#sha'ir

[ncat]

Sha'ir (Updated)

Heres the sha'ir again! Its got some minor quality of life changes, mostly adjusting a couple of the abilities for the gens and their subtypes. Though also notably, retrieval is changed a bit: Retrieving cached spells is much faster (1d4 rounds compared to the older 1 minute) but! Preparing learnt spells costs gold now whenever you change what you've got prepared!

Yeah :]

Homebrewery Link

[dailycharacteroption]

My Characters 6: Kyki Starchaser

We’re back with another special on my various characters that I have played or desire to play!

 Growing up in a desert land known for it’s ties to elementals and genies, Kyki had a typical childhood for a gnome growing up in a walled city. In particular, she was always fascinated by the wealth of wonders to be found at the bazaar, such a spices, beautiful works of art, and of course, magic. Her favorite, however, were items forged or empowered by the elements. Jewelry made from sand glass, perfectly polished river stones, and the like. She seemed to be able to read impressions from these objects as well, getting flashes of insight as to their history.

When she was old enough to travel, she hired herself out as an assistant to a merchant, hoping to see even more wonders, and it was on her travels that she realized her insight was more than just intuition, but the spark of occult understanding.

Fascinated, she did research into the nature of her gift, and in doing so, learned how to call forth her jin companions, Zepra, Kragg, and Smoldr, the three of which being usually small, but with an infusion of her power, can grow to great size and unnerving handsomeness.

With her own power established, Kyki quit her job in favor of the life of an adventurer, eagerly seeking new wonders with her elemental allies in tow.

 Ever-curious and ever-fearless, Kyki has been described as naïve and reckless before, but to her it’s simply being eager to explore and accept what life has to offer as one would accept a gift. While she finds the idea of violence abhorrent, she is also aware of the harshness of life. She won’t start hostilities, but she will end them. She’d much rather make a new friend and share her interests with them. Few things excite her more than a brilliant mind willing to indulge her in debate and observation.

 As a gnome, Kyki is a short, spritely thing with brown skin and bright blue hair that she wears in a messy ponytail. Her elemental allies joke that such is the missing “water” to their elemental trio.

Kyki favors the loose desert attire from her homeland, but always wears brightly-colored outfits regardless of weather, and she is never seen without her braided skirt of trinkets, each composed of a material weathered and changed by the elements, worn stones, fire-blackened wood, and so on.

 For this build, Kyki is a gnome with the explorer alternate racial trait, and her class will be the sha’ir archetype for occultist, preferably taking an air jin as her first choice (Zepra) with the conjuration school, followed by Smoldr the fire jin with evocation and gem-studded Kragg the earth jin with the enchantment school. She would be built for damage-dealing, utility, and social encounters in terms of her skills, spells, and focus powers. As far as magic items go she would favor those made from natural materials or with a clear elemental connection.

 That does it for today, but I hope you enjoyed it!

[sharasellarine]

A catfolk sha’ir for an upcoming session :)

[dailycharacteroption]

Sha’ir (Occultist Archetype)

 In the real world, a sha’ir is a descriptor used to refer to a pre-Islamic arab poet who was believed to have magical powers and to be able to commune with djinn and other spirits. The origin of the term is not known, but they were able to inspire their allies during wartime, and were considered a great boon as wise men.

Today’s archetype is actually not the first time that “sha’ir” has been used in tabletop roleplaying, with the Al Qadim campaign setting for The World’s Oldest Roleplaying Game using the term for one of the character classes unique to the setting.

However, today we’re looking at the pathfinder interpretation of the concept, which plays up the “communes with genies” side of things.

These occultists form a bond with a rare, insubstantial form of genie that are associated with each element, physically identical to weak elementals, but possessing occult knowledge in spades, granting their magic to the occultist, and the occultist granting some of their own power in kind in a mutually beneficial relationship.

 Rather than learn how to channel implement schools normally through objects, they instead summon and make pacts with the so-called jin, bonding with a total of three during their careers. Individually, these beings are weaker even than small elementals. However, they grant not only the spells and focus powers of an implement school, but also the spells of one of the four western elementalist schools of magic for wizards, appropriate to their element. In other words, each jin grants twice as many spells as a single implement school choice, just drawn from two different lists, but requiring the jin to remain close and alive to be able to cast with no problems. Thankfully, they can be easy enough to replace with a ritual.

At first, these jin can’t do much on their own, but by expending energy stored in them, the sha’ir can briefly augment them. At first this just includes granting the basic abilities of an elemental of the jin’s type. However, later, they can increase their size and might to resemble larger elementals. As they grow in level, smaller elemental sizes become easier, and the maximum power grows higher, until finally they can even turn jin into powerful elder elementals for a few brief moments.

With mastery, they can also keep one of their jin constantly as a small elemental without expending power, and even shift which one is so manifested by focusing.

Additionally, rather than call upon other outsiders to gather information and perform minor tasks for them, these occultists instead command one of their jin to do the same. However, doing so means that obviously that jin will be far away and unavailable to grant its power to the occultist during that time.

This archetype is a fun take on the occultist, granting them tiny minions that can turn into big minions. However, their biggest weakness is the definitely the vulnerability of the little guys, so definitely invest in protections for them, lest one errant fireball rob you of most of your magical abilities. A good strategy might be to invest plenty of mental focus into one jin to buff up into a powerful tank, while keeping the others close to provide their spellcasting. Or, you might decide to spread it around more evenly, perhaps taking extra mental focus feats to dial up how much you have to work with. Also look at the spells on the elementalist spell lists, and how various combinations of school spells and elemental spells can be combined.

 Fans of Golden Sun’s magic system of having pet elemental beings around providing spells may not get the elemental combined summons like that series, but they’ll definitely delight in deriving their magic from cute otherworldly beings.

Moving on from that, one can imagine that depending on their personal philosophy, these mystics may have different relationships with their jin partners, ranging from slave-driving masters to those that live in harmonious partnership with them.

  He doesn’t know how, but Mashinn is sure he is being watched. However, neither he nor his jin partners can pinpoint the source of this surveillance, which takes the form of a nearly invisible slithering tracker, the puddle-like ooze having been sent by one of his rivals.

 Eagerly seeking to defy the fate her heritage has meted out for her, Vilmei made a pact with the element of fire, seeking to find a way to turn away from the water, and her eventual transformation as a deep one hybrid. Until then, she pays her way with her mastery of magics of protection and as a seer.

 On their quest to put an end to the Lord of Elements Bound, the party must first defeat his generals, including the one knowns as the Collector, a robed sha’ir who specializes in rare elementals, having an ice, magma, and aether elemental under his thumb.

[blazingsai]

What I’ve Been Up To (Fourteen)

Honestly? I’ve been trying to get new content you all. Issue is, I found out the hard way that with the new format that I’m trying to use to tell stories, there’s almost zero chance of me just doing stories on the fly (which is how I’ve been doing most of my Rising Stars posts up until this point). All this means is that I’ll have to properly play out the dialogue and whatnot prior to taking the shots which, although is my preferred  way to do things, was also a reason why I was able to belt out Rising Stars posts so often (because it just came to me, I didn’t have to think too much about it). 

That being said, my ongoing issues with weightpainting aside... Above you can see 6 images of scrapped Rising Stars entries, and 2 images featuring something that I plan to introduce in upcoming Rising Stars entries (it’ll make sense, I promise).

NOTE: NONE of the images above will be used in upcoming Rising Stars posts

[meatprincess]

I made my first Dungeons and Dragons character on HeroMachine. He is a Drow Sha'ir who specializes in illusions and chaos magic~