This week we resume looking at the class exemplars, featuring the fantastic character portraits by Nikki Smith-Cielo. Continuing alphabetically, next up is the Monk Exemplar. Like our last exemplar, the Druid, she is also an Elemental-Kin, though a different element entirely.
Jalaana "Char" Yuddharat
The calm life of an ascetic may seem like an odd choice for a woman with literal fire in her blood, but it is that very contradiction that makes the pursuit meaningful to Jalaana. As a rambunctious, short-tempered youth she would fight anyone of any size with very little provocation, and had broken her nose three times even before reaching age fourteen. As she got older, though, her penchant for aggression become less of a quirk and more of a problem, especially when her fists started literally catching people on fire. Even as she reveled in her new nickname, she recognized that she had anger issues that would lead to a bad end if not controlled. She just didn't know where to start.
Everything changed when she saw the monks. They had come in from the jungle for supplies, and their serene grace showed her an inner peace she had never known. She felt she must learn their ways, but when she eagerly demanded they teach her everything they knew, they refused. Distraught and frustrated, she broke the master's nose, and was thrown in jail. At rock bottom, Jalaana decided that she must do whatever it took to control herself. When she was eventually freed, she went into the jungle alone to find the monastery and beg for forgiveness and another chance.
This time the master agreed, and Jalaana dedicated herself to achieving the mental and physical discipline she knew she needed. Just as she was beginning to feel like she might finally be under control, and while she was meditating alone in the jungle, bandits sacked the temple and slaughtered the pacifist monks she had come to think of as family. The old fury began to well up within her again, struggling to break her control. On her own again for the first time, she's not sure what to do with herself. Should she find a new monestary? Should she find the bandits and exact justice? Whatever she chooses, maintaining the fine line between a controlled burn and a raging wildfire will be difficult without the guidance of her mentors.
Ancestry
Jalaana is an Ifrit, a fire Elemental-Kin. While she possesses several biological distinctions from the typical example, she is also part Human. As such, she chooses Human as her base ancestry. This gives her two free ability boosts, which she assigns to Strength and Intelligence, and 8 bonus Hit Points. For her first Ancestry Perk, she chooses the Elemental-Kin perk, and specifically the Fire option. This gives her a flaw to Wisdom, another free boost which she chooses to apply to Agility, low-light vision and a permanent bonus to Intimidation. This perk also unlocks all other Elemental-Kin perks if Jalaana wants them, expanding her pool of options beyond those typically available to a Human.
For her remaining three Ancestry Perks, Jalaana chooses Elemental Potency, Infused Attacks, and Natural Aptitude. Elemental Potency increases the damage whenever an Elemental-Kin deals energy damage of the type associated with the user's element, which is fire damage for Jalaana. As an Ifrit, Infused Attacks allows her to add 1d8 fire damage whenever she uses an unarmed attack, and this additional damage increases as when she further improves her proficiency with those attacks. Natural Aptitude is a Human perk that gives her an additional Class Perk when she gets to that step.
Background
For her Background, Jalaana further improves both Strength and Agility and becomes an expert in Acrobatics. She chooses Class Training for her Backstory Boon, which gives her yet another Class Perk when she gets to that step. Jalaana also chooses one of the optional Backstory Traits, Overly Hasty. With this trait, Jalaana always rolls twice and takes the better result when rolling initiative, but she also has a permanent -2 un-typed penalty to Perception. As an un-typed penalty, this will always stack with other penalties if she has them.
Class
Jalaana is a Monk. The Monk class lets her choose any one of the six ability modifiers to be her Key Ability. She chooses Endurance, which applies a +1 boost to that ability. The class also gives him another 12 Hit Points (10, plus her final Endurance modifier of +2), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. She's an expert in Athletics, Perception, Unarmored Defense, Fortitude, Reflex and Will. She's also trained with Light Armor. The class grants her four esoteric proficiency boosts for weapon groups, which she uses to boost her proficiency with Brawling and Darts twice, each, becoming an expert in both groups. Finally, Jalaana chooses 5 skills to become trained (3, plus her final Intelligence modifier of +2), and chooses Intimidation, Knowledge, Medicine, Occultism and Stealth. Since her Intelligence is +2, she also gets to apply an extra increase to one of these skills, which she uses to become an expert in Stealth.
All Monks choose a Monastic Tradition, which gives them a bonus class perk to represent specialization within their preferred style. Jalaana chooses the path of the Qi Mystic, which gives her the Awakened Qi class perk as a bonus. This perk offers Monks a choice in the nature of their mystical power, and Jalaana chooses the occult path instead of the divine. This makes Intelligence the Key Ability for her Qi Powers, and also lets her pick another Class Perk that provides an occult Qi ability. She uses this choice to gain the Qi Strike power, which lets her spend a Spell Point when making an unarmed attack to gain a bonus to the attack roll, a bonus to the damage, and for the attack to be magic.
Jalaana also gets to pick three more Class Perks, one by default and one more from her Natural Aptitude and her Backstory Boon. She chooses Immediate Stance, Monastic Weaponry, and Tiger Stance. Immediate Stance lets her enter a stance as a free action when she rolls initiative or starts her turn in combat, saving valuable time. Monastic Weaponry lets her substitute a weapon with the monk trait any time she would make an unarmed attack. Since abilities like Flurry of Blows cause a Monk to use an unarmed attack twice, she can instead use weapons like shuriken to make use of that potent action economy enhancer. Finally, Tiger Stance allows Jalaana to move up to two hexes, instead of just 1, if she Steps while in the stance. It also gives her access to a special unarmed attack which deals 1d8 slashing damage, instead of the default 1d4 bludgeoning damage for the default unarmed attack, and also inflicts bleed damage. This is, of course, in addition to the fire damage she adds from her Ancestry Perks and even more additional damage she can choose to add on the fly by making a Qi Strike.
Details
During this step, Jalaana gets to choose her final round of ability boosts. She chooses Strength, Agility, Endurance and Intelligence. This sets her final ability modifier array at Str: +3, Agi: +3, End: +2, Int: +2, Wis: -1, Cha: +0. She chooses Combat Reflexes as her General Perk, which gives her two more reactions each round in combat, allowing her to take up to three reactions on or between her turns if she needs to. For her skill boost, she chooses the Acrobatics Skill Perk Quickstep, which lets her spend one of her reactions on her turn to Step. If she's in Tiger Stance, this means that she can use one or more of her three reactions to move up to 2 hexes each time, without triggering reactions for this movement, and letting her save her primary actions for other things. This combination lets Jalaana flit around a battlefield like a wildfire.
Equipment
Like all characters in Realm of Runes, Jalaana has 150 silver pieces with which to buy starting equipment. She uses this starting cash to buy 30 shuriken, for ranged attacks, healer's tools, a standard adventuring kit (backpack, bedroll, belt pouch, blanket, 10 candles, 3 changes of clothes, a crowbar, flint & steel, a wood mug, 6 rations, 20m silk rope, 5 sacks, a pup tent, 5 torches, 2 water skins, and a writing set), 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). She keeps the remaining 16 silver left over as cash to spend during her adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Jalaana can fill out her important statistics. She has 20 Hit Points between ancestry and class. She's an expert in unarmored defense, and like all armor categories, this lets her double the tier modifier when calculating her proficiency to calculate armor class. This sets her AC at 16 without armor (+3 from proficiency, +3 from Agility). Her unarmed attacks have +5 to hit base, increased to +6 if she's making a qi strike. In Tiger Stance, her base unarmed attack deals 1d8+3 slashing damage plus an extra 1d8+1 fire damage from her Ancestry Perks. This is further increased to 2d8+3 slashing damage if the attack is a qi strike, although she can only do so by spending a Spell Point. She has a total of three Spell Points per day, since the Qi Strike perk increases the size of her pool by 1 in addition to teaching her the spell. The rest of her abilities are filled out similarly, depending on her proficiencies and ability modifiers as appropriate.
Next week we will once again take a closer look at an area of the rules that saw significant growth during the playtest process, poison and disease.
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