This week we resume looking at the class exemplars, featuring the fantastic character portraits by Nikki Smith-Cielo. Continuing alphabetically, next up is the Ranger Exemplar.
Llwyni
Most mortals consider long life to be a blessing, but Llwyni knows all too well that it can also be a curse. At the tender age of one hundred and nine, the Elf maiden fell madly in love with a human forester whose name she can only barely recall now. The relationship was passionate, but brief, lasting until the young man had died of old age. But Llwyni was still young, and the grief burned white-hot in her chest and she could not just move on.
She spent several decades almost haunting the woodland outpost where her lover lived, hunting and trapping in the forest for a living, watching as it grew from a small town into a bustling city, but unable to fully immerse herself in the place that had made her so intensely happy for not long enough. And yet she also cannot bring herself to go elsewhere for long. On the occasions when she is hired to guide others through the primeval woods she knows so well, she always finds her way back eventually.
Llwyni eagerly throws herself into any task which seems an adventure engrossing enough to serve as a distraction, even if only for a short time. With so much life still to go, finding any outlet for relief is important. She hates being lonely, but fears that letting herself get close to another will result in just another heartbreak she cannot recover from.
Ancestry
Llwyni is an Elf, which provides her with Low-Light Vision, 6 bonus Hit Points, and Keen Eyes that reduce the rate at which the distance penalty for Perception is calculated. Her ancestry also provides her an ability boost to Agility and Intelligence, and ability flaw to Endurance, and a free ability boost that she uses to improve her Wisdom. During this step she also chooses four Ancestry Perks: Ageless Patience, Lonesome, Incredible Steps and Keen Hearing. Ageless patience lets her spend extra actions on a task in combat to receive a stacking, un-typed bonus to checks per extra action spent. Lonesome gives her a bonus to checks and DCs against effects with the emotion trait, since her constant sorrow makes it difficult to be affected by much else. Incredible Steps lets her move up to two hexes at once each time she Steps, and will increase to three hexes if she ever becomes legendary in Acrobatics. Finally, Keen Hearing lets her use hearing as a precise sense within hex 5, giving her great situational awareness even in situations where sight is ineffective for any reason.
Background
For her background, Llwyni further improves both her Agility and her Wisdom and becomes and expert in Nature. She chooses Class Training for her Backstory Boon, which will let her choose an extra Class Perk when she gets to that step. She also chooses Overly Analytic for her Backstory Trait, which grants her a +2 un-typed bonus to Perception, but forces her to roll twice and take the worse result when rolling initiative.
Class
Llwyni is a Ranger. She chooses Agility as her Key Ability, which gives that ability another +1 bonus. The class automatically gives her another 9 Hit Points (10 plus her final Endurance modifier of -1), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. She's an expert in Perception, Fortitude, Reflex and the Survival skill. She's also trained in Will, Unarmored Defense, Light Armor and Medium Armor. The class also grants her four esoteric proficiency boosts for weapon groups, which she uses to improve both bows and swords to trained, and then again to expert. Finally, she chooses 6 more skills in which to become trained (4 plus her final Intelligence modifier of +2), and chooses Acrobatics, Athletics, Crafting, Diplomacy, Knowledge and Stealth. Since her Intelligence is +2, she also gets an extra skill increase, which she uses to improve Crafting to expert.
All Rangers gain the Hunt Target ability, which allows them to focus on a single target to more effectively deal with it. They also get to choose a Hunting Lodge as a class specialty, which grants a special ability and a bonus perk. Llwyni choose the Trapper Lodge. This lodge gives her the Snare Savant class perk as a bonus perk, a +1 class bonus to checks and DCs against traps and hazards, and allows her to use her own Crafting DC whenever she deploys a snare, even if she wasn't the one to create it. This already gives her a distinct advantage when making use of snares, and the advantage is further increased by the Snare Savant perk. This perk lets her Craft snares during Daily Preparations, and gives her a pool of snares that do not cost her materials to create, and do not require a check either, although the quality of these snares is limited based on her Crafting proficiency. As an expert, these free snares can automatically by fine quality. She also knows the formulas for all common and uncommon snares with a base item level up to half her level, rounded up, and since she's a Trapper, she also increases the DC required to notice her snares by her Wisdom bonus.
Llwyni also gets to pick two more Class Perks, one automatically and another thanks to her choice of Backstory Boon. She chooses Hunter's Accuracy and Monster Hunter. Hunter's Accuracy is a special version of a ranged Strike that allows her to ignore a target's cover and concealment, or provides a bonus to hit if the target is not benefiting from either. Monster Hunter provides a bonus to attack for her and all of her allies when she successfully uses Recall Knowledge or Recall General Knowledge to identify a foe, and also provides a scaling damage bonus if she critically succeeds at the attempt.
Details
During this step, Llwyni gets to choose her final round of ability boosts, and chooses Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Wisdom. This sets her final ability modifier array at Str: +1, Agi: +4, End: -1, Int: +2, Wis: +3, Cha: +0. She chooses Point Blank Shot for her General Perk, which gives her another special ranged Strike. This one improves her damage against a target if it is within the weapon's first range increment. For her skill boost, Llwyni chooses the Survival skill perk Canny Survivor. This lets her use Survival to Recall Knowledge when identifying animals, insects, traps, hazards, weather and environmental conditions, and she can also use it to Recall General Knowledge about any other creature type. This lets one of her best skills whenever she tries to identify a target, which in turn makes her even more likely to activate the benefits from her Monster Hunter class perk.
Equipment
Like all characters in Realm of Runes, Llwyni has 150 silver pieces to spend on starting equipment, but she also has three free fine-quality snares. While she has access to all common and uncommon snare formulas as a Trapper, she uses all three of these slots to have a stable of fine bear traps. The additional quality of a bear trap increases the maximum size of a creature it can ensnare up to Large. Since she has the formulas for snares, she can spend her starting cash on the parts cost of snares, instead of full price, and she can use these as effectively as if she had made them herself, thanks to her Trapper Lodge benefits. She spends her money to get 3 Caltrop Surprise snares, 2 Marking Snares, a composite shortbow, a shortsword, 40 arrows, 10 blunt arrows, hide armor, a light adventuring kit (backpack, belt pouch, bedroll, 2 changes of clothes, flint & steel, 6 rations and a water skin), an alchemical starter pack (1 alchemist's fire, 1 acid flask, 1 antidote, 1 antibiotics, 2 elixirs of life, and a bandolier to hold it all), 40m of silk rope, and 2m of steel chain. She keeps the remaining 20 silver as cash on hand to use during her adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Llwyni can fill out her important statistics. She has 15 Hit Points between ancestry and class. She has an armor class of 17 (+1 from proficiency, +2 from armor, and +4 from Agility. While her armor makes her impeded 1, her elven speed keeps her still as fast as most others, she'll only be impeded until she becomes a master of medium armor. She has a strong +6 bonus to hit with her bow, and a very likely chance of improving that to +8 just by successfully identifying the enemy, and foes will find trying to take cover or hide from her shots simply doesn't help. The rest of her statistics are filled out similarly, depending on her 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: minions.
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