Harrow
2023-05-04, 04:04 PM
I’m working on what I consider a “practical thought experiment”. I’m making a character for a campaign I’m playing in. I already have a character and the odds of them getting killed off permanently are pretty low at this point, but you never know when something will happen.
It’s an undead heavy 3.5 campaign in a homebrewed setting. Pathfinder stuff has sometimes been given an OK, so I’m currently trying to figure out what fun I could have with the undead bloodline ability of the Pathfinder sorcerer. It allows you to use [mind-affecting] spells on undead that were previously Humanoid as if they were still Humanoid.
I would be up-front that I want to use this character to start turning the campaign’s BBEGs, a group of liches, into the party’s minions. If my DM isn’t cool with me trying that, then I simply won’t play this character but do something else, should the need arise.
The first spell to come to my mind was Dominate Person. I like it, I really do. But, the save, and then another save with a bonus if I make a command “against [the target’s] nature” seem like pretty severe drawbacks.
The next one I thought of was Geas/Quest. No save, but comes with a couple of complications. For one, it must target a “living creature” and I’m not sure that Humanoids are considered living just because you use the undead bloodline sorcerer’s ability. Regardless of RAW, I doubt my DM would have a problem with letting it work, if the character concept was allowed at all. The other complication is the 10 minute cast time.
One solution to the casting time would be Anima Mage. Our characters are basically capped at 13th level (the DM didn’t want to have to deal with players having 8th or 9th level spells) so I’d have to use some kind of early entry trick to get all 10 levels I would need before hitting the level cap, but that would allow 1 casting of Geas a day as an immediate action. Good, but not excellent.
Solution number 2 is Spellguard of Silverymoon (setting specific stuff is generally allowed as long as the serial numbers can be filed off). At 3rd level, they get Selective Spell a number of times per day equal to their Int mod (minimum 1). Importantly, “Casting a selective spell requires a fullround action.” It makes no mention of spells that start out with a longer casting time, so, RAW, it should work. Whether I can get my DM to agree with it is likely a coin flip.
The last solution I can think of is to somehow disable a lich for 10 minutes while I cast the spell. I have no idea how I would do this, but hard-casting the spell feels like it would be the solution most likely to fly at my table, so if anyone has any opinions on this, I’d appreciate the discussion.
Any ideas on how I could pull something like this off? More fun [mind-affecting] spells to hit an army of undead and their lich masters with? Roadblocks to what I’ve laid out that I seem to have missed?
It’s an undead heavy 3.5 campaign in a homebrewed setting. Pathfinder stuff has sometimes been given an OK, so I’m currently trying to figure out what fun I could have with the undead bloodline ability of the Pathfinder sorcerer. It allows you to use [mind-affecting] spells on undead that were previously Humanoid as if they were still Humanoid.
I would be up-front that I want to use this character to start turning the campaign’s BBEGs, a group of liches, into the party’s minions. If my DM isn’t cool with me trying that, then I simply won’t play this character but do something else, should the need arise.
The first spell to come to my mind was Dominate Person. I like it, I really do. But, the save, and then another save with a bonus if I make a command “against [the target’s] nature” seem like pretty severe drawbacks.
The next one I thought of was Geas/Quest. No save, but comes with a couple of complications. For one, it must target a “living creature” and I’m not sure that Humanoids are considered living just because you use the undead bloodline sorcerer’s ability. Regardless of RAW, I doubt my DM would have a problem with letting it work, if the character concept was allowed at all. The other complication is the 10 minute cast time.
One solution to the casting time would be Anima Mage. Our characters are basically capped at 13th level (the DM didn’t want to have to deal with players having 8th or 9th level spells) so I’d have to use some kind of early entry trick to get all 10 levels I would need before hitting the level cap, but that would allow 1 casting of Geas a day as an immediate action. Good, but not excellent.
Solution number 2 is Spellguard of Silverymoon (setting specific stuff is generally allowed as long as the serial numbers can be filed off). At 3rd level, they get Selective Spell a number of times per day equal to their Int mod (minimum 1). Importantly, “Casting a selective spell requires a fullround action.” It makes no mention of spells that start out with a longer casting time, so, RAW, it should work. Whether I can get my DM to agree with it is likely a coin flip.
The last solution I can think of is to somehow disable a lich for 10 minutes while I cast the spell. I have no idea how I would do this, but hard-casting the spell feels like it would be the solution most likely to fly at my table, so if anyone has any opinions on this, I’d appreciate the discussion.
Any ideas on how I could pull something like this off? More fun [mind-affecting] spells to hit an army of undead and their lich masters with? Roadblocks to what I’ve laid out that I seem to have missed?