Arma

Arma

Arma are the personification of weapons. When an intelligent weapon reaches a certain state of sentience, some are given the opportunity to become more human than weapon. An arma appears like a normal humanoid, though with some strange physical qualities that are reminiscent of their true form as a weapon. For example: A mallet arma might have a large, square, flat, hammer-shaped head with flat features while a spear arma might be a extremely tall, rail-thin, gaunt, angular man with a naturally pointed hairstyle.

Arma can chose to revert back to their weapon form on command, though after the metamorphosis they are truly a living humanoid rather than a weapon. While arma are typically medium sized creatures, this assumes that the weapon they were made of was crafted for a medium sized creature. Arma created for creatures of a different size category inherent the size category of the creature they were crafted for.

Arma are often militant or delight in combat. They have a natural attraction to competition and many will try far harder than is socially acceptable in even trivial competitions. They will do things like taking tag way too seriously, train for a week for a local festival game, or take extreme offense when a child cheats them at a board game. This also manifests itself with a racial willingness to accept challenges or bets based on competition.

Most of the time arma will hide their true nature from the public at large but may trust a few intimate friends with the knowledge of their true nature. Then again, some of them wear it as a badge of pride and their origin is public knowledge. Arma always appear a humanoids of a fitting race, though they may not fit the mold of any particular race. Most of the time their appearance reflects the region and race that made them. A dwarven double waraxe arma is likely to be a squat, very blocky, dwarf-like creature with two over large crescent shaped ears.

### Sidebar: Creating an Arma

Spellcasters with the craft construct feat can turn an intelligent weapon into an arma with a special ritual that takes 1 week, costs 1000 gp per caster level of the intelligent weapon, and requires a spellcraft check with a DC of 20 + item’s caster level. Arma are under no special compulsion to obey the spellcaster in question once transformed, unwilling arma can make a will save (DC = casters spellcraft check -20) to negate this transformation. At the end of this ritual the arma retains none of its original magical abilities or special powers.

## Racial Traits

* Ability Score Racial Trait (0): Arma gain a +2 to any single ability score of your choice during character creation.
* Size\* (0): Arma are Medium creatures and have no bonuses or penalties due to their size.
* Type (0): Arma are humanoids with the arma and shapechanger subtypes.
* Base Speed (0): Arma have a base speed of 30 feet.
* Languages (1): Arma begin play speaking Common. Arma with high Intelligence scores can learn any languages they want (except Druidic and other secret languages).
* Weapon Form (8): At character creation each arma selects a weapon. As a standard action an arma can become an intelligent weapon of that type. This weapon has a +1 enhancement bonus, At 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter this bonus improves by +1 to a maximum of +5 at 16th level. An arma may change back to his humanoid form as a standard action as well. An arma in this form only retains its mental faculties and has senses out to 30 feet. Normally, arma may only perform Intelligence, Charisma, or wisdom based skill checks, activate it’s special abilities, or empathetically communicate with the creature wielding it. Arma who have some form of ability to move may use those abilities to move as normal and may make attack rolls and dexterity based skill checks. Arma have a ego score of 10+ their Charisma modifier before any other modifiers are applied. While in weapon form they have HP equal to their current character HP and any DR they possess improves their hardness by an equal amount. Their weapon form counts as their body for the purposes of being brought back to life (for spells like resurrection). This is a polymorph effect.
* Weapon Affinity (1): Arma is automatically proficient with the weapon they selected as their weapon form.
* Sunder Resistance (1): Arma gain a +2 racial bonus to their CMD against sunder attempts and grant this bonus to anyone wielding them.
* Enchantment Aptitude (1): Arma have a caster level equal to their character level for the purpose of crafting magic items and selecting item creation feats. In addition they receive a +2 bonus on checks to create and identify magic items.

Racial Points: 12

* An arma’s size is proportional to the creature they were sized to be wielded by. Typically a player character arma is of a Small or Medium size category. Larger NPC arma can make an interesting encounter.

## Arma Starting Ages:

First generation arma are created as fully developed adults, reach middle age after 175 years, reach old age after 263 years, and reach venerable age after 350 years, they have a maximum age of 350+4d100 years. Second generation arma use their other parents races starting age (110 years in the case of pure bred arma).

## Arma Height and Weight

Arma vaguely adhere to the height and weight of the base race which they are mimicking. They often have extremely disproportionate height and weight however. A spear arma who looks like a human might be 50% taller but only have 50% of the weight of a typical human. On the other hand, a squat dwarven waraxe arma might be 25% shorter than the average dwarf but weigh 25% more. These characteristics tend to only manifest in first generation or purebred arma, any amount of interbreeding makes these traits almost unnoticeable.

New Feats

Familiarity Bond

Your form is that of a bonded weapon.

Prerequisites: Arma, arcane bond with a bonded weapon that matches the arma’s weapon form or bladebound magus with a black blade matching his weapon form.

Benefit: An arma may spend a swift action to treat its bonded weapon or black blade as its weapon form for one turn. This grants all the enhancement bonuses, weapon special abilities, and intelligent item abilities of the arma’s weapon form.  The weapon is considered to have the same stats as the arma’s weapon form to determine the effects of their intelligent item abilities.

## Inherent Magics

From deep within your newly forged soul, you summon forth some of the magic that use to lay within you when you were a magical weapon.

Prerequisites: Arma, Character level 5th

Benefit: You may give your weapon form a number of magic weapon special abilities equal to 1/4th your character level. You may change which abilities you have via a special ritual that takes eight hours to complete.

## Soul Sheath

Drawing on the magic inherent to the ritual that gave you a body, you can create a sheath of spiritual energy around your fits that resembles your weapon form.

Prerequisites: Arma, base attack bonus +1

Benefit: The arma may, as a move action, grant his unarmed strikes the weapon profile of his weapon form. Changing back is a move action as well; in the case of a ranged weapon the arma may fire his ranged weapon as though he were wielding it. If your weapon form is a ranged weapon you must still provide ammunition.

## Transferred Spell (Metamagic)

You can cast certain spells of someone who wields you in combat.

Prerequisites: Arma, caster level 11th, ability to cast spells

Benefit: An arma who casts a spell with a range of personal modified with this feat may cast that spell on his wielder.

Level Increase: +3 (a transferred spell uses up a spell slot three levels higher than the spell's actual level). Spells that do not have a range of personal do not benefit from this feat.

## Weapon Soul

Though you have a humanoid form, your soul is still made of steel.

Prerequisites: Arma, Weapon Focus in weapon form, base attack bonus +4

Benefit: You gain the benefits of Weapon Specialization with the weapon your weapon form is patterned after, and you can use your character  level in place of your fighter level for the purpose of qualifying for feats that benefit a specific weapon, such as Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialization. You can use this feat instead of Weapon Specialization to qualify for such feats.

## Weaponized Spell

While in your weapon form you can cast spells.

Prerequisites: Arma, Inherent Magics, Character level 5th, ability to cast spells

Benefit: While in weapon form you may cast spells without their verbal and somatic components and you may even use any material components or focuses you possess, even though such items are melded within your current form. Spells cast in this manner take one action type greater than normal (a swift becomes a standard, a standard becomes a full round, ect) spells with a casting time of more than one full round action cannot be cast in this manner. Spells cast in this manner do not provoke attacks of opportunity.

## Wisdom of the Wielded

You may bolster the magics inherent to your former state.

Prerequisites: Arma, Inherent Magics, Character level 11th

Benefit: You gain any number of intelligent item powers with a cost totaling no more than 2,000 gp per character level you possess. You may only utilize these powers while in weapon form, and you may change them in the same manner as you would with the Inherent Magics feat.

Special: You may take this feat one additional time, if you do you may add an additional 500gp per character level to the amount of intelligent item abilities you may possess.

Favored Class Bonuses

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