Variant Rules (Merika Supplement)
The following changes are made to the base classes described in the Pathfinder rules set:
Only humans of the Imperium and the Pale have monastic Orders. Both reach similar results by taking very different paths. Monks of the pale take practical applications of physics, anatomy, and necromancy and turn it into a lethal fighting style and way of life. Monks of the Imperium live an ascetic lifestyle based around meditation and self-control in an attempt to cultivate their inner godspark and bring themselves closer to true mirrors of divinity.
The Way of Blood and Bone
- Students of the way
The Order of the Divine Reflection
- Students of the order
Wizards
- Wizards add Intimidate and Heal to their list of class skills.
Alignment[edit]
Most characters in the world are unaligned. The law and chaos axis has been dropped. While things may be ordered or chaotic, there is no great extraplanar philosophy tied to them. Many of the concepts of Law and Chaos can be folded into the base premise of Good and Evil instead. For example, seeking to unmake all of existence and return the world to its primordial components can be said to be "evil" instead of "chaotic". Good and evil are the two remaining alignments.
Choosing Good is a vow to uphold the beatific ideal in all things and a rejection of taint and corruption. Saints, martyrs, and crusaders for the light are all "Good". You can be a hero without being aligned but to be Good is an exalted state that marks a hero as larger than life.
Very few ever "choose" evil. Instead it is a willful rejection of morality and a conscious decision to embrace the base emotions and impulses. Evil corrupts. It makes false promises and seduces the weak. Corrupted priests, dark cultists, and irredeemable assassins are all "Evil". Villains can be bad without being Evil, to be evil is to be both a slave to and master of corruption.
Choosing to be aligned grants abilities and weaknesses. They are summarized below:
- Your alignment becomes a sort of subtype. Detect evil and other similar alignment divinations only detect individuals with the "Evil" subtype, characters and items carrying active taint, and spells and magic with the "Evil" descriptor. Normal folks are ignored by it even if they are doing something "bad" at the time.
- You may not make use of spells that have the Good descriptor if you are Evil. If you are Good you may cast Evil spells but suffer consequences for doing so including possibly gaining taint or even losing you Good status.
- You are vulnerable to spells and abilities that target individuals with your alignment. Unholy word has little effect on a normal hero, but it's devastating on a Good hero.
- A Good Character has a particularly powerful aura of "Good" (see the detect evil spell for details).
- A Good character is resistant to the effects of Taint. He takes a penalty to his ability scores equal to half his total taint score and may make a save every 24 hours after leaving behind a tainted object or leaving a tainted area to "shed" a point of taint. He loses this ability if he performs an act to gain taint (and it is not simply gained by being in proximity to a tainted object / area). To regain this ability they must receive an atonement spell.
- An Evil Character has a particularly powerful aura of "Evil" (see the detect evil spell for details).
- An Evil character is immune to the ability score penalties of taint.
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