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Occult Rituals


Occult Rituals

It’s a common belief that only those initiated in the rites and practices of arcane, divine, or psychic magic can cast spells, but this is not strictly true. Hidden within dusty libraries and amid the ramblings of lunatics lie the mysteries of another form of spellcasting—occult ritual magic. These spells are rare, coveted by both those eager to gain their power and those wishing to hide their existence. Most traditional spellcasters consider these rituals dangerous and uncontrollable, something to be avoided or used as a last resort. They fear the power these ceremonies grant to the uninitiated, as the rituals allow those with only a glimmering of understanding the ability to interact with the underlying fabric of magic.

While anyone can attempt to cast occult rituals, the process is fraught with peril. The strange and intricate incantations are often challenging to perform with precision, and failure can weaken the casters or even unleash horrors upon the world. Even when successfully performed, each occult ritual has a price—a backlash that affects at least the caster leading the ritual, and often those assisting in its performance.
Click here for the full rules on Occult Rituals.

Fugue of Oblivion

Source Horror Adventures pg. 132
School enchantment (compulsion); Level 6
Casting Time 6 hours
Components V, S, F (a receptacle urn worth at least 1,000 gp per level to be stolen; see below), SC (up to 4)
Skill Checks Bluff DC 35, 3 successes; Heal DC 35, 3 successes
Range close
Target one living creature
Duration instantaneous; see text
Saving Throw Will negates; SR yes
Backlash The primary caster can’t form short-term memories for the next 24 hours.
Failure The primary caster must succeed at a Will save or suffer the effects of the amnesia greater madness (see page 182). The amnesia lasts until removed, but can’t be removed, even by magic, until 2d6 days have passed.

Effect

The casters weave the target’s name into a chant of nonsense rhyming stories for 6 hours, as they slowly extract the target’s memories into the urn as a purple mist. The target loses all but the first class level she ever gained (if any; this ritual doesn’t affect racial hit dice), immediately reducing or removing all level-dependent abilities as if the target were a 1st-level character. In addition to the loss of her class levels, the target suffers from total amnesia of the time in which she accrued those levels. The target can gain experience and accrue new levels, though she must adhere to all the same decisions she made previously with her missing levels (class, archetype, skills, feats, and so on), even if she can’t explain why she now makes such decisions. In some cases, she might do so without meeting the requirements, such as if her amnesia blocked an alignment change and she gained levels in a class with an alignment restriction she no longer met; in this case, she would gain the abilities but retain only those she would have as an ex-member of the class. The rule that she must adhere to all previous decisions has one exception: if the target is a psychic, she can gain the amnesiac archetype as long as she could otherwise take it.

Destroying the receptacle instantly returns the lost levels to the target and reverses any amnesia. If the target became an amnesiac psychic, she loses the archetype as normal.