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PersonMan
2010-05-28, 08:33 PM
Alright, in a d20 Modern campaign that's coming up I've gotten the idea of two viruses. One infects a PC, and the other must be recaptured, as it's basically the thing to counteract the first virus. The character infected is a spellcasted who's power is rather limited, and I want to sort of show how the virus is spreading and giving him stronger magical abilities, but at the cost of it slowly encroaching on his mind and eventually gaining sentience.

How should I go about doing this?

Optimystik
2010-05-28, 08:39 PM
I dunno about d20 Modern, but Taint from D&D+ is the poster child of "you get stronger and stronger magic even as your sanity slips."

PersonMan
2010-05-28, 08:41 PM
I dunno about d20 Modern, but Taint from D&D+ is the poster child of "you get stronger and stronger magic even as your sanity slips."

I've heard...bad things about the Taint system.

Which book is it in?

Optimystik
2010-05-28, 08:57 PM
I've heard...bad things about the Taint system.

Which book is it in?

It's on the SRD, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/taint.htm) then fleshed out further in Heroes of Horror, IIRC.

Lysander
2010-05-28, 09:29 PM
Maybe use the sentient magic item ego rules, but without the item?

balistafreak
2010-05-28, 09:39 PM
I've heard...bad things about the Taint system.

Which book is it in?

The "bad things" occurs with the Necropolitan (race) Tainted Scholar (prestige class), both from the book of Bad Latin Libris Mortis. Undead are specifically stated as being immune to the negative effects Corruption and Depravity, the two components of Taint. However, they are considered to start with baseline scores of Taint (which means Corruption and Depravity) equal half their Charisma, +1 for being an Undead.

Necropolitan basically turns you into an intelligent (at least as intelligent as the previous being) undead without losing any of the benefits of your previous race (besides being alive, that is), which is cool and probably the best way to be undead in D&D. Not like the crappy LA +9000 templates like Ghost and Vampire.

Tainted Scholar is a prestige class with full arcane casting progression with one change - casting is now done off your Taint scores of 10 + either Corruption and Depravity instead of your previous casting stat. So let's take our Necropolitan, call him a Sorcerer, Charisma 18 because we like maxed stats. Previously he'd get +4 to his DCs and some amount of bonus spells. Now we give him his baseline Corruption and Depravity for being undead, 10, which is added to another 10 to act as his casting stat to make 20. Now he's got +5 to his DCs and more bonus spells than before.

Here's the kicker - while I've yet to find any way to raise Corruption as an Undead (you're immune to effects requiring Fortitude saves, which includes the gain of Corruption, so by never ever having to make those saves you can never raise your Corruption above what your Charisma defines it to be) to raise your DCs (people keep claiming you can get infinite DCs with Tainted Scholar, but I can't see how), you can still gain Depravity, by simply playing the game. Every time you cast a spell, you have to make a Will save or gain Depravity. You are specifically called out on being immune to the negative effects, so yeah. Even if you can't voluntarily fail the save, some amount of time later, you've got what amounts to infinite bonus spells due to your Depravity score being >9000.

The rules for Depravity have your brain explode long before this point, but then they go ahead and print that Undead are immune to Depravity/Taint in the same book (in the beginning of the section, no less) and then print an excellent way to be Undead also in the same book. Good job, Wizards. :smalltongue:

Oh, and Tainted Scholars have some random cool class features. Many of them involve paying Constitution and are specifically called out on being impossible to use if you lack the score, so they aren't that helpful. (Which begs the question of how they missed what they'd done with Depravity, seeing as they were implying you couldn't do this as an Undead, which... I've explained already.) But they have some other useful class features, which means being better than a straight Sorcerer. You'll still want to find a better Prestige Class afterward - you only need one level of this PrC to get the Taint-casting.

Currently I'm working on a single-character fix for this - by purposefully not picking spells that cause stupidness when cast Ad Nauseum (Wall of Iron, anyone?) and with limited utility, kind of like the old blasters of yore. I'll probably get slapped if I ever try to play with it, but somehow I imagine that without super-high DCs I can slip by.