Rock Magic
Hello, and welcome once again to Obscure Arcana, your weekly dose of magic in a mundane world. Now, if you’re specialized in one of the less well-known areas of magic, you’re probably getting a bit sick of seeing all of the love going to the “sexy” types like necromancy, or fire and ice magic, or even things like acid and electricity, which, while certainly not as overdone as fire or ice, at least get a certain amount of support. Not so for lithomancers, for example. What’s that? You’ve never even heard of a lithomancer? My point exactly.
Lithomancers are mages who specialize in magic involving earth and rocks. It’s true that there’s certainly some litho-magic in the core rules: stone shape, transmute rock to mud, and flesh to stone all come to mind, but overall they get a lot less love than, say, pyromancers. So, today we’re giving the rock-casters a little love with some earthy spells.
Crushing Sphere
This spell functions as flaming sphere, with a few differences. First of all, the conjured sphere is made of stone. It has a hardness of 8, and 300 hit points. Second, the sphere has a movement speed of 60 ft., rather than 30 ft. Because it is not flaming, it cannot set things on fire.
It is, however, more effective at crushing them. If the crushing sphere enters a space with a creature, that creature takes 3d6 points of bludgeoning damage. A successful Reflex save halves this damage. Either way, if the sphere still has movement it can continue moving, damaging further creatures in its path. If the caster desires, the crushing sphere can attempt to bull rush creatures it hits, carrying them along for the ride. It uses the caster’s CMB, with a +4 bonus, and uses the caster’s primary spellcasting ability score (Intelligence for wizards, Charisma for sorcerers, etc.) as its Strength score for this purpose.
All damage dealt by a crushing sphere is subject to damage reduction, but automatically overcomes DR/magic.
Earthen Armor
With this spell, you conjure armor made of earth and stone, which wraps around the target and protects him from harm. This armor grants an armor class bonus of +12, has a maximum Dexterity bonus of 0, an armor check penalty of -10, and 50% arcane spell failure. The target’s movement speed is halved while wearing this armor. This armor weighs 100 lbs. The armor also grants DR 8/adamantine to the wearer for the duration of the spell.
Earthen Fist
With this spell, you transform the target’s hands, making them hard as rock. This causes the target’s hands to deal bludgeoning damage, rather than nonlethal damage, and the target may make unarmed attacks with his or her hands without provoking attacks of opportunity. The target’s natural attacks also ignore any hardness less than 8. Further, the target’s unarmed attacks made with the earthen fist deal more damage than normal, as if the target’s size had increased by two categories. For a Small humanoid, this generally causes their unarmed attacks to deal 1d4 damage, and for a Medium humanoid, this generally causes their unarmed attacks to deal 1d6 damage.
The increase to damage granted by earthen fist does not stack with a monk’s unarmed strike class feature: a monk targeted by this ability uses either the unarmed damage granted by earthen fist or by his class feature, whichever is better.
Open Pit
When you cast this spell, you cause the earth to open up in a specified place, creating a large hole in the ground. The hole takes up a 10-foot-square area, and is 20 feet deep. Any creature standing on the area as the spell is cast may attempt a Reflex save to move to an adjacent square. If he fails his saving throw, or if there are no adjacent squares to move to, he falls.
Any creature that falls in the pit, whether during its initial creation or afterward, takes 2d6 points of falling damage. He can attempt to climb back out again as normal (DC 15 to climb the walls of a pit created this way), or escape by other means if they are available.
At the end of the spell’s duration, the walls of the pit slowly close and fill in. This is incredibly alarming to those within the pit, but the process actually causes any creatures or objects in the pit to be pushed gently but firmly out and onto the surface above, inflicting no additional damage. Once the pit has closed again, there is no visible indication it was ever there.
This spell only functions on areas of earth or natural rock, and cannot be cast on worked stone, wood, crystal, metal, or other materials.
Stone Throw
You conjure a small stone which flies through the air towards a target you designate. This is a ranged attack that deals 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage on a successful hit. Unlike most spells, the damage dealt by stone throw is subject to damage reduction, although it overcomes DR/magic. The stone crumbles to dust upon contact with any object, and even the dust fades completely within 1 round.