Corrupt Caster

[Ponce]

Hey all. Trying to pull together different material about casters who specialize in corruption and associated magic. In short, character material that is both effective, and supports a general corruption theme. I've managed to collect the following material.

Prestige Class: Fleshwarper. A tidy little class. Loses one spellcasting level though. However, its specialization in aberrant grafts leaves a strong aftertaste of corruption.

Prestige Class: Tainted Sorcerer. This one is really pretty (or rather, it isn't). Finally, an excuse for your caster to buy manacles. Keep in mind that in spite of the name, this prestige class is in no way limited to Sorcerers. Any caster can take this.

Prestige Class: Cancer Mage. I jumped out of my chair when I remembered this one. Unfortunately, its name is deceiving. It does not advance spellcasting, and is really more of a rogue class.

Feat: Mother Cyst. Grants a large number of bonus spells known. Great for a spontaneous caster, and still really good for prepared wizards (the spells don't need to go in your spellbook). The 7th level spell is quite easily abused, though. Great feat.

Feat: Dark Speech. Good stuff. Always wanted a voice that could make people's skin crawl. +1 caster level is just icing!

Feat: Deformity (obese). The boost to Con is worth the hit to Dex for most casters. Works really well with Tainted Sorcerer for extra blood and con points to work with.

Feat: Malign Spell Focus. Gives +1 DC to spells with the evil descriptor. Again, works well with Tainted Sorcerer (noticing a trend?) since EVERY spell the tainted sorcerer casts has the evil descriptor!

Feat: Tomb-Tainted Soul. This entire feat tree is a bundle of fun! Especially good for divine casters. Best part is that the prerequisite feat is itself very powerful, unlike many other trees.

Feat: Sacrificial Divination. Roll around in entrails and emulate high-level divination spells! What's not to like?

Feat: Touch of Hate. Patrons of my favorite deity can use this feat to corrupt animals and gain a seemingly endless supply of bitter minions. I see no limiting factor, so the feat is probably broken. Still really fun! I always knew giraffes were lawful evil. Nothing that tall and pretentious could be anything but.

Feat: Lunatic Insight. All knowledge skills are trained, +2 initiative, and a bonus to certain saves. Not a bad feat. Absent-Minded Professor? How about the Deranged-Sociopathic-Lecherous Professor?

What other material is out there? Get depraved, people!

[Mr. Friendly]

Various Taint related PrCs. Heroes of Horror has a few, as does OA. The Maho-Tsuki come to mind.

[DrizztFan24]

Insidious Corrputer form Drow of the Underdark...only half caster progression though, and it strikes me more of an evil bard class.

[Zincorium]

Heroes of Horror has some pretty nice prestige class.

Fiend blooded is spontaneous caster only, but it's very easy to enter and you don't lose anything until the 10th level (which isn't worth taking IMHO), and in return you get bonus spells known and some increases to ability scores. Good fill in if you've got levels left over and aren't sure what to take.


Tainted scholar... this one is tricky. It's a lot like the tainted sorcerer in the SRD, but with a very important difference: using your taint as your relevant casting ability. It's very good if you're undead or something similar which doesn't take ability damage from being tainted, allowing you to max out your scores, and somewhat useful if you've got a poor mental stats but want to be a caster.

Other than that, it's got better class features than the tainted sorcerer, but it's BAB and hit dice aren't as good (which is generally a very minor concern).

[Ponce]

Tainted scholar... this one is tricky. It's a lot like the tainted sorcerer in the SRD, but with a very important difference: using your taint as your relevant casting ability.

You mean that tainted scholar does or doesn't? Tainted sorcerer does as well, no?

Heroes of Horror seems like a good reference for this. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for the responses!

[Zincorium]

You mean that tainted scholar does or doesn't? Tainted sorcerer does as well, no?

Heroes of Horror seems like a good reference for this. I'll have to look into it. Thanks for the responses!

It does... I now am mystified how I missed that when reading tainted sorcerer. Oh well, the advice for tainted scholar holds true for tainted sorcerer then, either do it if you have a low casting stat or aren't going to take penalties for maxing your taint out (with tainted sorcerer just casting spells is going to take you real far, real fast).

[SamTheCleric]

Using your taint to cast spells brought a completely different image to my head.

I need to scrub my brain with bleach now.