I am running a Pathfinder game in which a L5 Kineticist (fire and aether elements) decided he wanted to go kill an angel more or less on his own. He got his ass kicked, but the Angel does not want to kill him, but rather incarcerate him somehow. If it was a wizard, a gag in the mouth and restraints on his fingers would do it, but how would one go about keeping a Kineticist locked up?
The kineticist is level 12, the specific angel is an Astral Deva.
Depending on the abilities that the kineticist has, simply gaging him up and tying his hands should be enough. Manacles (and masterwork manacles) are pretty good to restrain a humanoid. This will stop at least his Kinetic Blast:
As a standard action, the kineticist can unleash a kinetic blast at a single target up to a range of 30 feet. She must have at least one hand free to aim the blast (or one prehensile appendage, if she doesn’t have hands).
And will also prevent her from gathering power:
- If she has both hands free (or all of her prehensile appendages free, for unusual kineticists), a kineticist can gather energy or elemental matter as a move action.
But since nearly every other power is a supernatural or spell-like ability, he will need to blind her (wtih a blindfold for instance, or gouging out her eyes) to prevent the use of certain powers that require line of sight, or make her stunned or unnconcious to prevent any action altogether.
There are many spells that can be cast on the target to prevent them from using her kineticist abilities:
Suggestion could be used with a condition such as "Be a good boy and don't use any elemental power until i remove your manacles" to prevent usage of powers. But with hour/level duration, the spell will probably need to be re-cast.
Dominate Person can be used if the target is particularly against suggestions.
Baleful Polymorph (or any polymorph spell with a long duration): This will remove the ability to use any spell-like, supernatural and extraordinary abilities that the target has while the effect lasts (here, permanently until dispelled).
Geas can certainly be used to prevent the character from using his kineticist powers, as it places a magical command on a creature to carry out some service or to refrain from some action or course of activity, as desired by you.
One of the several versions of Binding can certainly prevent the target from escaping.
Trap the Soul will bind the character's soul into a gem until this gem is broken. This is a really expensive option though (1.000 gp per HD of the target).
Considering that a standard Astral Deva does not have have any of these spells available without GM interference on their sheet, the best course of action would probably be to Plane Shift this character to another plane of existance. Prerably one where he either has to be really nice or suffer the consequences, or one specially prepared by an ally of the astral deva to act as a temporary prison (such as a demiplane).
Finally, a Brain Moss disease (from Horror Adventures) is also another option, but i doubt a good outsider would go that far to keep a humanoid imprisoned.
Steps to follow:
Done. The creature is imprisoned for as long as the angel deems appropriate, while simultaneously not suffering or being harmed in any way, which is extremely important to a being composed basically of pure goodness.
If the angel is concerned about allies coming to rescue the offender, then it can hang an amulet of proof against detection and location around the statue's neck and then move the statue to its place of imprisonment.
As others have mentioned, rendering him unconscious should do the trick. If you don't like that option, you could blindfold him, gag him, and chain him up, which should foil most escape attempts.
Imprisonment would certainly do the job. Flesh to Stone wouldn't inflict permanent harm on him and could also be used to hold him effectively indefinitely.
If you can find a way for the angel to treat him as a called creature, the advanced form of Magic Circle Against Alignment should hold him pretty securely. Unfortunately, the only spell I've found so far that allows you to call a creature against its will is Gate, so you might have to bend the rules slightly to make it work.
I agree that some kind of demiplane prison would work well, and they certainly exist in the Pathfinder universe - the church of Zon-Kuthon created several objects called midnight mirrors as prisons for their enemies. I doubt an angel would use an actual midnight mirror, but it's not hard to imagine that the armies of Heaven could construct a similar artifact that links to, say, a featureless white void rather than something based on the Plane of Shadow.
Bestow Curse wouldn't prevent him from escaping, but it would make escape substantially more difficult. If the angel is uncomfortable directly cursing someone, Mark of Justice would allow him to set a trigger condition like "if the target attempts to escape".
I'd start with a private/pocket dimension, akin to a Bag of Holding, Portable Hole, or Demiplane, which has limited access (especially from inside) accessible to the angel -- but not to the kineticist. It needs to have long term life support, of course -- but that could come just from being much larger than the common pocket dimensions. Ideally, it would have an internal ecosystem -- like a terrarium a couple miles across.
It really depends on how perfect you want the restrain to be. For example gagging and blocking the fingers of a lvl 9 wizard is not enough to prevent him to cast a silent dimension door, a lvl 5 spell, but enough for most of the lvl 5 ones.
The only universal way I can think about to prevent someone from acting is to make him unconscious. The easiest way to achieve that is to put him in negative HP, stabilize him, and don't heal him. You will have to check every day that he doesn't wake up, possibly stabbing him a bit, so you need to know a bit about medical stuff (Heal ranks) or know someone who do.
Other ways of rendering someone unconscious are to reduce some of his ability scores to 0 (Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma), or to use other specific abilities/spells.
