Runelord (Class Archetype)

You draw untold power from runes, sometimes called sin magic. You associate with one of the seven sins, also known as the seven rewards of rule: envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath. If you choose this class archetype, you must select Runelord Dedication as your 2nd-level class feat.

Prerequisites: You must be a wizard.

Runelord Adjustments: You become trained in martial polearms and spears. When your proficiency for simple weapons increases, your proficiencies in these weapons increases as well. You learn the Thassilonian language.

Instead of an arcane thesis, you gain a personal rune. Your personal rune also affects your arcane bond.

You must select the School Of Thassilonian Rune Magic as your arcane school, and you must choose one sin to specialize in. When you cast any curriculum spell or school spell from the School of Thassilonian Rune Magic, you do so simply by tracing runes of power in the air. This removes the need to speak incantations aloud. When you Refocus, you do so by contemplating or indulging in your sin.

Each sin is opposed by two others. The incompatibility of these sins means that casting magic philosophically appropriate to those opposing sins, as represented by each school's anathema, interrupts your connection to your own sin and personal rune. If you violate your sin's anathema, you lose the benefits of your personal rune, and whenever you attempt to cast a curriculum spell or school spell, you must succeed at a DC 15 Flat or the spell is lost. This disruption lasts until you complete an Atone ritual; unlike a normal atone ritual, Arcana can be used for both the primary and secondary checks. Your curriculum spells (including spells of your own sin) never violate this anathema, sometimes providing alternatives to prohibited magic.

You gain Advanced School Spell as a bonus feat at 8th level, gaining the advanced school spell for the School of Thassilonian Rune Magic; once you've begun your studies of sin magic, there is no turning back from its allure.

School of Thassilonian Rune Magic

Arcane Bond and Personal Rune

Runelords hail from an era where even a scholar was expected to be able to defend themself with arms if necessary, leading to the practice of attaching a blade to the typical wizard's staff. You must choose a polearm or spear as your arcane bond. In place of an arcane thesis, you have a personal rune, which appears on your bonded weapon. The weapon functions as a staff only you can prepare and contains the sin spells from your sin up to the highest rank of spell you can cast (including your cantrips). Your personal rune isn't a property rune and doesn't count against the weapon's limit of such runes.

When you prepare your bonded weapon as a staff, you can physically merge one other staff in your possession into it, adding the staff's spells to your bonded weapon until your next daily preparations. While merged, the weapons haft takes on aesthetic aspects of the staff.

You discover the secrets to embedding aeon stones into your flesh. You spend 1 day attuning to an aeon stone and physically embedding it in your skin. While the stone is embedded this way, you gain the benefits of the aeon stone as if it were orbiting above your head, but it protects the stone from being noticed or stolen as easily. Aeon stones in your flesh must be invested to function, as usual.

You can also use this activity to safely remove an embedded aeon stone in 1 day. Someone without this feat can attempt to surgically remove it safely by spending 1 day and succeeding at a DC 30 Medicine check, or hastily by simply ripping it from a corpse.

You gain the resonant power of one embedded aeon stone as if it were placed in a Wayfinder. While you can embed multiple aeon stones in your flesh, you can gain the resonance power from only one embedded stone at a time, selected each day when you make your daily preparations.

Special At 8th level, you can take this feat again. If you do, you gain the resonance powers of up to four invested aeon stones instead of only one.

PFS Note: This feat acts as if an aeon stone was embedded in a wayfinder, and thus would not allow a second aeon stone to provide its resonance power from being embedded in a wayfinder.

Your personal rune is connected more closely to your arcane bond. You gain the critical specialization effects of your arcane bonded weapon. In addition, whenever you critically hit a creature with your arcane bonded weapon, they begin to feel the pull of your sin, imposing a –2 circumstance penalty to saves against any of your curriculum or sin spells until the end of your next turn.

Effect: Rod Of Rule

Requirements You are holding a weapon in the polearm or spear group.

You punctuate your spellcasting with a flourish of your weapon, imparting physical force to your magic. If the next spell you cast is a non-cantrip sin or curriculum spell that affects a single target, and you either succeed on your attack roll or the target fails its saving throw against the spell, a wound in the shape of your personal rune appears on the target, dealing additional persistent bleed damage equal to the spell's rank, in addition to its regular effects.

During your daily preparations, you can indulge in your associated sin or meditate on its values (and risks). When you do, you gain one additional spell slot of any spell level up to two levels below the highest-level wizard spell you can cast. You can prepare only one of your curriculum spells in this slot.

Your deep connection to a specific sin allows you to easily negate spells that sin opposes. Instead of being able to counter a foe's spell with Counterspell only if you have the same spell prepared, you can Counterspell it with any of your curriculum spells if the spell cast would violate your sin's anathema.

The ancient Thassilonians associated sins with different skymetals, and you've adapted that theory to empower your bonded weapon beyond its normal limits. When your personal rune is placed on a weapon during your daily preparations, choose a weapon property rune of up to your level that is common or you otherwise have access to. That rune is also added to the weapon until your next daily preparations. This rune counts against your weapon's limit as normal.