As we move into a new year and playtesting continues, the state of the rulebook is becoming more polished and balanced. The process has led to many exciting changes that not only make the game run more smoothly and intuitively for players and GM alike, but also further set Realm of Runes apart from other RPGs that have come before it. There has also been some great progress in the book's art assets, including finished portraits for each of the class exemplars. Over the next several weeks we'll take a look at the class exemplars, showing off the art and using the exemplars to provide an example of character creation for each class. We'll also take some deep dives into the areas of the rules that have shown the most growth during playtesting. Without further ado, let's begin with the Alchemist Exemplar!
Gniklis Two-Gnees
Gniklis has always enjoyed a life fraught with travel, peril and adventure. When the opportunity arose to join a pirate crew, he literally jumped at the chance. The little gnome quickly proved to be a natural at swashbuckling, and his ability to churn out bombs and firearms helped him quickly rise in prestige among his crew, and eventually he was democratically elected ship's surgeon, and unofficial mascot. Things were going great, and Gniklis would have loved nothing more than to keep marauding the high seas with the crew he thought of as family.
Then misfortune struck. The ship was attacked by a Kraken from the depths, and despite the valiant efforts of the crew in fighting it off, and Gnicklis's own attempts to keep his comrades fighting the beast, they were ultimately no match for the colossal monstrosity. The ship was torn asunder, and Gniklis proved to be the only survivor, clinging to a small floating section of the wreck and nursing his leg where a tentacle had ripped his foot clean off. He drifted at sea alone for several days before the currents of luck brought him to an inhabited island.
Now fully recovered, and with a shiny new peg leg, Gniklis harbors a deep grudge against the Kraken that ruined his life and his leg. He intends to one day catch up with his quarry and extract his revenge. For now, though, he enjoys taking odd jobs with other adventurers, always gauging their mettle to see if this is finally the new crew that can help him put the beast down for good.
Ancestry
Gniklis is a Gnome, which automatically grants him low-light vision, 8 bonus Hit Points, and a +1 boost to Endurance and Charisma, but imposes a -1 penalty to Strength. He uses his free boost to improve his Agility, which will come in handy for using ranged attacks. During the ancestry step, he chooses the following Ancestry Perks: Illusion Sense, Nimble Avoidance, Obsessive, and Weapon Familiarity. Illusion Sense gives Gniklis a bonus to checks and DCs against effects with the illusion trait, and also allows him to try to Disbelieve an illusion at any time, even if he hasn't interacted with it yet. Nimble Avoidance gives him a bonus to Armor Class against creatures that are bigger than him, which is likely to be most creatures since gnomes are small. The bigger the foe, the better the bonus to AC! Obsessive gives Gniklis a bonus to the Crafting and Knowledge skills. As an Alchemist, the bonus to Crafting is especially important, and makes it harder for foes to resist the effects of his alchemical items, especially bombs. Finally, Weapon Familiarity gives him a boost to proficiency with the weapon groups that gnomes are best known for: bombs and firearms, both of which are very useful to Alchemists.
Background
For his Background, Gniklis further improves both his Agility and Intelligence, and also becomes an Expert in Medicine. He chooses an Heirloom to be his Backstory Boon, which gives him a fine-quality hand cannon to start play with, without requiring he spend any of his starting money on it during the Equipment step!
Class
Gniklis is an Alchemist. He chooses Intelligence as his class's Key Ability, which gives that ability another +1. The class automatically gives him with another 10 Hit Points (8 plus his final Endurance modifier of +2), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. He's an expert with Fortitude and Reflex saves, as well as the Crafting skill, and is trained with Perception, Will saves, unarmored defense and light armor. The Alchemist provides two boosts for weapon groups, which Gniklis combines with the boosts from his Weapon Familiarity ancestry perk to make himself an expert in both Bombs and Firearms, improving his chances of success with all weapons of those groups and also unlocking the critical specialization of those weapons. Finally, he gets to pick 6 skills (3 plus his final Intelligence bonus of +3) in which to become trained. Gniklis chooses Acrobatics, Diplomacy, Knowledge, Legerdemain, Stealth and Survival. Then, since he has at least +2 Intelligence, he gets a bonus skill increase, which he uses to further improve his Legerdemain proficiency to expert.
All alchemists choose a Class Discipline at first level, which provides an initial ability right away, and will continue to add additional special abilities as he grows in level. Gniklis chooses the Grenadier discipline, and learns the Control Splash ability automatically. This ability lets him exempt creatures from the splash radius of his bombs, so he can feel free to throw bombs at targets surrounded by allies without worrying about friendly fire! He also gets to pick a class perk and chooses Bandoliero, which lets him draw items as a free action when he uses them so he doesn't have to spend extra actions drawing bombs and elixirs before he can use them.
He also gets a free formula book containing 6 1st-level alchemical item formulas of his choice. He chooses a diverse set of useful tools: antibiotics (a long-term bonus to saves against disease), antidote (a long-term bonus to saves against poison), black powder bomb (a potent explosive that deals splash damage), eagle-eye elixir (a long-term bonus to Perception), elixir or life (fast healing 5 for 2 rounds, or 10 Hit Points in total recovery), and sun rods (a glowing rod that sheds light like a torch, but lasts for much longer and doesn't use burn). With these formulas, he can spend Alchemy Points and use Advance Alchemy to preemptively craft four items per point spent, or he can hang onto these points for later to use Quick Alchemy to quickly create a single item per point in a pinch.
Using Advance Alchemy and Quick Alchemy, the only resources he needs to spend on making these items is the pool of Alchemy Points he has from being an Alchemist. With 3 Alchemy Points each day, Gniklis tends to use 2 Points to create a total of 3 black powder bombs, 2 elixirs of life, 1 antibiotics, 1 antidote and 1 eagle-eye elixir. He holds on to the last Alchemy Point for some flexibility, in case he needs more of the ones he prepared in advance, or needs something he wasn't expecting, like a sun rod. He can change how he spends his Alchemy Points each day if he finds some items are being more useful than others during a specific adventure!
Details
During this step, Gniklis gets to choose his final round of 4 ability modifier boosts, improving his Agility, Endurance, Intelligence and Charisma by one more, each. This sets his final ability modifier array at Str: -1, Agi: +3, End: +2, Int: +3, Wis: +0, Cha: +2. He also gets a free Skill Boost, which he uses to gain the Quick Hands Legerdemain skill perk. This perk reduces the reload value of weapons he wields by 1, allowing him to reload his gun with just 1 action, instead of two like normal. He also chooses Diehard as a general perk, which increases is dying threshold to 5. This gives Gniklis two extra chances to stabilize on his own if he's been reduced to zero Hit Points, and this also buys him extra time for one of his allies to stabilize or heal him before he kicks the proverbial bucket.
Equipment
Like all characters in Realm of Runes, Gniklis has 150 silver pieces to spend on starting equipment. Because he chose an Heirloom as his Backstory Boon, he also starts with that item in addition to whatever he spends this money on. Gniklis buys a light adventuring kit (a backpack, belt pouch, bed roll, 2 changes of clothes, flint & steel, 6 rations and a water skin), two full powder horns (each of which holds enough black powder to reload his gun 20 times), 40 pistol shot to use with his hand cannon, two bandoliers (to hold his alchemical items in a ready position), a shortsword to use as a backup melee weapon in a pinch), and a set of alchemist's tools and healer's tools to help him get the most out his Crafting and Medicine skills. He keeps 11 silver pieces left over in spending money to use during his adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Gniklis can fill out his important statistics. He has a total of 18 Hit Points between Ancestry and Class. Since he's trained in unarmored defense, his base Armor Class is 14 (+1 from proficiency, +3 from Agility), though his Nimble Avoidance perk will likely make this higher against most targets. With his Obsessive perk, the Crafting DC of his alchemical items (like as bombs) is 16 (+2 from proficiency, +3 from Intelligence, and +1 from Obsessive). Other statistics are filled out similarly, depending on his proficiencies and ability modifiers as appropriate.
Next week we'll take a closer look at one of the playtesting improvements very important to Gniklis and other Alchemists, a restructuring of items and item levels!
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