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CGNefarious
2014-01-13, 04:29 PM
So in an Eberron game I'm playing playing my sorcerer pulled The Foreign Trader from the Deck of Many Things and in a rash decision traded away almost forty years of his life for some magic items. Now he's sixty years old and being faced with his mortality.

Now most people who don't want to die would probably try to go the lich route, but that's not really Viktor's style. Being a member of House Cannith and an accomplished engineer, and also seeing his companion reduced to a soul in a gem (another Deck of Many Things result) he's begun contemplating about transferring his soul into a construct of some sort. He's made Warforged before so he feels confident in this endeavor.

My question is how I should go about doing this. The Magic Jar spell is level 5, but requires the target to have a soul (which can resist) and is of limited duration. Would a similar spell which is permanent but requires the body to be void of souls be like level 6? Or should it be higher? I've searched but found no real precedent for this.

Also, making say an Mithril Golem and putting my soul into it with stats as listed would be far too powerful, so I planned on scaling it back quite a bit. I've never done a homebrew before, so criticism and advice would be appreciated.

Make a Mithril Golem, but medium sized.

Construct traits, except for no immunity to mind effects. Physical abilities scores can't be drained or damaged, but mental ones can.

Instead of the DR 15/adamantine of the normal Mithril Golem, I was thinking of scaling it back to DR 5/adamantine. Is it still to powerful to give a caster damage reduction? Or is it too little for the price?

Instead of the whopping Str 33 and Dex 24, I thought it more reasonable for Str 20 and Dex 16. He would retain his mental stats, and constructs have no Con.

Base speed 30 feet since medium.

The Mithril Golem's Quickness (Ex) seems really strong for a PC, so I'm thinking about limiting it to a number of times per day. Maybe once per level per day?

The Fluid Form (Ex) seems fine to me. I see no real need to change it, but I also wouldn't be upset to lose it.

The Immunity to Magic is obviously way overpowered for a PC. I'd probably scrap this all together, or possible replace it with some light spell resistance.

Now for the cost to make it. The Mithril Golem cost 150,000gp to build, and requires a lot prerequisites. My construct is two size categories smaller, and isn't truly a Mithril Golem, having few of it's abilities and no where near it's strengths. It's more like a greatly improved Warforged, but without sentience. I'd also have access to the Creation Forges at Cannith to do this, and probably be able to get significant help from others. But still, this cannot be a cheap endeavor. So I was thinking maybe have the whole thing cost around 80-100k and several levels of researching.

What do you all think? I want something fairly balanced, but I also want it to be worth doing. I've never done high level play before, so I'm not sure if this is totally balanced or not. :smallfrown:

Domriso
2014-01-13, 06:03 PM
I would use the Soulbound Doll as a basis and go from there:
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/soulbound-doll

The basic idea is that you strip a piece of the soul from a creature, during which time it must die, and then form a construct with that soul fragment as a basis.

Using the same concept, it should be possible to strip a soul itself and attached it to a pre-made construct, probably with some form of focus acting as the actual hold. It might need a second spellcaster to complete the ritual, but it should be doable.

As a fun aside, if you could get a fellow spellcaster to help you with the procedures, you could make a variety of soulbound dolls out of yourself, using something like revivify to return yourself to life during the ritual with little to no repercussions on your own character.