How about a +2 bonus to saves against mind affecting effects? Autism doesn’t guarantee high intelligence.
Here is a trait or flaw for the castrated. The castrated must actually have had their genitals removed, not born with ambiguous genitalia.
Castrated as a trait: Eunuch Mage (or Temple Eunuch): You have been castrated as part of a magical or religious ritual. Benefit: You cast spells from any spellcasting class at +1 caster level. In addition, you may select any feat for which you qualify as a bonus feat at 1st level and Use Magic Device is always a class skill for you. Drawback: Your body has been weakened by being maimed. -1 to fortitude saves and -2 to saves against fear effects. In addition, your maximum ranks in the Intimidate skill can never be more than your character level (Normal: Your maximum rank in a class skill is your character level + 3).
I don’t know if I’d want rules mechanics to account for autism. Autism is a spectrum condition after all. I’m ‘high functioning’ in my autism, which is quite different from how someone with aspergers behaves and presents. Additionally, most in-game affects will be as a result of a autistic player with an autistic PC seeing things and reacting differently anyway. It’s rather different than say, an eidetic memory (which I think was a trait with rules in Dragon Magazine back in 2E or 3E days).
Objectively speaking, autism spectrum disorder isn’t a superpower. It’s not a flaw. It is a difference though - I’m better than a neurotypical person at some things, but much worse in many other areas.
Be assured that there is someone somewhere reading this thread who will request to their DM that their new PC have both the autistic AND castrated trait.
As you say, most of the people asking for autistic PCs are probably autistic themselves. As for the eunuchs, well, I guess there are quite of few of those these days too.
I know the stats for autism in the population. I don’t know the stats for eunuchs in the population. I don’t want to know the stats for eunuch autists in the population!
I learn strongly towards what SeruZmaj’s take on Daskinor. However I imagined that opening a gate to the Hollow allowed Rajaat to exert some measure of influence on him. So what if Rajaat is actively trying to seize control of Daskinor’s psyche through the mirror shards embedded in his flesh? The various voices and psyches Daskinor is wrestling with could be the psionic remnants of all the bodies he’s stolen. Normally Daskinor would have an easy time maintaining his sense of self as an accomplished psion, but Rajaat constantly wearing away at his psyche in an attempt to seize control could’ve broken the floodgates. So you’d have Daskinor and Rajaat as two primary personalities, then the dozens of personalities from all the bodies he’s stolen as secondary minds all with their own fears and goals. Perhaps Rajaat could serve as a common enemy for them all to unite against. Or perhaps only death can end the thousand mind horror plaguing Eldaarich.
On a slightly off note, one point of confusion I have wrestled with was that I doubt Borys would see Daskinor actively open a gate to the Hollow and just trust Daskinor not to release Rajaat at some point in a fit of desperation/insanity. The Dragon of Tyr strikes me as the sort who’d want all of his bases covered. At the same time I can see him being terrified of just swooping down in the hopes of assassinating Daskinor before he has time to open the gate again. So to Borys the issue is one of mutually assured destruction, based entirely off his assumption Eldaarich still has the means of releasing Rajaat.
So, what I could see Borys doing instead is try to probe the prison state of Eldaarich from afar through proxies as a means of getting a better idea of the situation. In other words he would hire adventurers, merchants, spies, etc from the Tyr Region and the Forgotten North to provide him with information on Eldaarich. What I consider especially fun would be if Borys did this through Ur Draxan proxies that he trusts, namely his own Ur Draxan Templars. A distinct twist I pulled in my campagin is the dragon is actively keeping an eye on the mainland through loyal Ur Draxan Templar he uses as spies. Eldaarich is the perfect place to open up intrigue there. This could be doubly exciting if the Shadow Giants and Rajaat loyalists know that Rajaat’s prison was briefly weakened in the Prison City and are seeking to figure out what’s going on as well. Then we suddenly have a three way conflict between Eldaarich, Borys, and Rajaat with the PCs caught in the middle.
(Edit: How much this reaction Borys has makes sense depends largely on how long ago Eldaarich opened the mirror on him imo. I personally compressed the Dark Sun timeline so the SKs have only been ruling Athas for a few centuries, but the other take could be that Eldaarich only got this desperate relatively recently.)
I mislike the focus on Rajaat, but if we must focus on Rajaat, I doubt that Borys the Dragon would permit Daskinor to interfere with the imprisonment of Rajaat in any fashion.
It’s one thing to refuse to pay the levy. Another entirely to interfere with the Dragon’s reason for existence.
Fair enough, my campaign sees little to nothing of Rajaat, so Daskinor felt like a good chance for the PCs to tangle with him. But that doesn’t work for a lot of groups.
The other thought I had was similar to Kalindren’s #7, that the mirror opened a rift to the Far Realm and whatever entity was on the other side was able to not only drive off Borys, but somehow ensure he wouldn’t return. This however came at a price, the entity sought to possess Daskinor. For while reality was poisonous to the Entity and its kind, mortal hosts could serve as a means of protection. Daskinor has resisted the entity, but the visions of the Far Realm have broken his mind. Should Daskinor’s psyche break entirely the Entity shall gain full control and Athas will know a new era of horror.
In this case, other mirror fragments are still at large, with Far Realm entities whispering to any foolish enough to possess them. Daskinor keeps such a tight control over his city not merely out of madness, but also because he rightly fears that the Entity has used him during moments of weakness to foster an eldritch cult within his very city. Rooting them out has been a constant goal of Daskinor’s and immense fuel for his paranoia.
I like the idea of a rift into the Far Realm. The way I see it, the rift is pouring Far Realm pollution into its surrounds. Primarily it affected Daskinor himself, as he got the full blast of Far Realm energies when the door to the Far Realm opened.
More generally, all the people of Eldaarich are affected in one way or another. Eldaarich has one modern innovation that the rest of Athas does not have - the mental hospital. Everyday, someone will randomly go berserk, yelling insanities like “they are here! THEY SEE US!”. Ironically the mental hospitals make the situation worse because gathering Far Realm affected people into a enclosed space creates a Far Realm cluster with viral implications, to the extent that the staff could be affected also. The already very mutable beings of Athas can suddenly mutate into Pseudonatural Creatures (non-epic version) in the vicinity of Eldaarch. Strange flowers bloom in Eldaarich, impossibly from rock.
The Quori from the Eberron setting can be renamed and reskinned as Far Realm invaders that possess some of the citizenry of Eldaarich, creating yet another faction in play in that realm. The invaders are not motivated by anything comprehensible by the people of Athas, of course.
In this scenario, it was not any Far Realm being that caused Borys to flee Eldaarich, but the opening of the Far Realm rift, which the Dragon’s psionic senses told him was extremely dangerous or toxic.
