Portenta
(Medium)
The way medium spirits work allows for your medium to appeal to several broad concepts, effectively adhering to any concept without having to sacrifice flavor. However, these broad concepts lack a lot of flavor, and that’s a great shame. For those of you familiar with Unfamiliar Faces: New Medium Spirits, you know that we have a great passion for creating new and flavorful medium spirits. Thus, when it came time to create a new medium spirit, I decided to follow that theme. The new spirit in question looks to the future, a spirit of prophecy and information, Porenta.
New Medium Spirit
Portenta
Portenta is a spirit of knowledge, taking the form of a great winged sphinx. While her legend is considerable, she is most commonly remembered for having traveled to the distant future to learn of events that will occur there. The prophesies of Portenta supposedly chronicle these events, and speak of strange and troubling things including wars, famine, and the emergence of powerful and evil overlords that will lead more than one world to ruin. The veracity of these tales is difficult to prove, as their subject matter is far in the distant future, with the earliest predictions not coming for a thousand years. Many believe them to be a politically motivated. Even so, those who channel Portenta gain some limited insight into the future and the power to divine their own fate.
Spirit Bonus: When you channel Portenta, your spirit bonus applies to initiative checks, attack rolls, and AC.
Séance Boon: You gain a +2 bonus on initiative checks.
Favored Locations: Basements, high towers, hot deserts, libraries, mansions, ruins, the site of a casting of a divination spell of 4th level or higher.
Influence Penalty: You are wracked with visions of a terrible and dystopian future, and have difficulty telling this future from the present. You begin all combats with the confused condition, which lasts for a number of rounds equal to your spirit bonus. Additionally, you suffer a penalty on all concentration checks and Intelligence-based skill checks equal to your spirit bonus.
Taboos: Choose one: you must not take a hostile action without spending a move action to divine the outcome through signs and omens or the consultation of cards, bones, entrails or similar, which allows you to perform hostile actions for 1 minute; you must not ignore or go against any advice gained from a divination spell, prophecy, or omen you have read, or willingly engage in activities such sources have indicated will be harmful; you must do your best to hide any information about what you believe will happen in the near future.
Divine the Outcome (Lesser, Su):You gain the ability to cast a number of divination spells as spell-like abilities. At 1st level, you can cast augury as a spell-like ability once per day. At 5th level, you can cast divination once per day and augury 3 times per day. At 10th level, you can additionally cast commune once per day and augury at will. At 15th level, you can additionally cast contact other plane once per day and commune 3 times per day. At 20th level, you can cast any spell-like ability gained by this spirit power at will.
Foretell the Future (Intermediate, Su):You gain the ability to determine if a course of action is likely to succeed, and bend reality accordingly. Three times per day, you may force a single character within 30 feet (including yourself) to reroll any d20 roll she just made, and you may choose which result is used. You may use this ability after you know the results of the roll (such as whether an attack hits), but before the consequences of that roll are determined (such as how much damage the attack does).
Certain Future (Greater, Su):You can see a brief glimpse of the future with perfect clarity, guaranteeing the outcome of a single event. You may allow Portenta to gain 1 point of influence over you; if you do, you may add +20 to any single attack roll, saving throw, skill check, or ability check made by a creature within 30 feet of you. Additionally, by expending 2 uses of your spirit surge ability, you may add or subtract your spirit surge dice from any applicable roll made by a creature within 30 feet.
Future Sense (Supreme, Su): You are constantly aware of the near future, gaining brief glimpses the next few moments. You are constantly affected as though by the spell foresight, except that the effect cannot be dispelled.