; psychotherapists have found it a useful tool. The illusion tends to choke when multiple people view it simultaneously– for every additional person observing the illusion simultaneously, each person gains a cumulative +2 bonus on checks to see through it, and every additional person who encounters it while people are still within sensory range of the illusion provokes a chance for a fundamental disconnect in everyone viewing it as the illusion frantically tries to compensate.
  • Seelie: Seelie fae are masters of trickery and subterfuge, and they've taught you a few of their tricks. You can prepare any IMCH principle as a standard action as long as it replicates a trap of some kind, but it only lasts for one hour. You can also create the illusion of gold in this time, but it's similarly short-lived; this is called faerie gold, and is infamous among mortals.
  • Summer: The sensual experiences of the Summer Court insidiously find their way into your illusions. Any illusion can now have an emotional component to it, which provokes a set response in those who experience it. You can choose from inciting confusion, fear, happiness, rage, or sadness in those who experience the illusion. The only defense against this emotional manipulation is to discover the true nature of the illusion. These are all mind-affecting abilities, and have an effective caster level equal to your Hit Dice.
  • Unseelie: Your illusions are less imaginative expressions and more like crushing the will of those who view them beneath the iron authority of the Unseelie. You can tailor-make an imachinary illusion for a single target if you have at least four components related to them: something of the head, something of the thread, something of the body, and something of the dead (it almost rhymes!). If the target later comes into contact with the illusion and does not realize its true nature, they are subject to a dominate person effect to submit to your will. If they are successfully dominated, they must be brought into contact with the illusion whenever the domination is to be renewed, potentially allowing a new chance to recognize the illusory nature of it. The effect has a caster level equal to your Hit Dice when you prepare it. This is a mind-affecting compulsion effect. The first time the subject is brought into contact with it, they are allowed a saving throw to resist the effect as well, against a DC of 10 + 5 for every IMCH principle you know.
  • Winter: You immediately get access to the thermal illusions of IMCH 334, but only to make things seem colder than they actually are, even if you don't meet the prerequisites for it. Whenever you prepare an imachinary illusion that includes a cold thermal component, it has extra kick to it; anyone viewing or otherwise experiencing it is too busy freaking out about how cold it is to pay as close attention as they otherwise might; viewers who are unprotected from the elements take a -4 penalty on checks to notice the true nature of the illusion. Your cold illusions can also cause viewers to experience actual distress depending on the temperature bracket, just as if they were in real cold weather. You can create illusions that include temperatures down to the point of 'extreme cold' (below -29 degrees Centigrade).
Steam-Powered Songs (Su): Whenever you create an IMCH illusion with an auditory component, you can weave faerie music into it. You spend a daily use of your bardic music during the preparation, and select one bardic music ability or fae ballad that you know. The illusion is treated as if it is maintaining the music as its auditory illusion, which means that anyone who hasn't seen discerned its true nature is subject to the musical effect. An illusion can only maintain a musical ability for a number of rounds equal to its Bluff check (one chorus), but you can recharge it as a standard action by touching any part of the illusion and spending another use of bardic music. The effective Perform check for the music ability is equal to the Bluff check made to prepare the illusion.

Music in the Machine (Ex): Your knowledge of gramarie and faerie workings advances apace. At this point your illusions are so powerful that they can sustain their own music without your help. You can choose to permanently invest a use of bardic music into an imachinary auditory illusion, in which case it can be powered for a full chorus with a number of ebbs of puissance equal to half the Bluff check. If the illusion is ever dismantled or destroyed, you regain the invested bardic music charge. Decisions about exact details of the musical ability, if there are any, are handled as logical decisions inside of the illusion.

You can invest multiple ballads or songs in a circuit, but you need to pay for each of them separately.

Iron Ring (Ex): As you graduate from being an apprentice and become a doctor of magical engineering, your Court traditionally bequeaths you a ring of cold iron representing your bond to them. Unlike most iron, this ring is perfectly safe for fae of your Court to touch, although the same cannot be said of other fae. The ring represents the boundaries between truth and untruth, itself representing the divide between mortal and fae. By holding the ring and chanting a fae phrase, you can invoke a zone of truth effect around you with a caster level of your Hit Dice. Alternatively, you can invoke a zone of lies, which works the same way, except creatures under its influence are allowed to tell nothing but lies and falsehoods.

The Iron Ring also holds in it faerie magic sufficient to invest in one auditory illusion with your music in the machine class feature. You can recall the charge from the illusion as a free action at any time.

Magic Smoke (Su): At 7the level, you discover a special fae technique to put a little magic into technology. Whenever you link an imachinary illusion into a heuristical circuit, you can imbue it with magic smoke. The caster level of all of the effects the circuit uses is increased by +2, and the DC of any effects linked to the circuit is similarly increased. 1 ebb of puissance is also somehow generated by the circuit every round, which can be distributed like all energy input. This effect vanishes if anyone other than you alters the programming of the circuit or takes it apart to see what's generating the extra power.

Noble Standing (Su): Continued association with the fae has its rewards as well as its perils. If you're willing to swear a small oath at 9th level, you gain a special boon from your Court:
  • Day: The Day Court requires that you honour your commitments and keep to the letter of your word, even if you mislead your audience about your true intentions. This habit of speaking in half-truths and open-ended statements has made the Day Court famous in mortal tales. As a reward for your service, you are invited to join the Wyld Hunt. You gain the ability to polymorph at will into any animal with Hit Dice less than or equal to your own, and gain DR 5/cold iron while in this state; however, your hit point pool is not changed when transforming. This grants you the Shapechanger subtype. You can plane shift at will between the Plane of your Court and the Material Plane. The polymorph effect has a caster level equal to your Hit Dice.
  • Night: The Court of the Night requires that you bring tribute to Raja Jinn Peri in the form of mortal blood. For a monthly tribute of one living mortal girl, you gain the benefits of their favour. You can assume a gaseous form (no set duration) whenever you like, and while in gaseous form can possess beings as if with a magic jar effect at will. You share bodies with your victim instead of forcing them out, but can impose your will with an opposed Will saving throw, in which case you control the movements of the body. If the body you are in dies, you can leave the corpse in your gaseous form. Both of these abilities have a caster level equal to your Hit Dice, and the possession offers a saving throw against a DC of 10 + 1/2 your Hit Dice + your Charisma modifier.
  • Seelie: The Seelie fae demand that you devote yourself to mischief and pranks; their ways seem childish and crude to many mortals, but there is a deeper agenda they pursue. You are not allowed to speak the truth as you see it when you are a servant of the Seelie. As a reward, you are under a permanent prestidigitation effect, and can use it to greater effect than normal for your pranks: the weight, volume, and duration limits of all effects caused by this ability multiply by 100. You can also replicate actual objects with it, as if with a major creation effect. Objects created like this expire at midnight. This ability has a caster level equal to your Hit Dice.
  • Summer: The Summer Court knows well how to reward its faithful servants. They require that you give up all structured artifacts of society, including taxes, citizenship, marriage, and so on. You are similarly not allowed to acknowledge the authority of any mortal governing body. As a reward, you can summon at will a servant from the Summer Court to assist you; this is a succubus or incubus (succubus shapeshifted into a male form), bound to your will for as long as you like. The servant is advanced to be cohort-worthy for you (a CR of your ECL -2). This is a conjuration effect with a caster level equal to your Hit Dice, but no set duration. If your companion is killed, you can summon another whenever you like as a standard action, but you can only have one at a time.
  • Unseelie: Darkness and authority are your ally as a subject of the Unseelie. You must pledge to submit to their authority, essentially allowing yourself to be dominated indefinitely by the Queen of Air and Darkness. In reward, you yourself can turn darkness to your will; you can create a deeper darkness effect at will, and can see in darkness of any kind, even magical darkness, with perfect colour. You gain a +20 bonus on Intimidate and Diplomacy checks made while in shadowy illumination or darker conditions, and in such conditions people start 1 step closer to helpful towards you.
  • Winter: To touch the heart of Winter is to touch death itself. A true servant of Winter needs no protection or shelter from the elements, and as a vassal of the Court you are required to give up passing beyond mortal thresholds. In return, you are granted the power to reach beyond death: if you die, you can choose to come back as a ghost with your memories and thoughts intact. Everywhere you travel, you bring winter with you, as if with a control weather effect causing extreme snowfall and cold weather conditions. The winter front generally catches up with you about a day after you arrive in any location, and continues to follow you as a ghost.
One Heartbeat (Su): Music is your lifeblood, and it flows through your machines. Every circuit which contains an illusion that is invested with one of your musical abilities (as with your music in the machine class feature) is now considered linked as one circuit.

The Machine Stops (Su): Gramarie is amazing and awesome, but sometimes the old ways are the best ways. At 10th level you discover what the fae have been searching for so frantically: a secret weapon in the war of technology. This is a special technique which can be activated by burning three daily uses of bardic music. It produces an effect similar to an antimagic field centred around you, but instead of disrupting magic this disrupts modern technology. All gramarie in the area, even extraordinary gramarie, is suppressed, while normal magic and supernatural abilities are unhindered. The effect lasts for 10 minutes, and has a caster level equal to your Hit Dice. Circuits which are currently playing a chorus of your music (as through the one heartbeat class feature) are unaffected by this ability, as their faerie magic sustains them.

You can program this ability into a circuit, just like a ballad or a piece of bardic music (although three uses of bardic music must be invested). If you do, this effect is not sufficient on its own to sustain a circuit inside the antiscience field; a piece of real faerie music is required for this.

11
The Graughtsman
"I'll show you some intelligent design."


Image credit Light-Schizophrenia of deviantart.com

There are many charlatans who claim to have some secret knowledge of the workings of flesh. Physicians and their ilk scrape the surface, clinging to the desperate need to maintain some facsimile of life. Xenoalchemists are parasites, chopping nature's beauty apart in their reckless abandon to find something interesting. However, there are those whose study of life and death takes them deeper into the workings of biology than any other. These fleshworkers, known as graughtsmen, are unsurpassed in their manipulation of life. Where a physician preserves, or at best repairs, a graughtsman creates. Where a xenoalchemist severs, a graughtsman invents. They are engineers, thinkers, scientists, to whom life is nothing so much as a blank slate waiting to be engraved with their vision of the future.

Requirements: To become a graughtsman you must meet all of the following requirements.
Feats: Extraordinary ArtisanECS
Gramarie: Any two BIOY principles
Skills: Appraise 4 ranks, Heal 10 ranks, Knowledge (nature) 8 ranks
Specialization: Must be specialized in Biollurgy

Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: The graughtsman's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Craft (Int), Concentration (Con), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (local) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (the Planes) (Int), Knowledge (psionics) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Open Lock (Dex), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Graughtsman
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial   
Graft
Level   
Principles
Craft Reserve
1st+0+2+0+2Biocraft, harvest material, xenomachinery
1
+0
100
2nd+1+3+0+3Master grafter
1
+1
200
3rd+1+3+1+3Bonus feat
2
+2
300
4th+2+4+1+4Master grafter
2
+3
400
5th+2+4+1+4Gramarie graft
3
+3
500
6th+3+5+2+5Bonus feat, master grafter
3
+4
600
7th+3+5+2+5Doctorate principles
4
+5
700
8th+4+6+2+6Master grafter
4
+6
800
9th+4+6+3+6Bonus feat
5
+6
900
10th+5+7+3+7Master grafter
5
+7
1,000

All of the following are class features of the graughtsman.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a graughtsman, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Biocraft (Ex): You can use your ranks in Heal less 3 (-3) as your caster level for the purpose of crafting magic items. You also gain a craft reserve every level, as shown on your class table. You can use this reserve in place of XP for the purpose of crafting magical items. You do not keep your previous reserve when you gain a new class level, instead replacing it with your new reserve. In other words, spend 'em while you got 'em.

In addition, any special bonuses you might possess such as Skill Focus which apply specifically to the Heal skill you can apply to Craft skills, although this does not allow you to attempt such checks untrained. Speaking of which, you gain a bonus to Heal checks of half your class level.

Harvest Material (Ex): As a graughtsman you can quickly identify, catalogue and remove for future use the pieces of monsters which make them so dangerous. Harvesting remains requires two minutes of work with a helpless creature or recently dead (within one hour) corpse. It requires two skill checks.

First, you must make a Knowledge check relating to the monster's type. The relevant Knowledge skill required is described under the uses of Knowledge, but since that's kind of obscure I'll just list them here for you. It's worth noting that if you don't know what type the monster was you can simply attempt a broad Knowledge check and the DM will choose the appropriate skill for you.

Knowledge SkillMonster Types
Knowledge (arcana)Constructs, dragons, magical beasts
Knowledge (dungeoneering)Aberrations, oozes
Knowledge (local)Humanoids
Knowledge (nature)Animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, vermin
Knowledge (religion)Undead
Knowledge (the Planes)Outsiders, elementals

The DC for the Knowledge check is equal to 10 + the monster's HD. You can always attempt these checks, even untrained thanks to your broad training in general monstrous physiology.

If the Knowledge check is successful, the DM shall describe to you the pieces available for harvest. In general, this consists of informing you about supernatural and extraordinary abilities, breath weapons, natural weapons, movement modes, and so on. This might seem a little vague, but you can always request particular information about an aspect of the monster. If there is a piece of the monster you wish to harvest for one of your grafts, you can move on to the second skill check. You can only harvest material if it's appropriate for a graft you currently have access to.

Once you decide which piece of the monster you want (each graft has a particular requirement in the original monster and you can harvest one graft's worth of material from any given monster) you make a Heal check at the same DC. If successful you manage to procure the material needed for the chosen graft. The material is usable for about three days. If it's not used before then it begins to go rancid and becomes unusable unless you store it in a freezing environment (time spent in such a state effectively pauses the time limit).

If the Heal check is unsuccessful you cannot try again to harvest that material from the monster, but you can attempt additional pieces that you find useful. If you successfuly harvest one, however, the rest of the monster becomes contaminated and unusable. You can store as many of these monster pieces as you want, but the DM should decide on their weight and the space required to store them based on the monster they came from.

Xenomachinery (Ex): Xenomachinery takes pieces of monsters and turns them into wacky gizmos and gadgets. In general, there are two kinds of xenomachines: tools and accessories. A tool is, well, a usable tool. It's a held item which has an active power stapled to it from a graft. Any graft which grants a power which is activated, such as a draconis fundamentum or an oceanic infusion is suitable for being placed on a tool xenomachine. An accessory grants passive effects, which come from any graft which provides an 'always-on', non-activated effect. This includes grafts such as demon skin and an extra limb.

Creating a xenomacine requires the graft component to be attached, and the item for it to be attached to. Tool xenomachines are held items, which typically include things like weapons, wands, shields, and so forth, but could actually be anything that people hold in their limbs, such as a stick off the side of the road. When someone holds a tool xenomachine, they can access the graft as if it was attached to an appropriate body slot on them. If there is a daily limit or other restriction on a graft's use, the limit is carried with the graft itself, and is independant of who might be using it at any given time. Accessory xenomachines are attached to worn pieces of apparel or wondrous items which occupy non-graft body slots. Anyone wearing an accessory xenomachine has access to the graft power as if it was attached to them. You need to match up compatible slots, but the item slots and the body slots don't sync up exactly. Here's a conversion for you.

Body Slot    Usable Item Slot
ArmsArms
BodyBody (armour)
EyesFace
HandsHands
HeadHead
LegsFeet
ShouldersShoulders
ThroatThroat
TorsoTorso
WaistWaist

You cannot put a graft onto a ring. Any given wondrous item or piece of clothing or tool can only have a single graft attached to it at a time. Higher level grafts also require more powerful items to be attached to, as shown on the following chart.

Graft Level     Minimum Caster Level of Item
1
21
35
410
515

This restriction applies equally for tool and accessory xenomachines.

Actually attaching a graft to a xenomachine is a fairly straightforward process. It takes half an hour per caster level of the item, plus half an hour per Hit Die of the creature that provided the graft component. Afterwards, you make a Heal check against the Craft check that was made to make the item in the first place (for items the party didn't make, or if you just forget, assume the crafter took 10 on the check with the bare minimum ranks necessary for the construction). Success indicates the graft is successfully attached. Removing a graft from a xenomachine is possible, but takes the same amount of time, a Heal check at least as great as the original one to attach the graft, and destroys the graft component in the process. If you beat the original Heal check by 10 or more, you master it, and can remove the graft without destroying it; alternatively, this lets you claim it as if you had built it. With a half-hour process you can touch up a xenomachine you built to raise its grafter level to your current level of achievement.

At 1st level you can only attach 1st level grafts to items. You gain access to grafts of higher levels as shown on your class table. Your grafter level for your xenomachines is equal to your ranks in Heal less 3.

Master Grafter (Ex): Your mastery of the flesh continues to expand. At 2nd level and every two levels thereafter, you learn a new discovery about the nature of biollurgy and fleshworking that allows you greater insight into the natural form. Every time you gain this feature, choose an ability from the following list.
  • Artificial Fleshshape: You can now choose to create a biollurgical chassis of a different type. Whenever you use BIOY 228 to create a chassis, you can choose for it to be a Construct. If you do make it a Construct, you can choose to install a cockpit inside of it, which any intelligent creature can use to operate the chassis. If you install a cockpit, the chassis loses its Intelligence score entirely, and cannot be affected with BIOY 273. Instead, any creature of a size of at least two size categories below the chassis can ride in the cockpit and operate it with a DC 10 Knowledge (arcana), Disable Device, or Ride check for one round. While operating it, the riding creature is considered entirely subsumed in the chassis, and for all intents and purposes acts as the chassis for that round. Constructs gain additional hit points based on their size categories, as described here
  • Bizarre Fleshshape: You must be at least at your 6th class level to select this discovery. You can now choose to create a biollurgical chassis of a different type. Whenever you use BIOY 228 to create a chassis, you can choose for it to have one of the following types: Plant, Ooze, Outsider, Undead, or Vermin. An Outsider has a native Plane of whatever Plane it was created on. A vermin is inherently mindless, and does not gain an Intelligence score; it can still be made sentient with BIOY 273, but it loses its mindlessness at that point.
  • Genetic Gramarie: You must be at your 10th class level to select this discovery and know BIOY 381. If a chassis that you create counts as an arcanodynamic transformer or an eldrikinetic engine and breeds, its descendants inherit the principles of gramarie that have been prepared on it from those two schools.
  • Heart of the Matter: You must be at your 10th class level to select this discovery, and know BIOY 340. You can use BIOY 340 to place a single 5th level graft on a chassis. This is a separate slot apart from the normal graft slots on the chassis.
  • Infinite Faces: You can place any number of 0th level grafts on a chassis, instead of just one.
  • Material Fleshshape: You can now choose to create a biollurgical chassis of a different type. Whenever you use BIOY 228 to create a chassis, you can choose for it to have one of the following types: Animal, Dragon, Giant, Humanoid, Magical Beast, or Monstrous Humanoid.
  • Real Steel: The nature of metal is malleable, and the skilled artisan can mold it to his liking. Whenever you create biostructure, you can choose for it to have the statistics of iron as far as hardness and hit points per inch of thickness goes, no matter what metal went into it. Biostructure treated this way is alway considered ferrous.
  • Volcanic Ventilation: In addition to the other gas processing options you have, you can choose to have biostructure that you create process sulfur dioxide.
Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Bonus Feat: At 3rd level and again at 6th level and 9th level, you learn a bonus feat which must have the [Item Creation] tag.

Gramaric Graft (Ex): At 5th level, you unlock a special skill that transcends the borders between xenoalchemy and gramarie. You learn a special graft which imbues knowledge of a gramaric principle in someone. This works like a normal graft, except that you must spend an additional amount of time on the procedure as normal for preparing the principle in question. For xenomachinery, you spend this additional time while 'attaching' the graft (even though there is no monstrous material) to the item. Gramaric grafts are treated as accessory xenomachines, since they simply imbue knowledge of a principle.

You must know the principle you wish to imbue the subject with, and you must be able to implant grafts of that level. After the procedure, the subject can use the principle as if they had learned it themselves. They must still make any relevant skill checks involved with the principle themselves. The subject does not need to meet any of the normal prerequisites to know the principle, but they also do not count as "knowing" the principle for the purposes of meeting prerequisites on prestige classes, other principles, and other such venues. They can prepare the principal, but that's it.

This is a 2nd level graft for a Baccalaureate-level principle, a 4th level graft for a Magisterial-level principle, and a 5th level graft for a Doctorate-level principle. Gramaric grafts fill the Head body slot, and no other.

12
So after I finish porting stuff over, here's my stuff to do!

Gramarie to-do list:
  • Asternomist
  • 400-level principles
  • Artifacts
  • Make Eldrikinetics suck less
  • Feats
  • Traditions
  • Saboteur base class
  • Sapper base class
  • Theologineer base class
  • How To Gramarie: Gramarie 101
  • Gramaric Acupuncture
Xenoalchemy to-do list:
  • More grafts!
  • Feats
  • Golem Engineer
  • Horsemaster
  • Living Weapon
  • Mightblade
  • Monarcha Medicorum
  • Psychosinator
  • Swamp doctor
  • Xenoanimist base class
Let me know if you have ideas or if there's something that you're really excited for, so I can get to it sooner!

– Chris

13
The Apogineer

"If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."


Image credit dead-robot of deviantart.com.

The turning of the seasons is as quiet and reliable as the most complex and intricate machine. However, many in these times feel that the advent of gramarie and technology is trampling on the natural order. Some few of the new order of gramarists have taken up arms in its defense; there is a new order of guardians of the ever-implacable circle of life, known as apogineers. These wardens use the new ideas of gramarie to defend the order of the natural world against the encroachment of industrial civilization. Apogineers are skilled magitechnicians, but also follow a warrior code striving to keep balance between the disparate elements of nature. Theirs is a new discipline, but their fury is as dangerous as a sudden storm in summer or the harshest winds of winter.

Requirements: To become an apogineer you must meet all of the following requirements.
Alignment: Any neutral
Base Attack Bonus: +5
Feat: Track
Gramarie: Any two GEOC principles
Skills: Survival 10 ranks, Heal 4 ranks, Martial Lore 4 ranks
Special: Must have the changing seasons class feature.
Specialization: Must be specialized in Geoccultism

Hit Die: d8
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: An apogineer's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Autohypnosis (Wis), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Climb (Str), Diplomacy (Cha), Forgery (Int), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (geography) (Int), Intimidate (Cha), Listen (Wis), Martial Lore (Wis), Perform (Cha), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Swim (Str), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Apogineer
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Principles   
Maneuvers   
Known
Maneuvers   
Readied
Stances
Known
1st+1+0+2+2Cyclic stylings (initiate), sword of the seasons
+0
+1
+0
+0
2nd+2+0+3+3Earthlore, track ley lines
+1
+0
+0
+1
3rd+3+1+3+3Cyclic stylings (avanced), touch of green (subsistence)
+2
+1
+1
+0
4th+4+1+4+4Earthlore, weather warden
+3
+0
+0
+0
5th+5+1+4+4Cyclic stylings (expert)
+3
+1
+0
+0
6th+6+2+5+5Earthlore, touch of green (wakefulness)
+4
+0
+0
+1
7th+7+2+5+5Cyclic stylings (masterful)
+5
+1
+0
+0
8th+8+2+6+6Earthlore, forecast strike
+6
+0
+0
+0
9th+9+3+6+6Cyclic stylings (grandmaster), touch of green (natural)
+6
+1
+1
+0
10th+10+3+7+7Earthlore, only revolutions
+7
+0
+0
+1

All of the following are class features of the apogineer.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As an apogineer, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Cyclic Stylings (Su): Apogineers are privy to the secret tactics of the seasons in their constant cycle across the landscape of the world. As you advance, you learn to incorporate these cyclic stylings into your martial prowess. You gain the benefit of a cyclic styling when you are aligned with the appropriate season. This can be a special strike, a boon, a perk, a skill trick, or really anything. If a cyclic styling allows a saving throw, the DC is 10 + your class level + your Wisdom modifier.

You also have a fifth styling, the precipitous styling, which is only available when you are perfectly aligned in the middle of both of your axes. The power of many of the effects of your stylings depends on the magnitude of your alignment with the season. At 1st level and every two levels thereafter, you unlock a new talent related to your cyclic style.

Initiate Stylings: Initiate stylings are your first taste of the power of the elements. These are special combat techniques that are 'always on'. You become privy to initiate stylings at 1st level.
  • A Thousand Drops of Rain (Precipitous): When you strike a target they are battered from every direction by the uncatchable rain. Until your next turn, you count as if you were flanking the target for the benefit of your allies, no matter what direction their attack comes from. If a successful flanking attack from an ally strikes the target later in the same round, the enemy is dazed (Will negates). The flanking bonus you grant to your allies increases from +2 to the magnitude of your alignment with Spring.
  • Change in the Winds (Autumn): Fall is in the air, and with it the change of the seasons. You can choose to reroll initiative for yourself or an adjacent ally or enemy as a swift action (Reflex negates). You can apply a modifier to this initiative roll either positive or negative, equal to your alignment with Autumn.
  • Flowers in Bloom (Spring): Flowers and trees spring to life and blossom in your presence. Any dead vegetation within 50 feet of you while in this styling return to life. Undead plants are destroyed, because you know there are a lot of those around (Will negates).
  • Instant Spark (Summer): While in this styling you can respond as fast as a flame to any attack. You gain a number of additional attacks of opportunity every round equal to your alignment with Summer, and can make attacks of opportunity against people that enter your threatened squares as well as those who leave them.
  • Stone Shattering Ice (Winter): Your weapon swings with the weight of winter behind it. Objects explode into ice fragments as if they were nothing but frozen water. You deal double damage to objects, and gain a circumstance bonus on sunder attempts equal to your alignment with Winter.
Maneuvers Known: You progress your martial study as an apogineer; at 1st level and again whenever indicated on your class table, you learn a new maneuver that you qualify for from the Equinox, Revolution, or Solstice disciplines. Otherwise these maneuvers work exactly like they do for a normal cycle warden.

Maneuvers Readied: At 3rd level and again whenever indicated on your class table, you can ready another simultaneous maneuver. Otherwise, your preparation and expenditure of maneuvers works exactly like that of a normal cycle warden.

Sword of the Seasons (Ex): An apogineer is less of a warden of the seasons and more of a tactical engineer on their behalf. Levels in apogineer stack with levels in the cycle warden class to determine when you receive the eternal gift class feature, as well as the magnitude of its effect. You gain a bonus on Survival, Heal, and Martial Lore checks equal to half your class level. Apogineer levels count as full martial initiator levels.

Earthlore (Ex): The forces of nature have many secrets for you. Some of them relate to killing things, but others teach you how to build. At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, you learn a special discovery about geoccultism.
  • An Artificial Arctic: Your gold poles consume 25% less metal than normal, and are up to 10 degrees Centigrade colder than normal. You can apply the CorpsecrafterLM feat, if you know it, to your pole. This allows zombies raised with deadsnow to gain its benefits. Similarly, if you have any other feats with the [Corpsecrafter] tag, you can apply their benefits as well. You can have up to three living glaciers patrolling every 500ft. radius of your zone instead of just one. Mirror ice that you place in your arctic zone brings bad luck to anyone who breaks one of the mirror images; anyone who strikes one of the images instead of the illusive target takes a cumulative -1 luck penalty to all d20 rolls for seven days and seven nights.
  • Complex Environments: You can mix three metals together in a pole, as described in GEOC 323. There must still be one master pole, and you can draw a single kind of feature from the other two metals. You must know GEOC 323 to select this discovery.
  • Fancy Forests: Your copper poles consume 25% less metal than normal. You can place up to five light trees in the same square, two massive trees in the same square, or one massive tree and three light trees in the same square. Your ancient oaks are more perceptive than normal, and can see invisible creatures normally. They can also uproot themselves and move, with a speed of 10ft. by shambling their roots across the ground. Your heartwood now goes a step further in connecting things; if wood from one pole takes root in more than one other pole, poles which do not even contain the original wood can connected and controlled as described in the entry. If you have more than one nymph pool in your forest, stepping into one of them allows immediate transport to the other.
  • Grrrreat Grasslands: Your tin poles consume 25% less metal than normal, and the dirt is extra-good for growing things; harvests increase in yield by 25%. Ghostgrass that's grown in your grasslands, if properly preserved, maintains its edible incorporeal property for up to two weeks after leaving the zone. Your lightning pools can be recharged with electricity; a single lightning bolt into the pool empowers it with three ebbs of puissance. Standing stone circles that you set up can maintain twice as many transient effects as normal: ten instead of five on any given creature.
  • Just Deserts: Your iron poles consume 25% less metal than normal, and are up to 10 degrees hotter. You can choose to grow brassbrush as iron instead of copper. Firesand that you place can burn cold instead of hot if mixed with water at night; this creates a temperature of basically absolute zero while burning, which is approximately -273 Centigrade. Your mirage oases always have a pool of drinkable water in them which is sufficient for up to eight people to hydrate themselves for a day.
  • Mobile Oaks: Stationary features that you previously placed can be moved by 5ft. with a 5 lb expenditure of metal as a standard action when controlling the pole, but only within the normal constraints of placement.
  • Obviously an Ocean: Your silver poles consume 25% less metal than normal, and you can place living saltwater fish of your choice of up to 2 HD into your ocean zone for 5 lb apiece (after the discount). Krakenhaunts that you create conjure one duplicate creature every time they're activated. Your truewater crevices still can't be closed, but they stretch to accomodate passage of larger vessels or creatures; they can accomodate creatures of one size category larger than should be able to fit through them. Your prismatic reefs can now be built up to 100ft. above the free surface of the water.
  • Sickening Swamps: Your lead poles consume 25% less metal than normal, and every square in the swamp somehow now has vines in it instead of just squares with trees. Your black lagoons can be programmed with a single metamagic feat that you know (or that a friend of yours knows, who's willing to help), which is automatically applied to Necromancy spells cast in them. This cannot have an adjustment of more than +2 to the effective spell level. Your haunted bogs are more efficient than normal; they process a soul in 1 hour instead of 2, and produce a dread wraith instead of a normal wraith. Your ignes fatui no longer need sustenance from the pole to do their thing, and can make measurements off by up to +100% or -100% the actual reading.
  • Transient Poles: One of the most important discoveries, this lets a pole be fixed to a body of land instead of in space. If the land later moves, it carries the pole with it. The body of land must be entirely within the area of effect of the geoccult pole, and more importantly the pole cannot affect any land beyond the mobile body. This might not seem amazing, but it lets you have things like designer environments on flying islands or the backs of giant turtles, and so on in that fashion. You must be level 10 to select this discovery.
  • Wyrd Wetlands: Your mercury poles consume 25% less metal than normal, and you can place living freshwater fish of your choice of up to 2 HD into your lake zone for 5 lb apiece (after the discount). Cryptid caverns that you place are especially well hidden, as the actual knowledge of the caverns is impossible to remember; anyone who discovers the cavern is subject to an immediate suggestion to forget the existence of it (Will negates, DC 10 + 5 for every GEOC principle you know). Your healing springs now carry the full benefit of a regenerative effect, and can regrow lost limbs and other body parts. Your whisperreeds resonate when played as wind instruments, and can carry bardic music effects across any distance as well, essentially treating the second reed as the source of the music.
Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Stances Known: At 2nd level and again at 6th level and 10th level, you learn a new stance you qualify for from the Equinox, Revolution, or Solstice disciplines. Your stances work exactly like for a normal cycle warden.

Track Ley Lines (Ex): Beginning at 2nd level, you can see and trace the magical ley lines that lie beneath the mortal world. When tracking someone you gain a +1 luck bonus on your Survival check for every caster level the quarry possesses. You gain a +5 bonus on Survival checks made to locate a geoccult pole and to identify specific details of its biome.

Advanced Stylings: At 3rd level, you become privy to the advanced cyclic stylings. Advanced stylings activate automatically whenever you are in an appropriate weather condition as well as the appropriate seasonal alignment.
  • Bonfire Charge (Summer): This styling requires a heat wave. Whenever you make a charge attack in this styling, you can move twice as far as you would normally be able to. Every square you pass through is lit on fire until the start of your next turn and deals 1d6 fire damage to anybody moving through the space, as well as lighting them on fire. With a successful attack at the end of the charge, the target explodes in a ball of flame, dealing 1d6 fire damage per for every stage of your alignment to Summer to everything within 50 feet (including you).
  • Leaf on the Wind (Spring): This styling requires winds of at least 50 mph. You gain a fly speed equal to twice your land speed (good maneuverability). If you leave this styling while in the air, you enter a feather fall effect.
  • Leaves In Frost (Winter): This styling requires that it be snowing. While in this styling, all damage you deal (including other energy damage) becomes cold damage. If you strike an enemy with cold resistance, the resistance is removed for a number of rounds equal to your alignment with Winter (although it still in place for the intial attack; Fort negates).
  • Rain Through Roof (Precipitous): This styling requires that it be raining. You can transform your body (including possessions) into liquid, allowing you to move through spaces of Fine size or larger without having to make an Escape Artist check and without having to spend additional movement or actions. While in this stance you are immune to critical hits and precision damage, and do not need to breathe. You gain a swim speed equal to your land speed, a +8 bonus on Swim checks, and can always take 10 on Swim checks even if stress or distraction would normally prevent you from doing so.
  • Stone Smoothed By Sand (Autumn): This styling requires a sandstorm to be raging. Whenever striking an enemy with damage reduction, you deal an additional amount of damage equal to the damage reduction +1 (Fort negates).
Touch of Green (Ex): Your connection to the tireless cycle of nature draws you into its inexorable rhythm. At 3rd level you no longer requires food or drink, subsisting instead on an inner connection to nature. At 6th level you no longer have the mortal need for sleep, becoming wakeful and alert at all times. At 9th level your natural lifespan triples as you become as ageless as the world. You lose these benefits if you are not exposed to sunlight at least once over a 24 hour period.

Weather Warden (Su): You can call the forces of nature to your aid. As a standard action, you can marshal the weather in an area to your aid; you make a Survival check while inside of a biome. If your check matches or exceeds the check of the pole, you can immediately activate the normal climate condition for the biome as if with GEOC 323. The climate change goes into effect everywhere in the biome. No extra metal needs to be paid for this weather, but this ability can only be used once per pole per hour. If you beat the check by 20 or more, you can activate any climate condition, not necessarily the one the metal of the pole is keyed to.

Expert Stylings: At 5th level, you become privy to the expert cycle stylings. Expert stylings represent a further advance in the power of nature. To activate one of these stylings, you must expend a maneuver from either the Equinox discipline (for a Spring or Autumn styling), the Solstice discipline (for a Summer or Winter styling) or the Revolution discipline (for a Precipitous styling). This expenditure doesn't change your seasonal alignment, and the styling's effect lasts for five minutes.
  • Dance of Innumerable Petals (Spring): You move with a flurry of lilac petals whipping through the air around you. With every successful attack the cloud of petals bombards your target, befuddling their senses. The enemy is confused for a number of rounds equal to your alignment with Spring (Will negates).
  • Leaves Underfoot (Autumn): Any successful strike you make while standing on natural ground causes leaves to sweep up, catching onto the enemy. The enemy is immobilized (Ref negates) until the start of the your next turn.
  • Sudden Storm (Precipitous): You can very suddenly become very dangerous, like a sudden storm out of the blue. You can draw your weapon and attack an enemy as a swift action, delivering a martial strike which normally has an initiation time of a standard action. This ability cannot be used if your weapon is already drawn. This uses an attack of opportunity.
  • Walk Through Fire (Summer): You understand that all fires are one fire. Your movements can enter a fire of Small size or larger and exit another fire of Small size or larger within a distance of 50ft. for every alignment rating with Summer. You must be able to see the target fire, and this does now expend any additional movement for your turn. You can do this as many times as you like within any given movement.
  • Weight of Winter (Winter): Your blows carry the full weight of the winter snow behind them, and a successful attack soaks the target with freezing water. Any successful strike soaks your enemy to the bone, doubling their weight, dealing an additional amount of cold damage equal to your rating in Winter in d6's, and affecting them as if by an entangle effect until the start of the your next turn (Fort negates).
Masterful Stylings: At 7th level you become privy to the masterful cycle stylings. Masterful stylings are powerful talents that only activate when you are in the appropriate biome and also have the appropriate seasonal alignment.
  • Blossoming Body (Spring): This styling requires that you be in a grasslands biome. You gain fast healing equal to your Spring rating.
  • Leaves in Motion (Autumn): This styling requires that you be in a forest biome. While in this styling, you gain a bonus to Armour Class against attacks of opportunity equal to twice your Autumn rating. If an attack of opportunity fails to hit you, you can use an attack of opportunity to make an immediate trip, disarm, or sunder attempt against the attacker.
  • Only Smoke Within (Summer): This styling requires that you be in a desert biome. You can see and move normally through smoke, fog and fire. As a swift action you can whip up a fog cloud effect around yourself made of smoke. If you spend a standard action at it, he can create a solid fog effect instead. This smoke cloud lasts for a number of rounds equal to your rating with Summer.
  • Unstoppable Torrent (Precipitous): This styling requires that you be in an ocean biome. With every successful strike an enemy is pushed back five feet and you can move forward five feet. If you choose, you can repeat this multiple times, although every attack takes a cumulative -4 penalty. You can initiate a martial strike maneuver which has an activation time of one standard action or less with each attack. Activating this styling consumes the rest of your turn after this initial strike.
  • Winds of Winter (Winter): This styling requires that you be in an arctic biome. When you make an attack roll, the attack is targetted against every adjacent enemy simultaneously. If an adjacent square is empty, it's filled with a gust of wind effect until the start of your next turn, blowing away from you (Ref negates).
Forecast Strike (Ex): At 8th level, you achieve an important milestone in your training, and learn to forecast your attacks in tune with the seasons. Whenever you make an attack roll of any kind, you can expend a readied maneuver of at least 6th level from the Revolution discipline as a swift action. You roll two dice for the attack (hopefully of different colours), and the target may only select one of them to defend against. Prior to making the attack you should write down in secret which die is actually the real attack. If the target picks the wrong attack to defend against, the attack is resolved as a touch attack instead. Prior to forecasting a strike, you choose a season; success on the attack moves you one stage closer to that season on the appropriate axis. Failure moves you in the opposite direction by one stage. On a successful strike you can choose to switch your current axis.

Grandmaster Stylings: At 9th level you learn the final combat tactics of the seasons, the grandmaster stylings. Grandmaster stylings are only active while in the appropriate extreme weather condition.
  • Burning Blood (Summer): This styling requires you to be in a wildfire. Whenever you receive fire damage, he recover that amount of damage instead. You radiate intense fire, and any enemy that touches you, grapples you, or strikes you with a melee weapon lights on fire.
  • Only Dirt and Dust (Autumn): This styling requires an earthquake to be going on within 500ft. of you. You become one with the ground around you. You can swim through dirt, stone, masonry and metal as if they were water. You gains a +8 bonus to Swim checks for this purpose, and can take 10 on Swim checks through such materials even if stress or distraction would normally prevent you from doing so. You are under a perpetual stoneskin effect.
  • Perfect Storm (Precipitous): This styling require an ongoing thunderstorm. With every successful attack you make, the target is struck by a sudden wave of water, throwing them back 1d10 x 20 feet, dealing 1d6 damage per 10 feet (dealing the full damage even if their movement is blocked), knocking them prone, and weakening them against lightning. If they are hit by electricity before your next turn, it automatically bypasses electricity resistance (although not immunity) and deals double damage.
  • Smell of Spring (Spring): This styling requires a flood to be in the area or to have passed through in the previous minute. You gain regeneration equal to your Spring rating, which is only bypassed by cold iron. You automatically recover an expended maneuver at the start of every round.
  • The Wind Held His Hand (Winter): This styling requires both a tornado to be within striking distance (250ft.) of you and also temperatures of at least -40 Centigrade. You can strike any enemy you have line of sight to with your melee attacks, even if they are flying.
Only Revolutions (Ex): All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. You are as inevitable and implacable as the turn of the seasons. You can store your lore and knowledge in a geoccult pole you have established. If you die, at the turn of the season you are reborn as an intelligence controlling the pole. If the pole has mental access to a body, you can take it for your own as if with a permanent magic jar effect (Will save negates, DC 10 + your class level + your Wisdom modifier). Otherwise, you can remain in the pole, and control it and the circuit it might be hooked up to as if you were an Exotic Intelligence. The pole, once it houses your soul, can be used as a focus to bring you back to life with no level loss.

14
The Dungeonjammer

"For the last time: it's a meticulously calibrated hand-bevelled piece of technical equipment with original Ozark imagery, guaranteed to enhance athletic performance. Not a ten-foot pole."


Image credit PReilly of deviantart.com.

Raiding dungeons is a dangerous pastime. There's the monsters, and the traps, and the evil masterminds, and the furniture that wants to eat you, and did I mention all the monsters? Only an idiot would choose to continue risking life and limb by going again and again into the depths of the earth, breaking into some cursed tomb, a dragon's vault, a giant's sky fortress, or whatever the latest horrible place to die is. Only the truly desperate or the truly stupid would lower themselves to such madness.

That is, if you're an amateur.

For a trained professional, of course, dungeons are nothing but a regular day's work. Extreme dungeoneering is the latest craze sweeping the realm, as skilled and talented challengers engage in this death-defying sport! The smartest, most cunning athletes of the land are the dungeonjammers, who break into the most secure vaults, the most treacherous dungeons, the most frightening haunts, to return with riches aplenty! Dungeonjammers are high-performance athletes who compete in the biggest and most dangerous sport of them all, hardcore treasure hunting. Using the latest gadgets and equipment afforded by gramarie, they cheat the laws of physics themselves in their pursuit of the ultimate loot. Do you have what it takes to join their ranks and win eternal glory?

Requirements: To become a dungeonjammer you must meet all of the following requirements.
Feat: Athletic
Gramarie: Any two YGGD principles
Skills: Forgery 10 ranks, Knowledge (dungeoneering) 8 ranks, Open Lock 8 ranks
Special: Must have the inspiration and trapfinding class features
Specialization: Must be specialized in Yggdratecture.

Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: All. A dungeonjammer treats all skills as class skills. Yes, even that one.

The Dungeonjammer
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Principles   
Inspiration   
Monty
Haul
1st+0+2+2+2Extra-D trick, tools of the trade, monty haul
+0
+1
1 lb
2nd+1+3+3+3Cunning aim, winning
+1
+2
5 lb
3rd+2+3+3+3Extra-D trick, fast movement (weird)
+2
+3
10 lb
4th+3+4+4+4Cunning spaces, winning
+3
+4
50 lb
5th+3+4+4+4Adrenaline rush, extra-D trick
+3
+5
100 lb
6th+4+5+5+5Cunning tools, winning
+4
+6
500 lb
7th+5+5+5+5Extra-D trick, it might work
+5
+7
1,000 lb
8th+6+6+6+6Cunning ploy, winning
+6
+8
5,000 lb
9th+6+6+6+6Extra-D trick, fast movement (flickering)
+6
+9
10,000 lb
10th+7+7+7+7The competitor, winning
+7
+10
50,000 lb

All of the following are class features of the dungeonjammer.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a dungeonjammer, you gain proficiency with firearms if your setting permits them. Otherwise, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Extra-D Trick (Su): It's only cheating if you get caught! Dungeonjammers push the rules of reality itself to the breaking point as they pursue everlasting glory and piles of treasure. At 1st level, and every two levels thereafter, you learn a special extradimensional trick that you can deploy using your yggdratectural talent in order to break the laws of physics to get an edge. Activating an extradimensional trick is usually a swift action, and costs inspiration as noted in the entry.
  • Arrow Time: This trick is activated as an immediate action, when you're targetted by a ranged attack or when a ranged attack passes through your square en route to its target. You can either 100% choose to dodge the attack, or you can make an opposed attack roll in an attempt to knock the projectile in the direction of your choice, including back at the launcher. If you fail the opposed attack roll, you're hit by the projectile; however, if you succeed it's as if you were relaunching the projectile, using your own attack roll (even if it's a melee attack roll) to aim it. This trick costs 1 point of inspiration. Successfully deflecting an attack allows you to attempt to continue deflecting projectiles at no extra cost until the start of your next turn, or until you're hit by one of them, whichever comes first.
  • Danger Sense: This is a trick which heightens your senses when danger rears its head. You can activate this trick as an immediate action to skip back slightly in time and prepare yourself. This lets you reroll initiative if you don't like the result; more interestingly, if you are ambushed, you can activate this trick to be expecting the ambush and thus to be able to act in the surprise round. You can also activate this trick to avoid being flat-footed against an attack. This trick costs 1 point of inspiration.
  • Dimensional Skip: This simple trick moves you between worlds, and you end up up to your move speed away from where you started. It can only take you to a point to which you have line of sight. This trick costs 1 point of inspiration, but it can be activated as an immediate action for 2 points of inspiration instead.
  • Double Take: You need to be 9th level to select this trick. You activate this trick with a swift action at the start of your turn, and can take two entirely separate possible turns. This means that you start your first take, play the turn normally, and end your turn. Then everything is reset to its location at the point you used the double take, and you play through your turn for a second time. Afterwards, you can choose which take becomes the actual course of events. This trick costs 4 points of inspiration.
  • The Easy Way: You need to be 7th level to select this trick. You can activate a phase door effect as a swift action. This effect has a caster level equal to your Hit Dice, and costs 3 points of inspiration.
  • Freeze-Frame: You need to be 7th level to select this trick. This trick is activated as a swift action, and works like a one-round time stop, stopping time until the end of your current turn. Unlike a normal time stop, you can interact with creatures during this effect, and they are treated as flat-footed against you. This trick costs 3 points of inspiration.
  • Portal-Fu: Much like the Spot, you can make clever use of portals in fighting. You can activate this trick to place a portal on any flat surface within 100ft. of you. Once you have placed two matching portals, creatures and attacks can move through them as if the points in space were connected; a portal is about the size of a standard Medium-sized doorway. The portals last indefinitely until you place another portal, at which point the oldest one collapses and the newest two are linked. Placing a portal is a swift action, and costs 2 points of inspiration.
  • Rope-Fu: You can make weirdly improbable jumps using this trick, which don't quite seem to follow normal rules of geometry. This lets you make a single Jump check at a +30 bonus. This works like a normal Jump check, except that you can choose to take regular actions (except movement) at any point during the Jump, and even end your turn there and pick it up on a following round. Only when you want to continue moving do you complete the jump. This jump is activated as a swift action by spending 1 point of inspiration.
  • Wallcrawler: Gravity is really just a point of view. This trick is activated as a swift action, and until the start of your next turn you can walk up surfaces of any inclination, even upside down. You always gain the attack bonus for higher ground while this trick is activated. This trick costs 1 point of inspiration.
Inspiration (Ex): Dungeonjammers are forced to be as cunning and ruthless as possible if they're going to make it to the big time. At every level, you add 1 point of inspiration to your pool. As normal, inspiration is restored at the start of every encounter, typically when initiative is rolled.

Monty Haul (Su): What's the point of specializing in yggdratecture if you can't use it for your own benefit? You have big pockets; really big pockets. Like, extradimensional pockets. As a dungeonjammer you have your own personal extradimensional space which you and only you can reach into. You can draw things from your extradimensional space as a free action, as if you had the Quick Draw feat. At 1st level this space can only hold 1 lb of material, but this increases exponentially as you level, as shown on your class table. Volume is not a concern, and neither is sorting it; the stuff that you want just ends up at the top, much like a handy haversack. You can only store stuff that you personally can carry.

Tools of the Trade (Su): What you don't have, you can fake. By making a Forgery check as a full-round action, you can convert a number of lb of material in your extradimensional pocket space into a liquid asset known as potential. Potential isn't really anything tangible, but it can be assimilated into other stuff by drawing from other parallel realities where you collected different items. Your Forgery check must be greater than or equal to both the gold piece value of the object and the Craft check made to build it in the first place in order to disassemble it like this. Potential still takes up as much weight in your pocket space as it did when it was an object, it's just... different now.

As another full-round action, you can reassemble potential into the exact tool that you need for the job. You make a Forgery check, which is the Craft check made to create the item. The tool created cannot have a gold piece value greater than the result of your check. It materializes in your hand as if you had had it all along, of course. You can make either of these Forgery checks as a swift action by spending 1 point of inspiration. You can treat your Forgery check as the relevant Craft check made to create any object you desire through this. You gain a bonus to Forgery checks equal to half your class levels as you hone your talents at deception with this talent.

A DC 15 Appraise check reveals the foreign nature of these objects; merchants typically buy them for substantially less than their nominal price because of this. These items are primarily useful for your adventures and your competitions, not for their market value.

Cunning Aim (Ex): Precision is the name of the game. Starting at 2nd level you can spend 1 point of inspiration as a swift action to gain a bonus to attack on your next attack made in the same round equal to half your class level, and additional precision-based damage equal to +1d6 per class level. If you spend 2 points of inspiration instead, the attack also twists through the intervening space, either allowing you to make a melee attack against a creature within 30ft. of you, or eliminating all range penalties on a ranged attack.

Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Winning (Ex): A real athlete values winning above any other concern. It doesn't matter how you do it, history remembers the person that crosses the finish line first. High-performance dungeonjammers have taken to pushing gramarie to its limits to get an added edge over their competitors. At 2nd level and every two levels thereafter, you learn a special discovery about yggdratecture from the following list:
  • Flux Capacitor: A polarcane flux can have any number of flux traits, although only one of any given kind (for example, you can't have gravity pulling in two different directions). If you have the ability to apply flux traits to other spaces, you can place multiple such traits in them as well.
  • Going Nowhere: To learn this discovery, you need to be able to join semi-spaces together with portals. You can now join a portal to a place that you haven't seen before; this works like a teleport effect, with the same chance of making a mistake in the coordinates of the point you're joining. The portal you create in the unknown space is immovable, and fixed in space once established.
  • Intense Causality: To learn this discovery you must know YGGD 371. Whenever you prepare an YGGD principle, you can twist the fabric of space-time in order to cause one of the following effects:
    • Reduce the time to prepare the principle by half.
    • Roll the skill check twice and select the result you prefer.
  • Keeper of the Keys: You can close spaces without them being destroyed permanently. You can also lock portals to semi-spaces and demiplanes, by touching it and making a Forgery check which meets or exceeds the original. In order to open the portal, a matching Forgery check needs to be made.
  • Plane Sense: By touching a portal, you can tell the size of the space that it connects to and any flux traits or planar traits in effect on the other side.
  • Reverse Geometry: When you set up a flux, you can choose to reverse its dimensionality. Instead of a semi-space which is bigger on the inside than the outside, this is a flux which is bigger on the outside than the inside. This counts as the flux trait; the area is actually two size categories smaller than the space it takes up in the outside world. Anything which enters into the flux is squeezed into that space as if they were in a small constrained area.
  • Usurp Space: By making a Forgery check that matches or exceeds the check of a space you are inside, you become the creator of the flux for all intents and purposes, including joining that space with other spaces.
  • Weird Time: To learn this discovery, you must know YGGD 371. To use it, you must be inside of a demiplane that you created with the Erratic Time trait. By spending an hour and making a Forgery check of equal or greater value to the check of the demiplane, you can reroll the Erratic Time Trait's time flow roll.
Fast Movement (Su): By stepping through space and between dimensions during your regular movement, your ground speed increases by 20ft. at 3rd level. You also automatically avoid the first attack of opportunity made against you each round because of this strange motion. At 9th level your speed increases by an additional 20ft., and you can choose to activate a blink effect whenever you want as a free action (turning it on or off).

Cunning Spaces (Ex): Extradimensional talent certainly lets you be a master of surprise; starting at 4th level, by spending 2 points of inspiration, you can prepare an YGGD principle as a swift action. This principle only lasts until the end of the current encounter.

Adrenaline Rush (Ex): You don't have time to take a breath and calm down, there's so much to do! You know who stopped to smell the roses? The guy that came in 2nd. Starting at 5th level, you can take two swift or immediate actions every round.

Cunning Tools (Su): Starting at 6th level, you can get more bang for your buck when obtaining high-performance athletic equipment out of the aether. Whenever you use your tools of the trade class feature, you can spend an extra point of  inspiration to multiply your Forgery check by 100 for the purposes of determining the gold piece value that can be obtained from an alternate possible dimension. This opens up all sorts of possibilities, including such things as masterwork items, potions, wondrous items, and so on. When we talk about gold piece value, we're talking strictly about price, not cost. Note that this only changes the volume of value you can coalesce at once, not the actual value of the potential. You must still disassemble enough items to provide you with the potential for whatever you want to build.

It Might Work (Ex): The all-important words when you have no other options left and it's all come down to this. Starting at 7th level, you can make a Forgery check as a full-round action to convert potential in your pocket space into puissance. This generates a number of ebbs equal to your Forgery check, and consumes 100 times that much potential in lb. This costs 4 points of inspiration; if you spend 6 instead, you can do it as a swift action.

Cunning Ploy (Ex): At 8th level, you can prepare a cunning plan to imitate other arts of gramarie. You need to have a blueprint of a specialist principle from a discipline other than Yggdratecture. As a full-round action, you can expend 10 inspiration points to make a Forgery check to imitate the requisite skills needed to use it. The Forgery check must be at least equal to 20 + the benchmark skill check of the blueprint (DC 60 for a Magisterial principle, and DC 80 for a Doctorate principle). Failure indicates the inspiration is wasted, but the blueprint is unharmed. If you are successful, then as a one-time thing, you can prepare the principle from the blueprint in twice the normal time. After this, the blueprint is ruined. The key skill check used in the preparation of the principle is your Forgery check -20.

The Competitor (Ex): At 10th level, you've reached the height of your fame and the height of your glory; there's nowhere to go but down. Or perhaps... sideways? If you're willing to take the leap, you can transform yourself into potential inside of your pocket dimension, to be reassembled in an alternate universe similar, but not quite the same, as our own. Doing this allows you to introduce some change into the world based on the particular dimension you choose to enter into. This works like a reality revision that you don't need to pay any cost for. However, there's one problem with your plan: there's another you in that universe, none too happy that you've broken in. This is a carbon-copy of you, down to every item you carry and every decision you've ever made, except for the choice to jump to another dimension. Alternate versions of you that you encounter like this are driven insane by the unexpected experience of encountering themselves, and try their darnedest to kill you in order to reassert their reality.

This ability can be used once every month, or you can build an yggdratectural portal which leads people through to another dimension like this (whoever travels through can select the change introduced into it). A few caveats, though: as far as you're concerned, unless you follow them to that precise dimension, that person is dead, since they no longer exist in your reality. Second, a tremendous amount of energy is required to power this alternate universe machine, on the order of 100 ebbs per trip.

15
The Contractor
"Let's make a deal."


Image credit MamonnA of deviantart.com

Power comes in many shapes and sizes, but perhaps the most underrated and most useful of all is the power of persuasion. Convincing other people to do your work for you is way better than actually having to learn to do stuff yourself. Gramarists who discover this tend to delve into more exotic ways of getting people to do stuff for them, and those who delve deep enough and dark enough might become contractors. Contractors are gramarists who have reached an agreement with the powers of the Lower Planes to requisition fiendish labourers and Outside help. Beyond these terms, contractors also learn to spread their talent for coercion to the great forces beyond the cosmos, the vestiges that lie between Planes. A contractor is a master of manipulation, deception, and above all else, control.

Requirements: To become a contractor you must meet all of the following requirements.
Feats: Negotiator
Gramarie: Any two ALCH principles
Skills: Bluff 8 ranks, Diplomacy 10 ranks, Knowledge (the Planes) 3 ranks
Special: Must make contact with a high-ranking entity from the Lower Planes
Specialization: Must be specialized in Alchemetry

Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: The contractor's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (the Planes) (Int), Knowledge (psionics) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Open Lock (Dex), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Contractor
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Principles   
Maximum
Vestige Level   
Soul Binding
1st+0+0+0+2Fiendish license, soul binding
+0
1
1
2nd+1+0+0+3Alchemastery
+1
2
1
3rd+1+1+1+3
+2
3
1
4th+2+1+1+4Alchemastery
+3
4
1
5th+2+1+1+4
+3
4
2
6th+3+2+2+5Alchemastery
+4
5
2
7th+3+2+2+5Doctorate principles
+5
6
2
8th+4+2+2+6Alchemastery
+6
7
2
9th+4+3+3+6
+6
7
3
10th+5+3+3+7Alchemastery, solomon's key
+7
8
3

All of the following are class features of the contractor.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a contractor, you gain no additional weapon or armour proficiencies.

Fiendish License (Ex): As a contractor, you have a fiendish license to do business on the Lower Planes, which gives you some precedent and prestige in negotiations with Outsiders from those regions. Your fiendish license is an actual piece of ID that you need to carry on you whenever you want to make use of any of the abilities it authorizes. You gain various abilities based on your fiendish rank, which is the sum of your class level and your Charisma modifier. Only permanent changes to your Charisma result in an increase in your fiendish rank. This rank is also what various baatezu can detect your rank as, as described in Fiendish Codex II.

Fiendish Rank   Licensed Ability
1Silver Tongue
2Faust's Enclosure
4Negotiation
6Overseer
7Outside Insurance
8Talented Negotiator
10SOP
12Expert Negotiator
13Not in it for the Money
16Grand Negotiator
19Indentured Service
  • Silver Tongue: Your dealings with the denizens of the Lower Planes have granted you some insight into their manipulation and deal-making techniques. You gain an unholy bonus to Diplomacy and straight-up Charisma checks equal to half your class level, and this bonus is doubled against Good-aligned creatures.
  • Faust's Enclosure: To conduct a deal you need to lay down certain ground rules, which is difficult to do when people can just teleport away from you. At will you can use magic circle against evil and dimensional anchor effects as spell-like abilities. Your caster level for these effects is equal to your Hit Dice.
  • Negotiation: You've been authorized to contract fiends for assignment in the Material Plane. You can use a lesser planar binding effect at will as a spell-like ability and with a caster level equal to your Hit Dice. You can only call Outsiders with the Evil subtype with this binding, and you gain a +3 bonus on the Charisma check to compel them to do your bidding if the task or assignment furthers the aims of your fiendish patron.
  • Overseer: It's important to make sure that a job gets done and done well. You can include a clause in your bindings that allows managerial oversight. If you beat the opposed Charisma check on your negotiation ability by at least 5, you can initiate a sense link effect with the fiend at will. Your manifester level for this effect is equal to your Hit Dice. Fot every 4 ranks beyond 6, you can link to an additional sense simultaneously.
  • Outside Insurance: It always pays to have insurance. If you beat the opposed Charisma check on your negotiation ability by 10 or more, you can place the fiend on retainer as insurance. The fiend is dismissed from immediate service, and they can keep any payment you've offered them. However, if a specific set of circumstances occurs (such as your death, but really anything that's specified during the binding) they are placed under a geas to follow a specific set of instructions determined during the negotiation. Once they have fulfilled the instructions, they are released from the geas and the transaction is complete.
  • Talented Negotiator: The Hit Die limit for your negotiation ability increases to 12 HD.
  • SOP: It's standard procedure to have the personal identification of any fiendish employee on file. If you beat the opposed Charisma check during your negotiation ability by 5 or more, the fiend is obliged to give you their name. If you beat the check by 15 or more, they are compelled to tell you their truename, if they know it.
  • Expert Negotiator: The Hit Die limit for your negotiation ability increases to 18 HD.
  • Not in it for the Money: You can now pay for service in a currency that fiends actually care about: souls. Instead of money or gold, you gain a bonus on the Charisma check for your negotiation ability if you present the fiend with a soul (trapped such as with a trap the soul effect) equal to +1 for every 6 Hit Dice of the trapped soul. Speaking of which, you're now authorized to collect souls. Once per day per point of your Charisma modifier, you can use a trap the soul effect as a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your Hit Dice.
  • Grand Negotiator: The Hit Die limit for your negotiation ability increases to your ranks in Diplomacy (if that would be greater than 18).
  • Indentured Service: There's no service like continual service. For every 10 points you beat the opposed Charisma check of a negotiation by, the fiend is compelled to assist you for one additional task beyond the first. Extra tasks are determined after the initial roll, and can be only as hazardous or dangerous to the fiend as the initial task.
Soul Binding (Su): Your powers of negotiation are not just limited to fiends and atomic spirits. They extend into the furthest reach of the cosmos, and the trapped spirits that reside there. You can contact a vestige and make a pact with it. At 1st level, you can make a pact with only one vestige, but you can make a pact with another simultaneous vestige at your 5th and 9th class levels. You must complete the summoning and binding process with each vestige separately, so that each has its normal chance to influence you. You bear the physical sign of binding of each one. Unlike most binders, your effective binder level (EBL) does not determine your maximum vestige rank; instead, refer to the class table. Your EBL is equal to your fiendish license rank, and determines all other functions related to binding vestiges. If the vestige you are trying to contact is of a higher level than your indicated maximum, you cannot summon it.

To contact a vestige, you must draw its unique seal visibly on a surface, making the image at least 5ft. across. Drawing a seal requires you to mark a surface, and 1 minute of concentration. A seal not used within 1 minute of its drawing loses all potency, and must be redrawn. Some vestiges also have special requirements for contact, as noted in their entries. Once you have drawn the seal, you must perform a ritual calling of the vestige as a full-round action, which fails if you cannot be heard. An image of the vestige appears after this calling, and disappears 1 round after you finish addressing it.

To make a pact with a vestige you must make a binding check, which for you uses a check of 1d20 + your class level + your Cha modifier (the silver tongue ability applies to this check). This requires 1 minute, although you can choose to rush it as a full-round action by taking a -10 penalty on the check. You must make this check alone; others cannot help you with it. Whether the check succeeds or fails, you gain the powers granted by the vestige for 24 hours. If you fail the binding check, the vestige influences your personality and your actions, and you are said to have made a poor pact. If your check is successful, you show no ill effects and maintain control over your personality.

While under the influence of a vestige, you must adhere to its requirements to the best of your ability. If you are conscious and free-willed, and you encounter a situation in which you cannot or will not refrain from a prohibited action or perform a required one, you take a -1 penalty on attack rolls, saving throws, and checks until that vestige leaves you. These penalties stack if you disobey multiple vestiges.

The Difficulty Class (DC) for a saving throw against any supernatural power granted by a vestige is equal to 10 + your class level + your Cha modifier. For more information on vestiges and the binding thereof, refer to the Tome of Magic.

Alchemastery (Ex): Your fiendish insight allows you to delve deeper into your command of the atomic. In particular, the elder engineers of the Lower Planes can lend you their advice about the highest forms of metal. At 2nd level and every two levels thereafter, you learn a new discovery which relates to the discipline of Alchemetry from the following list.
  • Amazing Alkahest: Your alkahest is an incredibly great solvent. Any alkahest solution that you create can now dissolve any inanimate object, not just a planetary metal. Otherwise, this follows all of the same rules for dissolving a planetary metal.
  • Continual Carmot: Carmot that you create now provides not only preservation, but restoration as well. Any object under its effects repairs itself at a rate of 1 hit point per round. Similarly, any creature under its effects gains fast healing 1.
  • Lethargic Lead: Enclosures surrounded by your cursed lead are now extremely slow, to the point where they have an equal and opposite effect to that of quicksilver. Objects and structures made from your cursed lead now experience time at a slower rate than other materials; for all purposes, they experience one round for every two normal rounds. Spaces, creatures, and objects completely enclosed by your cursed lead experience the same effect
  • Mysterious Moonsteel: Moonsteel that you create is partially made out of moonbeams. It weighs nothing at all, no matter how much of it there is. Anything inside of a moonsteel enclosure is treated as being under a perpetual blink effect.
  • Oefficient Orichalcum: You must be at your 10th class level to select this discovery. Orichalcum that you create is especially great at channeling puissance in it. Circuits that are set up between a wood transformer and a battery made out of your orichalcum no longer lose an ebb to inefficiency in the transfer. In addition, your orichalcum can now hold twice the number of ebbs that the same volume could normally hold.
  • Phlegmatic Phlogiston: Your phlogiston is especially pfiery! The heat aura around it radiates out an additional 5ft., and the area that would have been in the aura before now burns white-hot at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Centigrade.
  • Platinum Standard: You must be at your 10th class level to select this discovery. You can now transmute other metals into platinum with ALCH 286, but at a 10:1 ratio (that is, you only end up with 1/10 the volume you started with). The DC for platinum is 65.
  • Quixotic Quicksilver: Your quicksilver's especially quick. Quicksilver's elemental time trait now applies to anything that is touching at least half a cubic foot of quicksilver (479 fluid ounces).
  • Square-Cube Law: Learning this discovery allows you greater insight into the nature of three-dimensional structures. Your ALCH principles can now target any applicable body which has a volume of no more than 81 cubic feet and a weight of no more than 350,000 lb.
  • Sublime Sunmetal: Sunmetal that you create is now extremely radiomantic. It produces an aura with a radius of 5ft. (plus 5ft. for every size category of the sunmetal body beyond Medium) in which its handling effect occurs. The negative levels from the sunmetal exploding are now equal to one-tenth of the ebbs channeled into it (minimum 10 negative levels).
  • Very Irregular Properties: Energy exists not in a vacuum, but in conjunction with other kinds of energy. Discovering this allows you to place two ALCH 202 qualities on a given body at the same time.
Principles of Gramarie: You continue to advance your study of gramarie. At 2nd level, and again whenever indicated on the class table, you learn a new principle of gramarie that you qualify for. At 7th level you gain access to Doctorate-level principles, and can refer to yourself as a doctor of any discipline you attain that level of knowledge in.

Solomon's Key (Su): At 10th level, your talent in negotiating extraplanar favours has reached its zenith. Whenever you make use of the spectroconstruction class feature, you're no longer just calling up unskilled labourers. Instead, the spirits you invoke are borrowed from the souls of architects and engineers who wound up in the Lower Planes. Spectroconstruction now allows you to craft things which require intricate craftsmanship, using your Diplomacy check instead of any necessary Craft check for the labour. In addition, you can trade regular labour for a single preparation on your behalf of ALCH 101, at a rate of 100 hours of unskilled labour for every use of the principle over the half-hour of spectroconstruction.

The Craft skills used in your spectroconstruction must still be normal crafting skills which exist in your game. If you're in doubt about whether a technology level is appropriate for your game setting, consult your DM about the intended craft. You can use this ability to perform the labour for magic item crafting, but you must have the required Craft feat and supply the materials and XP required for it as normal.

16
Alchemetry


Image credit Antuniey of deviantart.com

"We're made of star-stuff."

Alchemetry is the careful application of magical charges to alter the fundamental properties of materials and objects. A master of alchemetry understands materials on a very deep level, and knows how to cause drastic changes with small applications of puissance. Any engineering project which calls for materials outside of the mundane requires someone skilled in alchemetry. Alchemetry was originally conceived as a scientific offshoot of the royal art of alchemy, and bears many outward resemblances to this pseudoscience. However, alchemetry actually deals with contacting and negotiating with the spirits of everyday matter, and convincing them to change the way they form materials.

Alchemetry often involves the use of astronomic gauges and astrolabes, employed to determine the alignment of heavenly bodies, as well as more traditional alchemical supplies such as flasks and scales. Any such specialized equipment counts as a masterwork piece of equipment, and provides a +2 circumstance bonus on the Diplomacy check made to prepare an alchemetric principle. The Almagest is a mythical alchemetric treatise which is said to describe the motion of the planets in exacting detail.

Key Skill: Diplomacy


ALCH 101: Intro to Alchemetry
Grade: Baccalaureate
Prerequisites: None
Target: Solid material of no more than 8 cubic ft. and weighing no more than 5,000 lb
Preparation Time: 30 minutes

This principle alters the fundamental properties of material. The target must be a single body of uniform material. As part of this principle, you make a Diplomacy skill check to convince the atomic spirits of the material to rearrange themselves to your liking. At the end of the preparation, you can apply one of the following changes to the body. Any body can only have one modification to a given statistic at a time (for example, a body of iron can't have its durability raised twice).
  • Durability: The hit points per inch of thickness of the target are increased or decreased by half your Diplomacy result (minimum 1 hit point per inch).
  • Hardness: The hardness of the target is increased or decreased by one fifth of your Diplomacy result (minimum 0).
  • Heat Capacity: Somewhat less common than most operations, the target increases and decreases in temperature by a different factor than it normally would from external heat sources and temperature conditions. Divide your Diplomacy result by ten (minimum 1), and pick either that number or its inverse (1/the result) as the new heat capacity factor. All temperature changes to the body are multiplied by this factor before being applied to it. This also affects fire and cold damage sustained by the target.
  • Sturdiness: The break DC of the target can be increased or decreased by one quarter of your Diplomacy result (minimum DC 3). This change applies to anything that is made out of the material in the future.


ALCH 202: Irregular Properties
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: ALCH 101, Diplomacy 8 ranks
Target: Solid material of no more than 8 cubic ft. and weighing no more than 5,000 lb
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle applies strange elemental properties to a body of material. The target can be made of different materials, but must be touching while this principle is being applied. If the target is ever broken up after this point, all of the pieces carry the effect of the principle. At the end of the preparation, you can apply one of the following properties to the body. Material can only carry one of these properties at a time.
  • Buffering: The target neutralizes acids and bases on contact. Acid damage deals half damage to it just like normal energy effects. If it comes in contact with a fluid that deal acid damage and is not destroyed by it after a number of rounds equal to the number of squares the fluid could cover, the fluid is rendered pH neutral (assuming the target remains in contact with the fluid).
  • Flammability: The target becomes flammable. It loses all fire resistance or fire immunity, and fire damage ignores the hardness of the material. Fire deals full damage to the material instead of half damage.
  • Magnetism: The target becomes magnetic, and is treated as ferrous for all purposes related to magnetics. Electricity deals double its normal damage to it, which for most metals means that it deals full damage to it instead of half damage.
  • Resonance: The target hums with a resonant sensation, allowing it to transmit sound in a way most materials do not. Sonic damage no longer ignores the material's hardness, and it deals half damage just like normal energy effects.


ALCH 286: Mysterious Metallurgy [Specialist]
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: ALCH 101, Diplomacy 8 ranks
Target: Solid planetary metal body of no more than 8 cubic ft. and weighing no more than 5,000 lb
Preparation Time: 2 hours

This principle uses strange procedures involving astrology to realign a material's spirit with a different planet. The target must be a single body made of one of the planetary metals. As part of this principle, you make a Diplomacy skill check to realign the metal's alignment. The principle can be applied to any of the following metals: copper, gold, lead, mercury, iron, silver, and tin. The base metal is changed into one of the other planetary metals, chosen when the preparation is complete. Each metal also has a Diplomacy DC to achieve in order to transmute into; failure indicates wasted effort. Volume is conserved in the transformation, even if the weight of the metal body changes.

The planetary metals have the following statistics:

Planetary   
Metal
Hardness   Hit Points
Per Inch   
Melting Point   Boiling Point   Break DC
Modifier   
Diplomacy DC   Density
Copper8201084 °C2562 °C+325560 lb/cubic foot
Gold5101064 °C2856 °C+1501,200 lb/cubic foot
Lead230327 °C1749 °C+520700 lb/cubic foot
Mercury515-39 °C357 °C+035840 lb/cubic foot
Iron10301538 °C2862 °C+1030490 lb/cubic foot
Silver510962 °C2162 °C+120650 lb/cubic foot
Tin25232 °C2602 °C-215360 lb/cubic foot
  • Copper: Copper is exceptionally conductive to electricity. Electricity deals one-quarter damage instead of half damage to it.
  • Gold: Gold created with alchemetry is real gold, but is also distinguishable from naturally occuring gold. An Appraise check (DC 20) indicates the gold's artificial nature. It is difficult enough to produce that it is often still accepted as a trade currency, albeit at a significantly lower exchange rate than natural gold. Gold is very inert, and does not rust.
  • Lead: Lead is a durable material which is fairly easy to produce, but it is also poisonous. Anyone who spends a lot of time wearing or handling lead is susceptible to lead poisoning on a daily basis, which works like a poison with a DC of 16 and which deals 1d4 Con damage as the primary and secondary damage.
  • Mercury: Note that at normal adventuring temperatures, mercury is a liquid. Mercury is a powerful poison, with a DC of 20 and dealing 1d6 Str damage as the primary and secondary damage. Mercury is exceptionally conductive to electricity. Electricity deals one-quarter damage instead of half damage to it.
  • Silver: Silver created with alchemetry is real silver, but is also distinguishable from naturally occuring silver. An Appraise check (DC 10) indicates the silver's artificial nature. Alchemetric silver is so easy to produce that it is very close to worthless as a trade material. Silver is exceptionally conductive to electricity. Electricity deals one-quarter damage instead of half damage to it.
  • Tin: Tin is an exceptionally flimsy material, but it is easy to produce. It is also very resistant to acids and corrosion; acid effects deal only a quarter of their normal damage to tin.


ALCH 325: Preternatural Fluids
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any two ALCH principles, Diplomacy 15 ranks
Target: Material of no more than 8 cubic ft. and weighing no more than 5,000 lb
Preparation Time: 1 hour

Learning this principle allows you to affect fluid bodies with your alchemetric principles. All of your alchemetric principles can now be used to target liquid or gaseous bodies, although the fluid to be affected must be enclosed and separated from other freely moving fluids in order to alter it.

This principle in its own right allows you to convince the free spirits of fluids to change their motion slightly. As part of this principle you make a Diplomacy check. At the end of the preparation, you can apply one of the following changes to the body.
  • Density: The density of the target is altered by a factor of up to a tenth of your Diplomacy result. This changes the weight of the target by the factor specified, and causes a fluid to exert a different amount of pressure.
  • Phase Change: The melting or boiling point of the target is increased or decreased by a number of degrees Centigrade (or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit multiplied by this result), up to your Diplomacy result.


ALCH 364: Unexpected Materials [Specialist]
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any three ALCH principles, Diplomacy 15 ranks
Target: Planetary metal body of no more than 8 cubic ft. and weighing no more than 5,000 lb
Preparation Time: 4 hours

This principle allows you to refine a planetary metal to a new level of supernatural purity. This principle targets a body made of a planetary metal, and ascends it to a higher form. As part of this principle, you make a Diplomacy check. You must meet the Diplomacy DC of the superplanetary metal you are trying to transform the material into. Each planetary metal has one higher level form which it can be turned into. These superplanetary metals have the same statistics as their normal counterparts, but gain a special property.

In addition to the normal planetary metals, this principle can target an 8th metal: platinum. Platinum is an odd case, and while it can be ascended with this principle, it is not a valid choice for ALCH 286. For all other purposes, it is treated as a planetary metal. Platinum and its ascended form have a density of 1,340 lb/cubic foot.
  • Copper: Copper ascends into carmot, which is the key element to the philosopher's stone. Consuming carmot freezes the aging process in any living thing for 24 hours. Carmot in general is an element of preservation, and anything touching carmot does not decay, rot, rust, or otherwise wear out. Carmot has a Diplomacy DC of 60.
  • Gold: Gold ascend into sunmetal, which is a radiomantic element. Radiomantic elements deal 1 negative level per round to anyone who handles them. The DC to remove a negative level from a radiomantic element is 25. If at least a cubic foot of radiomantic material is charged with at least 100 ebbs of puissance on a given round, it detonates in an explosion with a radius of 1 mile per cubic foot of metal. The explosion deals 1d10 negative levels to every living thing in the area, hellfire damage equal to the total number of ebbs channeled into the metal (Fortitude save for half damage against DC 25) and it poisons the earth; no living thing can grow there for the next 50 years. Geoccult poles in the area are affected by this. If the number of ebbs channeled in the explosion exceeds the Survival check of the pole, it is destroyed and the metal used in its construction disintegrated; other geoccult poles set up in the area in the next 50 years must beat this DC or disintegrate upon preparation. Sunmetal has a Diplomacy DC of 85.
  • Lead: Lead ascends into cursed lead, which is a protective material that has antimagical properties. Any enclosed space made of cursed lead is filled as if with an antimagic field effect. Cursed lead has a Diplomacy DC of 55.
  • Mercury: Mercury ascends into quicksilver, which carries the elemental nature of speed. Objects and structures made from quicksilver experience time at a faster rate than other materials. For all purposes, they experience two rounds for every normal round. Spaces, creatures, and objects completely enclosed by quicksilver experience the same effect, although it's usually impossible to interact with the outside world from such a location in order to take advantage of the property. Quicksilver has a Diplomacy DC of 70.
  • Iron: Iron ascends into phlogiston, which gives off heat perpetually. Phlogiston always radiates heat as if it were on fire, but it never burns up. This heat radiates out 5ft. from the phlogiston body (with an additional 5ft. for every size category of the phlogiston body above Medium). This area is raised to an arbitrary temperature of at least 1,000 degrees Centigrade at all times. Anything that burns at those temperatures must make a DC 15 Reflex save every round it remains in the area or catch on fire. Phlogiston has a Diplomacy DC of 65.
  • Platinum: Platinum ascends into orichalcum, which is the metal of the gods. It has the statistics of adamantine for all mundane purposes. Orichalcum can store gramaric energy as a battery; every cubic foot of orichalcum can hold up to 100 ebbs of puissance indefinitely; it's normally handled in beads, which can each store a single ebb. Orichalcum has a Diplomacy DC of 100.
  • Silver: Silver ascends into moonsteel. Moonsteel gives off an unearthly silver glow, and extends onto the Ethereal Plane. It interacts with both the corporeal and the incorporeal. Moonsteel has a Diplomacy DC of 55.
  • Tin: Tin ascends into alkahest, which is an agent of entropy. It has the normal statistics of tin, but breaks down in water to create an incredible solvent. This works like universal solvent, but can also dissolve any of the planetary metals. Any planetary metal body that spends time immersed in an alkahest solution takes a cumulative -1 penalty to its hardness every round. When its hardness reaches 0, it begins taking 1d6 nonlethal damage every round (even though objects don't normally take nonlethal damage). If the metal is removed before reaching 0 hit points, the nonlethal damage and penalty to hardness disappear. When the body's hit points reach 0, it is dissolved into the solution, adding its volume to the volume of the alkahest. If the alkahest solution is later dried out, dissolved metals can be retrieved in granular form from the solute. Alkahest has a Diplomacy DC of 50.

17
The Gramarist
"This is my world. It follows my rules."


Image credit evermind-design of deviantart.com

In a world as fabulous and frightening as we find ourselves, knowledge is a valuable commodity. Many marvels seem like magic to the uneducated, but the intellectual knows that all phenomena must follow certain rules and laws, even if we don't quite understand them, and even if they might potentially rip our faces off as they spawn tentacled horrors. Science is the great leveller, allowing for equalisation between those people who can arbitrarily shoot laser beams out of their eyes and those who can't. The mechanisation of the magical is collectively known as gramarie, and thus one who learns the skills to use and control it is a gramarist.

There are several different disciplines of gramarie:
  • Alchemetry is the study of matter. More specifically, it's about quantifying and exploring the empirical principles at work in commonplace alchemy. Alchemetry is all about transforming substances and tweaking their properties.
  • Arcanodynamics is the study of arcane power. Arcanodynamic principles explore the relationships between magical energy (commonly known as puissance) and more common forms of energy, such as heat and light.
  • Biollurgy is the study of life. It explores the distinction between the living and nonliving, and can walk the fine line between the two.
  • Eldrikinetics is the study of magical motion. The powers that propel magic vehicles, defy gravity, and generate momentum are the principal focus here.
  • Geoccultism is the study of the environment and ley lines. It deals with thaumaturgic poles which tweak and modify the world around them, sometimes to extreme lengths.
  • Heuristicism is the study of control systems and circuits. It allows you to link magic together in fascinating new ways.
  • Imachination is the study of the real and the nonreal. It explores the mechanics of generating false sensations and illusionary interactions.
  • Kaleidomantics is the study of the magical prismatism of light. Kaleidomantic filters are refracted curtains of colour which can be used to separate agents based on the nature of light.
  • Yggdratecture is the study of other worlds and dimensions. The malleable nature of a fantasy planar cosmology sometimes works in your favour.
Game Rule Information

Abilities: Intelligence is far and away the most important skill for a gramarist. Gramarists who prefer to serve in battle as low-grade artillery will enjoy high Dexterity scores to make their eldritch blasts more accurate. However, it's important to recognize that gramarists are not focused on combat at all, and will not do well if that's their primary goal.

Alignment: Any
Hit Die: d6
Skill Points at 1st Level: (6 + Int modifier) x 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 6 + Int modifier

Class Skills: The gramarist's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Decipher Script (Int), Diplomacy (Cha), Disable Device (Int), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Handle Animal (Cha), Heal (Wis), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) (Int), Knowledge (dungeoneering) (Int), Knowledge (local) (Int), Knowledge (nature) (Int), Knowledge (the Planes) (Int), Knowledge (psionics) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Open Lock (Dex), Profession (Wis), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis) and Use Magic Device (Cha).

The Gramarist
LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
Principles Known
1st+0+0+0+2Baccalaureate principles, eldritch wick, specialization
1
2nd+1+0+0+3Eldritch blast +1d6
2
3rd+1+1+1+3Spectroconstruction
3
4th+2+1+1+4Bonus feat, eldritch blast +2d6
3
5th+2+1+1+4Spectroconstruction (2/day)
4
6th+3+2+2+5Eldritch blast +3d6
5
7th+3+2+2+5Spectroconstruction (3/day), magisterial principles
6
8th+4+2+2+6Bonus feat, eldritch blast +4d6
6
9th+4+3+3+6Spectroconstruction (4/day)
7
10th+5+3+3+7Eldritch blast +5d6
8
11th+5+3+3+7Spectroconstruction (5/day)
9
12th+6/+1+4+4+8Bonus feat, eldritch blast +6d6
9
13th+6/+1+4+4+8Spectroconstruction (6/day)
10
14th+7/+2+4+4+9Doctorate principles, eldritch blast +7d6
11
15th+7/+2+5+5+9Spectroconstruction (7/day)
12
16th+8/+3+5+5+10Bonus feat, eldritch blast +8d6
12
17th+8/+3+5+5+10Spectroconstruction (8/day)
13
18th+9/+4+6+6+11Eldritch blast +9d6
14
19th+9/+4+6+6+11Spectroconstruction (9/day)
15
20th+10/+5+6+6+12Bonus feat, eldritch blast +10d6, the architect
15

All of the following are class features of the gramarist.

Weapon and Armour Proficiencies: As a gramarist you are proficient in all simple weapons and light armour. You are not proficient in shields of any kind. By spending two skill points when you take your first level in this class, you can claim a single martial weapon proficiency as a one-time bonus by spending some time on (shudder) physical education.

Eldritch Wick (Sp): The study of gramarie is very closely related to the study of pure magic. Arcane energy is one of the purest forms of puissance, and as you learn about the principles that govern the flow of magic, you also learn to generate that energy yourself. At 1st level you gain an eldritch wick, which is a touch attack that deals 1 point of damage. This ability can be used at will, and is treated like as a spell-like ability whose caster level is equal to your Hit Dice. Your eldritch wick is the equivalent of a 0th level spell.

Your caster level for your eldritch wick (and, later, your eldritch blast) qualifies you to take feats, prestige classes, and other such venues which require a generic caster level. It does not count as arcane, divine, or anything else more specific than a vanilla caster level.

Specialization: All initiates of gramarie tend to gravitate towards one discipline or another; at 1st level you must pick one discipline to specialize in. You gain a competence bonus of half your class level on the key skill of your chosen discipline, and can select principles from that discipline which are marked with the [Specialist] tag. A specialist cannot select any doctorate-level principles from other fields of study than their specialization.

You can choose "general studies" as your specialization, in which case you have chosen to major in "the universe". These gramarists are known as universalists, and while their guidance counselors might say they lack direction, they actually know exactly what they're doing. A universalist can select magisterial-level (200-level) specialist principles from any discipline as doctorate-level principles, but can never select doctorate-level specialist principles. They can, however, learn any non-specialist doctorate-level principle once they gain access to that tier. If you are a universalist, you also never qualify for prestige classes or other venues that require specialization.

A universalist adds this competence bonus to Knowledge (architecture and engineering) checks.

Principles of Gramarie: As a student of gramarie, you have many avenues of learning available to you. At 1st level, and again whenever indicated on your class table, you learn a new principle. Principles are supernatural (Su) abilities which bend or break the laws of physics, but not quite in the same way that most magic does. Principles can be used whenever you have the time, materials and inclination; they are effectively usable at-will if you are in an appropriate situation. Principles come in three grades: Baccalaureate, Magisterial, and Doctorate. You gain access to these higher grade principles as shown on your class table. Once you achieve the Doctorate level (at your 14th class level) you may refer to yourself as a doctor of your that discipline. You cannot put off learning a principle; if you do not qualify for one when you would otherwise receive it, it's lost. If a principle is marked [Specialist], it can only be learned by a specialist in that discipline.

A principle is not cast, it is prepared. By preparing a principle multiple times, you can change the volume or size of the target affected. For example, if a principle targets 1 cubic foot of material, by preparing it twice (and thus spending twice as long on it) you could target 2 cubic feet of the material instead. A special case is made for bubbles, which are spherical effects. For more information on the size of bubbles, refer to the miscellaneous section at the end of this document.

If a principle requires materials, you need extra materials every time you prepare it. You can also improve a principle later on my adding more materials to it (if applicable) and by spending more time on it. This also forces you to make a new skill check on it. Speaking of skill checks, you can always choose to use Knowledge (architecture and engineering) as the skill to prepare a principle instead of the discipline key skill, but you take a -10 penalty on the check. In the same vein, you can take 20 on key skill checks made to prepare a principle, but you can never take 10 on them. Bear in mind that taking 20 means taking 20 times as long as you normally would, which for gramarie can be very long indeed. To prepare a principle you must be within range of touch of the structure or object or location on which you are setting the principle for the duration of the preparation.

If multiple gramarists know the same principle, they can work simultaneously on the same project. For example, two gramarists could prepare the same principle at the same time, and the principle would count as having been prepared twice. Later a third gramarist who also knows that principle could show up and prepare it again, and the principle would then have been prepared three times. A gramarist can choose to 'lock' a principle that has been prepared, meaning that only he can continue work on it later. Bypassing the lock requires making a key skill check (based on the discipline) which beats the principle's current skill check by 5 or more.

Eldritch Blast (Sp): Once you move beyond a simple cursory understanding of arcana, you can learn to project your power in the same way as those whose magic is in their blood. At 2nd level your eldritch wick becomes an eldritch blast, which is a ranged touch attack that must be made within 60ft. Your eldritch blast deals 1 damage, plus 1d6 damage for every two class levels as shown on your class table. Aside from the small difference in damage, this blast is interchangeable with that gained from other classes, and additional eldritch blast damage from other sources adds to this eldritch blast. Your eldritch blast has an equivalent spell level of half your Hit Dice, and the caster level of the effect is equal to your Hit Dice.

Spectroconstruction (Su): Building super awesome architecture would take a while if you had to do it all yourself. Luckily you have at your beck and call an army of spectral labourers willing to take one for the team. Starting at 3rd level, every day you can cause an effect equivalent to a lyre of building (building effect) for 30 minutes. You gain an extra daily use of this ability at 5th level and every 2 levels thereafter. You can use this effect on its own merits, or as part of a project, as you see fit.

No Perform check is required to initiate this effect, but instead you must make a DC 18 Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check every time you activate it (+3 to the DC for every additional time per day you activate it). Failure indicates the daily use is wasted. You cannot split up individual uses of this ability; if you do not use all 7,200 man-hours during the activation period, they're lost.

(click to show/hide)

Bonus Feat: As a student, you inevitably pick up a few lessons along the way which aren't necessarily taught in a classroom. At 4th level, as well as every four levels thereafter, you gain a bonus feat you qualify for. A universalist can instead choose a principle which they qualify for in place of a feat.

The Architect (Ex): An amateur could do something right; a professional never does it wrong. At 20th level, you're far beyond being a master of magical engineering. Every Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check you make is maximised (treated as a natural 20), as well as the rolls for your specialization's key skill.

The true revelation at this level, however, is the perfect understanding you have achieved of the connection between magic rules and the convential laws of physics. Knowing how these principles of weird science interact allows you to transcend the normal preconceptions of what is and what is not 'possible'. All of your principles are now extraordinary in nature, and for all intents and purposes any machine or structure you build out of them is considered nonmagical in every way.

18
Eldrikinetics


Image credit Osokin of deviantart.com

"Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings"

The nature of motion is one of the oldest problems of mankind; as a species we seem to be addicted to speed, and other humanoid races are no better. The ability to transport materials at high speeds and across great distances makes many amazing feats of civilization possible. Eldrikinetics is the study of magical principles which can create this movement using powerful thaumaturgical engines. An eldrikinetic ship scoffs at gravity!

Eldrikinetics typically makes use of predrawn sets of blueprints, schematics, and parametric drawings of various engines and vehicles. Other useful supplies include pendulums and springs to test various principles of motion. Any piece of equipment like this counts as masterwork, and provides a +2 circumstance bonus on the Concentration check made to prepare an eldrikinetic principle. A particularly famous kinetic device is the Foucalt Pendulum, which is said to be able to control the motion of the earth itself.

Key Skill: Concentration


ELDK 101: Intro to Eldrikinetics
Grade: Baccalaureate
Prerequisites: None
Target: 1 cubic foot of material
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle transforms a mass of material into an eldrikinetic engine. An engine can generate a certain amount of Push, which is a kind of imparted momentum. Every engine has a particular kind of fuel which can be used to generate its Push, although all of them can also run off of pure puissance if they're hooked up to a circuit. When an engine generates Push, it moves itself in a certain direction, and brings anything attached to it along for the ride.

To determine how fast a structure moves, you need two things: the magnitude of the Push, and the Bulk rating of the object (including the engine). The Bulk rating can be found from the following chart:

Size CategoryBulk Rating
Fine1
Diminutive8
Tiny27
Small64
Medium125
Large216
Huge343
Gargantuan512
Colossal729
Enormous1,000
Immense1,331
Behemothic1,728
Cavernous2,197
Mountainous2,744
Vast3,375
Unusally heavy (stone, metal, etc)x 2
Unusually light (cotton candy, paper, etc)x 1/2

For example, a single simple orthogonal engine has a Bulk rating of 54 (Tiny size for a 8 cubic foot block, multiplied by 2 for being unusally dense).

Determining the speed is the fun part, and is slightly more maths-requisite. Get a calculator! You divide the Push generated by the Bulk rating of the thing moving. Then round down. Multiply this value by 30 feet per round. Ta-da! You now have the speed your object moves every round. Control systems are relatively simple to install (DC 20 Knowledge [Architecture and Engineering] check) in order to steer the craft.

Like any principle, if this principle is prepared more than once you can end up with an engine much larger than normal. For every additional time you prepare this principle you need an additional 8 cubic feet of the appropriate material; the engine must be a single solid unit no matter the size. If you supply enough fuel for the extra size you get extra Push out of it. So, for example, if you spend three hours preparing an engine which is three times as large as normal and feed it three times the normal fuel required, it generates three times the normal Push. If you feed it less fuel than the maximum, the entire engine still moves, but only produces Push equivalent to the fuel used. When you combine into a larger engine like this, you're said to have multiple engines in parallel.

For ease of reference, here's the speed of some basic Bulks, against up to five engines in parallel. Note that there are certain benchmarks for speed. At a speed of 1,800ft. objects can now be considered as projectiles for ranged attacks (this speed is hereafter known as projectile speed). These objects deal damage based on their weight, as described in Complete Warrior. At a speed of 6,698ft. the speed of sound is broken, also known as mach 1. Similarly, mach 2 is a speed of 13,397ft. and mach 3 is a speed of 20,096ft.

At certain Bulk Ratings you run into a maximum speed. This is the maximum speed that can be achieved from a single engine or set of engines in parallel. In order to exceed the listed maximum speed, an object would need two or more entirely separate sets of engines acting on it simultaneously.

Bulk RatingExample Object100 Push200 Push300 Push400 Push500 PushMaximum Speed
1Wood chipProjectileProjectileMach 1Mach 1Mach 2Mach 3
2Bullet1,500ft.ProjectileProjectileProjectileMach 1Mach 3
8Arrow360ft.750ft.1,110ft.1,500ft.ProjectileMach 3
27Spitoon90ft.210ft.330ft.420ft.540ft.Mach 2
64Chest of drawers30ft.90ft.120ft.180ft.210ft.Mach 2
125Human with a jetpack-30ft.60ft.90ft.120ft.Mach 1
216Automotive--30ft.30ft.60ft.Mach 1
343Light aircraft---30ft.30ft.Mach 1
512Pirate ship-----Projectile
729Tarrasque with a jetpack-----900ft.
1,000Small house-----450ft.
1,331Big house-----240ft.
1,728Temeraire-----120ft.
2,197The Chrysler Building-----60ft.
2,744The Hindenburg-----30ft.
3,375Flying island fortress-----30ft.

At mach 1, objects are considered projectiles for ranged touch attacks. At mach 2, they also catch enemies flat-footed unless the target has uncanny dodge. At mach 3, they deal double their normal damage, with the extra damage being sonic energy damage.

An engine has a set amount of Push that it generates, but that is a maximum. When this principle is first prepared, you can set the Push output to any number you like up to the maximum value. This can be changed later with a comparable Concentration check to the one made when the engine was set up. It should also be noted that an engine produces Push (and, consequently, speed) which occurs in the space that the engine is inside. This means that the engine must have more than 50% of its volume inside of the dimension where it's producing its Push.

As part of this principle you make a Concentration check. The Concentration check doesn't really come into play much, but if anyone tries to dismantle the engine, the Disable Device DC is equal to your Concentration check.

This principle allows you to make the following engine:

  • Simple Orthogonal: A simple orthogonal engine uses wood as a fuel source and is made out of iron. It requires 1 pound (about 1 log) of wood for 1 minute of operation, during which it generates 100 points of Push per round. This engine pushes orthogonally to the gravity in the area, which means that it moves horizontally along whatever plane it is on. A simple orthogonal engine can also be sustained for one round with 6 ebbs of puissance.


ELDK 219: Atypical Ballistics
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: ELDK 101, Concentration 8 ranks
Target: 1 cubic foot of material
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like ELDK 101, but you can also build the following engine:
  • Ballistic: A ballistic engine uses bone as a fuel source and is made out of copper. It requires 1 pound of bone (about a human armbone), at which point it can be activated three times before refuelling. Unlike most engines, a ballistic engine imparts its Push to an object it's touching instead of to itself. The object is then launched at any angle the operator likes. This allows the engine to make actual ranged attacks with the object being launched if it is moving fast enough. Every time the engine is activated it generates a one-time burst (instead of sustained motion) of 400 points of Push. A ballistic engine can also be charged for a single use with 6 ebbs of puissance. Objects launched with a ballistic engine have a range increment of 1/20 their speed (round down).
Ballistic engines are treated as ranged weapons, and can be enchanted or enhanced just like one.


ELDK 276: Unnatural Propulsion [Specialist]
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: ELDK 101, Concentration 8 ranks
Target: 8 cubic feet of material
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like ELDK 101, but you can also build the following engines:
  • Ascending: An ascending engine uses daylight as a fuel source and is made out of silver. It requires full daylight to operate, but as long as it is in an area of full daylight it generates 200 points of Push per round. In the light of the full moon it is even more effective, and can generate twice this amount. This engine pushes upwards, opposing the direction that gravity is acting on the engine. An ascending engine can also be sustained for one round with 8 ebbs of puissance.
  • Submerging: A submerging engine uses blood as a fuel source and is made out of flesh. It requires 1 gallon of fluid blood for 1 minute of operation, during which it generates 200 points of Push per round. This engine pushes downwards, in the same direction as gravity is acting on the engine. A submerging engine can also be sustained for one round with 8 ebbs of puissance.
It's also important to note that if a vehicle has both a powered ascending or submerging engine as well as a powered simple orthogonal engine, it can act as if it had a special movement speed. This is called a two-part engine. The combination of ascending and orthogonal provides a fly speed, and the combination of submerging and orthogonal provides a swim speed (assuming the vessel is otherwise suitable). The speed is equal to the lower of the two speeds per round available from the composite engines. With a fly speed the vessel is treated as having an average maneuverability for any relevant purposes. That being said, if you'd rather work out the actual logistics of the exact activations and headings of the two Pushes, feel free. This is merely a simplification for ease of gameplay.


ELDK 355: Strange Locomotion
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any two ELDK principles, Concentration 15 ranks
Target: 8 cubic feet of material
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like ELDK 101, but you can also build the following bizarre engines:
  • Badgerdrawn: A badgerdrawn engine uses nuts and acorns as a fuel source and is made out of stone. It requires 5 pounds (about a cubic foot) of nuts or acorns for 1 minute of burrowing, during which it generates 200 points of Push per round. This engine can only be used when it is in contact with dirt or loosely packed earth, and allows the engine and whatever it is attached to to burrow through the dirt. The engine can pull its structure through dirt or loose earth in any direction, but cannot pull it out of the earth. A badgerdrawn engine is also sustained for one round with 10 ebbs of puissance.
  • Beeform: A beeform engine uses honey as a fuel source and is made out of amber. It requires 1 gallon of honey for 1 minute spent in bee form, during which it generates 200 points of Push per round. This engine, while active, transforms the engine and whatever structure it is attached to into a swarm of bees. The affected structure and any creature on board into an intelligent swarm, temporarily giving it the Swarm subtype. The Push can be used to move it in any direction above ground, and counts as a fly speed appropriate to the speed granted by the Push. It counts as having a perfect maneuverability for all relevant purposes. A beeform engine can also be sustained for one round with 10 ebbs of puissance.
  • Lightningleap: A lightningleap engine uses electricity as a fuel source and is made out of solid mercury. It requires 10 volts of electric potential for every leap it makes. Every leap provides the equivalent of 200 points of Push in any direction, as the engine and whatever it is attached to transforms into a bolt of lightning. The vehicle reconstitutes into its original form at the other side of the leap. It also deals electricity damage to everything it passes through during the leap (10d6 damage with a Reflex save for half damage, against a DC equal to the Concentration check of the engine). A lightningleap engine can also be activated for a single leap with 10 ebbs of puissance.
  • Stonefish: A stonefish engine uses seawater as a fuel source and is made out of diamond. It requires 10 gallons of seawater for 1 minute of stone swimming, during which it generates 200 points of Push per round. This engine can only be used when it is contact with stone, metal, or any other kind of earth material. The engine allows movement in any direction while the vehicle is submersed in the stone, and allows it to move through stone or metal like a fish swims through water. It counts as having a swim speed equal to the the speed granted by the Push. A stonefish engine can also be sustained for one round with 10 ebbs of puissance.


ELDK 399: Immaterial Travel [Specialist]
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any three ELDK principles, Concentration 15 ranks
Target: 8 cubic feet of material
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like ELDK 101, but you can also build the following engines:
  • Aetherial: An aetherial engine uses moonsteel as a fuel source and is made out of cold iron. It burns 1 cubic foot of moonsteel for every minute spent travelling incorporeally. While active, the engine and the vehicle it is attached to becomes incorporeal, and it generates 400 points of Push per round. It can travel in any direction on the Ethereal Plane during the effect, and for all intents and purposes has a perfect maneuverability and a fly speed with a speed equivalent to that granted by the Push. An aetherial engine can also be sustained for one round with 15 ebbs of puissance.
  • Planejumping: A planejumping engine uses sunmetal as a fuel source and is made out of adamantine. It requires 1 cubic foot of sunmetal for every jump that it makes. Every time it's activated, it pulls itself and the structure attached to it through the planar void, to another Plane as if by a gate effect (travel version only). It generates the equivalent of 1,000 points of Push, although it doesn't physically move. Instead, there must be at least enough Push generated from the engine to impart a speed of 30ft. to the vehicle. A planejumping engine can also be powered for a single jump with 30 ebbs of puissance.

19
Geoccultism


Image credit Holicia of deviantart.com

"Everything must go somewhere."

Geoccultism is an intricate art that involves thaumaturgically aligning the essence of a place to a particular orientation through a combination of manipulating ley lines and magnetic fields. Through the use of a ruling pole, a skilled geoccultist can create a variety of weather conditions and terrains, suitable for everything from ideal agriculture climates to advanced meteomantic warfare. To truly master geoccultism, one must know the land like they know themself, and often better.

Geoccultism is aided with enchanted compasses and ancient atlases, to locate and track ley lines across the surface of the earth. Dowsing rods are also commonly employed to pinpoint the location and orientation of geoccult poles. An aid like this counts as a masterwork piece of equipment and provides a +2 circumstance bonus on the Survival check made to prepare a geoccult principle. The Imago Mundi is perhaps the most famous arcane atlas ever compiled, and always shows the exact alignment of seven 'ley plates', islands of geolomantic power which move inexorably below the surface of the earth.

Key Skill: Survival


GEOC 101: Intro to Geoccultism
Grade: Baccalaureate
Prerequisite: None
Target: At least 100 lb of planetary metal
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle transforms a continuous mass of metal into a geoccult pole, which emits a field geomagnetically attuned to a specific biome. The metal transformed emits a bubble-shaped field, except that it has a different size than normal. The field begins at a radius of 500ft., and every additional preparation of this principle adds an additional 100ft. of radius to it. The particular biome created depends on the planetary metal used to create the pole. A geoccult pole is immobile once created; it is fixed in the geography of the land. It can be broken out of geomagnetic alignment with a DC 30 Strength check (+5 for every GEOC principle you know), but this ruins the principle and returns the pole to its original state. Molten metal can be transformed into a geoccult pole, but enough mass must remain in the fluid body to maintain the required amount; otherwise the effect is similarly broken. A biome condition spreads slowly, at a rate of 5ft. per round out from the pole, until it reaches its ultimate radius.

Geoccult poles slowly consume themselves to provide the fuel for their biome. Every day they consume 5 lb for every 100ft. of radius. If this consumption reduces the mass of the pole below the critical mass, the pole collapses. The critical mass is defined as 100 lb multiplied by 1 + the number of times the radius has been increased (that is, the required mass to use the principle itself). Additional mass can be added to a geoccult pole by placing appropriate metal so that it touches the main body. The mass is slowly subsumed into the body of the pole over the following ten minutes. If a geoccult pole is hooked up to a heuristical circuit, puissance can be used to pay for mass which would otherwise be consumed, at a rate of 1 ebb for every 10 lb of metal that would be needed.

If a feature requires upkeep, that is, additional expenditure of metal or puissance to maintain itself, this can happen over time. An appropriate amount of puissance must be supplied to the pole to pay for the feature's upkeep; the full amount of puissance must be provided in 10 rounds. That is, at least one-tenth of the puissance must be supplied once a round for ten rounds, or until the full cost is paid. Payment is due at either midnight or midday, as chosen when the pole is established. If on a Plane without such times, payment is still due every 24 hours, starting from the establishment of the pole.

If there are multiple features which need to be supplied puissance to maintain, they can be paid one after the other, with no round in-between when no puissance is being transferred. If there is such a break, all of the necessary metal for remaining features is drawn from the body of the pole. If there is ever not enough mass in the pole to keep it above the critical limit, the pole collapses.

A geoccult field does not overwrite everything in the area, only natural elements. Trees, rocks, leaves, grass, dirt, and so on, are subsumed into the pole; if the field is broken later on, the old terrain elements reassert themselves as if nothing had happened. Animals and artificial elements such as houses, are not subsumed like this; instead, the landscape changes around them. Things that a geoccult pole creates are real and tangible, and last if taken out of the area. Once removed, they don't disappear if the pole collapses.

As part of this principle, you make a Survival check. This check determines the potency of the biome. You must make a certain DC in order to create the pole in the first place, or the principle is wasted to no effect; this critical DC is shown in the condition entry. For every 5 points you beat the critical DC of the check, any effects caused by the biome have their saving throw DC increased by 1, the skill check they require increased by +3, and any damage dice increased by 1 die. As the biome spreads, the baseline terrain of the area changes to that of the biome. This is essentially the foundation of the land.

If two biomes come into contact, one of them overwrites the other; whichever has a higher Survival check is dominant.

The poles that you can use include:

Planetary MetalCritical DCBiomeBaseline Terrain
Copper20ForestRich soil
Gold25ArcticPermafrost
Iron25DesertSand
Lead20SwampPeat
Platinum20CityBasalt
Tin15GrasslandsDirt
  • Arctic (Permafrost): Permafrost is essentially frozen soil. The ground in this biome remains frozen year round, and the air temperature also grows fairly chilly thanks to convection. The ground is inhospitable to plants; only the hardiest arctic plants can grow roots deep enough to penetrate the frozen topsoil. In practice, this biome typically ends up creating a cold desert. An arctic biome has an average temperature of 0 Centigrade during the day to -40 Centigrade at night. Arctic biomes receive 50% less precipitation than most biomes, and what they do receive is typically in the form of blinding snowstorms.
  • City (Basalt): Basalt is pretty much just simple cobblestone. Nothing grows on it, although it's nice for walking along and riding horses on. A platinum pole's doesn't have much effect on the local climate, although wind patterns tend to be broken up by large structures and sharp corners.
  • Desert (Sand): Speaking of which, a desert is primarily filled with sand. This is a wasteland that has little nutritional value stored in the ground, which leads to a vicious cycle where plants can't grow in the area to provide nutrients for other plants. Sand is incredibly inhospitable, and also hard to travel on, since it's loose. You cannot run on sand, and horses only cover half their regular distance in a day. A desert biome has an average temperature of up to 40 Centigrade in the day, and as low as freezing (0 Centigrade) at night. A desert biome receives 50% less precipitation than normal biomes.
  • Forests (Rich Soil): This is a dark carbon-rich soil perfect for trees and general agriculture. Profession (farmer) and similar checks made to grow things in the soil gain a +2 bonus, and annual yield using this soil (assuming it's used over the entire growing season) is increased by 25%. Rich soil depletes quickly, and consecutive yields after a boom year yield only 75% of their normal potential. Forests have a temperate climate, ranging from 5 to 25 Centigrade.
  • Grasslands (Dirt): The dirt created here is very sturdy and enduring. Although not as rich in nutrients as the dark soil of the forest, grasslands dirt perseveres. This is the baseline soil which is assumed in general. Grasslands typically have a pleasant climate, with similar temperatures to a forest.
  • Swamp (Peat): Peat is very wet, very mucky soil. It's filthy to move around in, and requires a DC 10 Balance check every round you move through it to avoid getting really muddy. It's got a huge moisture content, and is very well-suited to some kinds of plants. Traditional crops like grain can't grow here at all, but any species of plant which can cope with the extremely wet conditions can do quite well; oak trees, tea trees, and other plants with shallow roots find themselves at home. Any plant well suited to the terrain grows 50% faster than it would elsewhere. Swamps often have very humid and muggy climates; 10 to 25 Centigrade is common, with a consistent relative humidity of up to 70%.


GEOC 235: Bizarre Biomes
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: GEOC 101, Survival 8 ranks
Target: At least 100 lb of planetary metal
Preparation Time: 1 hour
 
This principle works like GEOC 101, except that you can place features into the biomes that you are creating. By maintaining contact with the pole during the spread of a biome, you can place terrain features, such as trees or mineral deposits, inside of the area as it grows. Alternatively, these can be changed as a logical decision or by preparing the principle again. Changes introduced like this after the fact also spread from the pole at a rate of 5ft. per round, overwriting previous features (you must still remain in contact with the pole during the spreading effect to place terrain features). If a pole's effect is broken, the old terrain reasserts itself at the same rate. Every biome has a baseline feature, which is a characteristic of the land itself which is intrinsic to the biome's nature. The baseline terrain of the biome is free; additional terrain features require the immediate consumption of metal from the mass of the pole, as described in the feature entry.

Some features require upkeep; features which need to replenish themselves (such as a tree which has been cut down) do so over a period of one day, consuming again as much material as was required to station them in the first place. Features can be placed on top of things that already exist, such as manmade structures in the area. However, the primary owner of a structure is allowed a Will saving throw (DC 10 + 5 for every GEOC principle you know) to resist the encroachment of the geoccult field. Success indicates that that pole cannot place any features inside, on, or in the structure in question. This spread also does not grant you any special insight into what is inside such as structure; if you don't know what it looks like inside, you're essentially just placing features randomly in the dark.

Many of the features described here are fairly rudimentary. If you have access to additional supplementary material, such as the supplements Frostburn: Mastering the Perils of Ice and Snow (for a gold pole) or Sandstorm: Mastering the Perils of Fire and Sand (for an iron pole), feel free to make use of their more extensive geography choices. Work with your DM to determine what would be a reasonable price for various natural terrain features from these supplements. Note that supernatural terrain elements are not appropriate for this principle.

The features you can place are:

Arctic [Gold]: A gold pole allows you to spread an arctic biome. An arctic area has permafrost as its baseline, and additional terrain features include black ice, ice, rock, scrub, snowdrifts, and trees. The arctic is a cold, inhosbitable place, filled with many frozen dangers.
  • Black Ice: Black ice is exceptionaly dangerous ice, in that it's very unreflective and also very slippery. This makes it hard to notice until you're actually on it. To even notice black ice, someone needs to succeed on a DC 20 Spot check. This works like ice (see below), except that a DC 10 Balance check is required even to move normally on it. If someone on black ice fails to notice that it's there, the Balance check DC to move across it doubles, and failure indicates that they fall prone. Black ice costs 25 lb for every 5ft. sheet.
  • Ice: Ice is frozen water, and this describes an ice sheet on the ground. it could cover up a frozen body of water, or just packed smooth snow. It costs 2 squares of movement to enter a square covered in ice, and the DC of Balance and Tumble checks there increases by 5. A DC 10 Balance check is required to run or charge across ice. Ice costs 5 lb for every 5ft. sheet.
  • Rubble: This is either light or dense rubble strewn across the ground by avalanches in the past. Light rubble increases the DC of Balance and Tumble checks by 2. Dense rubble costs 2 squares of movement to enter into, and increases the DC of Balance and Tumble checks by 5, and of Move Silently checks by 2. Light rubble costs 5 lb for every 20ft. patches, while dense rubble costs 5 lb for every 10ft. patch.
  • Scrub: Scrub is hardy, reasonably nutritious plantlife which can survive the harsh conditions of the tundra. One 5ft. patch of scrub will sustain a herbivorous Medium-sized creature (including omnivorous humanoids, although not for prolonged periods of time) for a day, but they'll be unsatiated until they get more filling food. Scrub costs 2 squares of movement to enter into, and it provides concealment. It grants a +2 circumstance bonus on Hide checks. Scrub costs 5lb for every 5ft. patch.
  • Snowdrifts: Snowdrifts are large shifting bodies of snow. This snow is typically lighter and more powder than normal, and is very difficult to move in. When moving in a snowdrift, one is treated as if it's 20 degrees Centigrade colder than it actually is. It costs double movement to travel through a snowdrift, and Balance, Hide, Survival, and Tumble checks all take a -5 penalty. Snowdrifts are mobile terrain features which blow with the wind, and can cover other terrain elements. Snowdrifts cost 25 lb for every 10ft. drift.
  • Trees: These are nearly always coniferous trees which thrive at high latitudes. Trees tend to be fairly sparse in a tundra environment, but it's not uncommon to see lone trees eking out their survival. These work like the light trees described in the SRD. Light arctic trees cost 5 lb, and occupy a negligible space; they cannot be placed any closer than 10ft. separation.
City [Platinum]: A platinum pole allows you to spread a city biome. A city has cobblestone as its baseline, and additional terrain features include bridges, buildings, fountains, roads, sewers, and walls. A city is a generally hospitable place, designed to be inhabited by humanoid creatures.
  • Bridges: Bridges are roadways that extend over chasms, bodies of water, and other otherwise dangerous terrain. A bridge extends the cobblestone basis of the biome out into a gentle arch, which can hold 200 lb for every 5 ft. of width at once. A bridge costs 5lb for every 5ft. section.
  • Building: Buildings are where people tend to live. A single application of this particular terrain feature is called a storey. A single storey is a 20ft. by 20ft. by 10ft. room, with doors and windows arranged to taste on the walls, floor, and ceiling. If multiple stories are stacked on top of each other, a staircase can be installed which connects the two, positioned either along one of the outer walls or in the center of the storey. If two stories are placed immediately adjacent to each other, the two rooms can be merged into a single larger room. Each storey, upon creation, generates a deed, which allows the holder to create or remove subdividing walls, windows, doors, staircases, and balconies inside that storey. These features can be placed wherever and however the deedholder likes, but they can extend only 2ft. beyond the border of the storey. This task requires 10 minutes for each feature to be added or removed, and can only be done by the legal owner of the deed. In fact, a deed may only be transferred via legal means, such as inheritance, sale, dowry, and so on, unless the original creator of the deed decides otherwise at the time of placement. A single storey costs 50 lb.
  • Fountain: A fountain is a pleasant landmark that allows free access to clean, drinkable water. A fountain constantly emits a stream of fresh water, flowing out at a rate of 5 gallons every round. A fountain that isn't connected to a source of water consumes 10 lb of metal each round to produce the necessary liquid. A fountain costs 60 lb of metal to produce; in addition, if there is any statuary that the creator of the fountain wishes to incorporate, the fountain costs an additional 30 lb. Intricate ornamentation may require an appropriate Craft check, as decided by the circumstances.
  • Road: A road is a surface intended to be easy to walk along. Creatures following a road can travel overland 20% faster than they otherwise would be able to. In addition, if a stretch of road has a width of 20ft. or more, this feature can also produce bullseye lanterns that hang 7ft. above the ground every 60ft. along the road, supplying constant light. Four 5ft. sections of road costs 10 lb to produce.
  • Sewer: A good sewer allows you to pipe water (or other liquids) to a fountain, or take wastewater away from a road. Sewers are usually created 10ft. below ground, and cost 10 lb for each 125 cubic foot block of ground altered. In addition, by spending an additional 10 lb on a section of sewer, a pipe is created that connects it to either a fountain or a road; this is either a release or a drain, respectively. If a sewer connects to a body of liquid, it consumes it at a rate of 10 gallons per round. Furthermore, a pipe can fuel two fountains for every body of liquid it taps into. If a fountain is fueled by a pipe connected to a body of liquid that isn't fresh water, it produces that liquid instead. Liquid waste has to go somewhere, which means that it doesn't just disappear when it goes into the sewer. Every sewer needs to end somewhere, and for an initial cost of 20 lb plus an additional 5 lb for daily operation, you can install a water purification system in your sewer line. This is a 5ft. block (125 cubic foot) which is placed at some point along your sewer; liquid which goes in is purified, as if with a purify food and drink effect. A single water purification system can handle 7.5 gallons of liquid every round.
  • Wall: A good wall keeps the city safe! Each of the costs on the table below are for a single 10ft. section; each section has an AC of 3 and a Hardness of 8. A gate can be added to a wall for no additional cost.

    Wall Dimensions       Hit Points
    per Section   
    Cost
    20ft. tall, 5ft. thick450 hp20 lb
    30ft. tall, 10ft. thick720 hp60 lb
    40ft. tall, 15ft. thick1170 hp120 lb
Desert [Iron]: An iron pole allows you to spread a desert biome. A desert has sand as its baseline, and additional terrain features include cacti, packed earth, quicksand, rubble, sand dunes, and undergrowth. Deserts are dangerous wastelands, unsuited to normal life. Only the hardiest survive their brutal conditions.
  • Cacti: A cactus is a desert plant typically spiny and sharp to the touch. Cacti provide concealment, and a +1 bonus to AC and Reflex saves to anyone in the same square. However, one can only make use of these bonuses by moving in close quarters around the cactus, dealing 2d3 piercing damage every round. You cannot climb a cactus, but it is filled with liquid that can be harvested with a DC 15 Survival check. Cactus juice will hydrate people, but those who drink it report hallucinations and fevers (-4 penalty to mental ability scores until they get eight hours of rest out of the sun). Cacti otherwise work like light trees, as described in the gold (arctic) pole section. A cactus costs 15 lb and cannot be closer than 10ft. to another cactus.
  • Packed Earth: Packed earth is useful for desert trails, and for leading pack animals. It's solid enough to walk on easily, but it's impossible to grow anything in it. Pack earth costs 5lb for every 5ft. square.
  • Quicksand: Quicksand is an imfamous desert danger. This is ground that appears solid until any weight is put on it, at which point it begins to suck the mass inside of it. Quicksand costs 25 lb for every 5ft. patch of it.
  • Rubble: Desert rubble works like the rubble described in the gold (arctic) pole section. Desert rubble is cheaper, however, being a more common sight without snow everywhere. Desert rubble costs 5 lb for every 40ft. patch, and dense rubble costs 5lb for every 20ft. patch.
  • Sand Dunes: Sand dunes are huge moving swathes of sand which envelop the landscape. They arrange themselves with a gentle slope facing into the wind, and a steep slope on the opposite side. Sand dunes are loose terrain, and maneuvering in them costs twice as much movement as normal. Sand also gets everywhere, which you'll be noticing for weeks afterwards. Balance and Tumble checks have their DC's increased by 5 in a sand dune, and standing up from prone is a challenge as it's nearly impossible to get a good hold on anything to stand up; standing from prone is a full-round action unless you have a special ability to speed this up (such as kip up, in which case it's unchanged). Sand dunes are mobile features which move with the wind, and can cover other terrain elements. Sand dunes cost 5 lb for every 50ft. patch.
  • Undergrowth: Undergrowth is mostly composed of vines, roots, and bushes, and it restricts movement. Undergrowth created with an iron pole is the light type descibed. Undergrowth costs 5 lb for every 5ft. patch.
Forest [Copper]: A copper pole allows you to spread a forest biome. A forest has rich soil as its baseline, and additional terrain features include fungus, logs, moss, streams, trees, and undergrowth. Forests are ideal for providing natural resources such as wood and to scavenge for food. Forest soil is exceedingly fertile, and can be very useful for agriculture.
  • Fungus: Fungus is reasonably nutritious and can grow in the absence of light as long as it has a decent supply of nutrients and peace and quiet; however, anyone untrained in Survival (0 ranks) has a 5% chance of picking a poisonous mushroom when gathering food from a fungus patch (Fortitude DC 15, initial and secondary damage 1d4 Con). Someone trained in Survival can make a DC 25 Survival check to gather up to three such poisonous mushrooms from any given 5ft. patch. Fungus patches are softer than the ground; falls onto them count as being 20ft. shorter than they actually are. Mushrooms, once picked, take a day to grow back. Fungus patches cost 50 lb for every 5ft. patch.
  • Logs: Logs are a common sight in a forest. They provide cover like small walls, and typically stand from 1ft. to 3ft. high. They can be placed to run over streams, although travelling longitudinally on a log requires a DC 10 Balance check and twice as much movement as normal. A log takes up a space of 5ft. by 10 to 200ft., decided at placement. Logs cost 5 lb for every 10ft. in length.
  • Moss: Moss is a light covering of greenery on the ground. It is very soft, and aside from being pleasant to the touch, it is very easy to move quietly on. All Move Silently checks made on moss gain a +4 circumstance bonus. If moss is placed on a log, the Balance check to move on it is doubled. Moss is reasonably nutritious, and some species can survive on it. It also grows ridiculously fast, and replenishes itself every six hours instead of every day. Moss costs 5 lb for every 10ft. patch.
  • Streams: A stream is no wider than 5 to 10ft. wide, and no more than 5ft. deep. These are freshwater streams, but unless connected to an outside water supply the water will quickly grow stagnant and gross. Streams cost 5 lb for every 10ft. in length.
  • Trees: Trees are of course the most important feature of any forest, useful for hiding, climbing, tactical positioning, wood, and so on. The trees created with a copper pole can be light or massive. Light trees require negligible space, while massive trees require a 5ft. square. Light trees cost 5 lb, and massive trees cost 20 lb. Trees can be placed at a discount when grouping them together in a forest; up to four light trees can be placed in a single 5ft. square, and the third and fourth are free. Similarly, up to two light trees can occupy the same square as a heavy tree, and they are also free.
  • Undergrowth: This works like the undergrowth described in the iron (desert) pole section. Undergrowth created with a copper pole is the light type descibed. Undergrowth costs 5 lb for every 5ft. patch.
Grasslands [Tin]: A tin pole allows you to spread a grasslands biome. Grasslands have a baseline terrain of dirt, and additional terrain features includes clay, grass, shale, streams, tall grass, and trees. Grasslands are fairly straightforward terrain with not too many surprises. It's excellent terrain to settle on, and the ground is very reliable for agriculture. Grass is a perfect foodstock for domesticated animals, and in general grasslands are ideal for developing some measure of civilization.
  • Clay: Clay is a useful material which exhibits plastic behavious when it's mixed with water. This makes it very important for artisans and craftsmen to use for their work. The clay this pole creates is a solid deposit near the surface, which is rocky and solid, which acts like light rubble. Balance and Tumble checks made on clay have their DC increased by 2, and a failed check smashes the clay, destroying 25% of it every time. A single clay feature contains 2d6 lb of clay and takes up a 5ft. square. Every 5ft. square of clay deposit costs 25 lb.
  • Grass: This is the main reason you'd be using this biome. Grass is a very hardy, useful plant that can be created in large quantities. It is ideal as a feedstock, and livestock raised on this grass grows 10% larger than normal livestock of their kind. The grass created is still growing, and thus has an 80% moisture content; it must typically be dried out before being used as feed. Grass costs 5 lb for every 10ft. patch.
  • Shale: If clay is hard to balance on, shale is even worse. Ride, Balance, and Tumble checks across shale have their DC increased by 5. A failure causes the person attempting the action (including the mount, if applicable) to fall prone on the shale, taking damage as if from a 20ft. fall. Running and charging across shale is impossible on foot. Shale costs 5lb for every 5ft. patch.
  • Streams: These are the same kinds of streams described in the copper (forest) pole section.
  • Tall Grass: Tall grass is especially dangerous and easy to hide in. Hide and Move Silently checks gain a +4 circumstance bonus in it. Beyond that, this grass provides twice as much grass material as the grass baseline terrain, and is dry to start off with. This feature is placed in 5ft. squares. Tall grass costs 15 lb for every 10ft. patch.
  • Trees: These are the light trees described in the copper (forest) pole section, although they tend to be deciduous instead of coniferous.
Swamp [Lead]: A lead pole allows you to spread a swamp biome. A swamp has peat as its baseline, and additional terrain features include acid bog, mucky ground, quicksand, standing water, sulphur jets, and trees. Swamps are generally not very nice places to be, but there are some hard to come by materials that often show up in them. Swamps can be dangerous, and tend to attract the worst sorts of black magic. Most people stay no longer than strictly necessary.
  • Acid Bog: Acid bog has a faint green hue, making it difficult to notice except in good light. Spotting an acid bog bog before entering it requires a DC 20 Survival check. If the moving creature succeeds on a DC 10 Survival check but not a DC 20 check, he notices that the square is with bog but does not identify it as acid bog. Acid bog deals 1d6 points of acid damage per round of exposure, or 6d6 points of acid damage with total immersion. Most acid bog is only about 1 foot in depth, making total immersion unlikely (although prone creatures count as fully immersed). It costs 2 squares of movement to move into a square with acid bog, and the DC of Balance and Tumble checks in such a square increase by 2. Acid bog imposes a –4 penalty on Move Silently checks. Acid bog costs 10 lb for every 5ft. patch.
  • Mucky Ground: This is ground that is half water and half dirt, resulting in a sticky, sloshy ground that is difficult to move in. As a result, characters traveling in mucky ground must move at half speed and make DC 10 Balance checks every 60ft. If a character fails that check, they fall prone and get mucky. Alternatively, a character may attempt to move at standard speed through the ground, but must make a DC 15 check every 60 ft. A character that is running or charging through murky ground must make DC 20 Balance checks every 30 ft., making it nigh-impossible to move quickly on the mucky ground. Mucky ground costs 5 lb for every 10ft. patch.
  • Quicksand: This is the quicksand described in the iron (desert) pole section, except with mud instead of sand. Anyone who gets stuck in a swamp quicksand pit gets unavoidable filthy from head to toe. Swamp quicksand is more common than desert quicksand, and thus is cheaper: it costs 20 lb for every 5ft. patch of it.
  • Standing Water: Standing water is a common occurence in swampy areas, and is super gross. It's not at all useable for cooking or cleaning, and usually has lots of nasty stuff living in it. It is, technically, water, so it could be purified with magic to be useable. Any standing water which is left on its own (typically for at least a week) tends to attract mosquitoes and especially stirges. Every 5ft. square of standing water can sustain a flock of stirges, who lay their eggs in the filthy water. Standing water costs 10 lb for every 5ft. square.
  • Sulphur Jets: These are jets emerging from the moist ground or standing water bodies which give off a mixture of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide gas (known as swamp gas). They're not really very pleasant, and actually very dangerous to people not equipped to breathe them. Anyone that breathes in swamp gas must make a DC 15 Fortitude save or become nauseated. Swamp gas is super-flammable, and the tiniest flame or spark inside of a sulphur jet can cause a fireball effect (effective caster level equal to the number of adjacent sulphur jets inside the radius, to a maximum of 10) centered on the source of the flame. Detecting swamp gas is kind of hard, and usually done by scent. Anyone with the scent special ability just knows when they're in an area filled with swamp gas. Everyone else needs to succeed on a DC 15 Survival check first. Sulphur jets cost 25 lb each, and occupy a 5ft. square. They can be placed in standing water as well as peat.
  • Trees: These are the light or massive trees described in the copper (forest) pole section. Trees in a swamp are placed at the same discount as in a forest, and get vines besides. Vines allow easy climbing and swimming; anyone can climb a swamp tree with a DC 5 Climb check, and can move at double speed through a swamp without touching the ground if they succeed at a DC 15 Climb and Jump check every round (they don't have to touch the ground, either, which is pretty awesome when you think about how much horrible stuff there is on the ground in a swamp). To use this movement, they must move only through squares containing trees. Light trees require negligible space, while massive trees require a 5ft. square. Light trees cost 5 lb, and massive trees cost 20 lb.

    (click to show/hide)


GEOC 291: Unknown Oceans [Specialist]
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: GEOC 101, Survival 8 ranks
Target: At least 100 lb of planetary metal
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like GEOC 101, except that it allows you to use the final two planetary metals in your geoccultism: mercury and silver.

In addition, you can now change the topology inside any biome that you create; this is called (appropriately) a topology feature. This works like a terrain feature, but can be placed concurrently with pretty much any other terrain feature. A topology feature can be placed concurrently with basically any normal feature, but there are limits to how it can be set up. You cannot have two adjacent 5ft. squares with a difference in slope between them of more than 10 degrees. Every 5ft. you want to raise or lower a 5ft. square relative to its original height costs 5 lb of metal.

Note that this is actually pretty much useless for silver and mercury biomes, since the actual topology of the area is far below the surface of the water. However, it can technically still be used if you really want to dig an underwater trench or something.

Planetary MetalCritical DCBiomeBaseline Terrain
Mercury35WetlandFreshwater
Silver40OceanSaltwater
  • Wetland (Freshwater): This creates essentially a freestanding body of freshwater, sometimes known as sweetwater. Essentially a lake, although the exact term would describe on the geography and placement. Freshwater bodies are typically several hundred feet deep in the middle, tapering up sharply at the edges. When you spread this terrain, you can decide the exact depth, although it cannot be more than 450ft. deep at any point. Freshwater is amazing for any kind of life, and is very important for settlements and civilization. This freshwater is created pure and free of contaminants.
  • Ocean (Saltwater): This creates a freestanding body of saltwater; essentially a salt lake, although it could also be connected to an outside ocean. This works basically the same as the wetland, except that it can be much, much, much deeper. It can be as deep as six miles down in the middle. Saltwater can't be drunk by most humanoids, although sahuagin and many other aquatic races find it prime habitat.
There are also a few features you can place around these bodies. These terrain features can be places around the edge of your body of water, and are at ground level instead of below the earth. Wetland can have mudflats and reeds around it, and ocean can have sandbars and tidepools around it.
  • Mudflats (Wetland): Mudflats are, appropriately enough, flat planes of mud which are really easy to get stuck in. It's basically normal dirt and soil which is so wet from the nearby body of water that it's become a huge mass of mud. It's impossible to move in, like at all. Someone would have to make a superhuman (DC 25) Balance check to move freely across the surface of it, and they still couldn't run or charge. Anyone who gets stuck in it is moving at 5ft. per round, if that (DC 10 Balance to move at all). Seriously, this stuff is just not fun. Mudflats cost 50 lb for every 5ft. patch.
  • Reeds (Wetland): Reeds are a little more pleasant. These are big cattails, rice paddies, and similar. They can be used to make really cool wind instruments, and also are great to hide in. They grant a +8 circumstance bonus on Hide checks made in them. Unfortunately, they grow in ankle-deep water, which is kind of gross. Rice is also an amazing crop, and the same amount of land used growing rice instead of wheat can feed twice as many people. Reeds cost 10 lb for every 5ft. patch.
  • Sandbars (Ocean): Sandbars are the shorelines that people normally associate with oceans. This works like the sand described in the desert section, except that there's a hell of a lot more water in it. In general, you can find water just by digging down a little bit. Sandbars are free.
  • Tidepools (Ocean): Tidepools are a clever way to trap fish without line or net. Tide comes in, deposits fish, and backs out. Tidepools are really cool tiny little ecosystems, and you find all sorts of neat edible stuff in them. A 5ft. patch of tidepools delivers enough food for four people every day assuming there are edible fish in the saltwater body, and that the tidepools are close enough to the shore to catch the tide. Tidepools cost 30 lb for every 5ft. patch.


GEOC 323: Curious Climates
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any two GEOC principles, Survival 15 ranks
Target: At least 100 lb of planetary metal
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like GEOC 101, except that it allows you to spread an additional kind of feature from your geoccult poles: a climate condition. This principle allows you to connect your geoccult poles to fundamental meteorological gradients, producing appropriate climate change inside of the biome. Whenever you set up a geoccult pole, you can choose to introduce a climate to the area as well as more tangible environmental features. Similarly, you can update a previously constructed geoccult pole to contain a climate element by preparing this principle on it once (no matter the size) and matching or exceeding the Survival check made to construct it. The climate change introduced can be turned on or off, or set to a specific level, as a logical decision. Alternatively, the climate feature can be modulated as a standard action when touching the pole by making a matching Survival check.

Climate conditions are tied to a particular metal, but thanks to your new mixing ability (see below) you can have interesting weathers in strange biomes. Climate changes can be implemented either globally (in the entire field of the pole's effect) or locally (in circles of 100ft. radius). Every hour that a climate change is in effect, it consumes metal as described in its description. Note that metal is consumed for each separate weather change, so if you decide to split up the area and have different climate conditions in different parts of it, you pay for all of them. They also have more extreme forms; A geoccult pole can be manipulated either physically or through a heuristical citcuit to trigger an extreme weather condition with additional instantaneous metal consumption. Controlling a climate condition, either standard or extreme, is a standard action that provokes an attack of opportunity.

In addition, you can now mix your biomes slightly. By incorporating a second metal into the body of a pole, you can make use of a single terrain feature off of that biome's list, or even that biome's climate condition (although you can only have one climate condition at a time). However, metal consumed to place and sustain the feature is drawn from this secondary reserve, and additional masses of the second metal must be added to replenish it. Once you pick the specific terrain feature for the pole to have access to, it cannot be changd. It can be placed as many times as you like inside the biome within these constraints. If the smaller pole falls below its critical mass, the parent pole starts to burn itself to pay for the feature instead, at a ratio of 10:1 (and not in your favour, either).

Planetary MetalTerrain       Climate ConditionExtreme Weather Condition
CopperForestHeat WaveWildfire
GoldArcticSnowHailstorm
IronDesertSandstormEarthquake
LeadSwampFogFlood
MercuryWetlandsCold WaveCold Snap
PlatinumCitySmogAcid Rain
SilverOceanRainThunderstorm
TinGrasslandsWindTornado

Note that you must know GEOC 291 to use mercury or silver poles.
  • Copper (Heat Wave): An iron pole allows you to cause heavy heat waves, which can be big risks of sunstroke in places that are already hot. A heat wave raises the ambient temperature by up to 20 degrees Centigrade. This might be balmy in the arctic, but deadly in a desert. Every hour that a heat wave is in effect it consumes 5 lb for every 5 degree temperature increase from the pole.
  • Gold (Snow): Snow is basically the king of nasty weather conditions. If you don't live in Canada or somewhere else northern (or really far southern, I guess), you probably think snow is kind of cute and fluffy. I just want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that I hate you. Falling snow has the same effects on visibility, ranged weapon attacks, and skill checks as rain (see the ocean section below), and it costs 2 squares of movement to enter a snow-covered square. A day of snowfall leaves 1d6 inches of snow on the ground. You can also choose heavy snow, which has the same effects as normal snowfall, but also restricts visibility as fog does (see the swamp section below). A day of heavy snow leaves 1d4 feet of snow on the ground, and it costs 4 squares of movement to enter a square covered with heavy snow. Heavy snow accompanied by strong or severe winds may result in snowdrifts 1d4×5 feet deep, especially in and around objects big enough to deflect the wind—a cabin or a large tent, for instance. Snow has the same effect on flames as moderate wind. Light snowfall costs 15 lb of metal for every hour of effect, and heavy snowfall costs a whopping 40 lb of metal every hour.
  • Iron (Sandstorm): Technically sandstorms are really just strong wind in the desert, but we treat them like they're their own separate thing (so that you can enjoy having sandstorms in a swamp). A sandstorm reduces visibility to 1d10×5 feet and provides a -4 penalty on Listen, Search, and Spot checks. A sandstorm deals 1d3 points of nonlethal damage per hour to any creatures caught in the open, and leaves a thin coating of sand in its wake. Driving sand creeps in through all but the most secure seals and seams, to chafe skin and contaminate carried gear. Every hour that a sandstorm is in effect it consumes 15 lb of metal.
  • Lead (Fog): Fog can be pretty dangerous in a fight, since you can't really see anything. A lead pole produces fog, mist, whatever you want to call it (okay, technically it has to do with the visibility from the air between 3/8 and 5/8 of a statute mile). Fog obscures all sight, including darkvision, beyond 5ft. Creatures 5ft. away have concealment (attacks by or against them have a 20% miss chance). Fog consumes 10 lb of metal for every hour that it's in effect.
  • Mercury (Cold Wave): A cold wave, as you'd expect, is the opposite of a heat wave. It lowers the temperature by up to 15 degrees Centigrade. Every hour that a cold wave is in effect, it consumes 5 lb for every 5 degree temperature decrease from the pole.
  • Platinum (Smog): Smog is a huge breathing hazard associated with urban areas. Though the danger is not immediately apparent, smog obscures all sight beyond 10ft., including darkvision. Creatures 10ft. away or further have concealment in smog (attacks by or against them have a 20% miss chance). In addition, creatures with the scent special ability cannot detect creatures beyond 20ft. due to the sharp, acrid scent of the smog. Finally, every hour a creature spends inside smog inflicts 1 nonlethal damage to them, which cannot be healed naturally while they remain in the cloud. Smog consumes 10 lb of metal for every hour that it's in effect.
  • Silver (Rain): Rain makes things wet, and in general is not very pleasant. It reduces visibility ranges by half, resulting in a -4 penalty on Spot and Search checks. It has the same effect on flames, ranged weapon attacks, and Listen checks as severe wind. It also gets things wet after three full rounds of exposure. You can also choose heavy rain as an option, which doubles the normal penalties and gets anything exposed for even a single full round soaking wet. Normal rain costs 5 lb per hour, and heavy rain costs 10 lb per hour.
  • Tin (Wind): A tin pole allows you to cause windstorms, inciting winds of up to 70 mph as a regular thing. The pole can be controlled to produce wind between 0 and 70 mph. Strong winds consume metal every hour they're in effect equal to 5 lb per wind category.
The extreme weather conditions include:
  • Copper (Wildfire): Okay, maybe it's not a weather condition per se, but it's still pretty awesome. This is a huge brush fire that engulfs everything flammable in its path. It burns through the area, leaving ash behind. Basically, all of the flammable features will have to replenish themselves the next day. Natural wildfires are unpredictable, but a geoccult wildfire is controlled from the pole. A wildfire can be between 50ft. wide and however wide you want (out to the limits of the zone). A wildfire can advance at up to 120ft. per round, scorching the land behind it. A wildfire has three main dangers: heat damage, catching on fire, and smoke inhalation.
    Breathing the air in a wildfire causes a character to take 1d6 points of damage per round (no save). In addition, a character must make a Fortitude save every 5 rounds (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage. A character who holds his breath can avoid the lethal damage, but not the nonlethal damage. Those wearing heavy clothing or any sort of armor take a -4 penalty on this save. In addition, those wearing metal armor or coming into contact with very hot metal are affected as if by a heat metal spell. Additionally, characters engulfed in a wildfire are at risk of catching on fire when the leading edge of the fire overtakes them, and are then at risk once per minute thereafter. Finally, wildfires naturally produce a great deal of smoke. A character who breathes heavy smoke must make a Fortitude save each round (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or spend that round choking and coughing. A character who chokes for 2 consecutive rounds takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Also, smoke obscures vision, providing concealment to characters within it. A wildfire is very destructive, but potentially also very useful. It only costs 50 lb to get it started, and every round spent controlling it costs 10 lb of metal.
  • Gold (Hailstorm): Hail is not pleasant. This works like a sleet storm effect, with an effective caster level equal to half of the Survival skill check of the pole. Additionally, creatures out in the open take 2d6 bludgeoning damage every round (Reflex DC 15 for half damage) from the massive hailstones, far larger than what nature normally spits out. A hailstorm can effect an area of any size, up to the full pole area, costs 75 lb to get started, and lasts for 1 round per effective caster level.
  • Iron (Earthquake): Earthquakes technically also aren't weather, but they are really cool. This works basically like a earthquake effect, with an effective caster level of half of the Suvival skill check of the pole and an effective spell level of 7. The earthquake starts with an 80ft. radius, but can be expanded over subsequent turns to target adjacent areas inside of the geoccult zone. An earthquake costs 200 lb to begin, and 175 lb every subsequent round that it's maintained (hitting additional area sections). You cannot target the same area twice with the same earthquake.
  • Lead (Flood): A flood is a lot of water that comes out of nowhere. I mean, in real life it comes from lots of rain or something, but this actually just appears out of thin air. It's a wave of water from 10 to 12ft. high which just starts somewhere in the zone, up to 80ft. in length. It travels in a direction you choose, and basically just wipes out everything along the way. Anything loose is swept up and carried with it. A flood wave travels at up to 100ft. per round, and does everything you would expect. It's basically treated as a Colossal creature with a Strength score of 40 bull rushing everything that it touches. Everything it strikes takes 5d6 points of bludgeoning damage (Fortitude DC 20 for half damage). The flood causes massive infrastructure damage to any structure in strikes, if it doesn't destroy it completely. The flood travels for 5 rounds, at which point it dies down. You can control the exact speed of the wave, as well as making small adjustments to its trajectory of up to 10 degrees per round. A flood costs 200 lb to kick off, but only needs 25 lb of metal to control every round.
  • Mercury (Cold Snap): A cold snap is a super brutal wave of cold. It drops temperatures by 40 degrees Centigrade, which is a hell of a lot. This is just brutal, antarctic style cold. Exposed vegetation just dies. Non-salinated water snap-freezes to 50ft. down, killing aquatic wildlife. Creatures exposed take 4d6 points of cold damage every round (Fortitude DC 25 for half damage). Flames are extinguished, and any character touching or holding metal is affected as if with a chill metal effect. A cold snap thankfully doesn't last for long. It costs 150 lb to start, and costs 100 lb every round to maintain.
  • Platinum (Acid Rain): This is not weather that you want to be caught in; acid rain is identical to heavy rain, except that every round that a creature spends exposed causes it to take 2d6 acid damage. Even when an exposed creature gets out of the rain, they take 1 acid damage until they dry off. Acid rain costs 100 lb to kick off, and lasts for an hour.
  • Silver (Thunderstorm): A thunderstorm is devastating. It includes winds of up to 50 mph, as well as heavy rain. Every round that it's active, you can call down a lightning bolt that deals 1d10 d8's of electricity damage in a 5ft. radius to a specific point in the affected area. These bolts offer a Reflex save (DC 20) for half damage. A thunderstorm costs only 50 lb to get started, and every bolt costs an extra 25 lb. A storm lasts for an hour before petering out.
  • Tin (Tornado): This is strong wind. Like, really really strong wind. All flames are extinguished. All ranged attacks are impossible (even with siege weapons), as are Listen checks. Instead of being blown away, characters in close proximity to a tornado who fail a DC 30 Fortitude save are sucked toward the tornado. Those who come in contact with the actual funnel cloud are picked up and whirled around for 1d10 rounds, taking 6d6 points of damage per round, before being violently expelled (falling damage may apply). While a tornado’s rotational speed can be as great as 300 mph, the funnel itself moves at up to 250ft. per round at your discretion. A tornado uproots trees, destroys buildings, and causes other similar forms of major destruction. A tornado is 75ft. in radius, and can be controlled from the geoccult pole. Tornados cost 175 lb to start, and an additional 125 lb every round that it's maintained and controlled.

20
Yggdratecture


Image credit arsenixc of deviantart.com

"But there's a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes the boundaries between the two worlds disappear, and then who can say what is possible and impossible?"

The simple knowledge that there are infinite Planes and spaces beyond the world we perceive has massive ramifications on almost every field of study. From the philosophical implications to the simple physical construction of the cosmos, planar cosmology has a very tangible impact on those within it. Yggdratecture is, broadly speaking, the study of space and time. And in true dungeoneering spirit, what can be studied can be twisted to your advantage. This discipline teaches how to shape and reshape space-time into an image you find more suitable.

Yggdratecture is a non-linear discipline, and is often one of the most difficult to wrap one's mind around. It's almost a requirement to have at hand at least one mathematical textbook on multi-dimensional space-time. Abstruse physical objects can also be a great aid to capturing the essence of warped space, such as 6-dimensional möbius strips, or boxes which only have a single surface. Any reference like the counts as a masterwork piece of equipment, and provides a +2 circumstance bonus on the Forgery check made to prepare an yggdratectural principle. Gabriel's Horn is a legendary multidimensional device purportedly created by an archangel to combat the planar incursions of the forces of Baator.

Key Skill: Forgery


YGGD 101: Intro to Yggdratecture
Grade: Baccalaureate
Prerequisites: None
Target: Spatial reference
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle creates an extradimensional bulge, which is a small space that is bigger on the inside than the outside. This is known as a semi-space. A semi-space is tethered to the Plane on which it is created, and can only be accessed from there. A semi-space connects to its home Plane through a portal with a radius no smaller than 1/16" and no larger than the width of the space itself. This decision is made when the semi-space is first prepared, and can be changed by anyone touching the portal from the inside. A semi-space cannot be completely closed, or it disappears permanently. Material inside of the space at the time is ejected into its home Plane.

A semi-space requires a spatial reference as to its location on the home Plane. This can either be a fixed point in space, or an object or creature. For example, it could be tied to a bag such that the opening of the bag is the same as the opening of the portal, and moving the bag moves the entrance to the semi-space. Alternatively, the portal could be fixed in space in a chosen orientation. Weight inside of a semi-space is not counted, but anything that protrudes from the portal has weight. This weight is applied to whatever the portal is tethered to (a creature or an object), adding to its own encumbrance. If a portal is instead fixed to a point in space, it supports protruding weight like an immovable rod. Every further preparation of this principle can add 2,000 lbs of carrying capacity to a portal fixed in space. If it is torn from its reference with a Strength check or from overburden, a semi-space collapses permanently.

A semi-space can be at most 2ft. by 2ft. by 2ft. Unlike most principles, you cannot prepare this principle multiple times in order to create larger spaces. As part of this principle you make a Forgery check, which determines the DC for Spot checks to notice the portal in space.

A semi-space portal is opaque from the back-end (it looks like a sheet of static), and the opening can be used to provide concealment based on its size. It provides partial concealment (20% miss chance) to a creature the size of the portal or up to one size category larger. Creatures smaller than the portal can use it for total concealment (50% miss chance). Depending on the orientation in space, a portal can also provide basic cover. However, any effect which misses a target because of an open portal instead deals damage to the space itself. A semi-space also takes damage from area effects such as a fireball when there is an open portal in the area of effect. A semi-space is always treated as failing Reflex saves against area effects. A space has effective hit points equal to the Forgery check made to create it, and collapses permanently when it sustains this much damage. A semi-space can be repaired by preparing this principle again on it, in which case the new Forgery check sets the amount of effective hit points it has.

A semi-space which collapses closes from access and shunts all matter inside of it into the nearest space to its opening on the Plane on which it was tethered. Bubbles and other area effects which are created on one side of a portal do not pass through the portal to the space on the other side. In order to affect the area on the other side of the portal, whatever is causing that effect must be inside the other space. This effectively means that the area effect from, for example, an arcanodynamic transformer, doesn't pass beyond the boundaries of the portal, and the transformer must be more than 50% on whatever side of the portal the bubble is going to take effect on.

If you try to tether a space to an unwilling target, they are allowed a Will saving throw to resist it at the end of the preparation. The Will DC is 10 + 5 for every YGGD principle you know.


YGGD 212: Polarcane Geometry
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: YGGD 101, Forgery 8 ranks
Target: Spatial reference
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like YGGD 101, but with some special exceptions. First of all, instead of creating a semi-space, it creates a bulge in the home Plane known as a flux. This takes the form of a bubble-shaped field of radius 5ft. that has different rules than the normal space on the Plane. Unlike YGGD 101, you can prepare this principle multiple times as normal for a bubble in order to make a larger flux. A flux is tethered, like a semi-space, either to a physical object which is at the centre of the flux (and thus can be moved around) or to an arbitrary point in space from which the flux permanently radiates. This decision must be made when the principle is first prepared.

Polarcane fluxes have special properties. You can choose one of the following flux properties to occur inside of the space:
  • Gravity: This kind of polarcane flux has different gravity than normal. Inside of the bubble, gravity moves in a different direction than normal. You can set the direction of gravity when you first prepare the principle, and it can also be changed by anyone touching the center of the flux or the object to which it is tethered as a standard action. If you prefer, you can lock the gravity when you first prepare the flux, so that it cannot be changed later. Otherwise, treat this like a reverse gravity effect, except with gravity pointing in the relevant direction. The Reflex save DC to grab something is equal to the Forgery check of the flux.
  • Magnetic: This kind of polarcane flux has special magnetic properties associated with it. As part of this principle you make a Forgery check, like with YGGD 101. This check determines how powerful the push or pull of the special magnetic forces in the flux are. When you prepare the flux, you can decide whether it is an attractive flux or a repellent flux. Whenever magnetic or ferrous metal objects (or creatures) enter into the flux, they are immediately subject to the magnetic force. This effect is equivalent to a bull rush, either directly towards or away from the centre of the flux. The effective attack roll for the bull rush is equal to the Forgery check of the flux. Objects and creatures which start their turn inside of the flux are immediately subject to another magnetic bull rush. If obstacles prevent them from completing the forced movement, they take damage as if from falling the same distance. Unattended objects are treated as taking 10 on their 'opposed' Strength checks for a magnetic bull rush, and the flux is treated as being Medium in size, although it can affect any sized object or creature. Anyone touching the center of the flux or the object to which it is tethered can change the direction of the magnetic force as a standard action. If you prefer, you can lock the direction of the magnetism when you first prepare the flux, so that it cannot be changed later.


YGGD 241: Incongruous Pathways [Specialist Only]
Grade: Magisterial
Prerequisites: YGGD 101, Forgery 8 ranks
Target: Spatial reference
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like YGGD 101, but with some special exceptions. The semi-spaces you create with this principle can be closed from the inside, causing the portal to disappear from sight on the home Plane. In addition, you can prepare this principle successively up to eight times on a single space, allowing for a semi-space with a maximum volume of 64 cubic ft. (eight 2ft. x 2ft. x 2ft. cubes). Finally, whenever you prepare this principle you can choose to join the semi-space you are creating with another semi-space you've made in the past. This creates a second, connecting portal inside of each semi-space which exits into the other semi-space. Any particular semi-space can only be connected to two other semi-spaces, and you cannot remove a connection once it has been made.

If you have the ability to create a flux, you can choose to have a special flux property occur inside of semi-spaces you create, at your option when you first prepare it.


YGGD 353: Uncanny Cosmology
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any two YGGD principles, Forgery 15 ranks
Target: Spatial reference
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like YGGD 101, but with some special exceptions. You can successively prepare this principle as many times as you like, allowing you to make spaces which are as large as you have time to build. When you prepare this principle, you can also choose to separate it from its tethered Plane, turning it into a true demiplane. If you're building a demiplane instead of a semi-space, every preparation of this principle requires twice the normal time. However, you get to set the planar traits of the demiplane, including the morphic (excluding sentient morphic), elemental and energy, alignment, and magic traits. You cannot change the time trait of your demiplane. Any relevant decisions about the traits of your demiplane are made with the first preparation of this principle, and cannot be changed afterwards. A demiplane continues to exist if it is closed off from the Plane it is tethered to; the portal can be reopened, but only to the same Plane it is tethered to. Otherwise, the demiplane can be accessed with normal planar travel.

A demiplane's fabric is not as fragile as that of a semi-space, and it cannot be destroyed from damage.

If you know YGGD 212, you can apply a special flux property to your demi-plane when you prepare it. You can also choose to shape your demiplane like a bubble. Instead of a flux property, you can choose to set a gravity trait on a demiplane you create.

If you know YGGD 241, you can also connect semi-spaces to a demiplane. Unlike a normal semi-space, any number of semi-spaces can be connected to a single demiplane. You can also connect multiple demiplanes together.


YGGD 371: Abstruse Causality [Specialist Only]
Grade: Doctorate
Prerequisites: Any three YGGD principles including YGGD 353, Forgery 15 ranks
Target: Spatial reference
Preparation Time: 1 hour

This principle works like YGGD 353, except it allows you to set the time trait of any demiplane you create. If you have already created a demiplane before learning this principle, you can retroactively set a time trait with a single preparation. Time traits that you can set include:
  • Double Time: For every round that passes on the Material Plane, two rounds pass on this demiplane.
  • Erratic Time: Time randomly slows down and speeds up on this demiplane, as described here.
  • Normal Time: Time on this demiplane flows the same way as on the Material Plane.
  • Slow Time: For every round that passes on this demiplane, two rounds pass on the Material Plane.
  • Timeless Magic: This demiplane is timeless with respect to magic. All spells cast with noninstantaneous duration are permanent until dispelled.

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