Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Pathfinder Zaniness: Recovering the Cleric's Spell Slots

Here is an idea for a zany Pathfinder adventure plot.

Father Goodly is an experienced (8th level) cleric who runs a large temple with many happy congregants.  He has two fourth-level spell slots, but seldom has need for fourth-level spells.

He knows how to create magic wands, so he made a wand of neutralize poison to use in emergencies.  That spell is seldom needed, and he realizes that when his people are threatened by poison he will probably need more than one or two castings available.

He also created a wand of divination, for similar reasons.  His flock seldom has doctrinal dilemmas or becomes confused about how to deal with a charitable need, but when these happen they probably need to ask their deity more than two questions about the issue.

Recently, Father Goodly had what seemed a brilliant idea.  Since he was not using his fourth-level spells, he temporarily gave up both fourth-level spell slots to create two wands of imbue with spell ability.  This seemed amazingly efficient: he now can grant 100 congregants minor healing or language-sharing ability.

But yesterday both wands were stolen!  Now the unfortunate Father Goodly finds himself responsible for potentially dire evil.  Who has the wands, and what spells they will acquire from their use?

Moreover, Father Goodly will not get his fourth-level spell slots back until the wands are used up.  If the thief has a grudge against Father Goodly or his faith, the thief can cause trouble by not using up the last charge in each wand.

This quest could even be appropriate for a low-level party of heroes: even though Father Goodly is an 8th level cleric, the thief and his allies need not be that high level.

Father Goodly is busy running a temple and does not have the time to chase down the thief, who has probably already fled the city.  He is willing to use a few charges of the wand if divination to help the heroes start their adventure in a proper direction.

The temple is not notably wealthy and can only offer a reward of 2,000 gold pieces, even though returning the wands is so important.  Father Goodly proposes creating a second-level wand (of a spell lacking expensive material components) for the heroes as an alternative payment: the wand will cost him 2,250 to create but be worth twice that to the successful heroes.

The GM can use any villains, to fit the quest to the party of heroes.  Some, if not all, of these villains are able to use some extra low-level cleric spells.  An interesting twist would be having the adventure take the heroes to a village in which the villains have gained the villagers' trust by pretending to be clerics, perhaps even faking casting imbue with spell ability (using the wands) on the village elders as gestures of goodwill.

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