paradox42's crazy cosmology

[paradox42]

The Karmic Messiah

So, after the Goddess of Catastrophe became a Material Nucleus, the guy carrying the Seed of Metatron was determined to prove that Metatron could be cajoled into increasing the "size" of that Seed, so as to turn it into a full Shard template. He started with arguments along the lines of, look what Matter just did, do you want to let Evil have something so powerful go unchallenged?, but got nowhere except into a meditative state which he maintained for three days while the PCs explored the Matter cosmos and figured some things out (like the spell which could get them home).

But here I revealed a bit of plot background, namely my concept of how First Ones fight. See, if these great Beings essentially tie up most of the QP in Reality, and everything the Demiurge would have if it were awake, then how exactly do they go about jockeying for position, taking over each others' territories, and so on? I decided that it was essentially a giant game of one-upmanship, and that the Seed of Spirit was about to make a try at scoring a point at Matter's expense. So I had the player contemplate the various Elements, and search for one that could be argued as being "pure" or "good" in some manner: the point being that if he succeeded, and managed to argue how even the Purity of Matter's own cosmos contained a smidgen of Good amidst the Ultimate Evil, then Metatron would have Its "score" and would reward the PC with a Shard template.

He did eventually find something, and argued its essential Goodness convincingly, so Matter howled in pain and fury as some of Its Quintessence went over to Spirit. The players thus learned that, even in the face of total destruction, the First Ones were continuing their great game- and they also gained valuable insight into how that game functioned. But the PC who had carried the Seed of Spirit was directed by that Seed to create a new Elemental avatar, using that one Good element, and as soon as he did so he got his Shard template. He became the Karmic Messiah.

Creating a Karmic Messiah

"Karmic Messiah" is an acquired template that can be applied to any deity of at least Divine Rank 4 which has a Good alignment. A Karmic Messiah resembles the deity's former manifestation, but has highly reflective, silvery, chrome-like skin. The deity also gain a pair of (similarly silvery) feathered wings, like most angels have. It uses all of the deity's abilities and statistics, except as noted below.

Size and Type: The deity gains the Good subtype if it did not have it already.
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.
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). The character also gains a Fly speed of 6750 feet/round (equal to the speed of sound in a typical Material Plane at sea level) with Perfect maneuverability.
AC: The Karmic Messiah gains a +24 sacred bonus on AC.
Attack: The Karmic Messiah gains a +24 sacred bonus on all attack rolls.
Damage: All attacks made by the Karmic Messiah, whether natural attacks or by weapon, gain a +24 sacred 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 Karmic Messiah's natural attack forms (if it has any) are treated as Epic and Good for the purposes of overcoming Damage Reduction.
Special Attacks: A Karmic Messiah retains all special attacks it had before, and gains the following:

• Karmic Beam (Ex): As a standard action, the Karmic Messiah may release a beam of judgement which assaults those struck by it with the force of their own guilt and misdeeds (perceived or otherwise). This beam actually removes the target's experience points, dealing "experience damage" of 1d1000 per four hit dice the Karmic Messiah has (minimum 1d1000). If a creature loses enough experience to place it at a lower level, it does not lose the actual level, but instead cannot gain a level or spend any XP to pay for actions that require an XP cost (such as creating magic items, or casting a Wish) until it gains enough experience to climb back above the minimum required to be at its present level. Experience damage is not a wound that can be healed; the only way to get the lost experience back is to gain it through the usual methods such as adventuring.
• Karmic Spellcharging (Ex): The Karmic Messiah gains a +24 sacred bonus on all checks against Spell Resistance.
• Specular (Su): The Karmic Messiah's reflective skin gives enemies of the deity an exact image of the attacks they direct at it, even to the point of causing them the same pain they inflict upon the Karmic Messiah. Whenever the Karmic Messiah takes hit point damage from an attack, the attacker suffers an amount and type of damage identical to what the Karmic Messiah suffered (after subtracting any resistances or Damage Reduction the Karmic Messiah applied to reduce the damage). Any resistances or Damage Reduction the attacker has does not apply to this reflected damage- only the Karmic Messiah's resistances and Damage Reduction apply. Whatever pain a creature deals the Karmic Messiah is returned upon the attacker exactly as the Karmic Messiah received it. The attacker is allowed a Fortitude save (DC equals half the Karmic Messiah's HD + the Karmic Messiah's CON modifier) for half damage, but no other resistance or immunity can protect against the damage reflected by this ability.
• Spell-Like Ability: At will- Quickened Unbinding. The Karmic Messiah is able to use Unbinding as a Swift action, once per round. Furthermore, unlike the normal spell, the Karmic Messiah's Unbinding can free creatures bound into service, giving them a chance to break the contract that binds them without suffering any backlash that would normally ensue. (Creatures which do not want to break the contract or leave the service are not required to do so.) Even control effects with a Permanent or Instantaneous duration, such as Monstrous Thrall or Mindrape can be undone by this Unbinding, though in any such cases the Karmic Messiah must pay any XP costs normally accrued by the effects which can normally end such permanent controls. If the permanent effect lists no spells, powers, or abilities which can negate it, then the Karmic Messiah must pay 100 XP per hit die of the victim being released, or 100 XP per caster level of the effect being Unbound, whichever cost is greater.

Special Qualities: A Karmic Messiah retains all special qualities it had before, and gains the following:

• Damage Reduction (Ex): The Karmic Messiah gains Damage Reduction 50/Epic and Evil. If the deity already had existing DR of the "/Epic and Evil" type, then that DR is increased by 50 instead.
• Electricity Absorption (Ex): The Karmic Messiah gains Electricity Absorption 500. The first 500 points of Electricity damage that hit the deity in a given round heal it instead of hurting it.
• Holy Messiah (Su): All beings with any Good alignment (whether Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic) instinctively recognize the Karmic Messiah as an enlightened being worthy of respect and admiration, and will not under any circumstances attack the Karmic Messiah (not even when Dominated or otherwise controlled by a non-Good-aligned entity). It is still possible for them to harm the Karmic Messiah through accidental causes (for example, blowing up a barrel of oil that the Karmic Messiah happens to be hiding behind), but they will never willingly cause harm to the deity and will in fact go out of their way to avoid doing so. Beings with equal or more Divine Ranks than the Karmic Messiah are immune to this effect, and may attack the deity normally.
• Spell Reflection (Ex): The Karmic Messiah gains SR equal to 34 + its hit dice. Furthermore, all spells used against the deity and which fail this check are reflected back at the caster, if the Karmic Messiah was the only target. If the Karmic Messiah was only one of several targets, then only the portion of the effect which targeted the Karmic Messiah is reflected back on the caster. In either case, the Karmic Messiah is unaffected by the reflected spell, just as with normal Spell Resistance.

Saves: The Karmic Messiah gains a +24 sacred bonus to all saves.
Abilities: Change as follows: STR +36, DEX +36, CON +48, INT +36, WIS +72, CHA +60.
Skills: The Karmic Messiah 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 sacred bonus on all skills.

Challenge Rating: Same as the deity +53.
Level Adjustment: Same as the deity's Level Adjustment +80.


It was difficult coming up with a "chase ability" for this one, since the most obvious ones were clearly more appropriate to First Ones other than Spirit, but eventually I settled for two abilities which although not "chase"-like would still be considered cool. The Karmic Messiah was intended to be mainly defensive in nature, as befits the Ultimate Good it's supposed to be derived from, so I settled on the above- Specular and Holy Messiah with Karmic Beam for the effect (and given that it would have no appreciable effect in combat, since it's incapable of removing real hit dice or actually harming its target physically, this too fits the "defensive" profile in a way). I fudged a bit by adding the Mach 1 flight capability, but decided that if any of the Shard templates should offer the deity real movement at the speed of sound, it would be the one that gives the deity wings (whether or not it already had them, mind you- it would be possible for an already-winged deity to become four-winged this way). Given that the character who got this template was the party tank back when they were young gods just out to find their place in a big (central) cosmos, and that he ended up never using any powers except Specular, I think this one worked out rather well from a game perspective.

 

[paradox42]

The Fated Emissary

The last First One to provide the PCs with a Seed- as with Entropy and Matter, in fact a full Shard- was Fate. The PCs traveled to her cosmos, arriving in the 4th Edition "section" when their spell disgorged them, a fact they swiftly corrected by tearing open a planar hole into the Shadowfell and heading for friendlier (read: 3.5 edition) territory. Eventually they arrived in a cosmos that looked reasonably familiar, and there began the quest to find Fate.

In this version of the cosmos, I decided that the "flip side" of the Outlands would be called Fantastica, and the manifestation of Fate ruled it- and from it the rest of the multiverse (and in fact the entire cosmos) as the Childlike Empress. Yes, I used The Neverending Story to inform my game here- and eventually the PCs did their part by finding Fate and giving her what the story required of them. After they did this, they had a long and frank conversation with the First One, and she revealed to them several things they hadn't previously considered- for example, why the Demiurge was so nasty, what it was missing, how things could have gone differently for them on this long quest of theirs to gather Seeds of the First Ones- things like that. And in the end, the Goddess of Diplomacy- the last un-Seeded PC in the party- asked Fate for a piece of herself similar to that which had been given to Moiranna and the Goddess of Catastrophe.

Fate answered by giving her new Seed-carrier the amulet of wishes, the AURYN, and told her to make three wishes using it. The idea here was that I would use the PC's Wishes to influence the template that she eventually got- you'll get an idea of what I had in mind when I give the full details. But in the end, she wished for: (1) "good luck on all of the beings in this realm that helped me along in my story;" (2) "for [the PCs' homeworld]'s safety should the Demiurge awaken;" and (3) "for the safety of [the homeworld]'s inhabitants, should the Demiurge awaken." The PCs ended up in empty Astral space, with the AURYN gone from about the character's neck, but still she could feel it somehow with- perhaps within- herself.

And so we come to the Fated Emissary- the one template of this type that I didn't give an appearance change to- because I honestly couldn't think of one that fit. Her new power was internal, only visible when she wanted it to be- subtle and working in the background much like the First One herself (and not incidentally, the character who got the template as well; she had many levels in Void Incarnate by the time she arrived in Fate's cosmos).

Creating a Fated Emissary

"Fated Emissary" is an acquired template that can be applied to any deity with at least 100 hit dice and 4 Divine Ranks, and which has a CHA score of at least 70. It uses all of the deity's abilities and statistics, except as noted below.

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.
Speed: The deity's speed values do not change further.
AC: The Fated Emissary continues to have a deflection bonus to AC equal to its CHA bonus (minimum +1), and natural armor equal to ¼ its total hit dice, but also gains a luck bonus to AC equal to its CHA bonus.
Attack: The Fated Emissary gains a +24 luck bonus on all attack rolls.
Damage: All attacks made by the Fated Emissary, whether natural attacks or by weapon, gain a +24 luck 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 Fated Emissary's natural attack forms (if it has any) are treated as Epic for the purposes of overcoming Damage Reduction. [side note: in campaigns which feature a "Balance" weapon property that acts like Anarchic/Axiomatic/Holy/Unholy but for Neutral alignment, the Fated Emissary should also count as Balanced.]
Special Attacks: A Fated Emissary retains all special attacks it had before, and gains the following:

• Lucky Spellstrike (Ex): The Fated Emissary gains a +24 luck bonus on all checks against Spell Resistance.
• Spell-Like Ability: At will- Quickened Limited Wish. Since this is a spell-like ability, the deity does not have to pay XP to use it under normal circumstances, though some special situations (such as healing Permanent damage) still require paying the XP cost. The character is even able to wish for greater effects than a basic Limited Wish can produce, unlike the standard spell allows, but doing so is dangerous: it allows the intent and wording to be perverted just as a full Wish can be when the caster goes beyond the standard bounds.
• Vexing Wrath (Su): The deity's gaze can curse his or her enemies, bestowing a luck penalty on all such creatures within Close range (25 feet + 5 feet per 2 HD of the deity). Each round this ability is active, all potential targets of this Wrath make Will saves (DC 44 + the deity's CHA bonus + the deity's Divine Rank) to avoid the bad luck for that round, but once one save fails, the others will tend to fail also, thanks to the penalty. The Fated Emissary can activate this ability with a full-round action, but it can be deactivated with a free action. [Side note: This template was always going to have Vexing as its [Effect]'s "damage type," but I used the player's wishes to inform which [Effect] type was granted. In this case, because she wished for the safety of the world and its inhabitants, I decided that she meant to "watch out" for them- and therefore used the Gaze. Lame pun, but true story.]

Special Qualities: A Fated Emissary retains all special qualities it had before, and gains the following:

• Damage Reduction (Ex): The Fated Emissary 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 Fated Emissary's DR. If the deity already had existing DR of the "/Epic and Cursed" type, then that DR is increased by 50 instead. [Side note: This DR type was already used for the Entropic Shard, but given that Fate is supposed to be Luck, this DR type just fit too well to be ignored here.]
• Divine Presence (Heavenly Soul) (Ex): The Fated Emissary grants the Heavenly Soul Divine Ability to all allies within his or her Divine Aura. This grants them a luck bonus on all saving throws equal to their CHA modifier, or the Fated Emissary's CHA modifier, whichever is greater. [Side note: the real ability in Ascension doesn't allow substitution of the greater modifier like this, but I decided that since this was a Cosmic Ability and was supposed to be granting luck to all the deity's allies, it made sense to allow it in this case. This ability was the result of the wish to grant luck to all those who had helped her- it immediately and obviously pointed to Divine Presence granting some luck-helping ability.]
• Fateful Senses (Ex): All of the deity's senses expand to 10 times their base range.
• Inner Eye (Ex): The Fated Emissary always uses the best die roll in any given situation, rather than rolling the dice normally. However, when using this ability, the character no longer benefits from natural 20s as automatic successes- if a 20 plus the character's modifier does not succeed, then the "roll" still fails. [Side note: this was obviously the "chase ability," and furthermore one I intended to grant this template regardless of what the wishes made using AURYN might be. It was far too obvious not to add.]
• Sonic Absorption (Ex): The Fated Emissary gains Sonic Absorption 500. The first 500 points of Sonic damage that hit the deity in a given round heal it instead of hurting it.
• Spell Reflection (Ex): The Fated Emissary gains SR equal to 34 + its hit dice. Furthermore, all spells used against the deity and which fail this check are reflected back at the caster, if the Fated Emissary was the only target. If the Fated Emissary was only one of several targets, then only the portion of the effect which targeted the Fated Emissary is reflected back on the caster. In either case, the Fated Emissary is unaffected by the reflected spell, just as with normal Spell Resistance.

Saves: The Fated Emissary gains a +24 luck bonus to all saves.
Abilities: Change as follows: STR +36, DEX +72, CON +36, INT +36, WIS +36, CHA +72.
Skills: The Fated Emissary 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 luck bonus on all skills.

Challenge Rating: Same as the deity +53.
Level Adjustment: Same as the deity's Level Adjustment +80.
Alignment: The Fated Emissary's alignment acquires a Neutral component, if it did not previously have one. The decision of whether the Law/Chaos axis balances, or the Good/Evil one, is up to the DM, but usually the Law/Chaos axis shifts in such cases. A deity whose alignment already included a Neutral component does not change alignment from acquiring this template.


That alignment change was something I threw in later, after the game was over in fact, just because it seemed appropriate- the character who got this template was Neutral Good, so it wouldn't have hit her anyway, and of course the game was over by then so it's not like it was going to affect anything.

The Spell-Like Ability granted by the template was also a change from the rest, in that the others all have enhanced 9th-level spells, but this one is only 7th: this is because (A) the only spells which fit the theme of Fate were all Wish-type effects with XP costs, and (B) granting the 9th-level version- effectively granting infinite Wishes- has a special name in Ascension, that being Alter reality. And since this template was already getting Inner Eye, it was not about to get Alter Reality too! Besides those two reasons, the fact that the template was really supposed to be (in some sense) carrying the AURYN inside the character's inner being, even without having the amulet itself, granting some sort of Wish SLA was highly appropriate. So, Limited Wish it had to be.

 

[Raithe the Dreamer]

And in the end, the Goddess of Diplomacy- the last un-Seeded PC in the party- asked Fate for a piece of herself similar to that which had been given to Moiranna and the Goddess of Catastrophe.

It tickles me somewhat that the Goddess of Entropic Magic ended up being such an exemplar for the group, having become the first Shard.

On the subject of the Shard of Entropy, readers may be interested to know that I was later informed that there was more than one sacrifice that would have gotten Entropy's attention (according to paradox42, anyway). The nature of the sacrifice might have altered the template in some way, though in what way was never decided.

As a player, I flirted with both of these, but for Moiranna the Goddess, neither of them were truly options. They might be options for other characters that face a similar choice in other games, so I thought I might include them here, even if paradox42 didn't in his post.

The first would have been to sacrifice an artifact of incredible power to Entropy--in Moiranna's case, this would have been the Initial Enabler itself, described earlier in this thread. This was essentially a non-option to Moiranna. She believed at the time that it was her Fate to "distract" the Demiurge upon its awakening by using its Soul Object as bait, and not only that, it was perhaps more important to her than life itself (as her eventual suicide pretty much proved!).

The other possibility, that Moiranna did not take, would have been to sacrifice *all* of her spellcasting ability. This was, again, not an option. Moiranna's spellcasting was the core of her being (for those of you familiar with the main Dragonlance line, I took a lot of inspiration from conversations between Raistlin and Dalamar in the Legends trilogy here), and was really the one thing more important to her than the Initial Enabler.

That left suicide for Moiranna, as ultimately, the Magic was everything to her, and that meant both the Source of Magic (the Enabler) and her own personal Magic.

 

[Belzamus]

I would just like to mention that I love the quintessence suicide idea, as...many, many of my Immortals tend toward killing themselves in spectacular ways, taking as many enemies as they can with them.

 

[paradox42]

The Independent Thought

After the party was finished with Fate, the God of Secrets- who had specifically been Seeded by Thought/Madness way back at the start of all this (the other character having been Seeded by Thought/Dream) was determined to follow the Metatron carrier and turn his Seed into a full-blown Shard. So, the party next went off to the Pure-Madness cosmos. I asked for what portion the Secrets God (who was manifesting the travel effect) wanted to target, and he said random. I decided there was maybe a 1% chance that he'd end up somewhere he wanted to be, namely close to Thought Itself. I didn't tell them this of course, I just had the party members roll (though only the Secrets guy mattered).

So of course, the percentile dice he rolled came up 01.

For Thought's cosmic throne room, I opted to interpret Lovecraft through the veil of Science!!! and had the party end up in a universe that looked startlingly familiar, with a black sky/background dotted with stars- albeit a lot of stars, because they were right outside what appeared to be a supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy. All things considered, that was what really drew the party's attention to that wreath of a hundred or so planets, orbiting the event horizon inside the inner limit of the accretion disk and maintaining their atmospheres, all despite the clear and obvious impossibility of any real planet being able to do something like that without super-high-tech anti-gravity devices embedded throughout the crust and covering the surface (they should have not only lost the atmospheres to the black hole, but also been torn apart from tidal forces themselves, orbiting that close). The sheer weirdness of that spectacle was compounded by the fact that party members with Cosmic Consciousness- not to mention the Seeds the PCs were all carrying- could hear sounds reverberating through the atmospheres of these improbable worlds. Specifically, musical tones, sounding mostly like wind instruments- flutes, and the like. As if that weren't enough, the same musical tones reverberated throughout the accretion disk, despite the vacuum between the planets (and their atmospheres) and the inner limit of the disk. Those who listened too closely to the MUSIC or used Divination-type effects to try and figure out what was going on, found themselves making Will saves against damage to all three mental ability scores at once, as the sounds somehow "spoke to their souls" and started lulling them to "sleep" or at any rate unconsciousness.

After some time spent on that puzzle, the PCs- using Moiranna's Gate ability since there was no Astral Plane here for regular Gates to work- transported inside the event horizon itself, where they witnessed an even stranger sight that I described thusly: "In this place, Everything is Falling. At the Bottom is an enormous, tentacled Mass that reaches out and grabs things at random from the infalling material, and pulls it down into the main body to be absorbed. THIS looks thoroughly Far Realm to all of you, and is more what you expected when you came here. The enormous Mass is bright green in color. You can sense the MUSIC all around you here- in fact, inside the event horizon it seems to be even stronger than it is in the accretion disk. You are now Falling towards the Mass as well; however, the Mass is still some several AU below you. It appears to be at least as large as a planet, but size is distorted and difficult to judge here. The Mass is apparently a living thing of some sort, though grotesque and abominable in the extreme. Billions of eyes dot is surface in apparently random places, as do millions of tentacles (some miles in diameter and hundreds of miles long)."

Of course, the Mass was Thought, and after a brief but brain-twisting conversation, the God of Secrets got rid of his Seed and got instead an acknowledgement from Thought that he was a separate being. I should mention the significance of this; my conception of this First One and the reason it is so powerful, is that Thought literally is that throughout Reality- wherever there is mind, of any sort, there is Thought. Thought is literally and inextricably bound into every being or entity that has numbers in all three mental ability scores. So, this god actually got Thought to recognize him as an entity separate from Itself, hence the name of the template he got: Independent Thought. This being (as it turned out) so near the end of the campaign, we never actually specified how this template would change his appearance, but I here and now will suggest that it should be something along the lines of how reaching 10th level as an Alienist changes one- in other words, he becomes more "Far Realmy" in look. Turning greener, slimy/greasy, growing a few extra tentacular appendages, that sort of thing. But, on to the rules text.

Creating an Independent Thought

"Independent Thought" is an acquired template that can be applied to any deity with at least Divine Rank 4 and 100 hit dice, which has a non-Lawful alignment. It uses all of the deity's abilities and statistics, except as noted below.

Size and Type: The deity gains the Chaotic subtype if it did not have it already.
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.
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 Independent Thought gains a +24 insight bonus on AC.
Attack: The Independent Thought gains a +24 insight bonus on all attack rolls.
Damage: All attacks made by the Independent Thought, 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 Independent Thought's natural attack forms (if it has any) are treated as Epic and Chaotic for the purposes of overcoming Damage Reduction.
Special Attacks: An Independent Thought retains all special attacks it had before, and gains the following:

• Calculated Spellcasting (Ex): The Independent Thought gains a +24 insight bonus on all checks against Spell Resistance.
• Rotting (WIS) Storm (Ex): As a standard action, the Independent Thought can fill his or her Divine Aura with a field of energy that distorts the senses and thoughts of all creatures caught within it. This deals 1 point of WIS drain per 160 HD of the Independent Thought (minimum 1 point), and furthermore continues to cause the same damage in subsequent rounds (this "repeating" damage continues for 1 round per Divine Rank of the Independent Thought, even if the creature leaves the Storm). Creatures within one move of the outside of the deity's Aura are entitled to Reflex saves (DC 44 + the deity's CHA modifier + the deity's Divine Rank) to leave the field before it reaches full strength, and if successful take only half damage (though any damage taken is repeated in later rounds like normal). Creatures that are not able or not willing to leave the field with a move action, or which fail the save, take full damage. Damage taken in multiple rounds stacks: that is, if a creature takes 1 point of drain in round 1, stays in the field (taking 1 repeating point of drain and 1 point of "new" drain) on round 2, and then finally leaves the field during round 3 (after taking 2 points of repeating drain from rounds 1 and 2, and 1 point of "new drain" for round 3), then all three "repeating drain" effects continue going until they run their course. Once the Storm is active, it stays active until the Independent Thought dismisses it.
• Spell-Like Ability: At will- Quickened Replicate Casting. The Independent Thought is able to use Replicate Casting as a Swift action, once per round. Furthermore, unlike the normal spell, the Independent Thought can replicate up to 9th-level spells with this ability, and replicating a spell that has a casting time of 1 or more rounds still takes the deity just 1 swift action.

Special Qualities: An Independent Thought retains all special qualities it had before, and gains the following:

• Acid Absorption (Ex): The Independent Thought gains Acid Absorption 500. The first 500 points of Acid damage that hit the deity in a given round heal it instead of hurting it.
• Damage Reduction (Ex): The Independent Thought gains Damage Reduction 50/Epic and Lawful. If the deity already had existing DR of the "/Epic and Lawful" type, then that DR is increased by 50 instead.
• Insane Senses (Ex): All of the deity's senses expand to 10 times their base range.
• Legendary Intelligence (Ex): The Independent Thought's INT score is doubled, after all additive bonuses granted by race or templates (including the +72 granted by Independent Thought itself) are added, but before any effects from spells, items, or other temporary effects are considered.
• Psychometry (Ex): The Independent Thought has truly astounding analytical capability, and can literally read opponents at a glance. The deity is able to read the game statistics (including current totals of variable qualities such as hit points and spell slots) of any creature within his or her sensory range, at will.
• Superior Spell Resistance (Ex): The Independent Thought 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 Independent Thought gains a +24 insight bonus to all saves.
Abilities: Change as follows: STR +24, DEX +24, CON +24, INT +72, WIS +72, CHA +72. The deity also gains double INT, due to Legendary Intelligence (see above), but only after this +72 (and any other bonuses from race or other templates, including DR) are added.
Skills: The Independent Thought 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.
Alignment: The Independent Thought changes to Chaotic alignment, if it was not previously Chaotic, but the Good/Evil alignment component does not typically change.


This ended up being the last Shard template created for my game, because the one remaining character who didn't have one (the carrier of Thought/Dream's Seed) decided not to pursue a Shard. Interestingly, that same character was this party's contribution to the Seventh First One, during the Grand Nexus- so in a way, he got far better than a Shard could have been anyway.

 

[Evilmonkeygod]

AND DONE!!
i have read everything here(expect that one post about your last session).

Damn i like a lot of the stuff you came up with. any chance your in the tri-state area? i wanna play in one of your games, lol(or you could run one online )

curious, where does Death, as a force fit it in?? not undeath, or necromancy, but "we're all gonna die one day" Death.

 

[paradox42]

I would just like to mention that I love the quintessence suicide idea, as...many, many of my Immortals tend toward killing themselves in spectacular ways, taking as many enemies as they can with them.

It's occurred to me reading through the old logs where a lot of this stuff (particularly those templates) was discussed, that we came up with a lot of ways to use QP for Cool Stuff that should probably be shared.

I'll probably add another post at some future point listing those, but before then, I'll reiterate that that idea in particular- Detonation- is not something I came up with myself. It came originally from The Primal Order, the first roleplaying supplement published by WotC way back in the early 90s before they'd ever heard of Richard Garfield, let alone gone in with him to make M:tG. The whole series is very cool actually- and although they're difficult to get physical copies of today, they're well worth it for anybody thinking about running playable gods in a game. You can probably also find PDFs online, though I admit that I've never looked since I have physical copies to refer to.

 

[paradox42]

Damn i like a lot of the stuff you came up with. any chance your in the tri-state area? i wanna play in one of your games, lol(or you could run one online )

The answer would depend on precisely which tri-state area you mean- I'm in a tri-state area, being outside Chicago, but not necessarily your tri-state area.

But as for running games online- been there, done that. The entire game this thread is based on, which ran from April 2001 to January 30th, 2010, was done online, in chat rooms on various servers (until we discovered psionics.net, which later became otherworlders and remains that today). Several of the players in those games are people I've never met in person, since they live in (for instance) California, or Britain (yes, we had at least one player from "across the Pond" who stayed up late every Saturday night to play with us), and haven't been to Chicago. That said, there are several players from those games whom I have met in person, despite their living in California, Vancouver, Massachusetts, and various other scattered places, because back in 2006 the ones with money or who lived within driving distance connived to plan trips to Chicagoland all around one week in June. In between walking trips of Chicago and the museums, among other tourist activities I participated in with them, I ran one Paranoia game session for the ones who could make it (one guy wasn't in town yet at the time) at my apartment. A good time was had by all- but of course, it would have to be, since Happiness Is Mandatory (heh heh).

But, the online game is why I still have logs to refer to. Those, combined with a text editor program that has an excellent "Find in Files" search function, are a superb resource that I'm always grateful to have.

curious, where does Death, as a force fit it in?? not undeath, or necromancy, but "we're all gonna die one day" Death.

Other than having various Gods of Death- not the least of which is Azrael, the DR 45 Incarnation of Death- I believe UK's reasoning is that Entropy provides the "universal" force of Death. Certainly, when I referred to the First Ones by abstract "body part" titles, to reference the fact that they're all the underpinnings of the Demiurge, Entropy was nearly always referred to as Death. Time is Structure (or Bones), Fate is Action (or Muscle), Matter is Flesh, Spirit is Voice, Thought is Mind, and Entropy is Doom or Death. The Seventh First One, Evolution, we made the Heart, in the "body metaphor."

OTOH, if you want an actual Sidereal specifically named Death, then I never had one personally- though I believe UK would say that the Old One who rules/is Hades, Thanatos, is supposed to be Death in the Four-Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse sense.

 

[Alzrius]

OTOH, if you want an actual Sidereal specifically named Death, then I never had one personally- though I believe UK would say that the Old One who rules/is Hades, Thanatos, is supposed to be Death in the Four-Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse sense.

Although it's nowhere near as cool as what Paradox would have come up with, I humbly submit my own Death for consideration.

 

[paradox42]

Although it's nowhere near as cool as what Paradox would have come up with, I humbly submit my own Death for consideration.

Right. Have Raithe the Dreamer regale you with tales of how much his PC (and, I suspect, the player himself) hated the Phasmalich villain I used in the divine part of the campaign.