This week we resume looking at the class exemplars, featuring the fantastic character portraits by Nikki Smith-Cielo. Continuing alphabetically, next up is the Rogue Exemplar.
Aljara The Great
Born into slavery, Aljara was never content with her lot and resentful both of those that presumed to own her, as well as her relatives that were too cowardly or comfortable to stand up to them. She would not be cowed into submission, and much of her youth was spent in solitary confinement. Perhaps worse than the confinement, though, was having to endure the lectures afterward as her family tried to convince her that she needed to curb her belligerent behavior and settle down. Aljara eventually gave up trying to convince them to fight for their collective freedom, and instead plotted to get herself out any way she could.
Her opportunity came when she was fifteen. Her owners, having lost all patience with Aljara's stubborn resistance, brought her to a market to try to make her someone else's problem instead. Years in confinement had made Aljara quick with her hands, though, and she slipped her bonds as they were passing through a city. With so many people of all sizes around, she disappeared into the crowds and alleys before her captors could even notice she was gone. Too small and weak for hard labor, and having staunchly refused to learn any trade that might be useful to her "masters," she turned to a life of petty larceny to get by. Her nimble fingers and tiny stature made it easy.
It has been several years since her escape, and Aljara has become obsessed with wealth, whether legitimate or feigned. She always presents herself as a rich merchant, which helps in calming the suspicions of potential marks. She considers most tall folks fair game for any scheme she has, but is especially thorough when scamming slavers. The life of a con artist is hectic, however, and Aljara rarely stays in one place for long. If an opportunity to make money comes her way, she'll gleefully follow it until she's milked it for all it's worth. Perhaps one day she'll even have enough to buy freedom for the rest of her family.
Ancestry
Aljara is a Halfling, which gives her 6 bonus Hit Points as well as an inherent ability boost to Agility and Wisdom, a flaw to Strength, and a free boost that she uses to improve her Intelligence. During this step she also chooses four Ancestry Perks: Distracting Shadows, Lucky Halfling, Plucky and Unfettered. Distracting Shadows lets her treat creatures bigger than her as full cover, instead of just screening, and also reduces the effective Perception DC of creatures bigger than her by the number of size categories bigger they are. Lucky Halfling is a reaction that Aljara can use whenever she fails a saving throw or skill check, letting her re-roll the attempt and take the better result. Being Plucky means that attempts to prey on her fears and emotions are more difficult, and her saves against such attempts do not just have a bonus, but are one whole step better than rolled. Finally, Unfettered gives her a large, un-typed bonus to any checks and DCs to avoid the grabbed, entangled and restrained conditions.
Background
For her background, Aljara further improves both her Agility and her Intelligence and becomes an expert in Society. She picks a Skill Perk as her Backstory Boon, gaining the Society perk Streetwise. This perk lets her always use Society instead of the typical skill to for rude social checks, as well as to Make Impression and Request from targets that belong to low society. She also chooses the Hoarder Backstory Trait, which permanently improves her carrying capacity but also imposes a chance of being sickened when she uses consumable resources.
Class
Aljara is a Rogue. She chooses Agility as her Key Ability, which gives that ability another +1 bonus. The class automatically hives her another 9 Hit Points (8 plus her final Endurance modifier of +1), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. She's an expert in Perception, Reflex and Will, and trained in Fortitude, Unarmored Defense and Light Armor. The class also grants her two esoteric proficiency boosts for weapon groups, and she uses both to become trained in Knives and then an expert. Finally, she chooses 10 skills in which to become trained (7 plus her final Intelligence modifier of +3), and chooses Acrobatics, Athletics, Diplomacy, Deception, Knowledge, Legerdemain, Occultism, Performance, Stealth and Survival. As a Rogue, she then she gets two automatic skill increases, plus one more for having at least +2 Intelligence. She uses these boosts to become an expert in Acrobatics, Legerdemain and Stealth.
All Rogues get to choose a specialty which influences their approach to problem solving. Each specialty comes with a special ability, a bonus class perk, and a set of circumstances under which their Sneak Attack bonus dice increase in size. Aljara chooses the Finesse specialty. As a Finesse Rogue, she can add her Agility to damage instead of Strength when using an agile or finesse weapon, and if her weapon is both agile and finesse, her Sneak Attack dice are d8s instead of d6. Her bonus perk can be any class perk with the Finesse trait, and she picks Nimble Dodge. This is a reaction that lets her add a +2 class bonus to her AC against an attack. While this perk normally requires the user to be neither impeded nor sluggish, as a Finesse Rogue Aljara can freely continue to use this ability even if she is suffering those conditions. With a relatively small number of Hit Points, this will help her avoid taking damage altogether.
In addition to her bonus perk from her specialty, Aljara also gets to pick the class perk that all characters get at first level. For this perk she chooses Smooth Criminal. This lets her treat an observer's Perception DC as 2 lower for all purposes, which stacks with any additional reductions that might be applied by her Distracting Shadows ancestry perk. Smooth Criminal provides additional bonuses for a Rogue of any specialty, and for Finesse Rogues it also lets her treat a creature's Acrobatics and Athletics DCs as 2 lower for all purposes, making her much more successful if using combat maneuvers that target those DCs, or to escape from those maneuvers if they are successfully used against her. This combination makes Aljara extremely difficult to spot when she doesn't want to be, making her very likely to be able to set up circumstances in which she can add Sneak Attack dice to her attacks, and since her weapon of choice is both agile and finesse, those extra dice will always be significant.
Details
During this step, Aljara gets to choose her final round of ability boosts. She chooses Agility, Endurance, Intelligence and Charisma. This sets her final ability modifier array at Str: -1, Agi: +4, End: +1, Int: +3. Wis: +1, Cha: +1. She chooses Combat Reflexes for her General Perk, giving her two more reactions each round that she can use for her Lucky Halfling and Nimble Dodge reactions. As a Rogue, Aljara always gets both a skill increase and a skill perk for her skill boost during this step. She uses the increase to improve her Survival proficiency to expert, and uses the skill perk to pick up the High Society Society skill perk. Similar to Streetwise, this perk lets her use Society instead whenever she would attempt a civil social check, and also lets he use Society to Impersonate actual nobility. Between the two perks, Aljara can use society for almost any social checks, she can blend in seamlessly in both high and low society, and use her much better Intelligence to do so.
Equipment
Like all characters in Realm of Runes, Aljara has 150 silver pieces to spend on starting equipment. She uses this money to buy a kukri to be her primary weapon, fine quality padded armor, thieves' 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 of silk rope, 5 sacks, a pup tent, 5 torches, 2 water skins and a writing set) and 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). She keeps the remaining 7 silver as cash to spend during her adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Aljara 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. Since her kukri has the finesse trait, she can use freely her Agility instead of her Strength when she attacks with it, giving her a very respectable +6 to attack with it. As a Finesse Rogue, she can also use her +4 Agility instead of her -1 Strength when dealing damage with it. While a Kukri only uses a d6 for its damage dice, she'll augment that with an extra d8 if the target is flanked or flat-footed, since it's got both the agile and finesse traits. Her Stealth is a very good +6 to begin with, but this can be also thought of as more like +8 thanks to the reduction from Smooth Criminal, or even higher in the very likely event that she's trying to sneak around creatures that are bigger than her, which is almost everyone besides Goblins, Gnomes and other Halflings. 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: deities and their interactions with those followers that gain power from them.
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