Classy Classes

Part VI

November 28th, 2011

Welcome to another Dark Designs. Two weeks ago we were on the cusp of finishing the kyton class that I had started all the way back in August. We had made an outline of the class features we wanted to include in the second half, and were making our way down the list. Here’s where we’d gotten to:

Let’s see what’s next… looks like it’s the first of two pain/sadism related abilities. Let’s start by looking at what spells there are that use pain, especially since Ultimate Magic added “pain” as a new descriptor. I can find

Symbol of pain
Pain strike
Pain strike, mass
Interrogation
Interrogation, greater
Agonize
Excruciating deformation
Piercing shriek

Of these, if I were to use any at this point, I think it would be pain strike. Symbol of pain’s mechanical effect isn’t that much different than what the kyton’s unnerving gaze and visage of the lost abilities are already doing, so that feels a bit like a cop-out, and piercing shriek falls into largely the same boat. Interrogation would be good for some sort of torture, but we have yet to give the kyton any way of capturing victims alive. Agonize falls under broadly similar lines, although it would require some tweaking to even work at all. Excruciating deformation would work, I guess, but it just doesn’t strike me as a kyton’s style.

Now, there’s no rule that says that this ability needs to be any kind of spell-like ability, despite what the Bestiary implied. In fact, if I would be using pain strike or excruciating deformation, I’d probably want to rewrite the effect from scratch, anyway, just so you didn’t have to go digging around looking for a copy of Advanced Player’s Guide or Ultimate Magic to even use the class.

I had, in fact, considered just using a more general “sadism” ability (which I think is based loosely off of a feat from the old Book of Vile Darkness) that I’ve put on a couple of monsters in the past: gaining a bonus to X, Y, or Z for a round whenever the kyton deals damage (or, possibly, whenever the kyton kills a creature). But, that feels like a bit of a cop-out, and I think it’d be cool to give the kyton some kind of “pain gaze” thing. Since I’m not going to just reference pain strike and leave it be, I might as well tweak the spell a bit (well, maybe dramatically) to suit my purposes. Here’s what I’ve got

Sadistic Gaze (Su): Beginning at 14th level, a kyton can inflict agony with a mere look. As a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, the kyton can cause massive amounts of pain to a single creature within 60 feet. That creature must succeed on a Fortitude save (DC 10 + ½ the kyton’s class level + the kyton’s Charisma modifier) or suffer 1d6 points of nonlethal damage per Hit Dice the kyton possesses (to a maximum of 15d6 at 15 Hit Dice). Creatures that take damage in this way are nauseated for 1d4 rounds. The target must be able to see the kyton, and vice versa, or else this ability has no effect. The kyton may use this ability a number of times per day equal to its Charisma modifier (minimum 1).

Next up is another chain-related ability, and I think it’s time for us to finally improve the kyton’s chain warrior ability. Remember that we need to walk a fine line here, trying to rein in the ability to keep it as balanced as possible, without leaving kyton players feeling gypped. I think that we’re safe adding a 5th attack, but I’d like to make things a little more interesting than that.

Master Chain Warrior (Ex): Beginning at 15th level, a kyton’s ability to fight with its chains improves. It can now make up to five attacks at its highest base attack bonus each time it uses its chain warrior class feature. Additionally, any chain the kyton wields (including chains provided by its wrapped in chains class feature, and chains affected by its dancing chains class feature) is treated as a magic weapon, and gains a +1 enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls. Chains that already possess an enhancement bonus are unaffected.

The reason for the latter ability is that, if you’ll recall, the kyton is limited to one attack per magic chain it possesses when using these abilities, so a kyton can either have 4-5 chains with a relatively low magical enhancement, or it can have one normal weapon and have its other attacks be unenchanted. That’s fine by me, but it means that those unenchanted attacks won’t even be bypassing DR/magic, which isn’t going to cut it at 15th level.

Next up is our second and final new gaze ability. As I said before, I want a paralyzing gaze, and I think I’m going to go for it here.

Paralyzing Gaze (Su): Beginning at 16th level, a kyton can paralyze its victims with a glance. As a standard action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, the kyton can attempt to paralyze a single creature within 30 feet. The target must succeed on a Will save (DC 10 + ½ the kyton’s class level + the kyton’s Charisma modifier) or be paralyzed for 1d4 rounds. Creatures that are immune to paralysis are stunned instead. Creatures immune to both paralysis and stunning are immune to this effect. The creature must be able to see the kyton, and vice versa, or this ability has no effect. This is a mind-affecting fear effect. The kyton may use this ability once per day at 16th level, and gains an additional daily use at 18th and 20th levels.

Of course, now that I think about it, our 14th-level ability is a gaze as well, even though it was penned in as a sadism effect (which it is), and of course our 13th-level ability wasn’t a gaze at all (though we knew there was a chance of that going in).

For those of you wondering about the odd add-in that creatures immune to paralysis are instead stunned, the answer is that by the time you reach 16th level, the number of creatures that don’t have an immunity to mind-affecting effects, fear effects, or paralysis is a lot slimmer than it was a few levels ago. Paralysis is a powerful ability, as I said, but I still don’t want the class feature to be worthless against any more creatures than it really has to be.

In any case, now we’ve come to our second sadism ability. I said above that some sort of torture effect along the lines of interrogation or agonize would be good once the kyton had a way of capturing live prey, and now it has two (paralyzing gaze and, less obviously, sadistic gaze). Of course, I’m not sure what exactly to do with it. Of those two, since, again, we won’t be directly using the spell, I’d rather try to adapt agonize, because it has a wider range of applications.

Torturous Touch (Su): At 17th level, kytons gain a supernatural mastery of torture. With a single touch, the kyton can inflict hours of torture upon a subject, breaking its will and making it compliant and willing to adhere to the kyton’s wishes. This method is quite extreme, however, and not without risk to the victim. As a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity, the kyton may touch a single living, helpless creature. The kyton then inflicts any amount of d6 points of damage to the target. This damage occurs all at once, and the kyton must choose the number of d6 to be rolled before it begins rolling. If the target survives, it must succeed on a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 the kyton’s class level + the kyton’s Charisma modifier + 1 per 10 points of damage inflicted by this ability) or be affected as though by the spell charm monster. The kyton’s caster level for this effect is equal to its class level. Creatures that are immune to mind-affecting effects or charm effects are still affected by this ability, though creatures immune to pain effects are not (they still take the damage). The kyton can use this ability at will, but can only use it once on any given creature in a 24-hour period.

Originally I wanted this to be a more long-term ability (such as over an hour, or at least 10 minutes, rather than a single full-round action), but that presented some issues with the “pick an amount of d6, more gets you a higher save, but might kill the victim” mechanic, which I thought was fun and flavorful, and fit the torture theme well, so I condensed it down in order to avoid just keeping a cleric on hand to heal the victim as you torture them, creating arbitrarily high DCs at no risk. Of course, if you’re determined, you can always have a cleric resurrect the target and try again tomorrow. It bypasses immunity to mind-affecting effects partially for flavor reasons and partially to ensure the ability remains relevant at these higher levels.

This brings us to our 18th-level chain-related ability. As I said before, I want to give the kyton some way to bind people with its chains, because it just seems to fit so well. In fact, I’m almost surprised that the Bestiary version doesn’t have something for this. Whatever the case, here’s what I’ve got:

Bind in Chains (Ex): Beginning at 18th level, a kyton becomes adept at using its chains to bind its foes. First, the kyton gains a +8 racial bonus to its CMB for the purpose of grapple attempts, and a +8 racial bonus to its CMD versus attempts to escape from a grapple (but not attempts to grapple or pin the kyton).

Second, as a standard action, the kyton can attempt to grapple a single creature within 15 feet with one of its chains. This does not provoke an attack of opportunity from the target, though the kyton does not gain its +8 racial bonus to attempts to start a grapple in this way. If the attempt is successful, the kyton has two choices: it can either use the chain to pull the target into the kyton’s square, in which case the kyton grapples the target normally (and can now make use of its relevant racial bonuses), or it can attempt to grapple the target with just its chain.

In the latter case, the kyton does not gain the grappled condition, and the target remains in its square, and can only move by successfully moving the grapple or escaping the grapple. If such movement would move it more than 15 feet from the kyton, the kyton is moved as well. The kyton must still spend a standard action to maintain the grapple, and other than the distance and the fact that the kyton does not gain the grappled condition (and is denied its racial bonuses to CMB and CMD for the purposes of grappling), normal grappling rules apply.

As with all things grapple-related, this got a bit complicated, but I think it came out about as well as could be expected. Originally I was going to let it maintain the grapple as a swift action, or as part of a full attack (I seem to recall that in 3.5, at least, you could make multiple grapple actions in a round if your base attack allowed multiple attacks, but I can’t seem to find any support for that in Pathfinder (outside the Greater Grapple feat, anyway), but I’m concerned it might be too powerful, especially as that begs the question of maintaining multiple chain-grapples at a time.

And finally we come to the endcap. I’ve actually had this in mind for a little bit now, and it seems like a good marriage of the kyton’s various chain-related abilities with its sadistic streak.

Bloody Chains (Ex): At 20th-level, the razor barbs on a kyton’s chains become exceptionally cruel, slicing and tearing its victims to ribbons. Whenever a kyton successfully damages a creature with a chain (whether the chain is held, granted by the kyton’s wrapped in chains class feature, or used with the kyton’s dancing chains class feature), the target suffers 1 point of bleed damage. This bleed damage stacks, so a creature struck five times by a kyton’s chains would suffer five points of bleed damage.

And there you have it. The kyton class. I’d love to know what you think of the new abilities, if you have other ideas that you think would have been cool, or what you would have done differently, and why. Send me your thoughts at ariggs@necromancers-online.com.

In the meantime, thanks for reading.