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so ive been getting back into comics and super heroes. recently ive been reading Dr. Fate. for those of you who dont know who Dr. Fate is he is basically an artifact that has the consciousness of a being of order.
the artifact is a helmet, anyone who places the helmet on is basically taken over and enthralled into his service until he decides that his presence is unnecessary then releases you. in the process his power will destroy the weak and nonmagical, only a being capable of magic can truly contain his power and not die as a result eventually.
so i was thinking in my next home game, i would build Fate. it would be a helmet that has a high intelligence and Ego and once the helmet is placed on a NPC they would then be the vessel for my character, allowing a save vrs the possession from the artifact, no different then any other intelligent item.
im trying to get all aspects of playing this concept from the positives to negatives. if anyone has any observations of weaknesses and strengths i would love to hear them.
how the character works: humanoid places helmet on, saves vrs possession, then on a failed save my character stats override the target as if i were playing my level 5 character (or what ever), if the target isnt of 5th level and have access to arcane magic as a class feature the body withers and dies after one in game month requiring me to repeat the process or relinquish the vessel.
lawful neutral is the mandatory alignment for this concept. and im thinking a god wizard would fit this concept very well.
The alignment bit might be difficult, especially if he's burning out empty husks every month or so. Was just watching Dr. Fate on that Young Justice cartoon, realizing he was sort of a hard sell as a hero, compared to many others. I like the concept a lot, maybe he could just not "choose" unworthy targets.
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Sounds more like neutral evil to me. Stealing a person's body against their will, and potentially burning it up in the process. Seems a little harsh for lawful neutral.Sidekick describes, somewhat incompletely one incarnation of Dr. Fate.
Dr. Fate the hero isn't the Helmet, he's the composite of Naboo. the really bastard Lord of Order who takes the form of the Helm whose actions are moderated by Kent Nelson the human he posesses.
At some point Nelson decides that Naboo isn't worth working with and goes without the helmet.
Another incarnation of Fate is the merger of Kent and his wife with Naboo,
A third is Inza alone.
The Lords of Order are pretty much as nasty as their Chaotic counterparts, both sides pretty much are set on victory no matter the collateral cost.
Compared to Naboo, Judge Dredd is Clark Kent.
the description of the Fate was placed in terms for pathfinder players to have a point of reference. i wasnt going to go deep into the origins of the character or the true name nabu.
but my concern is... will having the ability for a host body die, and the "chracter" survive be too powerful or unfair to the other players.
it would come at a very high price tag. any day the host, who may be forced into doing what i command, would be allowed a save then just remove the helmet. that would leave me as just a helmet for the duration of the adventure. my party members could be accommodating and just place me on an unconscious npc. but then again they may not view that as a thing there characters would do, since it would be no different then casting dominate person on a sleeping person.
then again if the enemy gets the ability to destroy the artifact, that would kill my character completely without any way, barring wish/miracle, to bring them back to life. plus i would be completely at the mercy of those around me while i didnt have a host.
Sounds more like neutral evil to me. Stealing a person's body against their will, and potentially burning it up in the process. Seems a little harsh for lawful neutral.
he would be neutral evil IF he wasn't bound to his word, and only proceeded to keep someone against their will if he deemed the risk necessary. he has released people in the past for being unworthy hosts, as well as refused to release people as a result of them being "perfect hosts". in the case of kent... dont remember his last name, he was actually a litigator for the opposing side of the actions of Nabu. if Nabu did something unreasonable or to extreme, kent acted like a conscious. just like how they portrayed him in young justice.
I'm missing something. Are you wanting to PLAY this as a character? If so, and it's high level, dig back into 3.5 and look for the Fiend of Possession and run from there. Easy enough. Or if you don't like 3.5, or it starts with a low level character, mechanically you can just make him a Synthesist Summoner with his 'Eidolon form' being the transformed state when the Fate-analog takes over and just RP the rest.
Otherwise, you gotta work stuff out with the DM.
If you ARE the DM and this is a NPC, it can be a whatever-caster-you-want using a metamagic modified Magic Jar, or who's been polymorphed or in some other way transformed into the object that serves as the focus for it, or polymorph the body itself (it's lifeless and counts as an object), and go from there. The character can be anything you want at that point. You MIGHT could pull this off as a player if the DM doesn't mind giving you an item of metamagiced "Magic Jar" and "Polymorph Object" with 1/day uses, but good luck with that. Obviously this is a high-level solution, but so is the example.
The alignment bit might be difficult, especially if he's burning out empty husks every month or so. Was just watching Dr. Fate on that Young Justice cartoon, realizing he was sort of a hard sell as a hero, compared to many others. I like the concept a lot, maybe he could just not "choose" unworthy targets.
Nabu is Lawful Neutral: He's lawful to a fault, and one can argue that as a Lord of Order, he's sort of beyond Good and Evil. It's not so much that he shouldn't be LE but that on the Good/Evil axis he has as little moral control as an animal does.
Or just label him LE (in contrast, Klarion is a Lord of Chaos and wavers somewhere between a destructive CN and outright CE. Again, its worth arguing that Good/Evil doesn't apply to these beings who are so primally associated with the other axis.)
Kent Nelson is NG.
Doctor Fate, the composite of both beings, is LG. (But is closer to the Law part, wheras a traditional paladin is closer to the Good part.)
The Doctor Fate created with different human partners/hosts (such as Zatara) may be less Good than the ones with Nelson.
I think you just created a villain for my homebrew. I will tweak it a little and make them far more insane of course, but fighting someone with a giant metal clown face is just too good to go to waste.
To answer the op about the ability for the host body to die but the character not die, I don't think this is a problem.
I would just make the process of gaining a new host very similar if not exactly the same as raise dead.
Same cost, need a priest of the same level, perform a ceremony, etc. Thus mechanically it will be the same no advantage but you can skin it as you like.
I think he just created my next eidolon.
I won't even have to fight, all the enemies will just **** their pants.