#poor man has 11 AC without his mage armor

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: The Lost Prince

True Neutral Eldest of Forgotten Things, Sadness, and Solitude

Domains: Knowledge, Madness, Nobility, Repose. Subdomains: Ancestors, Insanity, Martyr, Memory.

The First World: Realm of the Fae, pg. 26~27

Obedience: Write down a memory on a piece of paper and then burn it. This must be a memory you’ve never used for this purpose or told anyone about. Benefit: You gain a +4 sacred bonus to AC and CMD against attacks of opportunity provoked by moving out of a threatened space.

This is one of the most open-ended Obediences in the game, and one of the easiest to complete. It doesn’t say how long the memory must be, what kind of memory it has to be, how large the paper must be, or if you, personally have to start the fire that burns it. For the sake of being fair to other deities, we’ll say it takes at the least 30 minutes of writing to fill a page with enough memories to satisfy the Lost Prince. The easiest way to think about it would be to view it as a diary--in fact, a diary is perfect. Fill a page with what you did the previous day, tear it out, and then burn it. Once a day, every day, until you need a new book.

The god of the boastful, the Lost Prince is not. A character that brags about their accomplishments will quickly find themselves without any memories to sacrifice to the melancholy fae, forcing them to keep on the down-low if they wish to have enough memories for tomorrow’s ritual. With that small downside aside, though, the Lost Prince holds the trophy for having one of the easiest Obediences to both perform and keep a secret. Who would question the nervous loner’s tendency to scribble in their diary? Who would bat an eyelid at a writer apparently growing frustrated with their stories before tearing them out and throwing them into a fire? The Lost Prince’s Obedience is also notable for being doable just about anywhere that’s not underwater or in an airless vacuum. No matter how deep and dank the dungeon, so long as you have access to ink, paper, and flame, you can perform your service to your god.

The benefit is also fantastic. It’s somewhat boring, but +4 AC when scooting your potentially-fragile butt out of some horror’s melee range is a (literal) godsend for just about anyone not wanting to take extra bruises in melee. It’s especially good when you consider that it’s strictly better than a feat that already exists--Mobility--and it can be taken by anyone without needing the fiddly Dex and Dodge prerequisites that Mobility does.   

As mentioned before, the Eldest do not possess the average Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel spread, and use the Feysworn Prestige Class. The Feysworn Prestige Class can be entered at level 6; if taken as early as possible, you get the Boons at character level 8, 11, and 14 instead of 12, 16, and 20.

Boon 1: Knowledge of the Lost. Gain Identify 3/day, Locate Object 2/day, or Crushing Despair 1/day.

While Identify and Locate Object are both good spells when you’re on a quest for magical items, you’ll rarely need either of them more than once a day. That being said, have you recently found a forgotten hoard of treasure? Because if so, three Identifies will likely save your party a lot of pain (and cause the DM a little sadness) by sniffing curses out of the suspiciously attractive weapons, armor, and equipment. That being said, there’s also the potential to simply use Identify as a makeshift Detect Magic to spot magical traps or incoming enemy mages before the rest of the party sees them.

Locate Object is useful in situations where your party’s own belongings are stolen, though savvy enemies will likely place your goods in lead vaults, ruining the spell’s effectiveness. Against foes who don’t know about the spell, though, it makes tracking them trivial and turns you into something like the Terminator, carefully following behind them as you trace their every move.

Crushing Despair won’t win a combat by itself, but it can certainly get the odds more in your favor, especially with its lengthy duration (1 min/level). Since there’s no obvious evidence that you cast the spell yourself, hurling it into a crowded area to crush a whole crowd’s emotions at once during, say, an impassioned speech from someone you dislike, or during an enemy’s attempt to rally their troops, can do a lot more damage to morale than it would simply being cast in combat.

Boon 2: Forgetfulness. 3/day as a standard action, you may alter a target’s memory as if using Modify Memory. The casting time is always 1 standard action, regardless of how much or how little memory you alter. By expending 2 uses of this ability, you may alter up to 1 hour of the subject’s memory. By expending all three uses, you may alter up to 24 hours of the subject’s memory.

Now THIS is a power with some seriously sinister roleplaying potential! From 80 feet away (when you first get the power), in under six seconds you can simply rewrite the last five minutes of someone’s life if they fail the saving throw. Again, spell-likes have no obvious signs they’re being used, so someone having their brain scrambled has no idea where it’s coming from!

There are lots of uses for this power, both insidious and benign. Have you been barred from entering a plot location? No, you haven’t! Because the doorman clearly remembers you showing him your IDs saying you were allowed in! Embarrassed yourself in front of a party member? In front of an official you can’t afford to be embarrassed around? No, you didn’t! Because you’ve just erased whatever the awful moment was from their mind. Has an ally of yours experienced an event they wish they could forget? Well, you can help with that. Did you just kill everyone in a room and leave one of them alive? Well, thank god you just saved this person’s life from a horrible monster that slaughtered their comrades! Most combats are over in less than thirty seconds, after all.

And of course, note that you don’t have to erase their current memories. If you have an objective in mind, you can overwrite, edit, or erase VERY old memories in their heads, wiping out minutes from yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, or a decade ago. If the target is unwilling to have their mind tampered with, this power pairs well with any ability to delve into their thoughts, letting you sift through and cherrypick moments to edit... And this power becomes even scarier when you pour more juice into it, wiping out, editing, or blotting through hours or even a full day’s worth of memories at a time. Having the ability to steal an entire day from someone is a terrifying power to have, and easy to abuse once you’ve learned all the ins and outs of the ability... But if you’re Evil (or at least Chaotic), you probably don’t have to worry about that. Wipe away!

Boon 3: Absolute Solitude. Once per day, you may cast Imprisonment as a spell-like ability.

As I covered back with Shivaska, Imprisonment is an immensely powerful Save-or-Suck effect because only Freedom, another level 9 spell, can counter it. Anything else, even the otherwise all-solving Wish and Miracle, can’t undo it. Faesworn also get it at level 14, 2~3 levels before Wizards and Sorcerers can learn Freedom. The biggest downside to using this to instantly end an encounter is that someone who gets bopped below the earth takes all their gear with them. If the poor sap had an important item on them, trying to end an encounter quickly and easily may see you being forced to undertake a different questline entirely to undo the Imprisonment!

A handy spell, and extremely powerful, but one that must be used with caution. Erasing someone like this is tricky business, especially if they have interesting or important items on them. There are many, many ways to creatively combine this with Forgetfulness, though... Such as having the Evil Wizard Man’s #1 henchman suddenly recall that your party happens to be the Evil Wizard Man’s best friends, and that the Evil Wizard Man decided to teleport away to handle business on another world, beyond the reach of divination, never to be seen again and leaving his best friends in charge of everything.

It’s still scary how powerful overwriting someone’s memories can be, if you’re creative enough. It’s a hell of a get-out-of-jail free card, especially when the one person who resisted your spell mysteriously went missing...

You can read more about the Lost Prince here.

#Spiritual Spotlight #Neutrality Notes #Pathfinder #Dungeons and Dragons