The Entropic Shard
I promised earlier to post the "Favored of the First Ones" templates that came up in my game, but given the experience of the "artifact list" and "Planar Edifices" posts, I'm going to do this list in a piecemeal fashion rather than try to make one post containing all of them. This is partly because these things, being templates, are rather long anyway, and also because that way it'll bump the thread when I post a new one.
But, this was the first one, the one that started the whole trend. Two in-game trends led to its creation: one was a setting feature that I haven't yet explained (but will, in a general sense, below); the other was a plotline that developed after a pair of PCs asked precisely the wrong questions at the Cloud of Secrets.
The setting feature is one of the unique features of the Urgic Magic spellcasting classes in my Material world: I explained back on page 1 that the classes don't have much to distinguish them from other casters except for their spell lists, but actually there is one feature that's quite relevant to this post: the fact that, when the spontaneous Urgic casters (who, as mentioned in the post listing Nexus Events above, are always tied to one of the ten Sources at 1st level and are forever after bound to that Source) hit certain levels, they gain special templates which are supposed to represent their bodies being partly (or wholly) "taken over" by energy from their chosen Source. In the case of Raithe's PC, named Moiranna (he's named her more than once, so I'll feel free to), she used the Negative/Entropic Source and was therefore set for two templates. At 20th level, she gained the Shadow Creature template, and then at 38th, she gained the special "Entropic Apotheosis" template which is called Cthonic. Now, each of the ten Sources has a specific pair of templates for this class feature; one granted at 20th, the other at 38th.
The relevant factor about these templates is that the 38th-level "Source Apotheosis" templates were designed after I had the IH, and in fact were specifically designed to look a lot like hyper-specialized DR 3 templates. A mortal character getting one of these would get a tremendous power boost compared to a pure-mortal character of another class, but to divine characters, the Apotheosis templates are by and large weaker than what they'd get as gods anyway- so nothing to write home about (just a couple of extra Divine Abilities really). This, too, was by design; I wanted these to be a sort of "introduction to godhood" set of things to get the players excited by the prospect of questing for Immortality.
But once the PCs started popping up to godhood left and right, this presented a rather obvious extension of the idea to me (Raithe and a couple of other players did too, in fact, though I'd thought of it myself before any of them suggested it in a game session): if the Sources can create these "godhood lite" templates that sort-of mimic DR 3, why could there not also be templates designed for
divine Urgic casters to gain, which would mimic Sidereal existence in much the same way? This is where the idea for the Entropic Shard began- it in fact turned out to be such a template.
But, on to the second catalyst- the plot. What happened was this: one day, at the Cloud, the endlessly inquisitive PC god of Secrets made the mistake of asking one too many questions about the Far Realm and Who (or more to the point, What) ruled it. I decided that his questioning had succeeded in actually waking up Thought, just a little bit, and that the crazy First One would do something crazy in response. Thought broke off a piece of itself- a sort of Seed of its own personality and power- and implanted it inside the god of Secrets. Two other PCs were there at the time, and I told them that they saw a wave of green light (green being a color particularly associated with the Far Realm in my game) expand out from the Seeded character and vanish into the mists, as well as the character's eyes flash green briefly. He seemed fine, but one of the two PCs just wouldn't let it go and asked pointed questions of the Cloud to try and find out what had just happened. Naturally, this got
him Seeded too, immediately afterward. The third PC (who as it happens was Moiranna, though that's not relevant to the plot here) got smart and decided to avoid that line of questioning in the future.
But, here was a very interesting thing, I thought to myself. The First One has broken off pieces of Itself to sort of "possess" these two characters when it suits It, but why go to all this trouble at all? I already had in mind, at this time, that I wanted to eventually have the Demiurge wake up and start the process of consuming the Sidereals, so the obvious answer here was that Thought was- on some level- dimly aware of this impending doom and wanted to hide pieces of Itself away somewhere to perhaps survive in some form after the Demiurge chomped It.
Then I hit on the idea that if Thought did this, why couldn't (or wouldn't) the other five? Six First Ones, six PCs- and though two had already been "Seeded," thus creating a sort of game of "musical Seed-chairs" for the First Ones, I realized that it could make for a spectacular campaign touring the various cosmoses and deciding which First Ones to save pieces of. The players would decide who got which Seed, in the end, and therefore also which First One was eventually left out (in the end, for the record, Time was the one they never got a Seed from- though that didn't matter given how things turned out). So I pulled a few railroady plot-points and connived to get the PCs out into the Far Realm, and then later (due to a poorly-worded navigational divination, not that they realized at the time
why it was badly worded, tee hee
) into the Pure-Spirit cosmos, where they got the second Seed. And Metatron, being the kindly Entity It is, actually explained to the PCs exactly what was going on and why It had done this.
But this leads us back to Moiranna, and Entropy- because she was the next one to get Seeded. And here, we return to the old idea of the "mini-Sidereal" Urgic-Magic template, because I had decided two things about Entropy if the PCs actually did try to get a Seed of It instead of leaving It to be the odd First One out. First, Entropy would not send a mere Seed, but would in fact largely (or wholly) consume the Seed-carrier in the process; and second, since this made Entropy the "most expensive" First One in terms of what it would cost to actually get the Seed, it would not be fair to not grant some sort of reward for following through with it.
Moiranna followed through, all right- she got Entropy's attention by
Gating to the heart of the Negative Energy Plane, where it was closest to the Pure-Entropy cosmos, and there committing suicide by Detonating her QP after supplicating Entropy and trying to get Its attention. A brief digression to explain this method of suicide: this was something I had borrowed from the old Primal Order line; basically it means that the deity in question "sets" all her quintessence to explode all at once- every single Quintessence Point creates a miniature explosion. It's a chain reaction: once started, there is no stopping it, and
all of the deity's QP are consumed in the process. It is therefore invariably suicidal, but the point of doing it is the hope that in the process the deity can take its enemies with it: I ruled that since each QP explodes, the process of Detonation deals 1 die of damage per QP. I never specified which die, but face it: a Lesser Deity with 2,000,000 QP would probably not be unhappy dealing 2,000,000d3 damage (even if a more standard 2,000,000d6 would be better).
But Moiranna wasn't trying to kill anything except herself: she deliberately sacrificed herself to Entropy with the intent of drawing Its attention and favor. And Entropy answered. Through the hole in the cosmic fabric that had been torn open by the massive blast, Entropy sent a tiny portion of Its own mighty dark essence to see what was what- and that tiny piece took the remaining patterns left in the still-Detonating quintessence to give Itself a form. Thus, It formed Itself into an essentially perfect copy of Moiranna, right down to the smallest detail, like the "Ilia-probe" created by V*GER in
Star Trek: the Motion Picture. But since the copy, the Shard of Entropy, was literally a piece of the Greater Being, It had extra powers that the original Moiranna had not had.
And thus, we arrive at the template itself. I'll just note the appearance changes here and then move on to the "How to Create an Entropic Shard" section, since anybody actually using this template in their own games would naturally want to tweak it. This template was designed with the assumption that my own table of divinity is being used in the game, so it assumes a great deal more hit dice and LA/CR than would be appropriate to a game using "core Ascension" as we called it in my game.
The Entropic Shard creature still resembles its previous form, but under normal circumstances looks like a simple hole in the world- a perfectly black, dark region- which happens to be shaped exactly like the original character, except for the eyes which are twinkling points of brilliant white light set into the whole as stars in an endless night sky. The Entropic Shard emits absolutely no smell, and its voice sounds oddly distorted as if by several echoes at once that are slightly out of synchronization with the original voice.
Creating an Entropic Shard
"Entropic Shard" is an acquired template that can be applied to any deity of at least Divine Rank 4 which has the Cthonic template and at least 100 caster levels as a [spontaneous caster of Entropic-Source Urgic Magic]. The abilities from this template overlap (do not stack with) those from the Cthonic and Shadow Creature templates the deity gained with [caster] levels. It uses all of the deity's abilities and statistics, except as noted below.
[Quick side note for adaptation to other games: it's probably not necessary to link this solely to Urgic Magic or the Cthonic or Shadow templates. Honestly, any creature of 100 HD and at least DR 4 would do, if it sacrifices itself to Entropy in an effort to gain Entropy's favor, and the First One actually decides to bestow said favor.]
Size and Type: The deity's size and type do not change further. [Important note here! I made this decision because it seemed the most appropriate thing, to keep the character as an Outsider rather than Undead. However, if the Umbrals are supposed to be type Undead rather than Outsider, then this should probably change the character to Undead instead.]
Hit Dice: The deity does not gain any extra HD, but its hit dice change to d100s for all current and future hit dice. The deity continues to gain maximum hit points per hit die, as standard for its Divine Rank. Finally, the deity gains bonus hit points per hit die equal to its CHA modifier (to offset the loss of CON- see below).
Speed: The deity's speed values change to 10 times its original speeds (that is, the base speed values it had without divine or other templates).
AC: The Entropic Shard has a deflection bonus to AC equal to its CHA bonus (minimum +1), an insight bonus to AC equal to its INT bonus (minimum +1), and natural armor equal to ¼ its total hit dice.
Attack: The Entropic Shard gains a +24 insight bonus on all attack rolls.
Damage: All attacks made by the Entropic Shard, whether natural attacks or by weapon, gain a +24 insight bonus to damage. This even applies to spells which deal hit point damage, and the bonus applies to each target of any such spell the deity uses (for example, a
Magic Missile spell would deal an extra 24 points of damage to each target, whether or not any target was hit with more than one missile, while a
Fireball would simply deal an extra 24 points of damage to creatures in its area before Reflex saves are rolled). Finally, all of the Entropic Shard's natural attack forms (if it has any) are treated as Epic and Cursed for the purposes of overcoming Damage Reduction, and ignore up to 25 points of Hardness (that is, treat any Hardness rating that a target of the Entropic Shard's natural attack has, as if it were 25 points less than its base value).
Special Attacks: An Entropic Shard retains all special attacks it had before, and gains the following:
- Abrogate (Su): [Since different people likely play this ability differently, I'm cutting out the lengthy description in the original template file and leaving this note instead. This is the ability from Ascension, and since it's such a "chase ability" my players universally gasped or were otherwise shocked when I said Moiranna was getting this.]
- Annihilating Strike (Su): Whenever the Entropic Shard makes a physical attack (whether by a natural weapon, or by using a manufactured weapon), the attack deals an extra 1d6 points of Permanent damage per 16 hit dice of the deity (rounded down, minimum 1d6). Permanent damage can be healed only by using a Limited Wish, Miracle, or Wish spell. A Limited Wish heals one point of Permanent damage. A Miracle or Wish spell heals one point of Permanent damage per level of the caster. Regardless of how much is healed by any such spell, the casting always costs the caster XP (even if the caster has it as a Spell-Like Ability and uses that).
- Entropic Spellcharging (Ex): The Entropic Shard gains a +24 insight bonus on all checks against Spell Resistance.
- Spell-Like Ability: At will- Quickened Gate. The Entropic Shard is able to use Gate as a Swift action, once per round. This even allows the deity to use the Calling function without spending XP, but doing so allows the intended target of the Call a Will save to refuse the summons. Unique beings such as other deities are still under no compulsion to come when Called. [Side note here: my logic for this was that I had told players prior to this event that Entropy was known to be able to travel anywhere It liked, pretty quickly, since It could effectively just "tear holes in Reality" and step through them. Because of this, I also ruled that this special Gate did not depend on use of the Astral Plane, so it could reach planes not connected to the Astral such as the Elemental Plane of Matter.]
Special Qualities: An Entropic Shard retains all special qualities it had before, and gains the following:
- Apostasy (Ex): The Entropic Shard cannot be affected by any alignment based attacks or effects. Whenever an attack, effect, feat prerequisite, class feature, or any other game mechanic checks the Shard's alignment, the Shard is treated as being whichever alignment grants the most benefit or least penalty. For example, the deity can take Monk levels without being Lawful, Barbarian levels even if it is Lawful, takes no damage from either a Holy Smite or Unholy Smite, and gives no reading (up or down) to a Detect Good spell. This applies even if the alignment based attack or effect comes from an immortal of higher divine status- for all practical purposes, the Entropic Shard is beyond alignment.
- Cold Absorption (Ex): The Entropic Shard gains Cold Absorption 500. The first 500 points of Cold damage that hit the deity in a given round heal it instead of hurting it.
- Damage Reduction (Ex): The Entropic Shard gains Damage Reduction 50/Epic and Cursed. A weapon must be both Epic and Cursed (that is, the weapon must have a "bonus" of -6 or lower) to penetrate the Entropic Shard's DR. This replaces any DR granted by the Shadow Creature or Cthonic templates, but otherwise does not change the deity's existing DR (if it has any from other sources).
- Entropic Aura (Su): The Entropic Shard continually emits an aura of darkness, actually swallowing light and making nearby light sources dimmer. The aura fills the deity's entire Divine Aura, and is effectively an extra effect added on to that Aura which cannot be suppressed or deactivated. Within that range, all light sources are reduced in intensity by 50% (as though under the effect of the psionic power Control Light). Among other effects, this negates any damage the light would normally deal to any creatures within the aura; for example, a Derro within the Aura would not lose CON even in full sunlight, since (within the aura at least) the sunlight is effectively no longer "full." It also allows the character to use its Shadow Blend ability (gained with the Shadow creature template) at will, no matter what the local illumination conditions would normally be. The Entropic Aura also causes extreme bad luck to befall creatures other than the deity within its radius. Enemies of the Entropic Shard take a -24 penalty to all rolls while within the Aura, and all Luck bonuses to rolls are negated (whether they would be granted to enemies or friends, though the Entropic Shard is allowed to choose certain Luck bonuses to allow, so the deity can choose to not affect allies if desired). Effects and abilities which simulate luck by allowing a creature to reroll the dice allow one less reroll than normal if used within the Entropic Aura; in many cases (for example, the power granted by the Luck Domain) this renders the power useless.
- Entropic Senses (Ex): All of the deity's senses expand to 10 times their base range.
- Horrific Presence (Su): The deity's Entropic Aura is extremely disturbing to all creatures (living or otherwise) that are not immune to fear. Creatures with less than 3 INT are automatically Hostile to the deity as soon as they enter the Aura, whether by force or otherwise; however, they are also Panicked automatically and therefore do not attack unless prevented from moving away from the Entropic Shard. Creatures with less than 1/4 the Entropic Shard's hit dice are actually paralyzed with fear, rendered unable to move, until the Entropic Shard's aura is no longer in contact with them. Creatures with 3 or more INT must make Will saves (DC = 34 + half the Entropic Shard's HD + its CHA modifier) or also become immediately Panicked, including being paralyzed with fear if their HD is low enough. They are not necessarily Hostile, but any Diplomacy checks the Shard uses on them have a -50 penalty due to the overwhelming horror.
- Superior Spell Resistance (Ex): The Entropic Shard gains SR equal to 34 + its hit dice. Furthermore, all spells used against the deity must check this special SR twice in order to function; if either check fails, the spell fails to overcome the SR at all.
Saves: The Entropic Shard gains a +24 insight bonus to all saves.
Abilities: Change as follows: STR +60, DEX +36, CON -, INT +60, WIS +60, CHA +72. The deity loses its CON score, but uses its CHA modifier in place of CON for all checks which would normally use CON. The deity also gains bonus hit points per hit die using the CHA modifier, instead of CON.
Skills: The Entropic Shard gains both Maven and Omnicompetent, if it did not already have them; all skills are raised to their maximum possible ranks by hit dice. Furthermore, the deity gains a +24 insight bonus on all skills.
Challenge Rating: Same as the deity +53.
Level Adjustment: Same as the deity's Level Adjustment +80.
Before moving on to the next post, I'll remark that this template- and the others that came later based on the same idea- were essentially intended to be "KR-3 Lite" in the same manner that the Urgic Source Apotheosis templates were supposed to be "DR 3 Lite." This will become more obvious as I detail the others.
I'll also mention that this template grants an insight bonus (which should properly be the domain of Thought rather than Entropy), because I wanted this template to grant
bonuses instead of radiating "null penalties" the way Entropy usually does- and so I had to pick one. Insight seemed the most appropriate, under the circumstances.
But more often, I threw whatever monsters at them that I thought I reasonably could from the IH Bestiary or other sources. They fought several Nexus Dragons, for example, and a Neutronium Golem, and I used guidelines from the Bestiary to create several opponents of similar level that weren't actually in the book such as the Eye of Daath (an Inevitable on a level similar to a Seraphim) or Pandorym (from the Elder Evils book, though the PCs actually skipped the cosmos before facing this thing so I never actually used the stats for it). I also threw Macrobe and double-Macrobe Vermin at one party, which usually proved to be relative pushovers- they're very over-CR'ed since they can't (by the rules) take feats, or other important things such as Divine or higher Abilities.
But that was one of the little mysteries that always had me wondering. It's nice to finally have some idea. I couldn't help but comment.
