Grim Advice

Here is some advice I wrote for a player who was thinking about becoming a Grim from level 1. Even those thinking about the Grim prestige class might find it useful if picking a PrC mid-career.

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Some players have their PCs take levels in Grim later in their career, maybe after meeting Gargul during a resurrection. You, on the other hand, have the benefit of starting off from first level with a goal in mind. And planning now will give you some real advantages.

You will have some role-play choices ahead of you. Are you a loyal servant of Gargul from day one, content to serve as a Grim in any capacity needed? Or are you a true ghostbuster, maybe with more of a scholarly interest in the afterlife and the unknown, and less of a champion of the god? Or are you a humanitarian, seeking to help lost souls find their way because their sad stories tug at your heart? There are a number of ways to approach the prestige class.

But to get to the nuts and bolts, you will want to qualify for the prestige class as soon as you can. With that in mind, consider the requirements:

>> Spells: Able to cast 1st level spells.

That's not hard to hit. Rather, the highest hurdle to entrance is this ...

>> Skills: Intimidate 7 ranks

... it is the required 7 ranks in Intimidation! To get that, you have to have seven class levels, so the earliest you can take a level of Grim is 8th.

>> Feats: Iron Will, Toughness

Iron Will takes up one of your feat slots, no way around that. But I will point out that you can get a Toughness feat free by being a liontaur, minotaur, or centaur; and by signing up for a tour of duty in the Woldian Mailed Fist organization, and, at 6th level, by joining the Woldian League of Adventurers organization.

>> Special: Must perform a special ceremony while in the Realm of Shadow

Here is the kicker! The "Realm of Shadows" is the Woldian equivalent of the Ethereal Plane. So to fulfill this requirement, you have to spend at least a few rounds there. But how are you going to get into the Realm of Shadows? The Eyes of Gargul won't take you there ... getting there is part of the test.

So how? Certain spells will do it: Blink, Plane Shift, Shadow Walk, Etherial Jaunt, for example. The lowest level of these is Blink, but there is a chance you'll blink back into the Wold at the wrong time (save your hero points to use in this case). You can also use magic items, notably scrolls of those spells, but with a chance of failure if you are not high enough in level. There are also magic items like the very expensive Armor of Etherealness and the very expensive Cloak of Etherealness. An Obsidian Steed is somewhat less expensive but more dangerous.

Using House Rules for the Wold, the Woldian Blood Witch gains Blink as a 3rd level spell, Shadow Walk as a 5th level spell, and Ethereal Jaunt as a 6th level spell. But Dimensional Anchor and Lesser Planar Binding are not on the witch spell list, unless you take the Rune domain and gain Lesser Planar Binding as a 5th level spell.

Another way to get into the Realm of Shadows is to find a magic portal that lets you enter the plane, or a friendly NPC to cast a spell to help you get there. These would be major PC quests that you would have to arrange with your DM, if they were possible at all. A DM helping a PC in this way should not make it too easy!

And even after you get into the Realm of Shadows, you have to nail your shadow into the plane, using Lesser Planar Binding or Dimensional Anchor (or similar effect). These are nonstandard uses for the spells, and they only work while you are under the effect of a Bless cast by an Eye of Gargul.

So let's put all these together. You have to be 7th level just for the required Intimidate ranks. You have to be blessed by an "Eye of Gargul" -- that is, a cleric of Gargul devoted to no other god; as such a cleric, you could bless yourself. You can cast Dimensional Anchor as a 4th level spell. But you have to be 9th level to cast Plane Shift to go to the Plane of Shadow. Thus, a Cleric of Gargul 9 can enter easy peasy. You can do it as a Cleric 7 if you want to read a Plane Shift scroll, which is not hard to do with a small chance of failure.

If you want to multiclass, gaining the Intimidate ranks is no problem under pathfinder, but you will not have access to the needed spells until even later. But you can be any combination of classes so long as you can cast first level spells if you put the ranks into Intimidate. If you have even five levels of cleric, you can use scrolls of Plane Shift and Dimensional Anchor with some error. If you max your ranks in Use Magic Device, you can even do it with no cleric levels at all.

But what if you wanted to be an arcane caster? A sorcerer or wizard could cast Blink to get into the Realm of Shadows. And Dimensional Anchor is a 4th level arcane spell as well as a 4th level divine one. Once again, you have to gamble on the Blink roll, but what the heck! Live dangerously.

Let me mention a couple other options. Wiz3/Cleric3/Mystic Theurge is a possible option; so is Witch3/Cleric1/MT3 could use Blink and a scroll of Dimensional Anchor to meet the qualifications. With a 15% chance of scroll error!

But you might want your Grim to be a little more war-like. An option is to take levels in Undead Hunter (another Gargul prestige class), then branch into Grim. The Undead Hunter gets a fighter BAB progression and better weapons than a pure cleric.

So to sum up ... under normal circumstances, to get to be a grim you have to be able to cast two spells: Dimensional Anchor and (either Blink or Plane Shift). You also have to take seven levels in other classes (for Intimidate ranks) and also two feats (Toughness, maybe gotten from the Fist or Taur race, and Iron Will).

If you want to CAST these spells yourself, you either want to be a Wizard/Sorcerer (for Blink and Dim Anchor) or a Cleric (for Plan Shift and Dim Anchor).

If you plan to UMD these spells, then you can have any caster class yourself, and arguably any other multiclass that you like.

As a power gamer, you are better off with a spell casting class that offer a more powerful spellcasting progression (cleric, wizard) than a less powerful spellcasting progression (ranger, paladin, bard). There are a few caster classes in the middle -- sorcerer, druid, and witch. Witch is the least powerful of the middle bunch, then druid (make sure you take a domain, not an animal companion), then sorcerer.

Keep in mind that qualifying for Grim requires seven levels. In deciding what you want to do with your seven prior levels, you should think about what you plan to do with your Grim levels. Do you want to sneak around with the Partial Darkwalking Ability? Do you want to be a Ghostbuster? Do you want to be a Spellcaster? Those are the three primary things you can do with the PrC.

If you want to be a Ghostbuster, or undead fighter in general, you may want to look at the Undead Hunter. You can qualify for that pretty early, and take several levels in it before becoming a Grim. Then after you max out your Grim levels, you can go back to UH, or even alternate Grim and UH.

If you want to be a scout / sneaky type, you may want to consider rogue or Arcane Trickster levels.

-- Cayzle