Virilneus’ GS4 Idea Book

Someone proposed a skill that would involve us taking parts from slain creatures and using those parts to create something, Frankenstein’s monster like. Well… I like it.

Now lets talk about golems. All in game history says that golems were created by wizards, which I think is just laziness. The word “wizard” the default when talking about anything magical and I think the GMs who wrote such information simply did not think things through.

Golems are a much more sorcerous creation than wizardly.

Golems are humanoid in nature, which profession has more to do with the first aid skill (which really should be called the anatomy skill)? Sorcerers. Which profession has animate dead? Sorcerers. Which profession deals in body parts (and I don’t mean healing them)? Sorcerers.

Wizards I’m sure had something to do with elementals, glacei, things of that nature. Golems however are definitely sorcerish.

So, lets say that sorcerers a long time ago created golems, perhaps in their experiments leading up to the discovery of animate dead. Why not “rediscover” that practice?

Imagine how fun this would be. You could go hunting for body parts, of course limb disrupt will get you the limbs but then there could be a guild skill (and first aid) involved in cutting off heads and other parts and bringing them back to the guild.

Then there is a room in the guild with a strange looking table where you can lay the parts down and stitch them together. Then through a process involving some of our spells, perhaps a combination of ensorcell, animate dead, and call lightning, the flesh golem comes to life.

What would be the purpose of this? Well what if the golem could be a permanent type companion like animal companion? Where a sorcerer could store it in the guild’s dungeon and take it out when wanted. Additionally the golem could be trained and taught some skills, rudimentary to be sure. The training itself should also be long and involved, requiring a significant investment of time. Also the golems could fight but I think the process of making one should be involved enough that if they die you feel it, kinda like an enchanting project exploding.

The fun part comes when picking out body parts. Your golem will have the strength of the critter that donated the arms, the health/constitution/weight of the critter that donated the torso, the speed of the critter that donated the legs, and the intelligence of the critter that donated the head. The critters would look like “A hideously disfigured flesh golem with the head of a Ithzir, the legs of a griffin, the arms of a pyrothag, and the body of a troll king, all stitched together with a coarse metal wire.”

I’m not entirely sure what kind of data you store on each critter, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to get this kind of information.

So there you go, a fun guild skill that would create endless variety and would increase intra-realm travel and exploration, and that doesn’t give a direct benefit to hunting.