This week we resume our introduction of the class exemplars, featuring the fantastic art by Nikki Smith-Cielo. Continuing alphabetically, this week we take a look at the Barbarian exemplar, one of my personal favorites. This one is based on one of the first characters created and run using the playtest rules, and that will always give it a special place. Without further ado, let's meet the youngest of the class exemplars!
Bonechomp
Even as a pup, little Bonechomp always dreamt of being a dragon. Massive, powerful and feared, dragons are almost exactly the opposite of goblins. As he grew to adulthood in the harsh warrens of a goblin gang, he found a deep well of fury that gave him an edge over his dozens of brothers and sisters. With that rage came literal fire, and with his temper and ability to produce flame on demand he gained the fear and respect of the other members of his gang.
The gang's chief, a wizened old goblin of seven years, feared that Bonechomp's popularity might develop into leadership ambitions. With the cunning of age, the chief decided that this potential challenger needed to be dealt with now, before he could become a problem later. Six of the chief's enforcers ambushed Bonechomp on the night before his first birthday. Despite being heavily outnumbered, and woken from deep slumber, the sheer fury of his draconic rage ensured Bonechomp's total victory over his assailants. Having survived, Bonechomp was free to challenge for the chief's position, but his ambitions have always been bigger than can be realized in a goblin gang.
He may have draconic features and temperament, but what Bonechomp really wants is to match up against a real dragon and earn its respect. To reach that level of strength, he needs to constantly test himself against threats of all sizes. So instead of taking revenge against the feeble old chief, Bonechomp travels the big wide world of monsters and glory. He always keeps an eye out for any chance to prove himself against the toughest opponents he can find so that one day, when he finally meets his first dragon, he will be its equal in prowess, even if not in stature.
Ancestry
Bonechomp is a goblin, which automatically grants him darkvision, 8 bonus Hit Points and a +1 boost to Agility and Endurance, but imposes a -1 penalty to Wisdom. He uses his free boost to improve his Strength, since he plans to be mostly focused on melee combat. During the ancestry step, he chooses the following ancestry perks: Burn It!, Eat Anything, Fireproof and Razor Teeth. Burn It! increases the amount of fire damage he deals, which will be quite frequently. Eat Anything gives him an un-typed bonus to saves against disease, poison and the sick condition, helping him to stay in fighting form. Fireproof both gives him increased resistance to fire damage, but also makes it significantly easier to extinguish himself if he ever accidentally catches fire. Finally, Razor Teeth lets him use his bite as an unarmed attack, which not only makes for an excellent backup weapon, but gives him an option with which he can Riposte if an enemy critically fails to attack him. The ability to potentially deal damage on another creature's turn is huge for a character that focuses heavily on damage output.
Background
For his Background, Bonechomp further improves his Strength and Endurance and also becomes an expert in Intimidation. He chooses a General Perk for his backstory boon, which will give him an extra general perk during the Details step. This will give him the freedom to both dramatically increase his maximum Hit Points without having to lose out on a helpful combat trick.
Class
Bonechomp is a Barbarian. He chooses Strength as his class Key Ability, which gives that ability another +1. The class automatically gives him another 15 Hit Points (12 plus his final Endurance modifier of +3), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. He's an expert at Fortitude and Reflex saves, Perception and the Athletics skill, as well as trained in Will saves, unarmored defense, light armor and medium armor. The Barbarian class also grants him four bonus esoteric proficiency boosts for weapon groups, which Bonechomp uses to raise both axes and brawling from untrained, to trained, to expert. Finally, he chooses four skills to be trained in (4 plus his final Intelligence modifier of +0), and chooses Acrobatics, Deception, Stealth and Survival.
All Barbarians choose a Clan at first level, which grants a special ability immediately and unlocks exclusive class perks later on. Bonechomp chooses the Dragon Clan, and of all available dragon types he chooses Red Dragons, one of the two that has his favorite damage type, fire, as its energy type. He also gets to choose a class perk, and chooses Vital Strike. This perk lets him use a Reaction to increase Strength-based damage by his Endurance bonus (again!), and can even do so multiple times if he is willing to increase his Maintain Rage DC (and risk tiring out of Rage) to do so.
As a Barbarian, Bonechomp automatically has the ability to Enter Rage. This gives him a bonus to attack rolls and saving throws, and also lets him add his Endurance modifier to Strength-based damage. Since he chose Red Dragon Clan, this bonus damage can be either a weapon's typical damage, or it can be fire damage instead! Bonechomp almost always chooses fire, since his Burn It! perk increases the amount whenever he deals fire damage. Being in Rage also gives him temporary Hit Points every turn, which will almost definitely help him stay healthy since it also imposes a penalty to his Armor Class.
Details
During this step, Bonechomp gets to choose his final round of 4 ability modifier boosts, improving his Strength, Agility, Endurance and Charisma by one more, each. This sets his final ability modifier array at Str: +4, Agi: +2, End: +3, Int: +0, Wis: -1, Cha: +1. He also gets a free skill boost, which he uses to gain the Underfoot Athletics skill perk. This causes him to be treated as a Tiny creature instead of a Small creature when he trips an opponent, or an opponent tries to trip him. Since being smaller than a foe makes it easier to trip them, and harder for them to trip you in return, this will make him especially adept at utilizing that maneuver. He also chooses Toughness and Sudden Charge as his general perks. Toughness gives him an immediate boost of 5 more maximum Hit Points, and will also give him an additional 5 more maximum Hit Points later on, every time he hits a level divisible by 5. Sudden Charge is an action economy enhancer that lets him Stride up to twice before making a melee Strike at a cost of two actions, instead of the three actions that all of those would require separately. This lets him quickly close into melee range with distant enemies without taking up his whole turn to do so!
Equipment
Like all characters in Realm of Runes, Bonechomp has 150 silver pieces to spend on starting equipment. He buys a scythe to be his primary weapon, a chain shirt for defense, a standard adventuring kit (backpack, bedroll, belt pouch, blanket, 10 candles, 3 changes of clothes, crowbar, flint & steel, wood mug, 6 rations, 20m silk rope, 5 sacks, a pup tent, 5 torches, 2 water skins and a writing set), goggles, a snorkel, and an alchemical starter pack (2 elixirs of life, 1 alchemist's fire, 1 acid flask, 1 antidote, 1 antibiotics and a bandolier to hold it all). He keeps 15 silver pieces left over as spending money to use during his adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Bonechomp can fill out his important statistics. He has an impressive total of 28 Hit Points between ancestry, class and Toughness. Since he's trained in light armor, his base armor class is 16 (+1 from proficiency, +2 from agility, and +3 from his chain shirt), though this will be reduced to 15 instead if he is Raging. His typical attack with a scythe is +6 (+2 from proficiency, +4 from Strength) and deals 1d8+4 damage. If he's raging, however, that becomes a +7 to hit instead, and he deals an extra 4 fire damage on each attack (3 from his endurance modifier, and 1 more from Burn It!). His bite attack functions the same way, just with a smaller base damage die of 1d6. The rest of his statistics are filled out similarly, depending on his proficiencies and ability modifiers as appropriate.
Next week we'll alternate back to a closer look at another topic that underwent significant improvements during the playtest process: tactical movement in hexes.
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