[Psionic] Tyrath (C M F)

[Lord Iames Osari]

Creature

Iames Osari, 18 years old CR 3
Male human Monk/(Telepath/Wilder) 1/(1/1)
LN/(CE/NG) Medium humanoid (Chaos, Evil, Good, Human, Law, Psionic)
Init +8; Senses Listen +8, Spot +8
Languages Abyssal (D), Auran, Common, Draconic (D), Elven
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AC 18 (+4 Dex, +4 Wis), touch 18, flat-footed 14; Dodge
hp 16 (1 HD)
Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +6
-
Speed 30 ft. (6 squares)
Melee unarmed strike +2 (1d6+2) or
Melee flurry +0/+0 (1d6+2)
Base Atk +0; Grp +2
Atk Options Combat Reflexes, flurry of blows
pp/day 13
Powers Known (ML 1):
1st (1 pp)--empathy (Will DC 15 negates, harmless augmentable), energy ray (+4 ranged touch, augmentable), mind thrust (1d10 damage, Will DC 15 negates, augmentable), psionic charm (Will DC 15 negates, augmentable)
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Abilities Str 15, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 16 (18[D]/16[L]), Wis 18 (18[D]/18[L]), Cha 10 (16[D]/18[L])
SQ human racial traits, unarmed strike, flurry of blows, Child of Passion, wild surge +2, psychic enervation 5%, psionic powers, kazejutsu style
Feats Improved Unarmed Strike, Combat Reflexes, Improved Initiative, Dodge, Psionic Talent x2 (D,D), Psionic Body (L)
Skills Autohypnosis +8 (L), Balance +8, Bluff +8 (L), Climb +6, Concentration +6 (D), Craft (alchemy) +8 (D), Decipher Script +6 (D), Diplomacy +8 (L), Escape Artist +8 (L), Gather Information +6 (L), Hide +8, Intimidate +5 (D), Jump +8, Knowledge (history) +8 (D), Knowledge (psionics) +8 (D), Listen +8, Move Silently +8, Psicraft +8 (D), Sense Motive +8 (L), Spot +8 (L), Tumble +8, Use Psionic Device +6 (L)
Possessions monk's outfit, cloak, superior pack, tent

Child of Passion:
Fractured Mind (Ex): For reasons not quite understood but definitely related to his being the Child of Passion, Iames has three distinct splinter personalities: the Dark, the Light, and "just-Iames". The Dark (CE Telepath) and the Light (NG Wilder) are intensifications of Iames's sadistic, predatory instincts and his loving, compassionate nature, respectively, while "just-Iames", the primary personality, is everything else. Since each splinter personality shares the others' experiences, the Dark's and the Light's class levels advance in step with "just-Iames's"; however, Iames gains only 80% of the normal number of experience points. For the purposes of determining base attack bonus, save bonuses, and HD, use "just-Iames's" class level. Each splinter personality has its own mental ability scores, skills, feats, and languages, which are marked (D) for the Dark and (L) for the Light. Unmarked ability scores, skills, and feats are "just-Iames's". Iames's Challenge Rating is equal to 1.5 x Hit Dice (round down) + 2. Iames can switch between splinter personalities as a free action.
Cherished Memory (Su): Once per day as a full-round action which provokes attacks of opportunity, Iames can copy and absorb part of another being's psyche. In order to do so, Iames must establish physical and telepathic contact with his intended target and maintain contact for the round. Iames must then make a Concentration check against DC 20. If the check fails or the physical or telepathic contact is broken, the attempt fails and the ability is spent for the day. His target then makes a Will save against a DC of 10 + 1/2 Iames's VD + Iames the Light's Charisma modifier. Unconscious and/or dying targets automatically fail their Will saves. If the target's Will save fails, Iames can copy one of the following from the target's mind:
• A feat possessed by the target which A) Iames does not possess, B) stacks with itself, or C) pertains to a different skill or weapon than the feat Iames already possesses. Iames need not meet any prerequisites of the feat in order to absorb it, though he cannot use the feat until he meets the prerequistes, as normal.
• A skill possessed by the target. Iames gains ranks in that skill equal to the difference between the target's ranks and the ranks he currently possesses, but only up to the maximum number of ranks in that skill that he could normally possess.
• A psionic power known by the target and of a level that Iames can manifest, even if it is from another class and/or speciality.
Channel Passion (Su): As the Child of Passion, Iames is capable of psionically channeling pure positive energy or pure negative energy when manifesting an energy power. Positive (or negative) energy deals +3 points of damage per die to undead (or living) creatures, while living (or undead) creatures are healed an equivalent amount. Any amount healed in excess of a creature's normal HP is added to HP as temporary HP. Each round in which a creature has temporary HP as a result of receiveing positive or negative energy in this way, that creature must make a Fortitude save against a DC equal to the difference between their normal HP and their current HP. On a failed save, the creature explodes due to an overload of energy and is dead. For the purposes of detect evil and similar spells, Iames possesses auras as if he were an outsider. Finally, as an embodiment of the power of passion, Iames's wild surge, surging euphoria, and volatile mind abilities function 1 point higher than normal, and his psychic enervation ability is modified as follows: instead of becoming dazed and losing power points, Iames may choose to take 1d8 points of damage per manifester level added.

Kazejutsu style (Ex): Iames receives a +2 style bonus on Jump checks.

Iames and his splinter personalities worship no particular deity. He has black hair, and his eyes change color depending on which splinter personality is in control at the moment. “Just-Iames’s” eyes are green, the Dark’s yellow, and the Light’s violet. When the Dark or the Light uses a psionic power, his eyes glow yellow or violet, respectively. Iames is 6’2” and weighs 216 lb.

(Yeah, stats for the guy I'm named after. His name is pronounced "YAH-mace". The superior pack consists of: a backpack, bedroll, 50' silk rope, a waterskin, 4 sunrods, and 5 days' trail rations.)

[Lord Iames Osari]

Mythology (Abridged) ;)

: Tyrath is a world where magic and psionics have coexisted since the beginning. The realities of the planes are underlain by great oceans of cosmic energies that flow to, from, between, and among the planes. These energies can be drawn into the planar realities as magic and psionics. A common analogy used by Tyrathian scholars compares the energies to an underground ocean and the planar realities as the ground above the ocean. Magic users cast their spells through ritual, "drilling" their way through the ground to reach the ocean of energy, while a psionicists' mind is like a natural spring or geyser, the "water" coming to the surface of its own accord. Apart from the differences in how the energy for magic and psionics is obtained, there is another difference. A spellcaster must perform a particular ritual to achieve a particular effect; a psionicist simply concentrates on the power within himself and wills an effect to occur. This is why a psionicist can use his powers, albeit with limitations, when in the grip of an overwhelming emotion such as rage, while a spellcaster finds that his mind cannot focus properly on the necessary ritual.
: However, there was a time when one part of Tyrath was devoid of psionicists for thousands of years. In the region surrounding the North and South Mehrunian Seas, where the Great War of Undeath was fought between the cursed followers of the Fallen God Moraan and the followers of the good and neutral Deities, the leader of Moraan's followers, an orc (formerly an elf) necromancer-priest-psychic named Mothga (long "o", "th" as in "this") built a mystical weapon of terrible power, known in legend as Mothga's Lightning. When the seers and diviners of the Living Alliance discovered its existence and power, a mighty fear swept through them. The dwarves, accustomed to the grimness of their icy northern plateau, remained stalwart. Their cousins the gnomes, confident that they could use their inventiveness and trickery to overcome the threat somehow, did likewise. The humans, short-lived and shortsighted, did not fully comprehend the magnitude of the danger and so stood bravely, loyally by their friends. The elven race, however, panicked. Confronted with the prospect of immediate death, their king, his court, and fully half of the elven population fled to the Great Island in the far south, destroying all knowledge of its location so that Mothga would never be able to find them. Henceforth, the Great Island would be known as the Isle of the Craven Elves, and all elves, even those who stayed to fight, would forever after be regarded as cowardly by the other races.
: In desperation after this mass desertion, the Living Alliance sent a small band to destroy Mothga's Lightning, consisting of a human paladin, a human rogue, an elf wizard, a half-elf cleric, a dwarf soulknife, and a gnome ranger. They succeeded, but at great cost. The destruction of Mothga's Lightning released the power of the region's built-up fears as a great vril, a psychic explosion of immense potency. The vril destroyed a huge area of elven forest, leveled old mountain ranges, raised a ring of new ones, redirected rivers, disrupted weather patterns, migration routes, not to mention killing millions. As well as all that, the vril also drained the psionic potential from the population for many, many leagues and generations.
: Only the elf mage and the gnome ranger survived the explosion, having teleported away at the last instant. The ranger later led several expeditions into the crater of the blast, which is now called Mothga's Waste. Among his discoveries were the young volcano at the crater's center ("Mothga's Tomb"), where Mothga's Lightning had once been, and the natural portal to the Elemental Plane of Water a few leagues away. However, the aura of death and destruction still lingered there, and on his fourth expedition into the Waste, the ranger fell sick and died, not even having gotten through the ring of mountains ("Mothga's Wall") surrounding it.
: The elf, meanwhile, was welcomed as a great hero by what remained of his people and became their new king.
: Seven thousand five hundred seventy-six years passed after the War of Undeath. Human nations rose and splintered. The dragons fought each other for dominion over Tyrath and were hunted by humanoid dragonslayers. Tribes of orcs and human nomads began to live in the desert of Mothga's Waste, its deathly aura weakened, though not gone. Warlords rose and fell. And then a son was born to a half-orc and a succubus in the Waste. When a band of adventurers killed his father, his mother rescued him and brought him to the Demonic Realms, but that was the extent of her maternal caring. She ignored how her son was bullied and beaten by full-blooded demons, many times by her lovers. After having been feared and respected in the Waste, this was too much for the youngster, who vowed that one day all beings would fear his name: Xarakh Nam, son of Larh Nam, son of Hrak Nam, of the line of Mothga. When he was fifteen, Xarakh returned to the Waste and began unifying the squabbling orc tribes, alternately intimidating and cajoling them. By the time he was 27, Xarakh Nam had invented a new kind of construct, built a levitating fortress, and honed his inborn magical skills to their peak; he then began to recover the pieces of and rebuild Mothga's Lightning in preparation for war with the nearby city-state of Enkidu.
: His impatience cost him dearly. A band of adventurers from Enkidu, the Seven, defeated and slew him. However, they failed to destroy Mothga's Lightning, nor did they discover his spare body. Still alive, Xarakh Nam secretly built a network of alliances with other evil forces over the next 15 years while Enkidu fought the Yuan-ti Empire and the Seven gained even greater fame by completing special missions and teaching at their Academy for Adventurers.
: Three years after the Yuan-ti war ended, a group of students set out on their first real mission, to clear out a den of goblins harassing travelers along an important trade road. One of them, unaware of the powers lying dormant within his soul, was a young man named Iames Osari. (Ominous musical flourish)

[Lord Iames Osari]

Feats

Madness [Psionic, Insanity]
Your mind has snapped under the strain of your psionic powers.
Prerequisites: Any chaotic alignment, ability to manifest psionic powers.
Benefit: You gain immunity to all effects that cause confusion or insanity, but take a -2 penalty on interaction skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Sense Motive). This penalty worsens by 1 for each additional insanity feat you possess.

Mad Clarity [Psionic, Insanity]
Your madness sometimes makes you difficult to control, but other times you are easily manipulated.
Prerequisite: Madness.
Benefit: You take a -1 penalty on Will saves for every insanity feat you possess, including this one. Every time you must make a Will save, you receive a +1d20 insanity bonus on your saving throw.

Shifting Madness [Psionic, Insanity]
The mercurial nature of your madness makes you difficult to control.
Prerequisites: Madness, Mad Clarity, Cha 15+.
Benefit: You gain the slippery mind trait, but take a -2 penalty on Concentration checks.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Yeah, so my entry is finished, barring any editing changes I might make (like finishing off the list of what's in the superior pack), and I'd really like some feedback.

I tried really hard to maintain balance with Iames's statistics. Obviously, he's much more powerful than another character with the same HD total. But at the same time, he's also less powerful than another creature with the same CR, primarily because of his comparatively low number of HD and HP. For example, at 5th level, Iames would be Monk 5/(Telepath 5/Wilder 5). If he was a normal multiclass character, with base attack bonuses, save bonuses, HD, and special abilities from all three classes, he'd be CR 15. Since Iames has only the base attack, saves, and HD of a 5th-level Monk, he's less powerful than that, but he also has the manifesting abilities and special qualities of a 5th-level Telepath and a 5th-level Wilder, not to mention his innate special qualities, so he's obviously higher than a CR 5. Thus, the rather arcane formula of HD x 1.5 + 2.

What do you guys think about Iames?

About the mythology?

About the feats?

C'mon, people, talk to me!

[martyboy74]

Are there other insanity feats? Rolling 1d20-2 and adding that to a will save is pretty handy.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Not yet... I think that I will make some, though... However, they will be located in the Homebrew forum.