Sneak Peek: Regional Feats

This month we present two of the regional feats from the forthcoming Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Foe Hunter was the brainchild of designer Rob Heinsoo and Inscribe Rune comes from Skip Williams.

Foe Hunter
[Fighter, General]

In lands threatened by evil nonhumans, many warriors learn ways to fight effectively against these creatures. You have served as a member of a militia or military unit devoted to protecting your home from the fierce raiders who trouble the area.

Regions: Chult, Cormyr, Damara, the Lake of Steam, the North, the Moonsea, Shield Dwarf, Tashalar, Tethyr, Vaasa, Wood Elf.

Benefit: Your homeland dictates the type of foe you have trained against. When fighting monsters of that race, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls with melee attacks and ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet, and you act as if you had the Improved Critical feat for the weapon you are using. This does not stack with the Improved Critical feat, but does stack with the ranger’s favored enemy bonus.

Special: In Cormyr, Damara, Tethyr, Vaasa, or as a Shield Dwarf, your traditional foes are goblinoids—goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears. In Chult and Tashalar, this feat applies to lizard-folk and yuan-ti. Wood elves train against gnolls. In the Lake of Steam, the North, and the Moonsea, this feat applies to orcs and half-orcs.

You may take this feat multiple times; its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat you must qualify for learning regional feats in a land that hunts a different creature than that specified by the regional feat you already have.

Inscribe Rune
[Item Creation]

You can create magical runes that hold spells until triggered.

Prerequisite: Intelligence 13+, appropriate Craft skill, divine spellcaster level 3rd+.

Benefit: You can cast any divine spell you have prepared as a rune. A rune is a temporary magical writing similar to a scroll. A rune can be triggered once before it loses its magical power, but it lasts indefinitely until triggered. A rune written or painted on a surface fades away when expended, erased, or dispelled, but a rune carved into a surface remains behind as a bit of nonmagical writing even after its magic has been expended.

Special: Inscribing a rune takes 10 minutes plus the casting time of the spell to be included. When you create a rune, you set the caster level, which must be sufficient to cast the spell in question and no higher than your own level. When you create a rune, you make any choices that you would normally make when casting the spell.

Whoever touches the rune triggers the rune and becomes the target of the spell. (If the spell only affects objects, than an object must somehow trigger the rune.) You may touch the rune safely without triggering it. The rune itself must be touched in order to trigger it, so an object with a rune may be handled safely as long as care is taken to avoid contacting the rune. As with a symbol spell, a rune cannot be placed upon a weapon with the intent of having the rune triggered when the weapon strikes a foe.

The caster must have prepared the spell to be scribed and must provide any material components or focuses the spell requires. If casting the spell would reduce the caster’s XP total, he pays the cost upon beginning the rune in addition to the XP cost for making the rune itself. Likewise, material components are consumed when he begins writing, but focuses are not. (A focus used in casting a rune can be reused.)

Inscribing a rune requires a Craft check with a DC of 20 + the level of the spell used. The Craft skill you use is anything appropriate to the task of creating a written symbol on a surface (metalworking, calligraphy, gemcutting, stonecarving, and so on). You paint, draw, or engrave the rune onto a surface (dwarves usually engrave their runes in stone or metal in order to take advantage of their racial affinity for these items) and make the check. If the check fails, the rune is imperfect and cannot hold the spell.

The act of writing triggers the prepared spell, whether or not the Craft check is successful, making the spell unavailable for casting until the character has rested and regained spells. (That is, that spell slot is expended from his currently prepared spells, just as if it had been cast.)

A single object of medium size or smaller can hold only one rune. Larger objects can hold one rune per 25 square feet (an area 5 feet square) of surface area. Runes cannot be placed on creatures. The rune has a base price of the spell level x caster level x 100 gp (a 0-level spell counts as 1/2 level). You must spend 1/25 of its base price in XP and use up raw materials costing half this base price. A rune’s market value equals its base price.

A successful erase spell deactivates a rune, but the DC is 15+ your caster level. Touching the rune to erase it does not trigger the rune unless the erase spell fails to deactivate the rune. A dispel magic spell targeted on an untriggered rune can dispel its magic if successful (the DC is 11+ your caster level). Untriggered runes are not subject to area dispels. A read magic spell allows the caster to identify the spell held in a rune with a successful Spellcraft check (DC 15 + the spell’s level). A rogue can use Disable Device to disable runes (the DC is 25 + the spell’s level, like any magic trap).

(Realmswatch Home Page)