School evocation; Level cleric 2, medium 1, occultist 2, psychic 2, shaman 2, sorcerer/wizard 2, summoner 2, witch 2

CASTING

Casting Time 1 minute
Components V, S, M (see text)

EFFECT

Range 100 miles
Target up to 20 entities of 6 HD or fewer; see text
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

DESCRIPTION

You send out a magical message to any eldritch entities of a particular kind within a 100-mile radius, which can be delivered to up to 20 such creatures, starting with the nearest creatures until the limit has been met. This spell can’t contact creatures with more than 6 Hit Dice. You can’t send a specific message, but this spell (and all similar contact entity spells) can be characterized as an open invitation to make contact and establish communication.

If there is an appropriate entity within range, the spell succeeds automatically. You don’t know whether the message was received, nor any specific details about what creatures received it or how many. Creatures that receive the message know the location and distance from where the spell was cast. Because this spell doesn’t call or summon the target, the target must have its own way to reach the place where the spell was cast.

How creatures respond to a contact spell is circumstantial and it is possible the creatures will simply ignore the spell. Creatures that come and investigate do so in their own time. They usually arrive cautiously, aware of the potential for ambush. Targets of the spell might inform their organization or community if they have one. There are no restrictions on how the creatures react to being contacted, and they might respond with hostility, parley, entertain an alliance, or subjugate the caster and their related community.

Using this spell counts as mentally contacting the creature for the purpose of any of its special abilities (such as the star-spawn’s overwhelming mind). For the purpose of spells like scrying, the creature has firsthand knowledge of you and a connection similar to if it possessed a likeness of you.

Each type of creature requires a different material component that must be included when casting the spell, as shown on Table: Contact Entity. Some of these components are expensive or might require quests to acquire. Contacting certain types of creatures makes the spell chaotic, evil, or both, as indicated on the table.

Sidebar: Contact Spells

There are a few nuances to contact entity spells that bear attention. First, not all eldritch creatures have a correlating contact spell. Contact spells do not replace or supplant planar ally or planar binding, so each contact spell targets an eldritch creature that is not an outsider. Contact entity spells might be useful for contacting other specific types of creatures that aren’t listed, at the GM’s discretion, and could be adapted for contacting certain outsiders.

It’s recommended that contact entity spells should be discovered in actual play rather than granted to PCs through level advancement. They represent ancient knowledge lost to most spellcasting traditions. Usually found in the form of scrolls or spell trigger items, an individual contact entity spell comes predetermined to work with a single kind of entity, with the appropriate material component already expended. Copying a spell to a spellbook from such a scroll doesn’t let the caster know how to contact other creatures with the spell. Though the class lists for these spells includes spontaneous casters, this is primarily to let them use the spell if found on a scroll, not to have unfettered access to contact entity as a spell known.

Some contact spells are evil, but many lower level contact spells are not. This is because certain Elder Mythos creatures are distinctly alien but not necessarily morally evil. There is also a rich tradition of spellcasters who traffic with dangerous creatures with the best of intentions; while actively summoning them onto the Material Plane is evil, merely speaking with them is not necessarily so.

Each intelligent creature in the spell’s area takes 1d6 points of Wisdom damage as their perceptions of reality realign with yours for the spell’s duration. Listeners with at least 5 HD can attempt a Will save to negate the effects. Your targets view you with a friendly attitude and respond to criticism of you with irritation.

Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate checks to create doubt about your purpose in those affected by the spell take a –4 penalty. The attitude of your targets regarding any creature that criticizes you or your vision automatically changes one step toward hostile; a Diplomacy check that fails by 5 or more reduces their attitude further. Your targets retain the same alignment and their prior beliefs, in addition to the ones you force on them. You can’t force beliefs on a target if such beliefs would be necessarily against the nature of its alignment and prior beliefs, but targets are otherwise able to hold contradictory beliefs.

If your campaign uses the sanity system, your sanity score decreases by 2 (and thus your sanity edge decreases by 1) instead of taking Wisdom drain each time you cast this spell. Only greater restoration, miracle, or wish can remove this decrease. A single casting of greater restoration removes one decrease in sanity from casting compelling rant, while a casting of miracle or wish removes them all. Affected targets take sanity damage equal to half your caster level (maximum 10) instead of Wisdom damage.

The targets might actually change alignment and beliefs if their loss of sanity afflicts them with an appropriate madness, in which case those effects last even after the spell’s duration has ended.