Sin Mage (Apath)

Unofficial rules compendium

Only wizards can truly follow the ancient philosophies created by Thassilon's runelords. The choice to specialize in a Thassilonian school of magic must be made when a character first becomes a wizard.

This is a development of the Thassilonian specialist wizard to be more campaign-specific and to my tastes.

Class Abilities

This archetype has all normal class abilities, except as noted.

Thassilonian Sin Magic

The sin mage specializes in one school of magic and gains great advantage in this field. In return, they give up several other schools of magic completely.

Spells of the school the specialist is focused on are prepared in a spell slot one level lower than normal. This means that an pride mage casts illusion spells as if they were all one spell level lower. Shadow conjuration is a 4th level wizard spell, but is only a 3rd level spell to a specialist wizard of the illusionist school. What is ordinarily first level spells of the chosen school now becomes cantrips and can be cast any number of times in a day. This bonus does not apply when creating magic items; the cost of a scroll, potion, wand or other magic item is always calculated based on the spell's normal level, tough a sin mage may learn the prerequisites for creating a magic item earlier than a normal wizard.

This replaces the arcane school ability. Sin mages do not receive school slots or school powers.

Sin magic focuses on the Tassilonian virtues of rulership and the sins they easily descend into. Originally aboleth concepts, the passionless aberrations viewed these concepts with intellectual curiosity and detachment. They were found to have a high magic potential, but this potential was never fully tapped by the aboleth or their early servants. Only when humans started to work with them did they get an emotional content that could be used to fuel magic.

The seven virtues of rulership and their accompanying sins can be seen on the table below.

Table: Sin Magic

Sin/ Virtue	Magic Type	Prohibited Schools	Focus Weapon	Metal	Description
Envy/ Charity	Abjuration	Evocation, Necromancy	Halberd	Noqual	The art of suppressing magic other than your own and to guard yourself and your possessions .
Gluttony/ Temperance	Necromancy	Abjuration, Enchantment	Scythe	Inubrix	Magic that manipulates the physical body to provide for an unending hunger for life.
Greed/ Generosity	Transmutation	Abjuration, Conjuration	Glaive	Adamantine	Magically transforming things into objects of greater value or utility, and enhancing the physical self.
Lust/ Love	Enchantment	Necromancy, Transmutation	Guisarme	Djezet	Magically controlling other creatures to satisfy your desires. Manipulating others' minds, emotions, and wills.
Pride/ Humility	Illusion	Conjuration, Transmutation	Lucerne hammer	Horacalcum	Perfecting the image of you and your domain.
Sloth/ Zeal	Conjuration	Evocation, Illusion	Longspear	Abysium	Calling agents and minions to perform your deeds for you, or creating what you need as you need it.
Wrath/ Kindness	Evocation	Abjuration, Conjuration	Ranseur	Siccatite	Channeling the raw destructive powers of magic.

Sin/Virtue: The governing pair of sin and virtue from which the school draws it's power. See ex sin mage below.

Magic Type: This is the type of magic that benefits from Thassilonian sin magic.

Prohibited Schools: These schools are completely unavailable. See prohibited schools below.

Focus Weapon: This is the kind of weapon that benefits from the weapon focus ability below.

Metal: This is the kind of magic metal associated with the sin. See Shards of Sin.

Description: An explanation of what this kind of sin magic is about.

This ability replaces arcane school.

Prohibited Schools

A sin mage does not get to customize his choice for opposition schools, his opposition schools are determined for him when he chooses his virtue. These restrictions are more significant than those most wizards follow, and are known as prohibited schools.

A sin mage can never prepare a spell that is in one of his prohibited schools-he treats these spells as if they were not on the wizard spell list. If using a spell trigger or spell completion item to cast a spell from one of his prohibited schools, he must use the Use Magic Device skill to do so.

Weapon Focus

A sin mage must choose to bond with an object for the arcane bond feature, and the object must be the pole-arm specified for his sin. The sin mage gains proficiency in this weapon.

Ex Sin Mage

The pair of sin of virtue that governs his school is a pivotal aspect of the sin mage's personality and power; a sin mage who does not show any commitment at all to exploring these values over one complete level loses the benefits of Thassilonian sin magic, but retains the drawbacks. He must either reaffirm his values or change what sin he is devoted to. If successful in this before gaining his next level, he regains the benefits of Thassilonian sin magic. If he fails, he loses the archetype.

Summary of Changed Class Abilities

These abilities of the original class are lost or modified in this archetype:

• Arcane Bond
• Arcane School