The Sun Devourers

Click for a larger version, friend!

I really, really like these guys. It's just a basic feature of Aztec mythology that the progenitors of mankind were also skeletal star demons that want to eat people and end the world. I used them in an earlier post as one of the things that will go wrong if you lock up the wrong archangel for too long. Don't lock up archangels or you'll regret it!

Tenebrous Monstrosities

This once placid myconid is now officially Up To No Good.

Fungi and arachnids exposed to concentrated unlight will quickly develop unseemly characteristics. Other creatures sicken and die, but they seem weirdly increased by their exposure.

Any monstrous spider or fungus can be affected. And sure, yeah, there are not a ton of fungal monsters in the monster manual, but the internet has some that you might like.

Once one of the eligible creature types has been irradiated with a dose of unlight, it develops a result from the table below over the course of a day or so. All effects are permanent, and multiple exposures will not result in further change. Also, you may want to give groups of identical abilities off here to keep things simple.

Tenebrous Mutation Table (d10)

1: The creature's intelligence increases to 20 and it's alignment changes to evil.

2: The creature exudes a shroud of inky spores in a 15-foot radius similar to a deeper darkness spell. The spores do not inhibit fungal or arachnid creatures.

3: Any creature struck by the creature's melee attack has their speed reduced to 2 until the end of their next turn as strands of semisolid darkness cling to them and inhibit their movement.

4: The creature's size increases in size until it is huge (10 feet by 10 feet). It gains +50 max hit points and automatically succeeds on the first saving throw it rolls, each encounter.

5: The creature can pass effortlessly through walls and doors of less than a foot in thickness unless they incorporate significant quantities of lead, gold, or another heavy metal.

6: The creature is invisible during the first round of each combat. This isn't an all the time thing, it's more like the unlight kicks in when it gets agitated enough for a fight.

7: The creature permanently bilocates. It occupies two spaces, but is the same creature. Damaging one damages the other, et ceteras. The two creatures can travel any distance apart but will be pulled into other planes together if one passes through a portal or plane shifts.

8: The creature gains resistance (half damage) against spell damage. It can also exhale a 5-foot wide, 25-foot long breath weapon of disintegrating darkness, inflicting 5d6 disintegration damage, Reflex half. It can do this three times per day but not two rounds in a row.

9: The creature grows a horrid mouth full of inky teeth in an unlikely location on it's body. The mouth makes an extra attack with the creature's normal attack bonus, each turn, inflicting something like 2d8 damage on a hit.

10: The creature sprouts a set of asymmetrical wings capable of propelling it through air, water, or interstellar void. It also develops the ability to reproduce via fission and to digest any organic material, if it did not possess those abilities before.

Absinthe and Opium

I'll skip the mini-essay about the inclusion of drugs in the Book of Vile Darkness being related to Monte Cook not being invited to the really good parties.

I have included rules for fantastic versions of two much-storied substances that I feel sure can fit into most games. It is my thought that, although these substances can add gris gris to a campaign, they should not be the focus. Thus, the rules avoid complication as well as I am able.

Addiction: Creatures that are exposed to one of these substances must make Willpower saves of the listed DC or form a habit. A creature with a habit must take a dose of his drug each day or suffer the specified drawbacks.
Each week that a character goes without his substance, he must make a Willpower save against the listed DC in order to shake his addiction. If this check fails, the character will do anything in his power that does not violate his alignment to obtain more of the substance in question. If this check succeeds, the addiction is over, though if he ever takes even a single dose of the substance again, his habit automatically reforms.
Greater Restoration or more powerful magics are required to cure addiction via magical means.

Opium (DC 18, 15gp)

This substance is usually used in a tincture or smoked via apparatuses that avoid applying direct flame to the substance. Opium products such as laudanum (opium dissolved in red wine or alcohol) are prized for their medicinal effects, and when used in conjunction with a Heal check or cure spell, allow the recipient to heal an additional +6 hp. In this case, the recipient must check for addiction.
Opium is also used for pleasure, and is renowned for the strange visions and mental activity that it causes. Each day, a creature with an opium habit may choose to memorize one of the following, which may be used as an extraordinary ability: Detect Magic, Detect Poison, Detect Secret Doors, or Detect Undead. This ability does not resemble magic, and the user may not even be aware that he is acting in an extraordinary fashion when using these abilities.
Once one has an opium habit, one must use daily or else become fatigued. If one goes more than two days without, one instead becomes exhausted. These conditions cannot be ameliorated so long as the habit lasts, except by using opium.

Absinthe (DC 14, 25gp)

The green faerie, the artist's liquor, a distillation containing wormwood and anise, among other things. This is the wizards' drug, reputed to allow men to taste souls, see the future, and hold traffic with fae creatures. When quaffed as a potion, absinthe will function as a potion with the effects of detect invisibility and detect magic at the same time, with a duration of but a single round.
A character with an absinthe habit will enjoy +1 to the DC of his spells, and enjoy a +2 bonus to Charisma-related checks with fae creatures.
When one has an absinthe habit, one must use daily or else become dazzled. If one goes without for more than a day, he instead becomes shaken. These conditions cannot be ameliorated so long as the habit lasts, except by renewed use of absinthe.

Draft: Beyond Good and Evil

This is a piece of draft, but I thought it was worth publishing here, as is, before I codify the whole thing into a PDF or whatever. I'm pretty sure that it's better than Monte Cook's "nipple clamps of agony" or whatever campy schlock he was churning out when he wrote his Book of Vile Darkness. I haven't checked for spelling, style, or game balance yet, so don't be too cruel about that. This part deals with the basic abilities that especially good or evil characters derive from their (im)morality.
~~~
Whether or not you are using alignment rules, there exist stronger spiritual states than those found amongst the populace. A man may be good but not a saint, while a criminal may be evil yet not a pawn of infernal powers. These moral states of being fall into three categories, thus:

State of Innocence: You have an alignment (or perhaps not) but are not yet so strongly moral or immoral as to be spiritually elevated or degenerate. Most creatures fall into this category.

State of Sin: You have willfully committed crimes so great that it is almost impossible for you to make penance. You derive great power from your rejection of morality and indulgence in wickedness.

State of Virtue: You have spiritually perfected yourself, or nearly so, and exist in a morally exalted state. You are filled with righteousness and mindful peace.

Inherently aligned creatures such as celestials and fiends are considered to exist in a perpetual state of virtue or sin, as appropriate, but do not gain any of the benefits listed below --they already have abilities generated by their spiritual state, and are largely incapable of changing their morality. They made their moral choices while still alive, and are now spiritually unchanging.

Pure Virtues
The following are actions that are always morally positive in game worlds, and so much so that they may cause a creature to enter a state of virtue.
-Joining a righteous crusade declared by the head of a good religion, against an evil foe.
-Embarking upon a distant pilgrimage to a major religious site.
-Living a virtuous life and being visited in a sacred vision by good deities or their servants. Often this will happen following one being morally tested, and passing.
-Sacrificing one's life, or attempting to do the same, to save innocents from death.

Mortal Sins
The following are actions that are always morally negative in game worlds, and so much so that they may cause a creature to enter a state of sin. Alas, it is much easier to enter a state of mortal sin than to enter a state of virtue.
-Violently murdering a sentient creature for selfish, earthly reasons.
-Torturing or mutilating a sentient creature for selfish, earthly reasons.
-Violent rape or similarly repugnant sex crimes.
-Desecration of a powerfully consecrated religious site or object.
-The entering of a pact offered by

Changing One's Moral State
When a virtuous or sinful creature reverts to a state of innocence, it loses a level as though it had died and been brought back to life. This may be brought about by grossly violating the general tenets of one's state or by choosing to participate in certain rituals. This does not prevent the adoption of future moral states.

Virtues and Malices by Level
1-3: 1 Minor
4-6: 1 Major, 1 Minor
7-10: 1 Greater, 1 Major, 1 Minor
11-13: 1 Greater, 2 Major
14-16: 2 Greater, 1 Major
17-20: 3 Greater

When one exists in a state of virtue or sin, one draws tangible strength from one's morality or lack thereof. These manifest in the form of virtues and malices, specific benefits that may be chosen. These increase in number and power as one increases in level. Whenever one enters a new bracket, one may re-choose one's virtues or malices.

Minor Virtues

Battle Martyr
Once per day, you may divert an attack aimed at an adjacent creature to you, instead. The attack is treated as though you were its intended target.

Charitable Virtue
You may cast cure light wounds a number of times per day equal to your Wisdom modifier.

Easy Passage
Traveling between this world and the afterlife is getting easier and easier for you. When you lose a level because of being raised (or resurrected, etc), you lose less experience points. Your experience total is still reduced enough to make you a level lower, but you also add 10% of the experience needed to reattain the lost level. Each time you die and are raised or otherwise returned from the dead, this amount increases by 10%, to a maximum of 10% times your CHA MOD or 90% (whichever is lower).

Everyman's Blessing
Once per day, you may cast bless as a move action. You perform this casting as though a cleric of your level and do not suffer a spell failure chance due to armor.

Halo
You enjoy a +1 bonus to your saving throws.

Lakewalker
If you desire, you may walk over liquid or nearly liquid surfaces as though they were solid. This includes water, mud, quicksand, and even magma, though in the last case radiant heat may still be a problem. In the case of rough weather, footing may still be a problem.

Moral Clarity
You enjoy a bonus to your initiative equal to your Wisdom modifier.

Pious Virtue
You enjoy a bonus to saving throws equal to your Wisdom modifier against spells and spell-like effects.


Major Virtues

Above It All
You are so pure that to touch the ground would sully your virtue. You continually walk about two inches off of the ground without generating pressure, allowing you to bypass hazardous terrain such as webbing or spikes, as well as avoid pressure-triggered traps. You are also effectively invisible to the Tremorsense ability, and enjoy a +4 bonus to move silently checks and checks to avoid falling prone (including trip attacks). You still fall if there is nothing beneath you, and can still come in contact with the ground if you are somehow forced to (such as when you are successfully tripped).

Anamaya
Your presence is anathema to lesser illusions. Any invisibility effects of third level or lower are automatically suppressed within thirty feet of you, as are the following spells or spell-like effects: blur, mirror images, displacement, and darkness.

Compassionate Faith
You are healed when you cast any of the cure spells on another creature. In addition to the normal effects of the cure spell upon their target, you are healed 50% of the hp that you restore (round down).

Eternal Light
When you die, your unquenchable spirit finds another body if you are not raised within 24 hours (or after another, specific, span of time chosen by you at the moment of death). You automatically reincarnate yourself, as per the spell. You still suffer all the negative effects of being reincarnated.

Nimbus
You enjoy a bonus to your AC equal to your CHA MOD against attacks from sinful creatures.

Thrice Blessed
Three times per day, you may cast bless as a move action. You perform this casting as though you are a cleric of your character level.


Greater Virtues

Heaven-Bound
You enjoy a permanent protection from evil spell upon yourself. Any effect that plane-shifts you against your will, instead plane-shifts you to a single good-aligned outer plane of your choice (chosen when this virtue is taken).

I Am Become Death
You have much to do among the living, and are not ready to enter the afterlife. When you are raised from the dead by any means, this virtue allows you to permanently and irrevocably lower your CON score by 1 in lieu of losing a level. You cannot use this virtue if you perished from ability damage, nor if your CON score is 1.

Odor of Sanctity
You and any allies within 10 feet of you enjoy a +3 bonus to your saving throws against area of effect spells and breath weapons. Should you perish, this effect remains about your corpse for a week, assuming that your cadaver remains in relatively good condition. If your cadaver is subject to a gentle repose spell, this effect may persist for up to a month.

Petal Step
Flowers bloom in your every footstep, and plant life flourishes in the light of your presence. Every 5' space you enter becomes covered with lush plant or fungal life. Though you are easily tracked, your abundance of life energy fills your spells. Any cure spells that you cast are automatically empowered, per the empower spell virtue.

Radiance
You enjoy a +3 bonus to your saving throws.

Shining Soul
Your maximum hit points increases by your Charisma (not Charisma modifier).

Too Peaceful To Strike
You may cast sanctuary upon yourself as a move action, at will. You perform this casting as though you are a cleric of your character level.


Minor Malices

Butcher of Lives
Your melee attacks permanently mutilate and disfigure. In addition to your normal damage, you semi-permanently lower the target's maximum hit point total by 1. These hit points may only be restored by the following spells: restoration, heal, and regenerate. Keep track of these lost hit points.

Calculated Cruelty
You may use your INT MOD instead of your STR MOD when determining the damage caused by your melee attacks.

Lifedrinker
You are invigorated by suffering. Whenever you threaten a critical hit with a melee attack or touch spell, you gain a number of temporary hit points equal to your level. These hit points fade after an hour.

Malicious Impiety
You enjoy a bonus to saving throws equal to your Constitution modifier against spells and spell-like effects.

Malicious Mutilation
You have brutally disfigured yourself at the behest of evil powers. Your Charisma is permanently lowered by 2, but another ability score of your choice is permanently increased by 1.

Malicious Talons
Your hands have been warped so as to give you a natural claw attack. It inflicts 1d6 damage, threatens a critical hit from 19-20, and has a x3 critical multiplier. Cosmetically, the claws may be bone spurs, iron nails, or even just your normal hands.

Tonic Glutton
You may quaff a potion as a move action. Drinking potions does not cause you to draw an attack of opportunity. You may drink two potions as a standard action that does not draw an attack of opportunity.

Touch of Hellfire
Any time you use an area of effect spell or spell-like effect, or other area of effect ability that inflicts fire damage, it inflicts an additional +5 damage.

Vitriolic Wounds
Any creatures injured by your natural attacks do not heal naturally for the next week.

Who Dares Wins
You enjoy a bonus to your initiative equal to your INT modifier.


Major Malices

Apophatic Existence
You are anathema to divine creatures and their minions. You cannot benefit from divine spells, and are completely immune to them. However, this provides you with a great deal of protection against priestly spells. You suffer only half damage from damage-causing divine spells, and may make a new save each round against any offensive divine spell with a duration. You cannot profess a religion other than those that involve the destruction of all deities.

Aura of Filth
You foul the air around you with pestilence. Spells and effects that restore lost hit points are only 50% effective within a thirty foot radius of you, including on you. Additionally, any creature that is injured by one of your natural attacks must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 plus your level) or suffer a curse. For the next week, spells and effects that restore lose hit points are only 50% effective on the target.

Brimstone
The distinct whiff of brimstone is apparent whenever you are near. You enjoy Fire Resistance 10, or increase any existing fire resistance by 10.

Carrion Curse
You may restore damage to yourself by consuming the freshly dead bodies of humanoids. The bodies must have perished within the past hour. Consuming such a body requires a single minute, be it because you are able to glut yourself at an unnatural rate, or because you sate yourself with the most restorative portions of the body. Each body that you so consume heals five hit points of damage. If you take this malice, you no longer heal naturally over time.

Contaminating Claws
Any medium humanoid slain by your natural attacks raises as a flesh-hungry zombie on the following turn. The zombie is not under your control but will not attack you. Otherwise, it will attempt to kill any living creatures that it can. The DM may find it convenient to use the following abridged/modified statistics:
Zombie: Speed 6, ATT +5 bite, dmg 5, AC 10, HP 20, saving throws +6; suffers double damage from area of effect spells and abilities.

Graveyard Step
Once per day as a standard action you may dimension door to any location within fifty feet. You must not be grappled, swallowed, or entangled, and your starting and destination locations must be upon soil or stone. You are pulled beneath the ground by dozens of undead arms and thrust up by them at your destination location.

Infernal Brand
You are marked with an obviously supernatural symbol, perhaps a demonic mark that emits actual flames, or perhaps a skull symbol that emits unhealthy light. The brand represents that you are the property of otherworldly powers. Outsiders and elementals of any alignment other than yours suffer a -3 morale penalty to attack rolls against you.

Nobody's Fool
Once per day, you may divert an attack aimed at you to an adjacent creature, instead. The attack is treated as though your chosen recipient were its intended target.

Onomancy
If you know a creature's given name, it gives you a measure of power over them. Your spells against that creature are made with a +1 bonus to their DC, respectively.

Touch of Decay
Organic matter crumbles beneath your caress, and even ferrous metal rusts. Only non-magical materials are affected, but most cannot long withstand us

Unfettered Soul
When you succeed a saving throw against a compulsion (such as dominate person), the caster must roll a saving throw against his own spell or be affected instead, as though you were the caster.


Greater Malices

Blasted Soul
Your spirit is so evil that it has been wracked with the torments of your likely afterlife, while you yet live. No earthly suffering holds any dread for you. Your maximum hit points increases by an amount equal to your Intelligence score (not Intelligence modifier).

Disordered Mind
Your mind is such a horror that any creatures attempting to perceive it or any facet of it risk their very sanity. Any creature that uses the following listed spells (including spell-like abilities) must make a Willpower save (DC 10 + character level) or be affected by an insanity spell, against which he may make a new save each day.

Blood of Attrition
Your blood has been infused with or replaced by some unwholesome substance, perhaps insects, poison, or darkness. Whenever you are injured by a melee attack from an adjacent creature, that creature suffers damage equal to your Constitution modifier. This damage is considered to be weapon damage for the purposes of damage reduction.

Gaze of Despair
When you threaten a critical hit against a creature or it rolls a natural 1 on a saving throw against an offensive spell that you cast, it suffers a -2 morale penalty to AC for the next 24 hours. This is a mind-affecting, fear-based, gaze attack.

Ritual Scarification
You have so mutilated your skin that it is a crisscrossing of nearly solid scar tissue. You enjoy a natural armor bonus to your AC equal to your Constitution modifier.

Shroud of the Outer Darkness
You are surrounded by an undulating cloud of shadows. Your attack rolls enjoy a +1 bonus.

i post some useful forbidden rituals

This isn't just going to be kvetching about the new edition or pining for the old ones. This is about an applied science. But the blog is still finding itself, and we'll see what mix we get of game products, campaign trip reports, and rants about Monte Cook being a wiener. I feel obligated to add some rules crunch.

My most presentable d&d creations along those lines were done for 3e because that was what my gaming group wanted to play, and I've gotten better over time. I'm sure the real grognards decry feats like everything else, but like so much else, I found them a worthwhile game mechanic concept with shoddy implementation.

I think that part of the problem that I have encountered as a d&d player is that 4e isn't d&d. People that lost three characters to the 1e Tomb of Horrors, and 3e players that suffered through yet another terrible Monte Cook module are both playing d&d, but I would assert that anybody using the 4e PHB is not, in much the same way that a reptile that grows feathers and has warm blood is no longer a reptile.

Part of the way I approach the game is by finding something that I think is a good idea, and then redesigning it so that it works for me. Sometimes that results in something I'm a little proud of --my cognates of the mechanics in 3e's morality books, the Books of Vile Darkness and Exalted Deeds, respectively, were much superior to those found within the published works. Then again, I wasn't shackled to writing deadlines or churning out useless exposition, nor beholden to the morals of the same audience.

While I'm rambling about the Book of Vile Darkness, Wizards of the Coast wasn't scared of putting bestiality in their modules relating to it, but it seems like they were scared of making evil mechanically rewarding. The premise of my approach to evil in my games has been that it ought to be rewarding, powerful, and easy --that's why people are tempted into evil. Being good is harder, otherwise everybody would be good.

So in the spirit of reclaiming things that I like from rules systems that I don't, here are some "forbidden rituals". In 4e, anybody can cast rituals if they learn them and pay the cost. Pretty much all the non-combat spells were moved there. These rituals that I've written ought to be usable in pretty much any edition of d&d with a little work, or at least give you enough of a gist to do your own stuff if you that think tempting characters with power has a place in your game.

Forbidden Knowledge

This knowledge is used and taught by evil creatures that seek to corrupt mortals for their own reasons. Using the rituals and skills carry no penalty or moral peril beyond the ramifications of the acts described, but the more one uses them, the more one seems to stumble upon other forbidden knowledge and the more one is presented with genuinely evil options.




Forbidden Rituals

Forbidden rituals are simple compared to more esoteric rituals used by proper spellcasters. So simple, in fact, that anybody of sufficient level can learn and cast them. The effects of forbidden rituals may be removed with a Remove Curse spell, but only if the recipient is willing. One cannot cast forbidden rituals upon an unwilling recipient.

Profane Altar
Caster Level 1
Cost: 100 gp.
Time: 1 Day.
This ritual debases an altar in preparation for darker acts. It requires the mutilation of a dead animal's body, but one need not actually sacrifice anything nor be the one to kill the animal. Celestials and certain very holy creatures may not approach within fifty feet of the altar of your shrine.

Twisted Gift
Caster Level 3
Cost: Target's level x 25 gp.
Time: 2 Days.
This ritual grants a minor wish but somehow things still seem wrong. You may give yourself a permanent -2 to one ability score of your choice in exchange for a permanent +1 to another ability score of your choice. This ritual must be performed at your altar.

Accursed
Caster Level 5
Cost: Target's level x 50 gp.
Time: 3 Days.
The recipient is filled with dark power, but also ravaged by it. He enjoys a +1 to attack rolls, and spell DC, but is also is resistant to curing magic --spells that restore lost hp only heal twice that amount. This ritual must be performed at your altar.

Bloodlust
Caster Level 9
Cost: Target's level x 75 gp.
Time: 4 Days.
The recipient is afflicted with a terrible craving for blood and death, but when this craving is filled he is supernaturally invigorated. Each day, you suffer -1 to your AC until you have slain a sentient creature. Once you have slain a sentient creature, this penalty is replaced with a +1 bonus until the next day. The circumstances and nature of the killing are unimportant to this ritual, a kill in combat is as efficacious as one done in a more formal setting. This ritual must be performed at your altar.

Summon Demonic Familiar
Caster Level 9
Cost: 1000 gp.
Time: 5 Days.
This ritual allows a wicked, sniveling creature to escape from sort of hellish afterlife, and binds it to serve as your sidekick. Though it must obey you in all things, it nevertheless is capable of causing mischief. Despite its best efforts, you should be able to use it only in the furtherance of good --if you're on the ball. This ritual must be performed at your altar.

Sulphur Imp
Humble yet sarcastic, this disgusting creature stands a foot tall, appears to have skin made of molten tar, and boasts a set of bat wings as well as a wicked looking scorpion tail that leaks venom uncontrollably. In addition to being magically bound to obey you in all things and being pretty darned helpful, the sulphur imp also has excellent networking skills and can put you in touch with more powerful evil creatures should the need ever arise.

Sulphur Imp: Speed 20 ft, Fly 30 ft, ATT +8, dmg 10 poison, AC 15, HP 30, saving throws +5; may turn invisible as a move action and remain that way even if attacking; when reduced to 0 hp is banished back to hell where it will make a full report concerning its observations in the mortal world, particularly regarding the spiritual state of the person that summoned it.