Miscellania

[Corwin]

Right, appearances. Base form becomes the half-elf one, closing the circle in a way. Golden wings, greater than the previous ones but just as conveniently foldable, replace the red ones of the half-dragon form. I'm not trying to affect the red dragon form one bit, just the base form, but if my wings there get a strange golden coloration, I can't complain too much given the circumstances.

[Anastasia]

Cor, are you interested in Amaryl taking any feats to boost Yoshi up? There's a couple that could make him more effective if you want to put resources into making him viable. Your call though.

[Corwin]

Such as? Sorry, was just never interested in the area of animal companions, so I wouldn't know without an example or two.  >_>

[Anastasia]

Updated Abagail's spell selection and a few other things on her sheet.

[Corwin]

Ko note: Cleaned up bad notepad breaks.

I've been meaning to post this, and once the effects of Abby's book were revealed, I was in a position to post. The idea is to use a refluffed Malconvoker with the Mechanus theme for her next prc. The name itself... doesn't really work anymore, but I lack anything better at the moment (Ace Attorney tempts so much...). Also, the summon lists suck for axiomatic critters that aren't outsiders, pretty much, but if it's possible to apply any sort of template for the origin of the summoned beastie, that should fix this issue (Summon Monster VI has a celestial dire lion, for example, but if the option existed to summon a fiendish/axiomatic/anarchic dire lion with that spell instead, it'd work well enough).

This is a draft, etc, and clearly some things don't work as they did for the original Malconvoker, but I tried to keep them as close as possible whenever it fit, and diverged when it didn't. Comments?

Malconvoker [Mechanus Edition]

You have always honed your conjuration magic beyond that of your other spells, toyying with the idea of summoning powerful outsiders to do your bidding yet never being able to do more than contend with the Summon Monster family of spells. At least, not until that book appeared, and you were set upon your path by a seemingly serendipitous event: the appearance of a thin folio inscribed with the vivid imagery of gears, entitled the Vital Pact.


Entry Requirements

Alignment: Any non-chaotic.
Skills: Diplomacy 4 ranks, Knowledge (the planes) 4 ranks.
Feats: Augment Summoning, Spell Focus (conjuration).
Special: Ability to call an Inevitable.

Class Features

As a malconvoker, you bargain with your allies from Mechanus in order to enter binding contracts with them, ones that they would execute to the letter.

Spellcasting: At each level beyond 1st, you gain new spells per day and an increase in caster level (and spells known, if applicable) as if you had also gained a level in a spellcasting class to which you belonged before adding the prestige class level. You do not, however, gain any other benefit a character of that class would have gained. If you had more than one spellcasting class before becoming a malconvoker, you must decide to which class to add each level for the purpose of determining spells per day, caster level, and spells known.

Axiomatic Summons (Su): At 1st level, you can attempt to barter with lawful creatures you conjure into serving you for longer than they normally would. When casting a summon monster spell to summon a lawful-aligned creature, you can attempt a Diplomacy check as a free action, opposed by the creature's Sense Motive check. If your check succeeds, the duration of the effect is doubled (as if by the Extend Spell feat), and the summoned creature might be subject to additional effects as described below. If it fails, the duration remains as normal and no additional effects can be applied.
If you fail the check by 5 or more, the creature breaks free of your control and is hostile toward you (though it still disappears as normal when the spell's duration ends).
If you use this ability when summoning multiple creatures, you must attempt an opposed skill check separately against each creature you wish to affect.

Beginning at 4th level, you can get the summoned creatures to go an extra mile for you. If your Diplomacy check to extend the duration of summoning succeeds, the creatures get a +2 bonus on weapon damage rolls and 2 extra hit points perHit Die (in addition to the bonuses conferred by Augment Summoning).

Beginning at 7th level, you can instill true zeal into the summoned creatures, sparking off exceptional resistance to your enemies' attempts to control or dismiss them. If your Diplomacy check to extend the duration of summoning succeeds, the creatures get a +2 bonus on Will saves, and your effective caster level is increased by 2 for the purpose of resisting dispel magic and similar effects against those creatures.

Inevitable Focus: Beginning at 2nd level, you can add the following spells to your class spell list and your list of known spells (or your spellbook) at the indicated levels. If you already have one or more of these spells on your class list at a different level, treat it as being of the lower level.
5th: Call Zelekhut (SC p42).
7th: Call Kolyarut (SC p42).
9th: Call Marut (SC p42)

Bargaining Skills: At 3rd level, you gain Skill Focus (Diplomacy) as a bonus feat. If you already have this feat, you can select any other feat for which you meet the prerequisite.

Legions of Mechanus (Ex): Once you attain 5th level, whenever you use a summon monster spell to summon one or more lawful creatures, you summon one extra creature of the same kind.

I Rest My Case (Ex): Starting at 6th level, you become exceptionally versed in the ways and natures of lawful creatures. Your silver tongue can convince lawful creatures you call to work with you, putting your case in such a way that shows that your intentions parallel their own. Upon calling an Inevitable into your service, you can make a Diplomacy check opposed by the creature's Sense Motive skill check. If you succeed on this check, the called creature becomes more amenable to your cause, taking a –5 penalty on the opposed Charisma check made to refuse serving you. If you fail, the creature immediately makes a new Will saving throw against your spell. On a failure, the spell functions as normal. If it succeeds on this save, the creature breaks free of your control and returns to Mechanus, where it might put forth a formal complaint against you.

Improved Conjuration: At 8th level, you gain Greater Spell Focus (conjuration) as a bonus feat. If you already have this feat, you can select any other feat for which you meet the prerequisite.

Expeditous Calling (Su): At 9th level, your greater understanding of Mechanus's laws has gifted you with the ability to cut through the vast majority of the red tape involved in certain kinds of conjurations. You may call Inevitables into your service while vastly reducing the time you would normally spend during the long process of bartering with them. Calling an Inevitable now takes up a full round action for you rather than the usual ten minutes. It then attempts to execute the task given it faithfully to the best of its abilities for a duration of 1rnd/lvl of the summoner before returning to Mechanus.



The Malconvoker Hit Die: d4
        Base
        Attack Fort Ref    Will
Level   Bonus Save Save Save    Special                     Spellcasting
1st    +0    +0    +0    +2    Axiomatic Summons          —
2nd    +1    +0    +0   +3    Inevitable Focus                  +1 level of existing spellcasting class
3rd    +1    +1    +1    +3    Bargaining Skills                 +1 level of existing spellcasting class
4th    +2    +1    +1    +4    Axiomatic Summons (Aid and Comfort)    +1 level of existing spellcasting class
5th    +2    +1    +1    +4    Legions of Mechanus          +1 level of existing spellcasting class
6th    +3    +2    +2    +5    I Rest My Case             +1 level of existing spellcasting class
7th    +3    +2    +2    +5    Axiomatic Summons (Objection!)    +1 level of existing spellcasting class
8th    +4    +2    +2    +6    Improved Conjuration          +1 level of existing spellcasting class
9th    +4    +3    +3    +6    Expeditous Calling                 +1 level of existing spellcasting class

Class Skills (2 + Int modifier per level): Bluff, Concentration, Craft, Disguise, Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (religion), Knowledge (the planes), Profession, Spellcraft.

[Ebiris]

Thinking about Alicia's planar domain and all the resources it entails, it was pretty cool how she had ready access to so much info on Eblis through her inhouse contacts, but it also makes me think of another point I touched on in the Sylica writeup. Alicia has an army, with all the logistical support that entails, so it makes rather less sense for her to be reliant on looting dungeons and dropping sacks of gold off at Elle's for her equipment needs. I think it might be better at this stage to generally have all her adventuring proceeds allocated to her treasury automatically, and have a free floating pool of stuff she can call on as needed - like how NPC writeups in D&D books might say 'Lady Alustriel is typically equipped with A, B, and C, but due to her position as ruler of the biggest magical city in the North can be assumed to have ready access to any magic item of up to X value.'

A good way of running it in the game to allow for player input and seeing choices matter is with certain actions increasing or decreasing the pool - mandating better weapons for the troops or initiating big projects could lower the resources readily available, increasing the population or looting a particularly juicy hoard or discovering secret crafting techniques could increase it. There could even be type adjustments on specific things, like say Sylica produces more holy type items and the Cauldron produces more fiery type items so more expensive items fitting the correct theme can be procured.

Most of our primary gear will surely still come from adventuring and plot, but I think this would be a cool way to get odds and ends or specific tools for a unique job.

[Anastasia]

I've been meaning to post this, and once the effects of Abby's book were revealed, I was in a position to post. The idea is to use a refluffed Malconvoker with the Mechanus theme for her next prc. The name itself... doesn't really work anymore, but I lack anything better at the moment (Ace Attorney tempts so much...). Also, the summon lists suck for axiomatic critters that aren't outsiders, pretty much, but if it's possible to apply any sort of template for the origin of the summoned beastie, that should fix this issue (Summon Monster VI has a celestial dire lion, for example, but if the option existed to summon a fiendish/axiomatic/anarchic dire lion with that spell instead, it'd work well enough).

There's an axiomatic creature template in the Manual of the Planes, but that introduces an element I'd rather not deal with. (Linked minds). Just change smite evil to smite chaos and that works fine for an axiomatic creature. The fluff is that they're very finished, symmetrical creatures.

You have always honed your conjuration magic beyond that of your other spells, toying with the idea of summoning powerful outsiders to do your bidding yet never being able to do more than contend with the Summon Monster family of spells. At least, not until that book appeared, and you were set upon your path by a seemingly serendipitous event: the appearance of a thin folio inscribed with the vivid imagery of gears, entitled the Vital Pact.

Rename the Vital Pact, there's no need to lift the Malconvoker flavor 100%.

Improved Conjuration: At 8th level, you gain Greater Spell Focus (conjuration) as a bonus feat. If you already have this feat, you can select any other feat for which you meet the prerequisite.

This is a fine substitution for Improved Calling. Improved Calling's better but it doesn't translate to the concept here at all.

---

Looks fine overall.

[Anastasia]

Thinking about Alicia's planar domain and all the resources it entails, it was pretty cool how she had ready access to so much info on Eblis through her inhouse contacts, but it also makes me think of another point I touched on in the Sylica writeup.

You guys having a lot of info at your fingers is logical enough and on purpose. Both of you have lots of friends and resources to help track things down. Sylica does tend to concentrate them, though.

Alicia has an army, with all the logistical support that entails, so it makes rather less sense for her to be reliant on looting dungeons and dropping sacks of gold off at Elle's for her equipment needs. I think it might be better at this stage to generally have all her adventuring proceeds allocated to her treasury automatically, and have a free floating pool of stuff she can call on as needed - like how NPC writeups in D&D books might say 'Lady Alustriel is typically equipped with A, B, and C, but due to her position as ruler of the biggest magical city in the North can be assumed to have ready access to any magic item of up to X value.'

A good way of running it in the game to allow for player input and seeing choices matter is with certain actions increasing or decreasing the pool - mandating better weapons for the troops or initiating big projects could lower the resources readily available, increasing the population or looting a particularly juicy hoard or discovering secret crafting techniques could increase it. There could even be type adjustments on specific things, like say Sylica produces more holy type items and the Cauldron produces more fiery type items so more expensive items fitting the correct theme can be procured.

Most of our primary gear will surely still come from adventuring and plot, but I think this would be a cool way to get odds and ends or specific tools for a unique job.

Yeah. This works for me - what do you think Cor - but I'm not really sure on how the math involved would shake out. Suggestions?

[Corwin]

I'll repost the prc some time later while accounting for the above and some thoughts on how diplo could be replaced.

---

I like it, just like I hoped to eventually see cash from any business venture, when you posted about wanting to do that. I do think it needs to be defined more, and there actually are some non-trivial things I want to have crafted, so I'll need an actual framework to see how that works. For an example, I'm looking into items having to do with holy dragon breath, that's not something I can reasonably expect to just be lying around in some dungeons, much less evil ones.

Another thing I'd like addressed (it's not clear to me as is) would be just who this pool of resources would cover. Our faceless followers, the npcs on our team, us? All of the above? If that, how would it work, since a negligible boost to me from some item would be quite the difference to, say, Abagail or some lvl3 wizard hoping to follow in my footsteps. Related, how would npc cash handled (Anty, Amaryl, Donald, etc)?

EDIT: And I forgot to put it my suggestions, of course. I actually do have some, as it happens. For investments, I'd suggest some kind of percentage of the cost invested if they turn successful. Say you put in X into a project; a year after, you get that percentage of X as royalties or whichever, perhaps with the proviso you can allocate them to another project (12% of invested value annually, 1% per month?). The rest of the proceeds presumably go towards upkeep, defenses and to pay your staff.

For planar treasuries and such: how about using something along the lines of the dicefreaks suggestion?

Create Items: A deity of rank 1 or higher can create magic items related to her portfolio without any requisite item creation feat, provided that she possesses all other prerequisites for the item. The maximum item value a deity can create is a function of her divine rank (see the table below). The item's cost and creation time remain unchanged, but the deity is free to undertake any activity when not laboring on the item.


Code: Select all
DIVINE  MAXIMUM
RANK    MARKET PRICE
1–5     4,500 gp
6–10    30,000 gp
11–15   200,000 gp (any non-epic item)

The idea would be to use HD instead of DvR. Assign 10,000gp for each HD to calculate the value of treasury, if you need to calculate large purchases at any given time? And say 5% of that would be the cap on any singular items you can spam, for lack of better word? At present level, the numbers make sense to me, though I can't tell how they'd scale. Otherwise, the restrictions on how the items must somehow fit the criteria (relation to portfolio) and Eb's suggestion of a wider theme (holy vs fire) both work. Perhaps the specific items to be produced fall under one and the general needs for off-screen equipment under the other?

[Ebiris]

The idea I had is that our followers get level appropriate gear as a matter of course (or monster standard stuff like astral devas and their holy maces +3) and our resources are for personal stuff and giving occasional gifts to individuals we like - if you abuse it like infinite money to hand out a million cloaks of resistance +3 then it rapidly becomes lame. It's more to have a sort of Batman factor of always having stuff available in our base that can be used for the current problem/task than for infinite money.

Like I mentioned, we could mandate say superior equipment for a large proportion of our followers at a penalty to our resources level, but it's best to be heavily abstracted than scrutinized too closely on the math, I think.

For notable unique NPCs, in addition to claiming stuff from adventuring proceeds as the PCs do, they could perhaps be granted access to the same resource pool as befits their status, considering they've been taking equal shares of adventuring profit all game. Since they're NPCs and under Dune's control there's zero worry of them abusing it, anyway.

I don't particularly care about profits from investments since I gave away my only business when I took over in Sylica, but I guess Seira deserves a profit from her portal monopoly.

[Corwin]

General prc thoughts, as follow-up to my draft post.

-How about using Knowledge: Law or Perform: Oratory (Arguments) as both prereq and class skill (applicant chooses one upon entry into the class)? It wouldn't discriminate between the various arcane casters, and while it would play to their strengths more with the main casting stat, it also wouldn't make them uber at normal diplo. In fact, it'd arguably make them worse than comparable characters since they'd be wasting their skill points on an unrelated skill. It could still be used against the Sense Motive of the target creature.

-The idea is that the 'axiomatic' template only applies to the 'monsters', those who are either 'celestial' or 'fiendish'. For ease of use, I'll follow Dune's suggestion (as I understood it) and keep the fiendish or celestial template of the creatures listed in the Summon Monster spells, with the following exception: it would gain Smite Chaos, and naturally be Lawful, coming from a Lawful plane, as far as fluff goes. Since it's somewhat related, do Celestial creatures have their natural attacks be Good-aligned?

-Not sure whether I should outright limit the benefits of the class which relate to Summon Monster uses to apply explicitly only to non-outsiders. Summoning devils without the original Malconvoker's protections against dealing with evil is kinda silly, and I dunno if there are any LG outsiders worth the bother by the time SM gets them for you. Thoughts?

-The book is being renamed to the Geometry of Gears!

-How about moving the dead caster level up a bit, to lvl2, lvl3 or lvl5? With the change in skill to something not-diplo, it's not as if a single level dip in the class particularly rewards you, or allows those with high diplo/bluff to auto-extend Summons.

[Anastasia]

Query: When you two chatted about wealth on IRC, you were talking about a White Wolf system of wealth. How does that work?

[Corwin]

In a nutshell, it says that you have 'resources' of 0 to 5, where each step up represents a very large growth in resources available to you. Next, it assigns costs to equipment both mundane and superior (ie magical/masterwork, say) using the same numbers. From that point on, it is a simple matter of comparing the equipment cost to the resources you have. If you are Resources 4, you can easily spam Equipment 0-3. If you buy Equipment 4, your Resources drop to 3. You simply cannot afford Equipment 5.

The stated goal of this is that it's not a game about counting gold or planning your household budget, so it basically streamlines it.

[Anastasia]

I'd probably want more than 5 ranks, but I get the idea.

[Anastasia]

General prc thoughts, as follow-up to my draft post.

-How about using Knowledge: Law or Perform: Oratory (Arguments) as both prereq and class skill (applicant chooses one upon entry into the class)? It wouldn't discriminate between the various arcane casters, and while it would play to their strengths more with the main casting stat, it also wouldn't make them uber at normal diplo. In fact, it'd arguably make them worse than comparable characters since they'd be wasting their skill points on an unrelated skill. It could still be used against the Sense Motive of the target creature.

That works. There's no Knowledge: Law but it suits Mechanus, so if you want it as fluff, why not?

-The idea is that the 'axiomatic' template only applies to the 'monsters', those who are either 'celestial' or 'fiendish'. For ease of use, I'll follow Dune's suggestion (as I understood it) and keep the fiendish or celestial template of the creatures listed in the Summon Monster spells, with the following exception: it would gain Smite Chaos, and naturally be Lawful, coming from a Lawful plane, as far as fluff goes. Since it's somewhat related, do Celestial creatures have their natural attacks be Good-aligned?

Celestial creatures lack the good subtype, so their natural attacks do not count as good aligned. This also applies to fiendish, anarchic and axiomatic creatures. The exception is using smite good/evil/law/chaos, which does count. (See houserules on smites.)

-Not sure whether I should outright limit the benefits of the class which relate to Summon Monster uses to apply explicitly only to non-outsiders. Summoning devils without the original Malconvoker's protections against dealing with evil is kinda silly, and I dunno if there are any LG outsiders worth the bother by the time SM gets them for you. Thoughts?

I'd have to look at the summoning lists, though I do know good outsiders are thinner on the ground than evil ones.

-How about moving the dead caster level up a bit, to lvl2, lvl3 or lvl5? With the change in skill to something not-diplo, it's not as if a single level dip in the class particularly rewards you, or allows those with high diplo/bluff to auto-extend Summons.

I'd rather have it and get the dead level out of the way. This isn't a huge deal though since she'd be focusing in the class, so whatever works.