Animate Unliving Servitor
Level: 3
Duration: Permanent
Range: Touch
The caster converts a mass of scrap-metal, broken crockery, glass, lead-shot, small rocks and other inorganic debris into a roughly human-like shape and causes it to arise in a mockery of life. The mindless servitor-thing formed by this spell is equivalent to an undead skeleton and can only carry out very simple commands of fewer than five words. they remain active until destroyed or Dispel Magic is cast upon them.
The caster may animate a number of hit dice worth of unliving servitors equal to the caster's level. For example, a 5th level scholar can animate 5 HD worth of unliving servitors, and it is left to them to determine if it would be 5 single-HD servitors or a single 5-HD servitor, or some other distribution of HD.
All unliving servitors produced by this spell have the following stats:
No. Enc.: Determined by Creator
Alignment: as creator
Movement: 20' (5')
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: Determined by Creator
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6 or by weapon
Save: MU1
Morale: 12
Level: 3
Duration: Permanent
Range: Touch
The caster converts a mass of scrap-metal, broken crockery, glass, lead-shot, small rocks and other inorganic debris into a roughly human-like shape and causes it to arise in a mockery of life. The mindless servitor-thing formed by this spell is equivalent to an undead skeleton and can only carry out very simple commands of fewer than five words. they remain active until destroyed or Dispel Magic is cast upon them.
The caster may animate a number of hit dice worth of unliving servitors equal to the caster's level. For example, a 5th level scholar can animate 5 HD worth of unliving servitors, and it is left to them to determine if it would be 5 single-HD servitors or a single 5-HD servitor, or some other distribution of HD.
All unliving servitors produced by this spell have the following stats:
No. Enc.: Determined by Creator
Alignment: as creator
Movement: 20' (5')
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: Determined by Creator
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d6 or by weapon
Save: MU1
Morale: 12
Love it. A very useful spell; I wrote a Nexialist spell like this one based on the gaming we did in the 90s. We had a Vampire/Mage campaign set in industrial decline of Binghamton, NY.
ReplyDeleteThere was an old coal repository known as the "Warehouse-Cathedral." Inside there, military contractors were making junk sculpture battle robots on-the-cheap, so-called Scrapras, using magic spells like this. It was a lot easier to make robots this way than doing lots of mechanical engineering and computer science. Too bad shortcuts always come with hidden costs!
Glad you liked it. I've been clearing-out old spells from the early days and this one was at the root of some interesting troubles for the player characters. I like having field-tested stuff.
DeleteYour Mage game sounds interesting. I never got the opportunity to play that game. I've always liked scrap-metal and debris-based golems and the like. I have a few more things like these to post about one of these days. I like your treatment of van Vogt's Nexialist concept. They'd make an interesting faction in certain obscure and often unmentionable locales...
Do they survive the death of their creator? Perhaps slowly falling apart as the magic animating them decays.
ReplyDeletePossibly. I do like your idea; the force animating these things would very likely run down after the death of their creator. The process is so personal that it would be very difficult for anyone else, except perhaps a designated heir or apprentice to recharge or take-over the old servitors of a dead sorcerer.
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