This material is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

INCANTATIONS

Incantations function like spells, except a character need not be a spellcaster to cast them. Anyone can cast an incantation simply by performing the correct ritual gestures and phrases. Incantations don’t use spell slots, so they don’t have to be prepared ahead of time, and there’s no limit on the number of times one can cast an incantation per day. Since they do not use up spell slots, incantations cannot be improved using metamagic feats. Finally, incantations generally have more powerful, far-reaching effects than even 5th-level spells.

There is, of course, a catch. Incantations take much longer to cast than normal spells. Success with an incantation is never assured, and the consequences for failure can be dramatic. The most powerful incantations can require rituals involving multiple participants, strange or expensive material components, or other aspects that make them difficult to cast.

Discovering Incantations

The instructions for performing incantations are generally found in various obscure tomes. Such books are filled with “magic spells,” and most of them are utterly bogus. But hidden among the dross is the real stuff, and discerning whether an incantation found in a book will actually work is a matter for experts in arcane lore.

Finding a set of instructions for a particular incantation requires a successful Research check with a DC equal to the Knowledge (arcane lore) DC for the incantation –10. Just learning of the existence of a particular incantation is an easier Research check, with a DC equal to the Knowledge (arcane lore) DC –15.

Casting an Incantation

At its core, casting an incantation means having the required incantation components, then succeeding at a number of Knowledge (arcane lore) checks during the incantation’s casting time. Each incantation lists how many Knowledge (arcane lore) checks are required to cast the incantation successfully.

Unless otherwise specified, the caster makes Knowledge (arcane lore) checks every 10 minutes. Failing a Knowledge (arcane lore) check doesn’t mean that the entire incantation is a failure, just that the previous 10 minutes have been wasted. However, if you fail two Knowledge (arcane lore) checks in a row, the incantation immediately fails. The consequences for failure are detailed in the description of the specific incantation. Even if the incantation fails, material components and experience points are still lost and the backlash still takes effect.

Incantation Components

Most incantations require components not unlike spells, including verbal, somatic, focus, and material components. In addition, some require secondary casters (abbreviated SC), cause some sort of backlash (abbreviated B), or cost the caster some experience points (abbreviated XP).

Secondary Casters

Some incantations require multiple participants to cast successfully. These secondary casters (abbreviated SC) are indispensable to the success of the spell. No matter how many people are gathered in the dark room, chanting with candles, only one character—generally the one with the highest Knowledge (arcane lore) check—is the primary caster who’ll make the relevant checks. Secondary casters can’t help the primary caster with the Aid Another rules, but their presence is required for certain aspects of the ritual nonetheless. If an incantation requires some other skill check, any of the secondary casters can make that check if they have a higher bonus than the primary caster. Even if you’re not a required caster of the spell, you can step in and make the non-Knowledge check if you’re better at the relevant skill than the actual caster.

Backlash

Some spells damage or drain the caster in some way. They have a backlash component, generally damage, negative levels, or some other condition. The caster takes the backlash regardless of the success or failure of the spell.

Saves and Spell Resistance

If the incantation allows a save, the formula to calculate it is included in the spell’s description. For checks to overcome spell resistance, divide the incantation’s Knowledge (arcane lore) DC by 2 to get the effective caster level for the spell resistance check.

Incantations as Spell-Like Abilities

Some creatures have spell-like abilities that duplicate the effects of incantations. There’s no chance of failure and no backlash for such spell-like abilities, which don’t require components of any kind and take only an attack action to activate.

Failed Incantations

Each incantation has its own consequences for failure (two failed skill checks in a row). In general, they can be divided into the following categories.

Attack: A creature is called from elsewhere to battle the caster (and often any bystanders and secondary casters). The incantation’s description tells the GM what Challenge Rating the creature should have, how it behaves, and how long it persists.

Augment: The incantation was supposed to weaken or destroy its target, but it makes it more powerful instead. A damaging spell might heal its target or cause it to grow in size, for example.

Betrayal: The incantation seemingly succeeds, but the subject of the incantation (or in rare cases the caster) loses all allegiances and gains their opposites. In general, the subject now hates all it loved before the incantation. The subject may keep its new allegiances a secret. Whenever a character attempts an incantation with a chance of betrayal failure, the GM should make the relevant die rolls in secret.

Damage: The simplest consequence of failure, damage is dealt to the caster or the target, depending on the incantation.

Death: Someone—usually the caster or the target—dies. Depending on the incantation, a successful saving throw may avoid the effect of failure.

Delusion: The caster believes the incantation had the desired effect, but in fact it had no effect or a very different one.

Falsehood: Common with divinations, the incantation delivers false results to the caster, but the caster believes the results are true. Whenever a character attempts an incantation with a chance of falsehood failure, the GM should make the relevant die rolls in secret.

Hostile Spell: The caster of the incantation is targeted by a harmful spell or incantation. The spell description specifies the specific spell or incantation, save DC, and so on.

Mirrorcast: The spell has the opposite effect of that intended.

Reversal: The spell targets the caster, rather than the intended target of the incantation.

Baleful Polymorph

Transmutation

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 41, 6 successes, and Knowledge (earth and life sciences), 1 success; Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, M, F, SC; Casting Time: 70 minutes (minimum); Range: Touch; Target: Helpless creature touched; Duration: Permanent; Saving Throw: Fortitude negates (DC 17 + caster’s Cha modifier) and see text; Spell Resistance: Yes

As the polymorph incantation, except that you change the subject into a Small or smaller animal of no more than 1 HD (such as a dog, lizard, monkey, toad, or viper). If the new form would prove fatal to the creature (such as polymorphing a landbound target into a fish), the subject gets a +4 bonus on the save. If the incantation succeeds, the target must also make a Will save. If this second save fails, the creature gains the Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores of its new form. It still retains its class and level, hit points, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, allegiances, extraordinary abilities, supernatural abilities, and spell-like abilities, as well as any spellcasting ability possessed.

Note that incorporeal or gaseous creatures are immune to being polymorphed, and a shapeshifter (such as a werewolf) can revert to its natural form as a move action.

Material Component: Laboratory equipment and alchemical supplies (purchase DC 25).

Focus: Part of the kind of creature that the target will turn into, such as a hair, scale, or feather. If you have a living, helpless creature that can serve as a model for the target creature, you gain a +2 bonus on the Knowledge (arcane lore) checks required for this incantation.

Secondary Casters: 12 required (not including the primary caster).

Failure: Reversal on all secondary casters, using the same saving throw DC.

Bibliolalia

Divination

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 33, 6 successes; Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, F, XP; Casting Time: 60 minutes (minimum); Range: Personal; Target: You; Duration: Instantaneous; Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: No

The bibliolalia incantation puts you in an oracular trance as you pore through books in a library. At the incantation’s conclusion, you uncover lore about an important person, place, or thing beyond the limits of mundane research.

The information gleaned through a bibliolalia incantation isn’t necessarily known to anyone, and it may not be in any of the books in the library. Nonetheless, something within the books triggers the burst of magical inspiration that reveals the information.

No set of rules can adequately describe how much information the bibliolalia incantation provides. If you have the item or person at hand, you’ll learn more than if you just have a name or a cryptic clue.

Focus: A large library with at least a token occult section (purchase DC 25).

Experience Point Cost: 200 XP.

Failure: Falsehood. The bibliolalia incantation reveals information that seems accurate, but is actively misleading.

Body Double

Conjuration (Creation)

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 39, 6 successes (and see text) and Disguise DC 39, 1 success; Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, M (see text), XP; Casting Time: 7 hours (minimum); Range: Touch; Effect: One duplicate creature; Duration: 12 days; Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: No

The body double incantation creates a duplicate of any creature formed from mystic clay, with alchemical blood and an eldritch life of its own. At first glance, the duplicate appears to be exactly the same as the creature you modeled it after, but there are differences: The body double has only half the level or Hit Dice (which affects its skills, feats, and class features). It has the surface mannerisms and personality of the real creature, but its Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores are all 5. Creatures familiar with the original might detect the ruse with a successful Spot check. You must make a Disguise check when you cast the incantation to determine how good the likeness is, and this Disguise check sets the DC for Spot checks (to notice imperfections in the duplication) and Sense Motive checks (to discern that the body double is behaving oddly).

At all times the body double remains under your absolute command. No special telepathic link exists, so command must be exercised in some other manner. The body double has no ability to become more powerful. It cannot earn experience points. If destroyed, it reverts to clay and melts into a vaguely humanoid lump within 1 minute. The body double doesn’t naturally heal and responds to neither conventional medicine nor natural healing. A complex process requiring at least one day, materials (purchase DC 5 + 1 per hit point), and a fully equipped magical laboratory can repair damage to the body double.

Material Component: The spell is cast over an elaborate clay simulacrum of the creature to be duplicated, and some piece of the creature (a hair or fingernail, for instance) must be placed within the clay. Additionally, the incantation requires rare earths and unguents (purchase DC 30).

XP Cost: 1,000 XP.

Failure: Betrayal. The body double has allegiances opposite the original creature and a pathological hatred of both the original creature and the caster. Furthermore, the body double isn’t under the command of the caster, although it may play along for a while while it learns about its new enemies.

Caduceus

Conjuration (Healing)

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 31, 4 successes, and Treat Injury DC 31, 2 success; Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, F; Casting Time: 6 hours (minimum); Range: Touch; Target: Living creature; Duration: Instantaneous; Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless); Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

Caduceus enables you to channel magic into a creature to wipe away injury and afflictions. It immediately ends any and all of the following adverse conditions affecting the target: temporary ability damage (but not permanent ability drain), blindness (including dazzled effects), confusion or insanity, daze, deafness, fatigue, exhaustion, feeblemindedness, nausea, and poison. It also cures up to 150 points of damage. A single casting of the incantation is enough to simultaneously achieve all these effects.

Caduceus also removes negative levels, but it does not restore permanently drained levels.

The caduceus incantation has no effect on undead or constructs.

Focus: Medical equipment found in a hospital emergency room (purchase DC 25).

Failure: Death. Target must succeed at a Fortitude save (DC 15) or die. If the save succeeds, the target is reduced to –1 hit points, unless he was already below that.

Cast into Shadow

Abjuration

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 33, 6 successes (see text); Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, M, XP, B; Casting Time: 1 hour (minimum); Range: 55 ft.; Target: One or more outsiders, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart; Duration: Permanent; Saving Throw: Fortitude negates (DC 17 + caster’s Cha modifier) and see text; Spell Resistance: Yes

The cast into Shadow incantation enables you to force outsiders (usually, but not always, fiends) away from the world you know, trapping them in some distant dimension. Up to 2 HD of creatures per caster level can be sent away in this fashion.

To target a creature, you must present at least one object or substance that it hates, fears, or otherwise opposes.

If you successfully overcome the target’s spell resistance, and the target fails its save, the target disappears. In general, targets never find their way back from beyond Shadow—or if they do, they don’t remember their previous time here.

Options: If the target or targets are all helpless, the DC for the incantation is reduced by –6. At the GM’s option, certain rare items might work twice as well (each providing +2 against spell resistance and +4 on the spell’s DC).

Material Component: An object the creature hates, fears, or opposes. Discovering such an item may require a Research check.

Experience Point Cost: 1,000 XP.

Backlash: Caster is exhausted.

Failure: Attack from an outsider of the same allegiance. The attacking outsider has a Challenge Rating equal to the average party level +1. It attacks the caster within a few rounds of the incantation’s failure. It has been brought to this world by the failed incantation, so it may retreat and try to make a home for itself here. It will always bear a grudge against the caster for bringing it here, however, and it is a potential source of later mischief.

Control Weather

Evocation

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 34, 6 successes; Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, SC; Casting Time: 60 minutes (minimum); Range: Two miles; Area: Two-mile-radius circle, centered on you; Duration: 24 hours (D); Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: No

You change the weather in the local area. It takes 10 minutes for the effects to manifest after the incantation is completed. The current, natural weather conditions are determined by the GM. You can call forth weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in.

You control the general tendencies of the weather, such as the direction and intensity of the wind. You cannot control specific applications of the weather—where lightning strikes, for example, or the exact path of a tornado. When you select a certain weather condition to occur, the weather assumes that condition 10 minutes later (changing gradually, not abruptly). The weather continues as you left it for the duration, or until you use an attack action to designate a new kind of weather (which fully manifests itself 10 minutes later).

Contradictory conditions are not possible simultaneously— fog and strong wind, for example.

Control weather can do away with atmospheric phenomena (naturally occurring or otherwise) as well as create them.

Secondary Casters: 12 required (not including the primary caster).

Failure: Mirrorcast. The opposite weather effect manifests over the course of 10 minutes (rain rather than a heat wave, for example, or a thaw rather than a blizzard). This weather persists for 4d12 hours and cannot be dismissed.

Create Clone

Necromancy

Skill Check: Knowledge (arcane lore) DC 32, 7 successes, and Knowledge (earth and life sciences) DC 32, 1 success; Failure: Two consecutive failed skill checks; Components: V, S, M, F, XP; Casting Time: 8 hours (minimum) and see text; Range: Touch; Effect: One clone; Duration: Instantaneous; Saving Throw: None; Spell Resistance: No

This incantation makes an inert duplicate of a creature. If the original individual has been slai...