Dear Oras, God of adaptation, change, and evolution,
Hello again! It’s your old friend Nate writing to see how you’ve been. You never write back! But that’s alright, since I’m sure you’re quite busy with all of the little monsters I set loose across the galaxy a while back. Ahh, that was good times. I would have loved to see the look on your face, if you weren’t too cowardly to show it.
Some might describe my actions as ‘playing God,’ and I am extremely flattered by such things! While I wouldn’t consider my work to register on the deific level, you can rest assured I’m certainly making a game of it! But a half truth is still a half truth. So, with my next gift to Golarion, I’m going to merge the bio horror with the belief structure.
Hello and welcome to Eldritch Excursion, the blog that commits heresies at the cellular level. In this exploration of flavor and mechanics, we’ll be covering a homebrew addition to one of my favorite classes, the Oracle. Said homebrew has that lab-grown, science-perfected flavor with extra GMOs or your money back. Let’s start it off with a new mystery.
Flesh
You have been awakened to a deep truth of the flesh, gaining an understanding that far surpasses the limitations of traditional medicine. You may have learned this from decrypting ancient occult rituals, or from reading a madman’s rambling notes on the subjectivity of physiology, or perhaps your flesh was unshackled after undergoing invasive and experimental surgeries. Your freakish power may be drawn from particularly visceral reverence of Lamashtu or Zon-Kuthon, but is just as likely to mirror the impossible biology of the Protean Lords or the Outer Gods.
Mystery Benefit Your supernatural understanding of the flesh means that skin, bone and muscle are all like clay in your hands. You can use Occultism instead of Medicine to treat wounds and may also treat your bare hands as healer’s tools. You may also use your proficiency in Occultism instead of Medicine to meet the prerequisites of any relevant feat.
You also manage to cultivate excess flesh. You gain a tentacle attack that deals 1d8 bludgeoning damage. Your tentacle is in the brawling group and has the grapple trait.
Trained Skill Occultism
Granted Cantrip gouging claw
Revelation Spells initial: improvised evolution; advanced: disgorge summon; greater: flesh king
Related Domains change, swarm
Curse of Unraveling
As your understanding of anatomy becomes decoupled from reality, so too does your body become mercurial from the inside out. Scars always fade, muscles shift like a swarm of eels beneath the skin, and wounds develop vestigial features such as teeth and eyes before fully healing.
Minor Curse Your body is unable to maintain its integrity and tears itself apart. You take 1d4 persistent bleed damage each round as writhing ribbons of exposed muscle protrude from your body. This damage cannot bring you below half Hit Points.
While refocusing to reduce your curse, your flesh coils back into your body, so you don’t take this bleed damage. Your body settles down while its unconscious, but resumes tearing itself apart when you wake up unless you rested long enough to reset your curse. As usual for oracular curses, you can’t mitigate or reduce this bleed damage in any other way, though you can still heal the lost HP normally after the fact.
Moderate Curse You continue to unravel as your body blossoms like a visceral flower. The bleed damage from your minor curse becomes 1d6, and the damage cannot bring you below 1 HP. The excess exposed flesh reenforces your tentacle attack, increasing its damage die by one step and granting it the reach trait.
Major Curse (11th) You’re barely recognizable as your body becomes a kaleidoscope of morphic biomass. The bleed damage from your minor curse becomes 2d6 and you gain Weakness 10 to area and splash damage.
In your fully unraveled state, you gain a transcendent understanding of biology that allows you to unhinge the flesh of others. You may take an action with the manipulate trait to inflict an adjacent creature that is unconscious, helpless, or grabbed by your tentacle with sloughing toxin using your Spell DC instead of the poison’s normal DC.
Silly Valeros, there’s more than one way to “get ripped.”
Focus Spells
Improvised Evolution Focus 1
[Uncommon] [Cursebound] [Transmutation] [Morph] [Oracle]
Mystery flesh
Cast (2 actions) material, somatic
Duration 10 minutes
You quickly grow a layer of protective natural armor over your skin such as an exoskeleton, angled scales, or a toughened hide. You may choose to manifest a lighter growth with statistics identical to leather armor or a heavier growth with statistics identical to hide armor. Both forms of armor use your unarmored proficiency.
The armor is effective, but imperfect. When you cast the spell, choose bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing. You gain Weakness 2 to that type of damage.
Wearing armor always causes the casting of this spell to fail.
Heightened (4th) You gain a +1 item bonus to saving throws. Increase the Weakness to 8.
Heightened (6th) The item bonus to AC increases by +1, and you gain a +1 item bonus to saving throws. Increase the Weakness to 12.
Heightened (8th) The item bonus to AC increases by +1, and you gain a +2 item bonus to saving throws. Increase the Weakness to 16.
Heightened (10th) The item bonus to AC increases by +2, and you gain a +3 item bonus to saving throws. Increase the Weakness to 20.
Disgorge Summon Focus 3
[Uncommon] [Cursebound] [Transmutation] [Oracle]
Mystery flesh
Cast (free action)
Duration 1 minute
You prepare a generous sample of mutagenic flesh to use as the base of your conjuration. If you summon a creature during the duration of this spell, you may construct it from that sample, causing the creature to appear in an adjacent square as you distended your jaw and spit the creature out. Your flesh bolsters its own, granting it a +1 status bonus to AC and saves for the duration of this spell. If the creature is slain, its body remains for the duration of this spell or the spell that summoned it, whichever ends first.
While adjacent to this creature, you may spend an action with the interact trait to consume its biomass. Consuming the creature destroys it entirely and heals you for 1d8 Hit Points for each level of the spell that summoned it, up to a maximum of 3d8.
Heightened (+1) The maximum healing increases by 1d8.
Flesh King Focus 6
[Uncommon] [Cursebound] [Transmutation] [Polymorph] [Oracle]
Mystery flesh
Cast (2 actions) material, somatic
Area 20 foot emanation; Targets caster and up to 9 allies
Duration 1 minute
Tendrils erupt from your body, unraveling every willing ally within range and reconstituting the lot of you into a single composite creature with physiology somewhere between a hydra and a flesh golem. This composite creature combines each component creature’s maximum and current Hit Points to calculate its own. Any component creature that was unconscious from damage is reawakened.
The composite creature uses your statistics to calculate its AC, Fortitude and Reflex saves, and speed and is one size larger than the largest component creature. Each component creature is Slowed 1 and Clumsy 1 for the duration. Component creatures can be individually targeted for any effect that requires a Will save.
Each component creature acts on its own initiative and has access to their own equipment. They are able take their own actions with their own limbs or take any action with the move trait to move the composite creature.
At the end of the spell, the component creatures reappear in their natural form in any square that was formerly occupied by the composite creature or is adjacent to another component creature. The remaining Hit Points are redistributed evenly between them. Excess Hit Points are redistributed between component creatures not yet fully healed. If the composite creature gained an affliction from a poison or disease, each component creature is immediately exposed to it.
If the component creature is brought down to 0 Hit Points, the spell ends early.
Shinji, get in the abomination.
Woo, that last one was a real chonker. While you daydream about trying to Katamari your party into a hive mind mosh pit, I’m going to get some well-earned rest. Come back next time and we’ll see what happens when I load a wand of fireball into a flintlock pistol and pull the trigger.
