Designing a Pain Mage

[tgva8889]

I'm working on designing an NPC who is a "pain mage;" he delights in torturing his victims and slowly inflicting pain on them and studying its effects. I plan for him to be a caster of some sort, and so I was curious: does anyone have any suggestions for spells he could use that would fit his motif? There's not as many obvious answers as I might have thought, and my knowledge of many books isn't great enough to help me find a wide selection.

[Draconium]

Power Word: Pain from Races of the Dragon(?). A 1st-level spell, that is (from what I hear) extremely good, and fits nicely into your "pain" theme.

[Inevitability]

Power Word: Pain from Races of the Dragon(?). A 1st-level spell, that is (from what I hear) extremely good, and fits nicely into your "pain" theme.

Note that Power Word Pain does deal a lot of damage, but it's spread out over the course of up to sixteen rounds. The villain might kill a PC with it, but not before they defeat him.

If you go for a cleric chassis, you can enter Maiden of Pain (PGtF), which gives a supernatural pain touch, the ability to deliver spells through a whip, and 9/10 cleric casting. It does require you to be drug-addicted, half-insane, and female, though.

[AvatarVecna]

Also, there's a couple of spells in the Book of Vile Darkness (the splatbook, probably not the in-game artifact).

[tgva8889]

Power Word: Pain is certainly worth considering if only for flavor. I imagine this Pain Mage keeps a few prepared (or saves a few 1st level spell slots if he ends up a spont. caster) mostly to cast on creatures he's studying so he can observe and study their reaction. Or perhaps learned the spell later on, because one with a fascination in pain couldn't pass up a spell so perfectly made to inflict it. Maybe not as useful in combat as one might hope, but very useful for setting the tone of this character.

Cleric seems to get a lot of great spells for this purpose, so I might go that route anyways. If it's for an NPC in a game, I could certainly modify some restrictions of that prestige class, though; I wouldn't be playing a Faerun game, so I'd have to change some things to use it.

I don't have access to a Book of Vile Darkness on my person, but looking up some spell descriptions has been rather enlightening. I'm sure using some of these would fit with my purposes. Wrack especially seems like exactly the sort of thing a Pain Mage would cast.

[Draconium]

I think BoVD has a spell called Sadism, which gives you bonuses for every few points of damage you inflict in a round, IIRC.

[sovin_ndore]

I would suggest you look at the Maiden of Pain PrC from PGTF.

[Flickerdart]

Would you consider psionics to be "casting"? Because there are a lot of gems there:
Level 1 powers:
Dissipating touch: Teleports away small pieces of the target. Not straight-up pain manipulation, but definitely a creative way of inflicting damage!
Empathy: Allows you to feel the subject's emotions. Pain is explicitly listed as one of them.
Level 2 powers:
Inflict pain: Self-explanatory.
Recall agony: Damage the subject by forcing him to recall past pain - or even future pain that he hasn't felt yet. Using divination to deal damage? Only in psionics.
Empathic transfer: Absorb pain into yourself.
Dissolving touch: Your hands are now acid. Sizzle sizzle!
Painful strike: Your natural weapons become more painful, dealing extra non-lethal damage.
Sensitivity to psychic impressions: Look into significant events of an area's past - including "great pain."
Level 3 powers:
Share pain, forced: One person takes half of all the damage that another person does. Useful for experiments where you have more than one subject.
Fate link: Similar to share pain but shares pain, lethal and nonlethal damage, and kills one if the other dies.
Empathic transfer, hostile: Transfer your pain to an unwilling subject.
False sensory input: One of the examples given is "make a light pat feel like a dagger thrust." Get creative!
Energy lance: The fire version "scorches the target with pain in addition to dealing damage. "
Level 4 powers:
Death urge: When you're bored of hurting your subject, get it to hurt itself.
Empathic feedback: Cause pain to anyone who attacks you.
Control body: Turn a person into a helpless meat-puppet while keeping their mind functioning and aware. I'm sure you can figure out a way to use this.
Quintessence: Contact with the material this power produces pulls part of the subject out of the time stream, dealing 1 damage per round until removed. Useful for long-duration experiments.
Modify memory, psionic: Instead of harming the subject, just make it remember being harmed. For the lazy experimenter. Alternatively, make them forget the injuries to keep them sane longer.
Level 5 powers:
Psionic revivify: Useful if you accidentally kill someone and need to de-kill them in short order.
Baleful teleport: Like dissipating touch, but better.
Mind probe: The best way to tell how the subject is feeling is to tunnel into their mind and look it up. There are no CAT scans in D&D, but there's this.
Level 8 powers:
Recall death: Similar to recall agony but better.
Level 9 powers:
Affinity field, pain: Everyone within 20 feet suffers all the negative conditions and damage that you do.

Because of the way psionics work (lower-level powers can be augmented to be better, as long as you have the ML for it), and because most of the powers you want are low-level, a theurge approach would be more beneficial for you since you could reap the benefits of the low-level powers, pick up Practiced Manifester to compensate for levels spent on wizard or whatever, and then augment the powers you have.

[Slithery D]

The new Psychic in Pathfinder's Occult Adventures has a Pain discipline whose bonus spells heavily involve inflicting pain through continuous nonlethal damage (pain strike) or debuff penalties (inflict pain, new spell).

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/occult-adventures/occult-classes/psychic

Incidentally, note that continuous damage is good for forcing concentration checks on casters, don't sell it short, especially in Pathfinder where they're harder to pull off at low levels.

[prufock]

Some interesting feats might include fell drain and fell weaken.

Also remember you can refluff most things to fit your theme.

[Fouredged Sword]

If your DM is open to Pathfinder and 3rd party, the Vitalist, with the Sadist and Life Leech archtypes seems perfect for this class. Kill your enemies, heal and buff your allies.

[Telonius]

I'd ... actually consider going with Bard. They have a ton of spells that inflict psychological pain on their victims. His motivation could be that he wants his music to be the ultimate expression of pain, and his research is geared to that. I'm imagining the Chant of Fortitude feat, keeping somebody just at -9hp and asking him how it feels; putting somebody on a forced march and using Chant of the Long Road to push them beyond their usual capacity. Then using their Cure spells to get them back into shape for another round.

[tgva8889]

Would you consider psionics to be "casting"?

For these purposes, totally. Thanks for the descriptions! I'm less familiar with psionics, but totally willing to use them for an NPC if it fits my designs well.


If your DM is open to Pathfinder and 3rd party, the Vitalist, with the Sadist and Life Leech archtypes seems perfect for this class. Kill your enemies, heal and buff your allies.

Well, I'm making an NPC, so I can do anything as long as I don't mind my players asking questions and/or potentially getting access to the same abilities in certain situations (like if they stole a wizard's spellbook, for example). That said, I know a lot less about Pathfinder than 3.5, so I'll give some of that stuff a look.


I'd ... actually consider going with Bard. They have a ton of spells that inflict psychological pain on their victims. His motivation could be that he wants his music to be the ultimate expression of pain, and his research is geared to that. I'm imagining the Chant of Fortitude feat, keeping somebody just at -9hp and asking him how it feels; putting somebody on a forced march and using Chant of the Long Road to push them beyond their usual capacity. Then using their Cure spells to get them back into shape for another round.

Where are those feats from? Bard is definitely an intriguing alternative that I'd be interested in looking into.


Also remember you can refluff most things to fit your theme.

Indeed. But looking at things that already exist helps to give me ideas!

[Telonius]

Chant of Fortitude is from Complete Adventurer. Chant of the Long Road is from Complete Scoundrel.

[tgva8889]

Thanks! I like the look of the Bard option.

[Amphetryon]

He wouldn't by chance have 6 fingers on his right hand, would he?

[tgva8889]

That guy was more of a pain warrior, or maybe a pain engineer. :smallwink: