John Cooper
Explorer
NONE SO VILE: DISCIPLES OF DARKNESS III - TORTURED SAVANT
By Aeryn Rudel
Skeleton Key Games/Blackdirge Publishing product number BDPNSVDOD03
17-page PDF, $4.00
None So Vile: Disciples of Darkness III - Tortured Savant (hereafter simply referred to as Tortured Savant for the sake of my typing fingers) is the third in the series of PDFs devoted to truly vile prestige classes and the deities and cults that are tied up with them. This one details a 10-level prestige class devoted to the power of pain, both in inflicting it upon oneself and inflicting it upon others. It has all of the other features of the first two PDFs in the series, but also includes not only a new cleric domain (Agony, quite appropriately) but also three new spells.
The cover, by Erik Nowak, is similar in tone to the first two, only red has been replaced with blue as the primary color. The rest of the features remain the same - the fake leather background, the holy symbol of the new deity (in this case Ixeth the World Flayer, the First God of Pain) - right down to the bloodstains.
Erik also provides the 6 black-and-white interior illustrations (two of which are the same, the holy symbol from the front cover), and I'm glad to report that the creepiness of his work on the first None So Vile PDF is back in full force here. His two illustrations of the NPC, an annis hag tortured savant named Yushalka, are worthy of nightmares: not only does she have the standard level of ugliness common to all hags, but she's split both her upper and lower lips to the nose and chin, respectively, and then folded back the skin and nailed it to her cheeks and jaw with silver nails. Bleagh! There's also a really disturbing portrait of one of her victims on page 11, a poor human who's had the skin peeled back from one side of his face and has only three teeth remaining. I'm particularly glad that his lower body is in shadows, considering the castration/emasculation that Yushalka performs in Aeryn's opening short story sequence! No doubt about it: this is vile material, and the artwork is very well done to fit the mood.
The tortured savant prestige class is ten levels devoted to pain, both of a personal and "sharing-with-others" nature. To even take the first level in the prestige class, the character has to perform some horrific self-mutilation like Yushalka's lip reconfiguration. (Other possibilities provided as examples include removing all of the skin from a limb, cutting off the nose, lips, or ears, or scarring yourself with flame or acid.) All the tortured savant gets in return for this "entrance fee" is a permanent -4 penalty to Charisma and the ability to progress further in the class. (Kind of weeds out the posers I guess, huh?) Other abilities as one progresses through the levels include a pain aura, increasing damage reduction, an excruciating touch, the ability to reflect back damage to the ones inflicting it upon the tortured savant, and an "unbearable embrace" that distills a lifetime of torment into one unendurable moment that pretty much cripples the victim into a pain-filled, mindless husk. Pretty evocative stuff, if you ask me. Once again, I marvel at Aeryn's ability to stay on focus, making all of the class abilities seem perfectly logical given the subject at hand.
There was a comparable number of irritating little errors in Tortured Savant, just as there were in the first two PDFs in the series, but Aeryn's speedily taking care of those. The only real glaring errors I noted - things that will have an effect on the playability of the material presented - was first of all an oversight in one of the new spells that kind of leaves the DM hanging as far as "what happens now?" (It's a spell called gutworm, that summons a larval purple worm inside the victim's stomach and then has it advance to full size in a matter of rounds, bursting out of the victim's body in a splash of gore. However, while the spell description states that a remove disease spell will halt the worm's magical growth, it doesn't state whether that in itself removes the worm, or if the victim is then left with a larval purple worm crawling around in his body cavities, and what kind of damage it does while in there, and how to get rid of it if remove disease doesn't do the trick.) Besides that, there were also a few errors in the NPC stat block, which I'll document here:
The deity provided in this PDF is a bit of a departure, for its history puts it (and two other lesser deities of pain, collectively known as the Crimson Triad) as the rulers of the planet during an epoch of time known as the Reign of Agony, which lasted from shortly after the creation of the world (by a sleepy creation god who immediately thereafter ignored it and went back to bed) until a dwarven mage gathered up a bunch of immortals from another world and had them first overthrow the Crimson Triad and then become the deities we know today. This was my least favorite deity history in the whole series, and it's the one least likely to mesh nicely with any given campaign world; I think it's pretty safe to ignore it in its entirely and just assume that the Crimson Triad (who are cool in and of themselves; I just don't like their full backstory) is a trio of nearly-forgotten pain gods whose ancient servitors were tortured savants. Or heck, for that matter, there's nothing forcing you to tie the tortured savant prestige class into any particular god in the first place; I'm sure there are plenty of pain-based deities in the campaign world who wouldn't mind having a tortured savant or two among their followers.
I was pleased to see the addition of the Agony cleric domain and the three new spells. Of the three, I think my favorite is the lowest-level spell; maybe it's just me, but I think a 2nd-level spell that causes additional damage to a person who just took damage the previous round is a perfectly fitting spell for an Agony domain, and the fact that the spell is called salt in the wound is just too perfect not to love. Besides the problematic gutworm mentioned above, the third spell is flay, which brings up images of "Evil Willow" from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. All three are fine additions to an tortured savant's spell inventory, although I'm sensing a pattern in Aeryn's prestige classes thus far in that this is the third one in a row whose practitioners prefer getting close and personal in melee combat against their foes as opposed to hurling spells from a distance. Not that there's anything wrong with this approach, mind you - it makes for a memorable opponent, and given that tortured savants are likely to be few and far between, that's perfectly acceptable.
Tortured Savant earns an easy rating of a fairly high "4 (Good)." I look forward to seeing others in the series, and for the record, my personal ranking of the three (from favorite to least favorite) are The Ravenous of Agramogg (the first one), then Tortured Savant (the third one), and finally Soul Harvester (the second one). Each one is a good value for those looking to add particularly vile enemies to a campaign.
By Aeryn Rudel
Skeleton Key Games/Blackdirge Publishing product number BDPNSVDOD03
17-page PDF, $4.00
None So Vile: Disciples of Darkness III - Tortured Savant (hereafter simply referred to as Tortured Savant for the sake of my typing fingers) is the third in the series of PDFs devoted to truly vile prestige classes and the deities and cults that are tied up with them. This one details a 10-level prestige class devoted to the power of pain, both in inflicting it upon oneself and inflicting it upon others. It has all of the other features of the first two PDFs in the series, but also includes not only a new cleric domain (Agony, quite appropriately) but also three new spells.
The cover, by Erik Nowak, is similar in tone to the first two, only red has been replaced with blue as the primary color. The rest of the features remain the same - the fake leather background, the holy symbol of the new deity (in this case Ixeth the World Flayer, the First God of Pain) - right down to the bloodstains.
Erik also provides the 6 black-and-white interior illustrations (two of which are the same, the holy symbol from the front cover), and I'm glad to report that the creepiness of his work on the first None So Vile PDF is back in full force here. His two illustrations of the NPC, an annis hag tortured savant named Yushalka, are worthy of nightmares: not only does she have the standard level of ugliness common to all hags, but she's split both her upper and lower lips to the nose and chin, respectively, and then folded back the skin and nailed it to her cheeks and jaw with silver nails. Bleagh! There's also a really disturbing portrait of one of her victims on page 11, a poor human who's had the skin peeled back from one side of his face and has only three teeth remaining. I'm particularly glad that his lower body is in shadows, considering the castration/emasculation that Yushalka performs in Aeryn's opening short story sequence! No doubt about it: this is vile material, and the artwork is very well done to fit the mood.
The tortured savant prestige class is ten levels devoted to pain, both of a personal and "sharing-with-others" nature. To even take the first level in the prestige class, the character has to perform some horrific self-mutilation like Yushalka's lip reconfiguration. (Other possibilities provided as examples include removing all of the skin from a limb, cutting off the nose, lips, or ears, or scarring yourself with flame or acid.) All the tortured savant gets in return for this "entrance fee" is a permanent -4 penalty to Charisma and the ability to progress further in the class. (Kind of weeds out the posers I guess, huh?) Other abilities as one progresses through the levels include a pain aura, increasing damage reduction, an excruciating touch, the ability to reflect back damage to the ones inflicting it upon the tortured savant, and an "unbearable embrace" that distills a lifetime of torment into one unendurable moment that pretty much cripples the victim into a pain-filled, mindless husk. Pretty evocative stuff, if you ask me. Once again, I marvel at Aeryn's ability to stay on focus, making all of the class abilities seem perfectly logical given the subject at hand.
There was a comparable number of irritating little errors in Tortured Savant, just as there were in the first two PDFs in the series, but Aeryn's speedily taking care of those. The only real glaring errors I noted - things that will have an effect on the playability of the material presented - was first of all an oversight in one of the new spells that kind of leaves the DM hanging as far as "what happens now?" (It's a spell called gutworm, that summons a larval purple worm inside the victim's stomach and then has it advance to full size in a matter of rounds, bursting out of the victim's body in a splash of gore. However, while the spell description states that a remove disease spell will halt the worm's magical growth, it doesn't state whether that in itself removes the worm, or if the victim is then left with a larval purple worm crawling around in his body cavities, and what kind of damage it does while in there, and how to get rid of it if remove disease doesn't do the trick.) Besides that, there were also a few errors in the NPC stat block, which I'll document here:
- p. 8, Yushalka, annis rogue 2/cleric 5/tortured savant 4: Technically, the rules as written don't allow her to control/rebuke undead at all, considering that she has a -3 Charisma penalty, and the number of times/day a cleric can do so is 3 + Cha modifier (or, in this case, 0 times/day; there doesn't seem to be a minimum number of times/day). It looks like she spent 94 of 96 skill points, so slap another two points in there somewhere. (Failing any better ideas, I'd bump Intimidate up to +11 to help compensate for the -3 Cha penalty - I'd imagine someone looking as she does would be pretty darn intimidating!) Finally, add "Survival +5 (+7 following tracks)" to her list of Skills [0 ranks, +5 Wis, +2 synergy bonus from Search].
The deity provided in this PDF is a bit of a departure, for its history puts it (and two other lesser deities of pain, collectively known as the Crimson Triad) as the rulers of the planet during an epoch of time known as the Reign of Agony, which lasted from shortly after the creation of the world (by a sleepy creation god who immediately thereafter ignored it and went back to bed) until a dwarven mage gathered up a bunch of immortals from another world and had them first overthrow the Crimson Triad and then become the deities we know today. This was my least favorite deity history in the whole series, and it's the one least likely to mesh nicely with any given campaign world; I think it's pretty safe to ignore it in its entirely and just assume that the Crimson Triad (who are cool in and of themselves; I just don't like their full backstory) is a trio of nearly-forgotten pain gods whose ancient servitors were tortured savants. Or heck, for that matter, there's nothing forcing you to tie the tortured savant prestige class into any particular god in the first place; I'm sure there are plenty of pain-based deities in the campaign world who wouldn't mind having a tortured savant or two among their followers.
I was pleased to see the addition of the Agony cleric domain and the three new spells. Of the three, I think my favorite is the lowest-level spell; maybe it's just me, but I think a 2nd-level spell that causes additional damage to a person who just took damage the previous round is a perfectly fitting spell for an Agony domain, and the fact that the spell is called salt in the wound is just too perfect not to love. Besides the problematic gutworm mentioned above, the third spell is flay, which brings up images of "Evil Willow" from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show. All three are fine additions to an tortured savant's spell inventory, although I'm sensing a pattern in Aeryn's prestige classes thus far in that this is the third one in a row whose practitioners prefer getting close and personal in melee combat against their foes as opposed to hurling spells from a distance. Not that there's anything wrong with this approach, mind you - it makes for a memorable opponent, and given that tortured savants are likely to be few and far between, that's perfectly acceptable.
Tortured Savant earns an easy rating of a fairly high "4 (Good)." I look forward to seeing others in the series, and for the record, my personal ranking of the three (from favorite to least favorite) are The Ravenous of Agramogg (the first one), then Tortured Savant (the third one), and finally Soul Harvester (the second one). Each one is a good value for those looking to add particularly vile enemies to a campaign.
