This week we once again introduce another of the class exemplars, featuring the character portraits by Nikki Smith-Cielo. Continuing alphabetically, next up is the Sorcerer Exemplar. As a Dhampir, this one also makes use of the hybrid ancestry mechanics.
Natasha Belnikova
The scion of a powerful vampire noble in a land where undead can live openly, Natasha has always quite enjoyed her Dhampir heritage. The ability to revel in the pleasures of the living and the dead alike brings her great joy, as does the comforting notion that when her hedonistic life comes to an end in the distant future, her lifestyle and status will simply continue unabated. For Natasha, life is a grand carnival of delight, and she would have it no other way.
If anything, her greatest frustration is with the structure and hierarchies of her homeland. What good is being dead if there are still rules? What good is lordship if there are still responsibilities? Perhaps the worst is the caring and understanding her father shows her. How can one rebel against an eternal abomination that only showers you with kindness and love?
And so Natasha decided to take a vacation, supposedly as an ambassador to the lands of the living to learn their customs and make contacts for diplomatic relations, but the primary point for her is vacation. To get into good trouble and bad trouble and maybe, but probably not, get all of the angst out of her system so she can settle down to a nice, quiet eternal death with her dad. She enjoys flaunting her undead heritage in the world, despite the way her custom bone armor chafes, because she likes the way it makes other people uncomfortable. She has no intention of hurting anyone, not really, but she does enjoy giving off the impression that she might.
Ancestry
Natasha is a Dhampir, but while she exhibits many distinct differences from the typical example, she is also part Human. As such, she chooses Human as her base ancestry. This gives her 8 bonus Hit Points and two free ability boosts, which she uses to improve her Agility and Charisma. She chooses Hybrid Ancestry (Dhampir) as her first ancestry perk. This perk gives her the Dhampir trait, reverses her interactions with positive and negative energy, unlocks all other Dhampir ancestry perks, forces her to take an ability flaw to Endurance, but also gives her an extra free ability boost. She uses this additional boost to improve her Intelligence.
For her remaining three ancestry perks, Natasha chooses Fangs, Undead Sympathy and Vampiric Thirst. The Fangs perk causes her naturally pointy teeth to be fully functional as a variant unarmed attack. This attack only deals 1d6 slashing damage, but it has the agile, finesse and simple traits and also inflicts persistent bleed damage if the target is damaged. She can always use this bite attack to Riposte if an enemy critically fails an attack against her, and she can also drink the target's blood as a free action whenever she deals damage with her teeth. Undead Sympathy causes undead to recognize her as one of their own. Mindless Undead are always indifferent to Natasha unless she acts hostile toward them first, and she has a permanent un-typed bonus when using social skills against creatures which have the Undead trait. She also treats her level as two higher for many important purposes when interacting with or attempting to magically seize control of undead.
Finally, Vampiric Thirst causes Natasha to begin play already afflicted with stage 3 vampirism, though unlike typical vampirism Natasha is not contagious. With stage 3 vampirism, Natasha is addicted to the blood of living creatures, and takes un-typed damage if she starts her turn in an area of direct sunlight, enters an area of direct sunlight, or ends her turn in an area of direct sunlight. She would begin to suffer adverse effects from her addiction if her Withdrawal stage gets high enough, but as long as her current stage of Withdrawal lists no symptoms, her Vampiric Thirst perk also grants her an un-typed bonus to all Strength-, Agility- and Charisma-based checks and damage. Since Sorcerers are primarily Charisma-based, this is going to come up quite frequently. She can drink blood any time she is within reach of creatures that are suffering bleed damage, which she is also likely to inflict with her fangs, and each time she does it causes such bleed damage to activate immediately, as well as at the end of the sufferer's turn as normal. If she activates bleed damage this way, Natasha also recovers Hit Points equal to the damage the target suffered. Since she's hurt by positive energy, this ability to drink blood to recover from damage can help keep her going when the most common type of healing would hurt her instead.
Backstory
For her background, Natasha further improves both her Agility and her Charisma and becomes an expert in the Arcana skill. She chooses Unusual Spell as her Backstory Boon, adding the animate dead spell to her spell repertoire. As an uncommon spell, Natasha could not have picked this spell normally. The backstory boon adds the spell in addition to all of the other spells that she will learn as a Sorcerer. Natasha also chooses the Addictive Personality Backstory Trait. This causes her to always begin Withdrawal at stage 3 instead of stage 1, and to reset to stage 3. This removes 2 days of no symptoms before suffering ill effects from her addiction to the blood of the living, but in exchange Natasha gains a small bonus to civil social checks against creatures if she is not suffering such ill effects, or a larger bonus to rude social checks if she is.
Class
Natasha is a Sorcerer. She automatically gets Charisma as her class Key Ability, which gives that ability another +1 bonus. The class automatically gives her another 6 Hit Points (6 plus her final Endurance modifier of +1), as well as several Initial Proficiencies. She's an expert in Will Saves and the Deception skill, and trained in Perception, Fortitude Saves, Reflex Saves, Light Armor, Unarmored Defense and the magical tradition associated with the bloodline she chooses. The class also grants her one esoteric proficiency boost for weapon groups, which Natasha uses to improve Brawling weapons to trained. While this does not change her effective proficiency with her fangs right now, since those are simple, it is a necessary step toward eventually gaining expert and better proficiency later. Finally, she chooses 6 more skills in which to become trained (4 plus her final Intelligence modifier of +2), and chooses Acrobatics, Intimidation, Knowledge, Religion, Society and Stealth. Since her Intelligence is at least +2, she also gains a bonus skill increase, which she uses to improve her Stealth once more to expert.
All Sorcerers choose a bloodline to be the source of their magical power. Natasha chooses the Undead Bloodline. This bloodline's magic is arcane in nature, making her trained in arcane magic and requiring that she choose spells from the arcane spell list whenever she adds spells to her repertoire. Her bloodline also adds a Cantrip and a 1st-level spell to her repertoire now, grave touch and ray of enfeeblement, and will add another spell each time her spell slots reach a new spell level. She also gets to pick a Sorcerer class perk which has her bloodline's trait as a bonus perk. She chooses the Grasping Dead perk, which adds the Bloodline Power of the same name to her list of powers, and increases her Spell Point pool by 1. This power causes skeletal arms to erupt from the ground in an area, dealing damage to creatures and possibly also tripping them.
Natasha also gets to choose another class perk for level 1, like all characters get during character creation. She is not restricted to just those perks with her bloodline trait for this perk, and she chooses the Sorcerous Will perk. This perk replaces Wisdom with Charisma as the Key Ability for her Will Saves. Since her Charisma is much, much better than her Wisdom, this dramatically improves her ability to resist mental interference. Finally, Natasha fills out her spell repertoire with four Cantrips and two 1st-level spells. She chooses acid splash, detect magic, mage hand and telekinetic projectile for Cantrips, and flamethrower and magic missile for 1st-level spells. Since her spells are Charisma-based, her Spell Rolls, Save DCs and damage with most of her spells is increased if she's not suffering ill effects from her addiction to blood.
Details
During this step, Natasha gets to choose her final round of ability boosts. She takes the option to accept an ability flaw to one score in order to receive a boost to all five of the others. She takes this penalty to Wisdom, thereby boosting Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intelligence and Charisma. This sets her final ability modifier array at Str: +1, Agi: +3, End: +0, Int: +2, Wis: -1, Cha: +4. She chooses Impeccable Recognition as her General Perk. This perk gives her a large bonus to checks to identify magic items and recognize spells, and also removes the penalty for attempting to identify spells and magic from other magical traditions. She also gains a skill boost, and uses this boost to gain the Deception skill perk Inveigle. This perk lets her use Deception instead of Diplomacy when making requests of others, consolidating more social interactions under the umbrella of one of her best skills.
Equipment
Like all characters in Realm of Runes, Natasha has 150 silver pieces to spend on starting equipment. She uses this money to buy a chain shirt made and a staff, both made from bone instead of the default materials. She also buys a ring of shade, a minor wondrous item that protects against heat from the sun, but also protects vampires from its damaging effects. This is key to helping make sure she can go out in the day and function in most societies she encounters. She also buys an alchemical starter pack (1 acid flask, 1 alchemist's fire, 1 antibiotics, 1 antidote, 2 elixirs of life, and a bandolier to hold it all). Since elixirs of life use alchemy to provide healing instead of positive energy, they will work for Natasha despite her vampiric nature. She keeps the remaining 18 silver as cash to spend during her adventures.
Final Touches
With all choices made, Natasha can fill out her important statistics. She has 14 Hit Points between ancestry and class. She has an armor class of 17 (+1 from proficiency, +3 from armor and +3 from Agility). She has a respectable +4 to hit when she attacks with her staff or her fangs, or +5 if she is not suffering ill effects from Withdrawal. Similarly, her Spell Roll and Save DCs for spells are +5 and 15, but both are also increased if she's slaked her vampiric thirst recently. With her Sorcerous Will, her Will save is +5 using Charisma instead of +0 using Wisdom, as would be the default. The rest of her statistics 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 which has improved over the course of the playtest process, character sheets and their organization.
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