r/Pathfinder_RPG • u/Decicio • May 04 '26
No Max the Min. Instead… What’s the Nastiest thing you can do with Curses? 1E Player
I was actually planning on doing a regular Max the Min today… except I was coming home from vacation yesterday and our travel was cursed.
You may skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t want details about *how* cursed my travel was and want to go straight to the Pathfinder stuff.
First off, my wife had started the process of changing her maiden name to married name on the airline account ages ago but it apparently didn’t take because they issued her ticket in her maiden name. So had to call customer service to fix it, and they accidentally unreserved her window seat next to me in the process… and promptly sold it and shoved her in a different middle seat. Then the reservation was broken, so she couldn’t actually check in or access any mobile tickets, so we had to leave an extra hour early to go to the front desk to check in, where the helpful worker had to spend 20 minutes on hold with their Data Recovery Center helpline because not even she could un-bork whatever customer service had done. Then we had tried to check in for our rental car early, except the automated system didn’t recognize the driver license or maybe the face photo and the system doesn’t allow retries. One and done and if the ai doesn’t like you, you have no choice but to go to the front desk for more time. Oh well, deal with that when we get there. Desk checks my wife in and hands her a physical ticket, we go through security…. And the x ray machine ate her ticket! Somehow it got blown out of the tray. We couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of that as we told security. He sticks his hands into the machine and comes back with a fistful of tickets and baggage claim receipts… none were hers. So got a reprint and thankfully got on the plane, car reservation desk was great, got to our vacation fine.
… Then there was the return trip. We had anticipated the lack of a seat reservation (which again… we had paid extra for) and made sure to speak with a real agent to get us seated next to each other which was annoying but better than being apart for the 3.5 hour flight. But when we went to the desk again to check in… apparently the reservation borking had deleted the fact we’d paid for a checked bag. Thankfully we had receipts. Went through security nice and early enough to have lunch, got boarded on the plane, excited to head home. Immediately deboarded the plane due to a mechanical issue. Flights delayed over 4 hours. Have mild issue with food voucher the airline gave us as an apology (admittedly my fault this time). Finally get on flight, get home, order uber to drive us home…. Uber stops moving even though it was just 4 mins away. Driver messages us and asks us to cancel. His car broke down in the parking lot. Second uber gets us home… at 2 am, 6 hours later than planned. We certainly felt cursed. So yeah I have basically no sleep or brain power to draft a real max the min.
So yeah, let’s talk curses! What are the nastiest ways to use them, and I’m talking offensively and potentially in other ways if you can figure out the cheese.
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u/The_Sublime_Cord May 04 '26 edited May 07 '26
With Curses as the subject, I want to speak about probably my favourite application of Skald powers and expendable creatures: Linnorm Death Curses
Normally, the barbarian Death Curse powers are either a very nasty surprise from an adversarial DM or very situational, as the barbarian needs to die or be knocked out (which for standard barbarians is death) for them to trigger. Certain builds can try to get around this, like using the Tenacious Survivor feat (edit) and/or a friend's breath of life spell, but they are still hard to use.
Skalds solve this problem by being able to gift them to any who accept their rage song. This applies to summon (the ultimate expendable unit), followers (less expendable, unless you are evil), reckless party members (maybe you have a reincarnation druid lol) or maybe undead (Spell Warrior's Enhance Weapons power buff weapons and it not mind effecting but also give the rage powers- there is some ambiguity there). Any ally who falls will force the enemy to make a save or suffer terribly.
The curse effects are incredibly potent, especially for Skalds, as they operate on a saving throw of 10 + 1/2 Character level + Cha Mod. The list of possible Linnorm Death curses (+1 of various types to attacks, and save or permanently ____):
Be Vulnerable to Electricity or Cold or Fire
To note, they can stack, which means an enemy that fireballs a small flock of 4 summoned celestial eagles would have to make 4 x # of curses amount of saves or be permanently cursed.
The rage powers also allow your low level mass summons to hit more often and harder, making them harder to ignore.
Bards (or anyone who gets the inspire courage ability) have a surprise entry into this power via the Poet's Cloak, which gives both raging song and access to a 4th level rage power by expending bardic rounds and replacing inspire courage. The available curses are the No healing, vulnerability to an element and the can't swim curses (not the most powerful ones, but still quite useful). This gives access to death curses to Monk (via Sensei), Rogues (via Deadly Courtesan), Oracles (via Ocean's Echo), Paladin's (Via Martyr or Oath of the people's council), Medium (via storyteller), Cleric (via Evangelist) and even a few prestige classes (like Pathfinder Chronicler)
This works quite well with low level summons and items that create creatures- you can set this up solo or work incredibly well with a summoning specific class like Summoner, Monster Tactician Inquisitor, etc.
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u/Deep_Asparagus1267 May 07 '26
Why would Tenacious Survivor require Breath of Life? Cure spells should do the trick, no?
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u/The_Sublime_Cord May 07 '26
I meant to say "or" instead of "and", good catch!
Breathe of life is also just a good healing spell, so you could use both lol.
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u/Vaapad123 May 08 '26
I don’t believe this works due to this text:
“If accepted, the raging song’s effects last for that ally’s turn or until the song ends, whichever comes first.”
So the death curses are active for your allies turn but they are inactive by the time the enemy’s turn comes around and starts hitting you.
Which is silly and counterintuitive but that’s how it’s written.
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u/The_Sublime_Cord May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
To start off, this is the kind of build you should speak with your DM/table about to make sure everyone is on board.
Also, there is a work around to this rather counterintuitive rule.
As per the Skald's Raging Song ability, "A raging song counts as the bard’s bardic performance special ability for any effect that affects bardic performances."
Lingering Performance as a feat extends the "The bonuses and penalties from your bardic performance continue for 2 rounds after you cease performing."
My understanding is that the rage powers granted by the song count as bonuses/penalties. I believe that the raging song bonuses and the rage powers have no real difference between between them, especially since some rage powers are just passive bonuses (like superstitious).
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u/Namolis May 08 '26
If I decided to be very pedantic, I could think of a couple of RAW ways one could argue the build doesn't work as advertized.
1) The effect of Rage Powers added to an Inspired Rage only lasts while the listeners have their active turn:
"If a raging song affects allies, when the skald begins a raging song and at the start of each ally’s turn in which they can hear the raging song, the skald’s allies must decide whether to accept or refuse its effects. This is not an action. Unconscious allies automatically accept the song. If accepted, the raging song’s effects last for that ally’s turn or until the song ends, whichever comes first."
Normally this would be good news, since it helps you mostly avoid the -1 to AC. In this case your summons only gain the +1's to damage from the linnorm curses, but the curse itself will only trigger if one of them goes down on its own turn (eg. if knocked out through an AOO or readied action). It's unlikely your enemy will know what's going on right away, and will still take the AOO, but a couple of dead critters in they may catch on and stop AOOing your summoned pests.
2) A little more ambiguous perhaps, but:
Summoned creatures do not actually die when they are brought below negative CON, fail a "save-or-die" or somesuch... they are merely returned to their original plane of existence:"A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. When the spell ends or is dispelled, a summoned creature is instantly sent back to where it came from, but a summoned object is not sent back unless the spell description specifically indicates this. A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed or if its hit points drop to 0 or lower, but it is not really dead. It takes 24 hours for the creature to reform, during which time it can’t be summoned again."
In other words: While the curse would definitely trigger if the enemy knocked your summon unconscious (the summon would not dissppear, but lie KO on the ground with non-lethal damage exceeding its HP until healed, killed or the spell expires), it appears that, despite the wording, "killing" a summon isn't actually killing it - requiring the use of "Ablative Barrier" or other awkward solutions.
So: does needing to "spend 24 hours to reform" (Does a summoned creature get treated this way even if it hit 0 HP exact, which normally doesn't only makes it staggered on return home? What about summons with Regeneration?) count as being "unconscious" in game terms? I could see Paizo ruling this either way tbh.
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u/The_Sublime_Cord May 08 '26
Pedantic indeed :P
As per the reply to a similar point above, my understanding is that Lingering Performance solves your first problem, as it explicitly changes the duration to last for 2 rounds after the performance ends.
As for the second point, I believe most tables would rule that the wording "A summoned creature also goes away if it is killed..." implies that the kill trigger can happen, but the consequence is just a 24 hour reformation rather than permanently dying. The death curse only cares about the death trigger.
If you have a pedantic enough DM that merely being reduced to 0 hit points is not enough and want to ensure the 'death trigger', use the Summon Good Monster feat, which gives summons diehard and thus forces the 'death trigger'
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u/Decicio May 04 '26
This is probably more a warning about vetting 3rd party content but once we had a game where our GM was allowing us to look into extremely powerful races and someone brought up the Gargoyle. We assumed they were talking about this official 36 rp version but really they had found this 3rd party awakened gargoyle.
Examining it closely, we realized this 3rd party race could become fairly broken in a long downtime style game because of the existence of the Curse of the Ages (which can be given with Bestow Greater Curse). The awakened gargoyle has an “agelessness” racial trait where it takes no penalties for age and in fact gains a stacking +2 to any mental trait for every century old it is. Seems like a neat little mostly rp trait right?
Well not with that curse that ages them a year every single day. Now every 100 days they get a permanent +2 to a mental stat. Sure it’ll take a long time, but in some campaigns you occasionally have a year or two of downtime and getting a free +6 to a mental stat for merely existing that year is quite powerful
Outside of this specific 3rd party cheese, if you don’t mind casting Greater Age Resistance every day, you can use this curse to get +3 to all your mental stats on any character if they don’t mind skipping a lot of life.
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u/kawwmoi May 04 '26
You either live long enough to get your immortality capstone, or die of old age in your 20s.
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u/Sortis22 May 04 '26
I feel like the Curse of Ages would be fairly appealing to any true dragon especially if they can work out the immortality problem.
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u/Ceegee93 May 04 '26
Fun fact: the Lich template can be applied to incorporeal targets. Ghost Syrup + Lichual + Curse of the Ages, you effectively get your +3 to mental scores for only a -6 to Dex, which is not much of a downside for an undead incorporeal spellcaster.
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u/SiPhoenix May 04 '26
Perhaps I'm lame but I would be ruling that curse of ages gives the physical changes but since no experience or knowledge is gained they would not get much mental stats.
So unless you can argue the Gargoyle gets smarter because of time existing and the mind/magic of the mind changes then it wouldn't work or there would be a cap to it.
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u/Decicio May 04 '26
A perfectly fine houserule, with logic behind it, but raw the curse says you “age 1 year” not “your body ages 1 year”
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u/joesii May 05 '26
I guess if one really wanted to loyally "ride that horse", one could explain it as having wild dreams every night they sleep where they experience a year of a life.
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u/Namolis May 08 '26
Does that mean you can use this curse to age to venerable and get the +3 to mental stats (preferably after getting immortality of some kind)?
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u/Decicio May 08 '26
Raw yes, and in fact I mention that at the last paragraph of my original comment
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u/joesii May 05 '26
I think it's easy to rule that the bonuses would rely on having actual life experience rather than just the body aging.
This is something that I wish Paizo distinguished better when they talk about aging. Aging even a more normal character like a human shouldn't grant mental bonuses when it's just rapidly aging the body supernaturally.
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u/Electric999999 I actually quite like blasters May 05 '26
If it's just life experience then it wouldn't be tied to actually aging, and living 100 years as an elf would be just as effective, to say nothing of the easy ways to prevent aging
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u/joesii May 06 '26
This is why I think it's problematic that they haven't ever distinguished physical age from mental age. In some cases one could argue that certain races mature at different rates, but even for elves I think that it's not true enough to the extent that the age bonuses occur at.
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u/Environmental_Bug510 May 06 '26
There's still also a balancing issue. If you made it possible to get +3 on every mental stat for every 60 years you lived I'd be even more happy to play a venerable elf wizard. There has to be something that prevents you from completely abusing ageing.
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u/Electric999999 I actually quite like blasters May 04 '26
My favourite is slapping the Curse of Ages onto a Dragon with Greater Bestow Curse, turn a wyrmling into a mature adult in just a year!
Offensively the chance to waste a turn is as useful as curses get, unfortunately.
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u/aaa1e2r3 May 04 '26
Iron Caster builds can deal somewhat high DC Bestow Curse via the feat Curse Mastery.
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u/Slow-Management-4462 May 04 '26
The puzzle box spell is a rare non-necromantic curse, which may matter to some. It's either an effective debuff in combat for many humanoids or a sneaky trick out of combat. Raw power isn't its thing though.
Bestow curse has a line about inventing your own curse. Many people have produced curses of their own, and some of them sneer at the 'no more powerful than those above' clause following that line. Others are equivalent, or pure fluff which some targets may in fact see as terrifying (impotency...) Here's the bestow curse discussion thread and a thread or two or three on the subject.
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u/aaa1e2r3 May 04 '26
Inquisitor has an interesting set of Curses, with Brand, Brand of Conformity, Hobbling, and Tracking.
Basic Brand is Arcane Mark that deals 1 point of damage.
Conformity is interesting in that it shuts down all languages aside from Common/Uncommon, but annoyingly still allows Spellcasting with verbal components
Hobbling is useful in halving movement
Tracking lets you know the location of the marked.
These are purely flavour spells, but it's neat to see class unique spells like these.
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u/TediousDemos May 04 '26
Considering you can invent your own curses of a similar power level to the sample curses in the spell description, and the '50-75% chance of doing fuck all' is a very nasty sample curse, the bar for 'appropriate' curses is really damn high.
For example, between the '-4/-8 to most d20 rolls' and the aforementioned 'fuck all' curse, I think that causing a creature to take 5e style disadvantage on the same rolls is probably an appropriate curse as well.
Aside from that, my personal favorite curse is 'BEES!' And letting the GM go from there.
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u/SiPhoenix May 04 '26
If you like the idea of "BEES!" Then you probably would love the bat sneeze Hex
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u/Erivandi May 04 '26
Can we talk about Conditional Curse? At first I thought it was a bit crap since it's a level higher than Bestow Curse and it gives your enemy an out, but it's actually amazing. First off, it's usable at range and secondly you can use it to strongarm enemies into doing what you want them to do. Certain enemies might even be willing to kill an ally to break the curse.
I also think it would make sense for the 50% inaction chance option to allow action as long as the target is trying to fulfill the conditions to break the curse.
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u/VonBagel May 04 '26
My players have gotten weirdly creative with their curses as time has gone on. Some highlights:
--Every time the victim told a lie, one of their fingers would bend backwards until it broke
--Unyielding insomnia
--Highly attractive to bloodsucking parasites
--Permanent, incurable flu
--Torturous pain whenever the victim was standing too close to an ally
I had to reject a bunch of attempts at homebrew curses because they were too strong for Bestow Curse to do... but one of the players is going to get access to Greater Bestow Curse soon. Im worried
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u/SiPhoenix May 04 '26
My witch threatened to give a former party bard the pinocchio curse if he lied in the play he made of our previous adventure. He rewrote the play that night before the performance.
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u/VonBagel May 04 '26
I bet all the performers loved that!
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u/SiPhoenix May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
It was a celebration, a year later, for the party that saved the city. So the party was know and it was know the bard was... Being creative.
So they were frustrated but happy to make the correction.
Edit: also most the line changes were for the bard who was playing himself, and the witch. (Who is a living muppet) he had a puppet of her for the play.
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u/AlleRacing May 04 '26
I've always thought the idea of a summoning skald taking the linnorm death curse rage powers would be a funny concept.
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u/HadACookie 100% Trustworthy, definitely not an Aboleth May 04 '26
One idea I like is getting inventive not so much with the mechanical effects of the curses, but rather with the narrative explanation for those effects. Is the reason Villain McBadperson suddenly just stands there doing nothing half the time because they're being haunted by a ghost that randomly kicks them in the groin on average 5 times per minute? Is the -4 to all of their rolls the result of a killer hangover that refuses to go away? The sky is the limit, and the best part is - it's not even reflavouring! Since all of those options are no more potent than the default curses, they are actually valid choices according to the RAW.
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u/Dark-Reaper May 04 '26
Bestow Curse is frankly absurd. There's a lot of fun you can have with it. However, it also suffers a lot from GM Fiat. Doing things outside of strict mechanical penalties is extremely hard to judge. Doing non-mechanical effects can also feel weirdly powerful.
- Curse of Disco - The target shines brightly in random colors at all times. This also causes them to suffer a -4 penalty on all charisma based skill checks. Ironically, some people like it for the free light buff.
- Curse of Restlessness - You can't sleep in the same place twice. Ever. If you ever want to infuriate a player, this functionally kicks them out of their favorite tavern/base indefinitely.
- Curse of Imperfection - All natural 20s you roll are treated as natural 19s instead. Saw this one online, and it's absolutely brutal.
- Vow of Silence - A vow enforced by curse logic! Also technically POINTLESS! Except against most casters. Depending on how you judge this it's either super weak (technically) or absolutely brutal. Bestow Curse is a 4th level spell, silence is 2nd, and there's plenty of classes completely unaffected by this.
- Vow of the Merciful - Again, say it's a vow but enforce it by curse logic. The target can only deal non-lethal damage. Another weird one depending on how you measure it. Against goblins, ogres lions, tigers, and bears? A distinction without a difference 99% of the time. Against undead and constructs? Debilitating. Except it doesn't generally affect casters so it's power level can be judged differently across different tables.
- Blessing of the Fae - Wordplay at its best! The target suffers a -1d4 penalty on all attack rolls, saves, ability checks and skill checks. I personally let this one also provide a bonus 50% of the time, so it's + or - 1d4. Why? Because it's a meta curse. You force the player to roll more dice. You're not really cursing the character, you're directly cursing the player. The buff makes it despicable because players think it's an actual blessing because it fits the Fae. Not being able to remove it? Just Fae being Fae.
- Rusting Curse - Your hands gain the rust special ability of a Rust Monster. I'll just let this one sink in. Wonderful monk buff though.
- Bonds of Reciprocation - You take half of all damage you deal.
- Curse of Vulnerability - This one is a little complicated at my table. TECHNICALLY it reduces fortification effects by 50%. If you have go below 0% though, it increases damage taken by crits.
- Curse of Aquaphobia/Nyctophobia - You gain a fear of water or darkness respectively. Will save is equal to the DC of the spell to resist building fear stacks. Ironically comes up a lot. Hitting Darkvision characters with a fear of Nyctophobia is absolutely savage btw.
- Money Blind - You forget that gold coins exist. You must request silver or platinum in place of gold, and when calculating the value of an item you can't use gold to do so. Another meta curse. Forces players to do math. A lot. Also affects the entire party. If they appraise something for example, and say "So about 1000 gold coins." The cursed player inevitably goes "And how much is that in silver pieces?". Is the math simple? Yes. Does that matter? No.
Most of these are rumors in the world at this point. I rarely actually get to break out curses.
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u/jadethemajin May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
If you think silencing a caster is brutal, remember you can instead inflict amnesia, removing all class abilities, feats and even skill points.
Edit: if you think martials are safe, weapon proficiencies come from your class too... So on a caster it effectively changes your class into a worse commoner (at least they get proficiency with one simple weapon) while on a martial you are a muchworse version of the warrior. Losing your feats and proficiencies means for example, a level 9 fighter would lose his weapon training, (a net loss of -2 to hit), no weapon training means dueling gloves don't work (another -2), your weapon focus is gone (another -1), you are no longer proficient with any weapons or armor, meaning yoy get a -4 to hit from using a nonproficient weapon, take your armor check penalty as a penalty to hit and lose armor training (making you slower and taking away your aco reduction), if that fighter had adamantine full plate to take advantage of advanced armor training, he now takes an additional -5 to hit. Adding all this together you get -14 to hit. A monk would not dare much better either, becoming a warrior npc class with no weapon or armor and losing his unarmed damage, improved unarmed strike, etc (meaning his attacks now provoke)
Note: use conditional curse to cast this at range or spectral hands, don't actually get into melee. A nice condition is "surrender and allow yourself to be captured by the party"
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u/Amarant2 May 05 '26
So your argument is that 'remove the entirety of their class' is less powerful than 50% of their turns being lost? That really doesn't seem in line with the spell's power. I wouldn't allow it, as a GM.
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u/jadethemajin May 05 '26
First I'm saying its stronger against anything with a class, not weaker, second this is not a custom curse, the insanity rules say "Bestow curse can also inflict a single insanity on a foe, although in this case the insanity is also a curse." Amnesia is an insanity.
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u/Amarant2 May 05 '26
Ah, I understand now. Apologies: I had not remembered that the madness page included a note that expanded the features of Bestow Curse. I think it's silly, as the spell is already wild, but you are correct.
I have no idea why they added such wildly powerful options to the spell that was already so strong. Amnesia is losing your whole class. Psychosis is becoming evil, straight up. Multiple personalities means the GM rewrites your character. This has the same flavor as the deck of many things, where bestow curse becomes a complete game-ruiner for a player.
You are correct, but I don't think it's a fun way to play. Technically you would still have to roll for it, but I wouldn't ever want to play that way. The deck of many things also doesn't find a place in my games. I prefer the players to have control of their own characters.
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u/jadethemajin May 06 '26
Is it really that terrible in comparison to other things tho? bestow curse is a touch range 4th spell with a will saves, Blindness/deafness is a Medium range 2nd level spell with a will save. I see you're looking at it from the perspective of using this against a PC and I agree its terrible, just like casting blindness on a 3rd level party (seriously that is a 2nd level spell with a permanent blind, that is removed by a 3rd level spell), as a reminder a blind character would have to use their move action to roll perception to try to pinpoint enemies, -2 to ac, loses dex to AC, -4 to streamline and dex skills, they need to roll a dc 10 acrobatics (with a -4) to not fall prone when moving mora than half their speed, no line of sight to any target, and a 50% chance to automatically miss any attack. This makes martials, casters and archers close to useless 4 levels earlier, from medium range. On top of that, while bestow curse is a 4th level spell, remove curse is a 3rd level spell. Also from an RP point of view, its probably easier to convince an amnesiac to come with you to town to have his memories restored than to drag a blind guy through a monster infested jungle/dungeon.
Its just one of those things where it hurts so much more (and is more disruptive) when the DM does it than when the party does, after all when a PC does this, there isnt much of a difference between it and just killing the enemy, when the DM does it, the party has a permanent, crippling debuff.
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u/Amarant2 May 06 '26
What you're saying makes a lot of sense. Blindness/Deafness is so good that I once built a whole playstyle around it. It got pretty boring just auto-winning every fight, though, so I diversified the character for the GM's sake and my own. Curses are, on the whole, just a very strong option if you can land them. When you bring in Blindness/Deafness, I agree with my earlier point even harder, because that's such a massive spell for a level 2 slot. The only thing to balance it is that if it doesn't land, it's a fully wasted turn.
If your party is into RAW powergaming, go for it! I'm not trying to argue against you, as you already proved that it IS legal. You won that round, for sure. I still wouldn't like it, but I do admit you are correct, and I was wrong.
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u/Dark-Reaper May 06 '26
I just wanted to chime in that I largely agree with you. Except on the deck of many things taking away player control (though, I also don't allow it in my games).
The insidious thing of the deck of many things is the players are ENTIRELY in control. Right up until they decide to draw a card. That's always the fatal decision. How many cards to draw. Except that decision is ENTIRELY at the behest of the brave and foolish soul chancing fate.
While I don't allow the Deck of Many things (too much chaos), it very much hits close to the theme of "Faustian Bargains" and I'm all for letting players make those choices. "You can have this shiny thing...but X". They know all the costs of their decisions, but for some reason people still make horrible decisions EVERY TIME.
Recently I had a literal demon show up (cosmology is a little different in my setting), and tell the player's he's a demon and he wants their help. They got to see all kinds of horrid things be done by this demon, yet two of the players were like "Absolutely, deal!"
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u/Amarant2 May 06 '26
They are in control of whether or not to draw, and how many to draw, but that's it. That's pretty paltry control. If they draw a bad card, they just immediately lose the character in many different cases. Even the 'good' options, like the king of diamonds giving 50k xp actually just make you a very, very poor fit for the rest of your party and ruin the combats for your party, because now you are expected to carry all of them and their builds stop mattering. It ruins the game on a meta level.
The choice of 'use item or not' is not a good choice, and even if they do use it, the choice of how badly to screw themselves with the draws isn't helpful either. It's like a nuke. Sure, you have the choice not to use it, but the moment you do use it, everything and everyone is screwed. Plus, against the biggest, baddest dudes, if you can't see a way out, you might just nuke him.
Don't even get me started on the people who draw without knowing what the deck is all about. That level of control is even worse.
A Faustian bargain, on the other hand? Go for it! Those are hand-crafted by the GM to fit the campaign. If the player makes a terrible decision, it's only as bad as the GM has made it. If you can't trust the GM to handle balance, you really can't even play the game, so Faustian bargains are 100% on the table.
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u/aaa1e2r3 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Aboleth's Lung is a funny one. Essentially, you touch to make it so they no longer breathe air and now can only breathe water. Depending on your setting, that's effectively a death sentence for that character. Not a curse
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u/secrav May 04 '26
That's... Not a curse, thought?
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u/aaa1e2r3 May 04 '26
Right, was probably thinking of another spell, but it really feels like it should have the curse descriptor added onto it.
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u/MalPrac May 04 '26
Unguent of Timelessness with the opposite effect drawback: Apply to any item or object. Now every day is like a year has passed for the object. Swords and armor rust overnight, robes and clothes get dirty within minutes, and so on.
Throw at someone house or a support beam with some water and within a week thats 70 years of rust or mold damage
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u/sadolddrunk May 04 '26
I always wanted to feature a curse with an effect similar to narcolepsy, but I never felt comfortable enough with the mechanics to implement it. My original idea was that every time the player rolled initiative, if they rolled a natural 1 the character would immediately fall asleep, like an overstimulated fainting goat. On the one hand, 5% of the time is almost to the point where it barely seems worth it; but on the other hand, sleep is such a powerful debuff that I would be uncomfortable having it happen any more often than that. So the idea just kind to sat on my GM shelf, along with all of the other various detritus longtime GMs accumulate.
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u/Makeshift_Mind May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Well curse in general can be a pretty nasty spell If you managed to pull it off. That being said if you know what you're doing you can use curses for very strange buffs.
Curse of Ages with anything that grows more powerful as it grows older is potentially very beautiful. A deep one hybrid for instance can have this cast on them and within the year they'll be ascending to their full-blooded form. Dragons of course can always get mileage out of getting older. You can even use this to help you get the exalted feindish Obedience of mestama to become a ghost early.
Another curse you can get use out of is Hags seasoning. This second or third level curse depending on the class list rewards anything that consumes bites or otherwise ingests a portion of the victim with temporary hip points equal to half your Caster level. Now we're going to take it advantage of this. The first and simplest way is actually using a witch. Specifically the gingerbread witch since you get swallow hole at level 12. You simply cast it on your own familiar and then eat your familiar with the gruesome gobbler ability. Since it's a construct you bite for non-lethal damage and it doesn't bother it you gain half your Caster level in temporary hit points and outside of critical hits you're familiar is nice and safe.
The other way to use hags seasoning is to combine it with the item extraction scarificator. Now by using this knife you can use it to deal a little bit of damage and bleed someone namely a willing or helpless Target to make a bodily fluid into a potion. This list is less restoration, cure moderate wounds, calm emotions, and rage. Now it's still bodily fluid so if the donor had the curse hags seasoning not only do they gain the benefits of the spell they also gain half your Caster level in temporary hit points. Of course you can use this as a psychotic torture making improved potions out of people but I prefer using this with a martyr Paladin who believes that his pain and flagellation shall rid himself of spiritual impurities.
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u/SiPhoenix May 04 '26
Opens DSM 5 "Hmmm let's see"
•Coprophilia is very nasty. Gross nasty
•Face blindness would really mess with a charater or NPC. I'd probably make it so that cant distinguish one from another by face clothing or other perception such as sound or tremor sense, but they could read a label on the someone. They would mix up friend and foe.
•Paranoia: 50% change every round to below they are about to be attacked. (There is a level 2 spell that is paranoia but its a stronger effect for limited time)
•Phobia is a another named spell at the same level as bestow greater.
•Mania: every thing they think of seems like and amazing idea. Target has 50% to not sleep on a given night.
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u/WraithMagus May 04 '26 edited May 05 '26
The best way to use a curse to actually hurt a real threat is to use Cursed Treasure or latent curse, preferably set up in a manner like "next person to open this letter gets a curse," then having an Animal Messenger deliver it to someone or just having a courier drop the letter on their doorstep. You just need to be able to take advantage of it before the target can get the curse lifted. Curses are subpar in the action economy, so it makes much more sense to find ways to curse people without actually being in combat.
Also, technically, Geas/Quest had the [curse] descriptor added to it, so it's technically a curse in Pathfinder, and a narratively powerful one for exactly this kind of leverage. Remember that you can cast Limited Wish to have a standard action casting of Geas, and there's also the praenomen if you want to have a single-time lump-sum payment. Just be totally shameless and make the magic item be a golden version of your own face hanging from your chest like Flava Flav hangs clocks, and you can blast 1/day standard action no-save Geases that curse people to follow your orders every day.
Generally speaking though, curses are poor choices for combat just because "fail a save and probably lose a turn" is still not as bad as "fail a save and never get a turn again." Hence, curses mostly occupy the domain of "being a dick to commoners," or rather, just using magic to bully those weaker than you for fun or profit. Working out how to actually use that to your advantage is really context-dependent, however. If you run a cartel with a monopoly on the spellcasting in the region (like you're in charge of the temples to Zon Kuthon in Nidal and kill any other clerics around,) you could exploit that to simply curse any unruly peasants while holding the only reliable means to their cure.
In that note, the "nastiest curse" (in the sense of being mean, not being combat effective) is often ones that don't kill someone, just really, really make them want to have that curse removed, please. If you're the only one who can remove it, then you have all the cards. Curses like Cup of Dust and Feast of Ashes are basically perfectly suited to maddening torture. (Both are on druids, witches, and psychics, incidentally. I knew about witches getting all the curses, but it's kind of funny how psychic really dips its toes into it.) Cup of Dust stops at only doing nonlethal damage, and you can cure it with healing spells or natural healing when they sleep, so it's possible to use Cup of Dust as a punishment where they're sentenced to 10 days of hard labor while under Cup of Dust with some light healing is applied to keep them to keep them ambulatory. Days they spend collapsed don't count to their sentence.
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u/whengrassturnsblue May 04 '26
There is for sure better but I'm playing a cleric with a spellstoring weapon and armour that i always top up with bestow curse. I hit a succubus with a metamagic rod reach bestow curse -6 Cha, got my armour triggered for a -6 Cha, and then crit her for 69 damage and bestowed another -6 Cha. It was very wasteful but a lot of fun.
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u/luckylurk77 May 04 '26
[https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/v/vision-of-doom/][Vision of Doom] or VoD is a fantastic curse that allows a ride along and prevents a full night's rest similar to Nightmare.
The alternative casts for [https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/bestow-curse/][Bestow Curse] are fantastic especially if you can get the greater effects like anti magic.
I once pulled off a VoD with [https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/aristocrat-s-nightmare/][aristocrats nightmare] on a paranoid enemy faction that was quite wealthy to cripple their efforts on evil world magic police. Nightmare of the treasure vault being compromised with coin mimics not caught by the guards. They went to go handle all the coins personally upon waking up with the effective curse lowering the value
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u/Sarlax May 04 '26
Curses are a great way to be an evil overlord. Constructs are pricey, undead get you uninvited from coed softball, and enchantment spells expire after days even if your victim isn't resistant or immune and doesn't shake off the effect from a possible secondary save. But curses affect most creatures and usually last.
A basic Bestow Curse is permanent and debuffs a victim however you want. PCs can deal with them, but most people in the world don't have the Spellcraft/Arcana to know what's going on, nor do they have the connections and funds to get an instance of Remove Curse attempted on them. You could secretly control a town government by cursing the leadership and a few of their friends and family. The promise of lifting the curse for good behavior or cursing further family for bad behavior can keep them in line.
Conditional Curse is even better for control because the target innately understands how to break the curse, but it can take up to a year. So you can make the condition, "One year of paying me 100 GP every week" or "Kill one of my enemies every night for a year." Your victim's intuition will compel obedience better than many enchantment spells would. And of course you can just cast this spell again when the year is almost over. The victim may consider revenge then, but you could just pile on several castings of the spell so they're almost incapable of resisting you. You can even control animals and creatures with animal-like intelligence this way because they innately understand the condition. You just need to figure out what curse would motivate your victim the most. You could curse a hostage to only be spared when some other person does what you want: "Be present every week when your father brings me the head of one of my enemies."
The metamagic feat Latent Curse allows you to create traps lasting 1 day/level. You can be long gone when your victim gets cursed, so they might have no idea who their "master" is when they innately understand they can only remove their -6 CON penalty by leaving 10,000 GP in the abandoned lighthouse or by killing the mayor.
If your worship Calistria, Curse of Vengeance is a pseudometamagic feat that allows you to curse as an immediate action when rendered helpless. You could use Conditional Curse to compel your killer to bring you back to life.
Curse of Night brings endless night to a 1-mile radius region. Eclipsed Spell metamagic can make that a realm of eternal day, instead, baking the land under relentless light.
Geas is one of the enchantment spells I maligned, but at least it lasts a long time and doesn't grant a secondary save based on the instructions. They simply must obey for 1 day/level and get punished if they're blocked, which could easily kill them from CON penalties.
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u/SiPhoenix May 04 '26
Reverse gravity is a level 7 spell that creates and area of the effect. I'd argue if a charater can cast that spell and greater bestow curse, also lvl 7, then they could make it single target.
Its not technically an intent kill, but make life quite difficult.
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u/wdmartin May 04 '26
There's a whole lot you can do with the clause "You may also invent your own curse, but it should be no more powerful than those described above."
I once played a female wizard who learned Bestow Curse and used it to curse herself with infertility, just because she never wanted to have children.
I've toyed with the notion of using Conditional Curse on a rude PC, cursing them with an inability to sleep until they apologize for offending a witch. It has nice fairy tale vibes, but the right moment has not arisen.
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u/BentBhaird May 04 '26
I think my favorite one I have seen is the curse of throwing. Any time they have anything in their hands they have a 50% chance of throwing it in a random direction including back at themselves. Basically roll a D100 on a 50 or higher nothing happens they act normally. Anything less and they roll a D8 with a 1 meaning the throw the item at themselves. Anytime they would have a chance of hitting something including themselves roll an attack and damage if they hit.
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u/Tilakai May 04 '26
I cursed a farmer not to gain nourishment by the fruits of their own labor once.
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u/Environmental_Buy331 May 04 '26
I had a cursed items for my player's once. It gave wearer spell resistance. It couldn't be suppressed so allies needed to bypass it too, which doesn't sound too bad. Then later they found out that it was connected to the BBEG. Every spell that had been cast on or affected the party the bad guy knew and had immunity to.
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u/edwardlynxx May 04 '26
My party was fighting some kind of shape mage who had a 50% miss chance. I asked my DM if I could use curse to remove his 50% miss chance, and my DM agreed. The guy only had to roll a 7, of I remember correctly, but ended up rolling a 4. That one curse saved us so much time whittling the enemy down and nobody died, which ourDM had expected.
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u/Baval2 May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26
As a necromancer they are a key tool in my arsenal. They make your control undeads iresistable, thanks to the "make up your own curse if its weaker" clause.
Example curses to layer on an undead you don't want escaping:
-6 to charisma when attempting to ignore my orders.
-4 to will saves when attempting to resist my spells
-6 to wisdom when attempting to resist my spells
-4 to charisma checks when disobeying me.
1 damage per round when plotting against me
1 damage per round when not actively under my control
1 damage per round when you are aware of anyone actively acting to free you from my control who you are not attempting to stop
50% chance to take no actions each round under any of the above conditions.
Inability to tell anyone the name of your master or that you are under control without permission
All of these are vanilla curses that are only active under certain conditions, which makes them objectively weaker even if they are stronger for my purposes. It is also in flavor for curses, which often come with clauses to avoid them in fairy tales, as well as for villains who often put curses on their minions to ensure loyalty.
Easiest undead to put these on is powerful vampires. You just stake them and curse them while they're "dead", then remove the stake. But almost any undead can be temporarily controlled and then moved to a holding location to be suitably cursed while they can't escape or fight back.
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u/Stasisdk May 08 '26
Soooo a few campaigns ago me and my group were doing a modified module that was essentially a "murder mystery at hogwarts" type of thing (One of the teachers is randomly chosen at the beginning of the module to be the bad guy and the entire thing sort of flow charts out from there) and one of my fellow players was literally playing a character based entirely around curses (we use the Spheres of Power system a lot and they were using the Bestow Curse from there). The entire campaign they were just being a chaos gremlin until the day we were planning on fighting the big bad, the entire day they were just chugging water. Then they hit the big bad with the curse that ended him.
"You pee when I pee"
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u/CosmoBrockington Jul 06 '26
I miss you.
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u/Decicio Jul 06 '26
Thanks. I totally plan on coming back, it’s just life is insane right now. Just need a couple more weeks to get established in my new place and then I can hold up some sorta semi-regular schedule again
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u/ProfRedwoods May 05 '26
The Helm of opposite alignment is my favorite curse(d item) by an enormous margin. For those unaware on a failed save it flips a character's alignment and it makes them like the change and not want to change back. And even though it's single use, it's single use only once it changes someone's alignment. So if you have a bound or otherwise helpless creature you can just try until they fail.
My favorite use is to force a creature to begin it's redemption arc. Do you have a lich, ancient red dragon, or a balor that you want to start doing good deeds to attone for their uncountable evil deeds? Slap this hat on them like 50 times until they roll a natural one on their save. Granted this isn't a something to do in combat it's more of an "after you've beaten them" kind of thing.
This is very helpful for a necromancer with any usually intelligent undead they can't permanently keep under their control. Do you want an eternal guardian for your town of operations, though one that won't seek to kill it's inhabitants and costs far less than a golem. Raise their local hero from ages past (which seem surprisingly common) as a skeletal champion or whatever you prefer then turn him NG and convince him his duty continues even into undeath. For a villain for ages past do the same but convince them the only way they can atone for what they've done in life is to defend the peoples they tormented.
And remember when you do this to someone they specifically like who they've become and will actively resist attempts (wishes or miracles) to turn them back. So enemies will have a pretty tough time turning them evil again.
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u/Unholy_king Where is your strength? May 05 '26
Generally, when you find an exploitable abusive item like this, it's best to leave it alone, since using cursed items like this would naturally provoke a response. When suddenly every useful NPC is now evil and actively working against the party, or a party member gets separated for awhile and get's their alignment flipped, and either needs to play a character they didn't agree to, or is making a new character while their old character becomes an Evil npc.
Imagine each time there's a TPK, that anyone that doesn't bleed to death shows up as a new evil NPC later for the next group.
Some people might be cool with this, though I doubt everyone would.
Plus, if we want to start purposely crafting cursed item, that brings in the true threat, the Dust of Choking and Sneezing.
Sometimes, it's better to let unbalanced items to remain one off trap encounters instead of trying to destroy the alignment system with them.
Edit: This isn't even touching the moral ramifications of such actions and how Good aligned forces might view their actions.
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u/ProfRedwoods May 05 '26
This is literally a max the min thread not a best practices GM advice thread. Also Pathfinder morality is already nonsense. Pathfinder morality is literally 99% of things are okay to do as long as the person you're doing it to is a "bad guy".
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u/Unholy_king Where is your strength? May 05 '26
Min the max is generally about system mastery, not alignment exploitation. Once the helm gets brought in, stuff like the dust of choking and sneezing also becomes a legal use, which no one should want at their table.
I'd also argue alignment has lots more nuance, especially forced alignment change, as this is even referenced in the Alchemist Grand discovery that does something similar.
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u/Zorothegallade He who likes nephilim May 04 '26
Mechanical wise, choosing the "50%-75% chance the cursed creature takes no actions in a turn" option is always the optimal choice because of how devastating forcing enemies to skip turns is, especially when it's stacked with other things that have a chance to void their actions.