This week we resume looking at the class exemplars, featuring the fantastic character portraits by Nikki Smith-Cielo. Continuing alphabetically, next up is the Druid Exemplar. This is the first of our examples to make use of the hybrid ancestry rules.
Tane Rakinui
Tane has always been different from those around him. At the surface level, his stony skin and rugged body have always set him apart from strangers and family alike. At a deeper level, few possess as deep a connection to the natural world as Tane. It is a relationship formed out of necessity, but would likely have blossomed anyway if he had grown to adulthood in the company of others.
Instead, Tane was always an outcast. Born to a wealthy traveling merchant and his wife, his Oread heritage marked him immediately as illegitimate. Despite his mother's protestations otherwise, Tane's father would not accept that the stony child could be his own flesh and blood, and treated him accordingly. When his mother passed when he was just seven, his father literally dropped him off on the side of the road and left him behind. He would have surely perished if it were not for the Orestiad that found him and sheltered him. The earth spirit raised him in the wilds, and druidic power came naturally to him with the expert tutelage of his fey stepmother.
While he still bears a resentment of his father, and those that value money over life in general, Tane has come to recognize that most people are not so bad. He tends to avoid settlements unless he needs supplies or grows especially lonely, and prefers to spend his time in wild places, especially mountains. It is close to the earth where he feels most at home, and the artificial floors and beds of civilization make him uncomfortable. He likes to help people when he can, and is especially kind to those that are outcasts, like he used to be.
Ancestry
Tane is an Oread, an earth Elemental-Kin. While he possesses several biological distinctions from the typical example, he is also part Human. As such, he chooses Human as his base ancestry. This gives him two free ability boosts, which he assigns to Endurance and Wisdom, and 8 bonus Hit Points. For his first Ancestry Perk, he chooses the Elemental-Kin perk, and specifically the Earth option. This gives him a flaw to Agility, another free boost which he chooses to apply to Strength, low-light vision and a permanent bonus to Athletics. This perk also unlocks all other Elemental-Kin perks if Tane wants them, expanding his pool of options beyond those typically available to a Human. For his remaining three Ancestry Perks, Tane chooses Infused Evolution, Natural Aptitude, and Stubborn. Infused Evolution works differently depending on which kind of element your heritage is derived from. For Earth Elemental-Kin, his stony exterior increases his resistance to all physical damage by his level. Since it works as an increase, this benefit will naturally stack with other sources of damage resistance, magical or otherwise. Natural Aptitude is a Human perk which grants Tane an extra Class Perk, and Stubborn is another Human class perk that gives him a bonus to saves against compulsion, emotion, fear and possession effects.
Background
For his Background, Tane further improves his Strength and Wisdom and becomes an expert in Survival. He chooses an Uncommon Item for his backstory boon, which he uses to gain a stone meteor hammer. Tane is also the first of the exemplars to take one of the optional Backstory Traits. He picks Destitute, which reduces the starting cash for his Equipment step to just 25 silver, but gives him an extra General Perk. He uses this extra perk to gain the Exotic Training perk for flails, removing the exotic trait from every weapon in that group, including the meteor hammer.
Class
Tane is a Druid. The Druid class always has Wisdom as its Key Ability, which gives Tane another boost to that ability modifier. The class automatically gives him another 10 Hit Points (8, plus his final Endurance modifier of +2), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. He's an expert in Perception, Fortitude saves, Reflex saves, and the Nature skill. He's also trained in Reflex saves, unarmored defense, light armor, medium armor and primal spells. The class grants him one esoteric proficiency boost for weapon groups, which he uses to become trained in flails. Finally, Tane chooses 4 more skill in which to be trained (4, plus his final Intelligence modifier of +0), and chooses Acrobatics, Athletics, Medicine and Stealth.
All Druids choose an order as a class specialization. Tane chooses the Leaf Order, which lets him case the spell goodberry as an Order Power using Spell Points and gives him the Bountiful Harvest class perk as a bonus. This perk empowers the goodberry spell however Tane casts it, causing it to always manifest one spell level higher than he casts it and increasing the number of berries it creates for him by his Wisdom modifier. With a final Wisdom modifier of +4, and a minimum spell level of 2nd, this means that each time he casts the spell it creates up to 9 magical berries, each of which nourishes as a full meal and causes one that eats it to immediately recover 3d4+4 Hit Points.
Tane also chooses two more class perks, one automatically and an extra one thanks to his Natural Aptitude. He chooses Primal Domain, which grants him the 1st-level power of the Earth Domain immediately, increases his Spell Point pool by 1, and will also automatically provide him with the Domain's 2nd-level power as soon as he can cast spells of that level. He also chooses Primal Esoterica, which lets him choose any common Occult spell to learn as an Order Power and once again increases his Spell Point pool by 1. Since he doesn't have much money to spend on equipment, he uses this perk to learn the mage armor spell for defense. With both of these perks increasing the size of his Spell Point pool, Tane ends up with a total of 6 Spell Points he can use to cast goodberry, mage armor or hurtling stone. Since mage armor has a 24-hour duration, Tane typically casts that at the beginning of each day, giving him 5 remaining points to split between goodberry and hurtling stone as needed, or to grant mage armor to another ally in need.
As a Druid, Tane can prepare primal spells each day. He can prepare four Cantrips and three first-level spells. He draws these spells from a spell list which includes all common primal spells. He can change which spells he prepares on a daily basis, or even leave some slots open to fill throughout the day, although he typically fills all of his slots with useful tools.
Details
During this step, Tane gets to choose his final round of ability boosts. He chooses Strength, Agility, Endurance and Wisdom. This sets his final ability modifier array at Str: +3, Agi: +0, End: +2, Int: +0, Wis: +4, Cha: +0. He chooses Widen Spell as his General Perk. This is a metamagic ability, which lets him freely add an extra casting action to one of his area spells to increase the size of the area. Since most low-level area spells produce a comparatively small area of effect, this will likely be quite helpful. For his Skill Boost, Tane chooses the Hazard Endurance Survival Skill Perk. This lets him use his Survival in place of any save against disease, poison, traps and weather.
Equipment
While other characters have 150 silver pieces with which to buy starting equipment, Tane's Destitute Backstory Trait reduces this to just 25 silver. In addition to this money, he also has the stone meteor hammer that he gained from his Backstory Boon. He uses his starting cash to buy a sling to serve as a backup ranged weapon, 20 sling bullets, and a light adventuring kit (a backpack, belt pouch, bedroll, 2 changes of clothes, flint & steel, 6 rations and a water skin). He keeps the remaining 10 silver as cash to use as spending money during his adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Tane can fill out his important statistics. He has 18 Hit Points between ancestry and class. With the benefits of mage armor, his armor class is 14 (+1 from unarmored proficiency, +0 from Agility, and +3 from the spell). His meteor hammer has a slew of useful properties, too. It has a d10 damage die, and the backswing, forceful, reach 2 and trip traits. Backswing gives Tane a bonus to his next attack after a miss and forceful makes the weapon deal extra damage if he hits with it in consecutive attacks. The reach 2 trait means the weapon can be used to hit targets up to 3 hexes away, and since it has the trip trait Tane can use the weapon's reach to use this maneuver against foes. He's also got a +5 Spell Roll and a DC 15 when using magic. His magic statistics will likely get used quite a bit, as well, since he tends to fill out his prepared spells with those that use an attack roll of allow a save. He prepares acid splash, ray of frost, stabilize and tanglefoot as Cantrips, and fills his first level slots with a alkaline, flamethrower and thunderwave. All three of those spells utilize a different kind of damage and a different type of area to cover many different situations, and all of them can be made bigger with his Widen Spell metamagic ability. The rest of his abilities 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, Backgrounds. More specifically, Backstory Traits and how they can be used to add additional flavor to a character.
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