Destiny: Shard-Soul

Shard Soul
You have a unique attunement to the most basic of elements that comprise the world: Dirt, rocks, gems, crystals, minerals and similar "earthly" aspects of the world. From it, your mind has prospered from its tranquil, patient and raw nature, whilst your body performs like an unstoppable boulder of power and durability.

lvl4
Way of the rock - 3/day
You adapt your mind to the raw nature of the soil and rock surrounding you, adapting a unique mentality of problem-solving through the limits of your own body. You may substitute your next stunts, acrobatics, history or persuasion check for an endurance check.

lvl7
Earth envoy
As your attunement grows, so does your understanding of the forces that the world endures and shapes it. You are now able to perform a history, arcana or streetwise check to determine what affected a mineral (gem, crystal, etc...), rock or earth substance within a year and the method it did so. This includes magic (e.g. spells, residue of spells), physical force (e.g. the force of a hoof hitting a rock), or other effects (heat, cold, erosion, water). You also gain the following talent:

Shape element - 2/day
Preparation time: 1 Minute
You may manipulate up to 50 cubic feet of any type of mineral, rock or earth that is within 10 feet from its current state/shape into whatever shape you desire. Forming complex shapes may require a precision check. Materials affected this way retain their original properties, but will slowly revert to its normal shape after 8 hours, unless the effect is sustained.

lvl10
Aspect of the mountain - 1/Session
You are no longer attuned to the earth: You are it. Calm, reserved, patient and undeniably powerful. You can now focus your body into a form of stone-like property for 10 minutes, or until cancelled manually). During this time, any and all forces against you treat you as though you are immovable (No push/pull force is possible) and you are completely indestructible to physical forces. Magical forces that affect your mind suffer penalties of -10. You are still capable of movement, but no faster than a trot. This effect prevents you from entering combat, flying, or any movement that would require an athletics or acrobatics check.

I like it.

"A rock?! THAT'S my destiny?!"

I like this, but the level 4 one is too attribute-reliant. It basicalyl screams "Hey! If you want this destiny, you'd better have a good endurance score!" Or, alternatively, "Hey! If you want that great Arcana score, you'd better be prepared to give up this destiny!" Both of which are bad. Thus, I think level four needs a rewrite.

AProcrastinatingWriter wrote:"A rock?! THAT'S my destiny?!"

I like this, but the level 4 one is too attribute-reliant. It basicalyl screams "Hey! If you want this destiny, you'd better have a good endurance score!" Or, alternatively, "Hey! If you want that great Arcana score, you'd better be prepared to give up this destiny!" Both of which are bad. Thus, I think level four needs a rewrite.

Allow me to point you towards the current official archmage destiny...

Arcane Secrets - 3/Day
Your study of magical secrets allows you to employ the art in new and versatile ways. You can use Arcana in the place of your next Persuasion, Perception, Stealth or Mechanics check.

I made it level 4 because the level 7 utility is a bit too powerful to be level 4. The endurance part is intentional: It offers a very good utility for those with high endurance, since the skill, in practice, has a very limited range of uses (This varies with DMs, but it's usually much less than something like arcana, persuasion etc...). Due to separation of combat/non-combat mechanics).

The whole destiny offers a good chance for roleplaying a literal "Made of Iron"/"Bruiser with a Soft Center" character.

Perhaps I could alter it a bit, however. How about this:

lvl4
Way of the rock - 3/day
You adapt your mind to the raw nature of the soil and rock surrounding you, adapting a unique mentality of problem-solving through the limits of your own body. You may substitute your next stunts, acrobatics, history or persuasion check for an endurance check. If your endurance modifier is same or lower than the skill you substitute, you cannot suffer critical failure penalties and may re-roll the die (once!), on a failure. The re-roll can be either the original/subsituted skill, or endurance again, which again prevents critical failures.

example of use:

Player A
Endurance = 11
Persuasion = 5

Player A can use the utility to roll endurance instead of persuasion, which gives him a bigger bonus. He can crit fail as normal.

Player B
Endurance = 5
Persuasion = 11

Player B can use the utility to roll endurance instead of persuasion, which gives him a lower bonus. HOWEVER, If the roll a natural 1, it doesn't auto-fail or suffer a consequence and if the roll is a failure, he can roll again, either as persuasion (+11 modifier, can crit fail), or endurance again (+5 modifier, but immune to a crit fail).


I propose this modification is applied to the archmage destiny as well, so that non-arcana based characters have a reason to take it. I made it slightly different, though, since arcane secrets is higher level and arcana is a generally more versatile skill.

Arcane Secrets - 3/Day
Your study of magical secrets allows you to employ the art in new and versatile ways. You can use Arcana in the place of your next Persuasion, Perception, Stealth or Mechanics check. If your arcana modifier is same or lower than the substituted skill, you may instead add half of your arcana modifier to it and re-roll it on a critical failure.