The Zivian Infiltrator

[Sardinal]

The Zivian Infiltrator

For every profitable crime, for every nefarious prank, for every flavor of mayhem, there is a follower of Zivix. Hidden within and scattered throughout the faith of the Laughing Lord, however, are Zivian priests of a different sort. Priests who seek to learn and mimic the flavors of other faiths.

The Zivian Infiltrators are an elite sect of the priesthood who master the arts of disguise and acting in order to infiltrate the churches or institutions of other faiths. Some insinuate themselves with a churches power structure to better steal and sell its secrets. Others seek to disguise themselves as adventuring clerics of more trustworthy Gods in order to gain a place within a band of heroes.

Zivian Infiltrators learn their arts at a hidden academy in the City of Lustria, under the tutelage of their Order's master, known as Arteides the Varied. Every Student knows Arteides is just another disguise for the master. A persistent tale passed from student to student is that a great reward awaits the pupil who pierces the disguise and that none have yet managed to has lead to constant speculation as to his real identity. The Pupils are forced to practice their arts on the streets of Lustria, where the honed eye of thieves, spies, and scoundrels of all stripes abound to catch them. Failure is punished inconsistently and with unpredictable severity. Once graduated, however, they are free to use their skills in whatever way they feel best serves themselves and their faith. Few, however, fail to answer the call of the most powerful of the faith of Zivix when their services are needed.

Prerequisites:
Alignment: any Chaotic
Deity: Zivix
Domain: Trickery
Feats: Deceitful
Skills: Disguise: 8 ranks, Bluff: 8 ranks, Knowledge Religion: 8 ranks, Gather Information: 3 ranks, Forgery: 3 ranks
Special: Must have successfully disguised youself as a priest of another faith for at least a 24 hour period.

LVL     Bab   Fort Ref Will   Special                                                             Spellcasting
  1       +0      0     2     2      Cover Identity                                            +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  2       +1      0     3     3                                                                     +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  3       +2      1     3     3      Malleable Morality                                       +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  4       +3      1     4     4                                                                     +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  5       +3      1     4     4      Unlikely Cover                                            +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  6       +4      2     5     5                                                                      +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  7       +5      2     5     5      Slippery Mind                                              +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  8       +6      2     6     6                                                                      +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
  9       +6      3     6     6                                                                      +1 to existing divine spellcasting class
10       +7       3    7      7     Deep Cover                                                  +1 to existing divine spellcasting class

Hit Die: d6
Skills: 4 + int mod/level. Bluff, Concentration, Craft, Decipher Script, Diplomacy, Disguise, Forgery, Gather Information, Heal, Know: Arcana, Know: Religion, Know: Local, Perform: Acting (only), Profession, Sense Motive, Spellcraft


Class Abilities:

Cover Identity: (Ex) The Zivian Infiltrator is rigorously trained to establish nearly flawless cover identities. For every distinct Craft or Profession skill in which the infiltrator has 3 ranks he may create a cover identity. Each cover identity must be a specific person with a name and history. He may, at any time, end one cover identity and establish a new one. Establishing a cover identity requires 1d4 weeks during which he may do nothing else as well as 6d10 gold.

While operating under one of his cover identities he gains a +3 circumstance bonus to disguise and a +1 bonus to Bluff and Gather Information. For each additional 3 ranks in the covers associated craft or profession skill, each of these bonuses increases by 1.

Malleable Morality: (ex) at 3rd level the Zivian Infiltrators rigorous training enables him to cloud even divination magics. While not under a cover identity, the Infiltrator is under the effects of an undectable alignment spell. While operating under a cover identity the Infiltrators alignment reads instead as the alignment of the cover.

Unlikely Cover: (ex) At 5th level the Zivian Infiltrator may designate a small number of his cover identities as "Unlikely Covers". They may disguise themselves as someone drastically different from themselves. Members of the opposite sex or a different race or someone with a drastically different body shape. While operating under an Unlikely Cover, the Cover Identity bonuses from the associated skill are doubled. The infiltrator may have one unlikely cover per point of charisma bonus (min 1).

Slippery Mind: (ex) at 7th level the Zivian Infiltrator gains the slippery mind calss feature as the rogue class ability described on page 50 of the PG

Deep Cover: (ex) At 10th level the Zivian Infiltrator may choose a small number of new covers equal to his Intelligence modifier. These may be the same ones chosen for unlikely covers or different. When operating under one of his deep covers, his mind is so thoroughly trained and conditioned to think like the person she is pretending to be that any magical scrying or mind reading at a power level short of deific reveals nothing about her true nature. Only the thoughts, alignment, and emotions of the fictitious persona can be detected. Further More, magical compulsions and charms elicit of the reactions of the persona.

[seekyr]

Does any other prestige class grant a permanent second level effect? I'm not saying it's broken, but this seems like a bit too much. Skill points are higher, with what trade-off? If you get more than you give up, it's a broken class. You're giving up turning undead advancement, and getting class abilities already. Seems a decent class, otherwise. I am unsure as to how they'd get past a high priest, who talks to tie god directly. If you're trying to say that they fool the god? I have a problem with people making their deities idiots.

Again, this might just be me here.

[Katdoral]

Well, there are a few that provide 2nd level, or higher, permanent effects. True Necromancer for instance provides a permanent zone of desecration, with effects identical the the Desecrate spell (2nd level), only differeing in that it only applies to the True Necromancer's undead. At least until 7th class level, then the area of effect gets a pretty big bonus. (Changes from the standard 20' emination to 10' per True Necromancer class level.)

The Animal Lord gets telepathy with any animal of his selected group as a constant effect. While that's not technically based on a spell, to do that otherwise would require Telepathic Bond, Lesser (3rd level sorc/wiz) and Speak with animals (1st druid/ranger, 3 bard). Admittedly it is specific to their animal type, but it would probably land at the second level mark if it were a spell a player created.

On the surface the bonuses for cover identity seem high, but boosting skill checks has always been rather cheap in DnD, plus even at 20th level those bonuses are still only at +7, assuming max ranks. (Or +14 if it's an Unlikely Cover)

As far fooling a high priest, the section on Deep Cover tells us that a god can, and does, pierce the facade. As for the high priest, I suppose that would depend on the situation itself, if the bluff and opposed sense motive checks don't raise suspicion, it would fall on role play to determine whether contacting divine agents would even be warrented.

It's certainly not a weak prestige class, but I wouldn't label it as broken personally. Anyways, just my thoughts.

[seekyr]

Wasn't poking for finishes, just wondering about the class balances. Does seem like a decent class, otherwise.

Wasn't really worried about the skill bonuses, even if they stacked unlimited.

[Sardinal]

In specific reference to the Malleable Morality ability there are several prestige classes that grant the the same Undetectable Alignment. The disguise abilities originally come from a 5 level faerunian prestige class. I dropped the sneak attack from it and spread the disguise abilities out over 10 levels and dropped the skill bonuses from +4/+2 and +1 per two ranks past the initial buy to +3/+1 and +1 per three ranks past the initial buy in order to gain the full caster progression. I dropped the standard d8 cleric Hit Die to d6 and dropped Turn/Undead progression for the 2 extra skill points per level.

I agree this class is on the strong end of cleric prestige classes, though I also feel that there are very few good cleric prestige classes out there. I had to balance the needs of the concept which required additional skill points to make it work with the need for Paul's game to have someone with a full caster progression for his story to progress. During play I nerfed the class twice as the original and second versions of the class proved to strong.