SS | Curse of the Eye of the Sun (Variant)

A modified variant of the Eye of the Sun item from SS.

Either as an ability, a curse spell, or as an item, a player may be transformed into a Cat. The cat's rules are based on the Eye of the Sun (SS) and are as follows.

Become As Cat

As a cat, you are considered a magical creature with supernatural attributes. You move swiftly and lightly but creatures with Truesight and Detect Magic can sense you are shapeshifted. Dispel Magic and certain Wards can either prohibit your movement, Restrain you, or force you back into your normal form.

(GM Note: Wards are environmental effects or special auras/buffs in my game. Things like fields of energy that interact with specific things. A Wizard, for example, may have a field that stops magical creatures like familiars from entering his closet and stealing his socks by prompting a Charisma save (vs Willpower) to push past it.)

As a cat you retain all of your statistics including health, AC and mental attributes, but you have a movement speed of 50ft and a Stealth modifier of +8. A cat is considered Small and cannot block a tile for hostile creatures. Your gear is melded into your body as a cat. You can attack as a cat - your attack modifier is +CHA and your damage dice is 1d4 (Piercing or Slashing). If you have a feat or class feature that benefits unarmed combat or converts your unarmed damage into new damage, features like Monk Weapons, these also apply to your cat attacks. You can perform mundane item and object interactions with objects no heavier than 10 pounds. Complex interactions, such as reloading guns or tying up waifs with rope, take three times as long in cat form but are possible. However, a cat cannot operate weapons other than Light melee weapons that weigh less than 10 pounds, which it must hold in its mouth and can perform only one attack with at Disadvantage. The cat maintains your Proficiencies but has no damage modifiers except for the instances aforementioned. If you have 20 or more INT, you do not suffer Disadvantage wielding applicable weapons, you benefit from your Modifiers for damage, and you manipulate objects at only twice as long as normal.

(GM Note: I could just turn the players into normal cats but I wanted them to be able to not be entirely useless in combat. This cat form also awards INT which is a worthless stat for most classes otherwise. It also let me make some specific interactions just for this ability.)

Interactions

Since the cat is maintained through a magical shell, any attempts to cast magic as a cat will fail. Impulse or communion actions, such as operating certain items/devices via willpower or telepathy, still work. Certain spells that target you may also fail.

As an Action, you can swallow an object no larger than a golfball, and as an Action, regurgitate that item. You cannot hold any more than one such item this way.

Cats have a special Action called Cling. A cat can cling to any reasonable object or a creature with a surface they can reasonably cling to. Unless the object or creature is intentionally trying to resist them, they can Cling to it without an Athletics check. Else, a grapple contest is performed. While Clinging to an object the cat follows that object without slowing it down. As many cats as attribute points in Strength a creature has can cling to it before it begins to take weight tolerance from additional cats.

(GM Note: Cats can cling to the weirdest shit and climb and jump over stuff normal people can't. Consider this when having players make Athletics or Acrobatics checks.)

Only creatures with an INT higher than 18 can verbally speak as a cat, otherwise all attempts to speak comes out as unintelligible mewling that may adjust the mental disposition of certain creatures. Spells such as "Speak with Animals" and "Tongues" function on these familiars.

Sanity

Creatures in the form of a cat with an active INT lower than 10 must make CHA (Willpower) saves when seeing animals smaller than they are, with Disadvantage if those animals are birds, and repeat these saves every time those creatures move and the cat can either hear or see them - else they lose control of the familiar and black out. Creatures with an INT lower than 5 are reduced to feral cats and cannot willfully transform back until the spell's effect ends or is cancelled by a third party. Creatures with an INT of 1 or lower cannot maintain the cat form and are forced to transform back.

As a cat, you are especially susceptible to certain smells and substances as well as fast-moving objects, lights or shadows. Being subjected to these things incites a Charisma save, upon failure you are subject to a mild psychotic break and permanently lose 1 INT while you maintain your current cat form.

(GM Note: Cats are both the smartest and dumbest animals I've ever seen. The innocuous can make for great sanity-annihilating escapades. Scale the DC for your sanity checks based on the severity of the temptation a cat may feel. A few D&D-based examples of things that might tempt a Cat.

- A Beholder's eye lasers.

- A will'o'wisp, especially if it's moving, is basically just a laser pointer.

- A Wizard's mancave is just a sea of narcotic fumes waiting to be rolled around in.

- Races with tails, like Dragonborn and Tieflings, make great portable cat prey. Bonus points if they try to escape the cat when it grabs for their tail on a failed Sanity check.)

If a creature is reduced to 0 hit points while being a cat, they transform back and begin to bleed out. Any items you had swallowed as a cat appear next to you. If you happen to lose your cat form due to a psychotic break, being reduced to 0 HP, or from losing your INT, you are afflicted by Cat-Induced Madness, the severity of its effects depending on a fateful roll on an Insanity table.

Any modifications to your INT as a cat are removed when you transform back, either willingly or unwillingly.

Curse Variant

As a Curse variant, an afflicted creature cannot willfully escape the Cat form without some kind of outside help, such as Divine Intervention or Wish. Until then, the character must somehow maintain their sanity and avoid being forced out of the form by losing INT, lest they suffer consequences from the Cat-Induced Madness sanity table (see below).

Playing as a Feral Cat

In the original item, Cats whom descend to 2-4 sanity just become dopey lap cats. In the Cursed variant, they turn into Feral cats. Both of these are GM-controlled. I made them different here because the threat level in my world is so high that a player turned Feral Cat is almost guaranteed to die. I considered how I would make a Cat behave under these new circumstances.

- Cats are very flightly and super fast even with a cone on their head. Players should have to roll initiative if they're trying to catch the cat and it notices them. If it spots them, you can have it run up to half its speed as a Disengage action.

- Objects and places out of reach are challenges to a cat, not barriers.

- Cats have very good memories and follow people's schedules and habits. Players have to be careful when trying to carral a runaway party member who's turned full furry.

- If a player or an NPC is trying to wrangle or hold a cat (For example, while someone is casting a ritual of Dispel Magic to free them), whoever is holding the cat will need to make Grappling checks every so often (around every 30 seconds to a minute). Cats are basically toothy liquid and can be surprisingly hard to control with your hands. A character whom has Expertise or Proficiency in Animal Handling, say for example a Druid, may be able to make this roll with Advantage. Murderous reminder that even 1 damage from a stray cat bite is still a DC 10 on Concentration checks.

Cat-Induced Madness

Roll a 1d4. On 1, roll again. For other rolls, consult this handy Madness table for some ideas on how being a cat traumatizes Schwa. This table is a modified version of my SS table - it's a lot more lenient and generalized.

1-10 - You gain the Personality Trait, "I find myself meowing at people every now and then. I'm starting to think I might be a cat, after all..."

11-20 - You gain the Personality Trait, "I absolutely must be clean. Immaculately clean. Any scraping of dirt, water, or otherwise that makes it onto me or my clothing must be removed, even if I have to lick it off."

21-30 - You can suffer Psychotic Breaks outside of cat form. Every time you do so, you gain a stack of Cat-Induced Lunacy, which work towards becoming a cat. Upon receiving ten such stacks, you transform back into a cat again, and start at 4 INT. This trait persists upon losing that form and rerolling on the table until the Madness is broken.

31-40 - Everyone you see is a cat. You have no idea why everyone is a cat, but nothing they say can convince you that they aren't cats. That's just the way things are. (This is not an illusion, but an actual mental defect - they see everyone as cats.)

41-50 - Everywhere you look there are red dots taunting you. You suffer Disadvantage to Perception, Insight, and Concentration.

51-60 - You impulsively swat at anything that moves within adjacent tiles any faster than walking speed, making an Unarmed Attack each time you do so.

61-70 - You make a Wisdom save against Fear any time a canine or similar creature or character comes within line of sight. The DC is determined by the nature of the object of fear - a canine deity will prompt a slightly highr DC than a toy of a puppy. The subject of the fear can re-attempt their saves if they are out of Line of Sight and lose awareness of the object of their fear for one minute, and each minute afterwards.

71-80 - You gain the Personality Trait, "I own you. I own everything you own. I make sure you remember this by staining you in my scent every time I think you've lost it."

81-90 - When you sleep you unknowingly transform back into a cat and conduct mischevious deeds. In this state, you start your cat form at 4 INT and have no recollection whatsoever of what transpires. You still receive rest as usual.

91-100 - Anything that touches you is unwelcomed. You instinctively try to bite objects or people that physically contact you. Upon doing so, they make a CHA save versus your Spell DC. Upon failure, they are also afflicted by the Curse of the Eye of the Sun.

Overcoming Madness

I rule madness resolution based on the severity of the origin. Some madness requires time and a lot of personal healing. Resolution can be attempted through saves or checks against a reasonably high DC. Some forms of madness can be helped with another character providing counselling once per day (generally before the character attempts a Long Rest). This may offer the afflicted character Advantage in their save attempts. Scale the difficulty and period of attempts based on how much you want to see your players try to counsel each other into believing everyone isn't actually a cat.