Thoughthunter

A drive to understand the mortal mind has led you down a path of madness and hunger, compelled by an overwhelming need to uncover and dissect the thoughts of those around you.

Scouring Tendrils (Ex)

Your studies have revealed a technique to reach into the minds of living beings, but the process required you to mutate your body with horrific eldritch rituals. In doing so, you have altered your body with a way to directly interface with a target’s mind, though your experimentation has not yet revealed the secret of delving their thoughts.

At 1st level, you can unfurl your arms into masses of writhing tendrils. These tendrils function as a primary natural weapon, save that they can only be used to attack as a standard action, used as part of maintaining a grapple, or when defending yourself from grapple attempts. An unfurled arm cannot be used to hold items or weapons, and if you were holding something when you unfurl one of your arms, your held item is dropped at your feet. These tendrils have reach equal to your natural reach plus 10 feet, and deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d6 + your Intelligence modifier on a successful hit. On a successful hit, you may make a grapple against that creature using your tendrils as a free action. You do not provoke opportunity attacks while grappling using your tendrils, do not suffer a -4 penalty for attempting grapple checks with only one free hand, and can choose to use your tendrils to deal damage when you maintain a grapple. Additionally, this ability counts as possessing the Improved Unarmed Strike feat for the purposes of qualifying for feats that improve your ability to grapple creatures using your tendrils. Unless you possess the Improved Unarmed Strike feat, the feats you have that would normally have it as a prerequisite can only be used with your tendrils.

When you use your tendrils to attack or as part of a grapple check, you use your Intelligence modifier in place of your Strength modifier for attack rolls, CMB, and CMD.

Whenever you successfully grapple or maintain a grapple against a creature using your tendrils, the tendrils begin to burrow into the soft cavities of the grappled creature’s head, interfacing with their mind and dealing severe psychic trauma. The affected creature takes 1d6 damage per promethean level. A successful Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 class level + your Intelligence modifier) halves this damage. This damage bypasses any immunities and resistances, but creatures with no Intelligence score and creatures immune to mind-affecting effects take no damage from this effect. At 5th level, you gain a +1 bonus to their attack rolls, CMB, and CMD when using your tendrils. This bonus increases by an additional +1 at levels 9, 13, 17, and 20.

At 9th level, and again at 17th level, the reach of your tendrils increases by 5 feet.

Hear Thoughts (Su)

Your continued studies have further warped your mind, allowing you to detect the thoughts of other beings as a constant whispering in the back of your mind. With concentration you can focus this effect, allowing you to better seek out specific thoughts.

At 1st level, you gain the ability to hear the surface thoughts of sentient creatures within 60 feet of you. This ability is a divination, mind-affecting effect that can penetrate barriers, but 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks it. Despite appearing to be an audible effect, your ability to hear thoughts is not actually impacted by whether or not you can physically hear.

You automatically detect the number of thinking and conscious (Intelligence score of 1 or higher) minds within the area, and the Intelligence score of each. This ability does not let you determine the location of thinking minds if you can’t see the creature whose thoughts you are detecting. By concentrating on this ability like a spell (using your class level as your caster level and your Intelligence as your ability score modifier) you can focus on these whispers to better understand them. If your concentration on this ability is interrupted (such as through taking damage) the psychic shock leaves you unable to regain your concentration for 1d6 rounds.

Each round you concentrate on this ability, you can sift through the surface thoughts of a single creature in range. A target receives a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 class level + you Intelligence modifier) once each minute to prevent you from reading its surface thoughts. On a successful save, you cannot read its thoughts for one minute. No matter the result of this saving throw, creatures cannot detect you using this ability unless they have a way to detect magic, divination effects, or if they can read minds themselves.

You can maintain concentration on this ability while you engage in normal conversation, allowing you to ask leading questions about topics of interest. A creature conversing with you while you concentrate can notice that you are distracted with a successful DC 25 Sense Motive check.

Warped Mind (Ex)

Your obsession with unraveling the secrets of sentient thought has permanently altered your own. This warping of your thoughts has rendered them inscrutable to others, and have granted you insight into the minds of others.

At 5th level, you use your Intelligence in place of your Wisdom when determining your Will saving throws, and the Sense Motive skill. If you can detect a creature’s thoughts, you can’t be surprised by them if they choose to attack you, allowing you to act in the surprise round if you can detect the thoughts of at least one of your foes before they attack.

Additionally, creatures who attempt to read your thoughts receive only garbled, insane, or otherwise unintelligible speech. This disconcerting experience damages their minds, causing them to take 1d6 points of damage per promethean level. A successful Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 class level + you Intelligence modifier) halves this damage. This damage bypasses any immunities and resistances, but creatures with no Intelligence score and creatures immune to mind-affecting effects take no damage from this effect. A creature can only take damage from this ability once every 24 hours. This ability does not apply to telepathy, or similar effects.

Harvesting Tendrils (Ex)

Your constant improvements on and practice with your tendrils has finally unlocked the secret you so desired: the ability to harvest the thoughts of living beings.

At 9th level, you can harvest the memories of your foes using your tendrils. Whenever a creature fails a Will save caused by your tendrils, the creature suffers a -1 penalty to Intelligence-based skill checks for 24 hours, and you gain a +1 insight bonus to Intelligence-based skill checks for 24 hours. This bonus stacks with itself, to a maximum of 1/2 your class level (rounded up). This is a mind-affecting effect.

In addition, you may harvest some of the target’s thoughts, allowing you to attempt to draw out the answer to a single question from the creature’s mind. The creature knows what answer you are trying to find, and can attempt a Bluff check with a DC equal to 11 + your Sense Motive modifier to obscure the information. If it succeeds at its check, you gain no information. If it succeeds by 5 or more, it answers whatever it chooses, and you believe that wrong answer to be true. Your questions are purely telepathic inquiries, and the answers to those questions are imparted directly to your mind. You and the target don’t need to speak the same language, though less intelligent creatures may yield up only appropriate sensory images in answer to your questions.

Sense Thoughts (Su)

The thoughts of other living beings further permeate yourselves in your mind, allowing you to accurately determine their presence and location.

At 13th level, your ability to hear thoughts improves to the point that you can detect those creatures as if you possessed the blindsight ability, allowing you to perfectly determine their location even if you can’t see them. Creatures immune to the effects of your hear thoughts ability are also immune to this ability.

Consuming Tendrils (Ex)

You have perfected your ability to consume minds using your tendrils, but at what cost? At 17th level, you have learned to fully consume the minds of living beings using your tendrils, but the mastery over your tendrils has caused numerous physiological changes to your body and mind. Your mutations have begun to take a toll on your mind and body, requiring you to consume the brains of living beings to sustain yourself. You no longer derive sustenance from food or water, but instead sustain yourself solely through the psychic energy of sentient brains. You cannot suppress this hunger through the use of magic. Each week you must consume at least one brain using this ability to sustain yourself. For every 24 hours that passes after this week, you suffer a -2 penalty to your Constitution score (or your Charisma score, if you are an undead creature). If this penalty reduces your Constitution score to 0 (or your Charisma, for an undead creature) you die.

As a full-round action, you can attempt to consume the brain of a helpless target using your tendrils. This attack functions as a coup de grace, and you automatically succeed on a grapple check made as part of the attack. If this kills them, you consume the target’s brain. For the next 24 hours, you can access all of the target’s memories. Accessing the consumed brain’s memories requires your concentration each round, as if you were concentrating on a spell. You can view a target’s memories at ten-times normal speed, for each round you concentrate on this ability you view a minute of the target’s memories. Memories are never perfectly accurate, and are often distorted by a creature’s biases. After 24 hours, the creature’s brain is fully digested and you can no longer access its memories.

Creatures immune to mind-affecting effects and creatures with no Intelligence scores can have their brain consumed, but you cannot access their memories and the brain cannot be stored. A creature whose brain has been consumed cannot be returned to life during the first 24 hours (unless you are slain), and can only be returned from the dead afterwards through the use of a resurrection spell or better.

Thoughthunter’s Pinnacle

You have reached the pinnacle of your art, your mutations finally taking fully hold of your body and turning you into a truly alien being.

At 20th level, if you are a humanoid creature your type changes to aberration, granting you Darkvision 60 feet (or increasing your existing Darkvision by 30 feet). Your body now fully sustains itself off of the psychic energy of minds you consume. You stop aging, no longer need to breathe, and become immune to inhaled diseases and poisons.

You gain the ability to retain access to the memories of minds you have consumed long after you have digested them using your consuming tendrils ability. You can store the memories of a number of digested minds equal to your Intelligence modifier and access their memories at any time. If a newly digested mind would put you beyond this limit, you may choose to replace the memories of a stored mind with the newly digested one.

In addition, the radius of your hear thoughts and sense thoughts abilities are doubled, and you no longer need to concentrate to read surface thoughts, allowing you to automatically scan the surface thoughts of a single creature each round.