#mezlan

 You ever watch one of those Looney Tunes episodes where a character tries to hypnotize whoever they are aligned against that episode, but in their incompetence, they end up hypnotized themselves? Yeah, that’s basically what we’re dealing with here today. For a more modern example, basically think of any One Piece villain who’s powers, while impressive, have a serious and outright goofy drawback.

Essentially, this archetype represents a particularly powerful mesmerist whose hypnotic powers are greater than others, but at the cost of getting ensnared in their own power.

This would be a great example of an archetype doing the whole “risk vs reward, barely able to handle their own power”, and indeed it can be, but for someone like myself who actually knows what autohypnotism is supposed to be, this archetype really feels like there’s a major disconnect between the name and the vibe of the class.

Autohypnotism is supposed to be a form of self-improvement in which the person in question puts themselves in a suggestive state so that a self-imposed mantra or ideal can be planted in their subconscious. Things like improving one’s motivation, boldness, courage, overcoming mental blocks and illness, and so on.

This could have been used for an archetype that had superior mesmerist tricks and touch treatment abilities, or better self-buffs, but we did not get that in this archetype.

I digress. I don’t mean to rag on this archetype as bad or anything, but there was a missed opportunity here, if you ask me.

In any case, this archetype can potentially provide bigger debuffs against foes, but they have to be super careful against what sort of foes they engage with. Foes that recognize their talents for what they are might be able to turn the tables against them.

 When using their hypnotic stare, these mesmerists impose greater penalties to both their foe’s mind, but also any other bold stares they have access to, the drawback being they also suffer the same penalties. The autohypnotist can try and focus to reduce or negate the debilitation they themselves experience, but doing so has an increasingly high chance that the foe slips free of their gaze.

With unfocused eyes, they can also try to bend the minds of other foes near their primary target to a lesser extent, but doing so does not differentiate between friend and foe.

A simple archetype, the autohypnotist seems best suited to back-like support builds that specialize in debuffing and controlling foes from the back lines, rather than up front, where the penalties they impose on themselves don’t matter so much. The ability to broaden their stare to target secondary foes also means they benefit from area-effect mind-targeting spells more so than other mesmerists, and with the right bold stares, they might even set up with allies to make all sorts of other attacks that much more effective. If the enemy starts targeting you, though, be sure to switch to negating your own penalties so you aren’t left vulnerable, and consider picking up mesmerist tricks with the purpose of providing contingencies when you get targeted.

 I can imagine that autohypnotists often seem out of it, especially when using their powers regularly. At the very least, they are likely very interested in exploring altered states of consciousness as a way to seek enlightenment or simply expand their powers. Others might find the weaknesses of their abilities incredibly vexing, perhaps suspecting that the weaknesses come from some great flaw in their training or inherent abilities. In this case, they might quest to find a way to retrain into a vanilla mesmerist, or perhaps another archetype.

  The Ivory Pillars, supposedly the ribs of some titanic primeval beast slain by the gods when the world was still cooling, has become the foundation of the city of Ventruus. The current king was supposed to be a soft-minded puppet put in place by some shadow organization, and while the man is clearly not entirely present mentally, he has turned the tables on every organization and manipulator who has tried to take advantage of him, earning him the nickname The Lucid King.

 Posing as a seer, the tengu crime lord Sozin the Wise really does enter strange trances during his supposed prophecies, but in truth he uses these moments to implant suggestions into the minds of the witnesses he invites, guiding them along paths he sets for them.

“Slime Monk” © Dylan Pock, accessed at his deviantArt here

[Commissioned by @coldbloodassassin. Sort of. They wanted a version of the Rev-9 Terminator from Terminator: Dark Fate. The gimmick of that movie is that the enemy Terminator can split into a T-1000 and T-800 at the same time! Which strikes me as a little pandering. I didn’t want to do it as a robot, especially since Pathfinder RPG already has its own version of the T-1000, the mezlan. So I made my version a mezlan variant, keeping the splitting gimmick and giving it the ability to condense its body to get that “metal skeleton” look going if you want it.]

Mezlan, Revine CR 16 NE Ooze This slimy creature shapes itself into a humanoid outline, growing its limbs into an array of weaponry. It begins to split, each half seemingly as capable and deadly as the other.

The mezlans are shapeshifting creatures that combine the features of oozes and constructs, created in the distant past and remaining in the dark recesses of the world. Although the baseline mezlan was designed for infiltration and stealth, other models do exist with other specialized functions. The revine mezlan is one of these elite models, designed for missions of assassination and elimination of well-protected targets. They are implacable killing machines, and will not stop until their targets are dead. They vary in alignment and personality as “ordinary” mezlans do, but are often evil due to the nature of their missions.

A revine has very precise control of its shapeshifting ability, able to grow new limbs to serve as weapons, squeeze through tiny cracks and crevices, or harden itself into an iron-like shell. They can also divide, which often proves a lethal surprise for enemies expecting a single target. They split in order to set up flanking positions, or to give chase to fleeing enemies while a defender stands its ground. A revine can remain split indefinitely, but its regeneration ceases to work shortly after the split occurs, and a revine must recombine in order to heal itself. Although revines make great use of their morphic weaponry, they often collect other weapons, particularly wands and ranged weapons in order to increase the distance they are capable of striking from.

01x12 “Promises You Can’t Keep” - January 31, 2018

Mezlan “Tassel Leather Loafers” - $200.00