Who’s ready to talk about characters?!?!?! And listening to Rando talk for 3 hours about nothing?!?!!?
Yay!
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Am I ready to talk about Kobold characters? Oh you betcha! Am I ready to try out Kobold voices on y’all? You know it!
Hey, catch you folks next thurs…
Going for the rogue spy
Cool, I was thinking of going rogue with my Kobold and the Eldritch Trickster racket and the Sorcerer dedication, but now I am going to go full Sorcerer with Dragon Disciple archetype. This way we won’t have overlapping Rogue skills leaving one of us feeling somewhat redundant. And we don’t have a full on non-cleric caster at this point.
After the first session zero I do have a question that occurred to me later. For my Kobold Sorcerer, if I choose the Draconic bloodline for Sorcerer do i get to pick a dragon color separate from my Kobold dragon exemplar color? Furthermore, if I dip into Dragon Disciple archetype here and there on my character and tie it to my Draconic sorcerer bloodline and not my Kobold dragon exemplar, and then if I get the Kobold Breath Weapon ancestry feat and later the Breath of the Dragon feat from Dragon Disciple could I end up having two breath weapons of different dragon colors/types? Also concurrently, would I be able to have two different dragon color resistances from Kobold Exemplar dragon color and Sorcerer Draconic bloodline/Dragon Disciple? Inquiring Kobold minds want to know!
Couple of quick question for @Rando:
Does our Rebellion focus affect the kinds of missions our PCs will go on? What about the actions in the activity phase ?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the spy is an archetype for rogues in PF1. The closest thing we would have in PF2 would probably be a scoundrel rogue, with the poison use being handled by rogue feats like um, poison weapon and such.
As written. Yes. And, yes.
In a game that now allows tiefling leshies aka demonic cabbage or vampiric (dhamphir) halfling paladin (champion) assassin’s (archetype), then why couldn’t we have a kobold sorcerer who manifests the powers of two separate draconic bloodlines?
And quoting myself now from a PM (is that a faux-pas?)
The leader of the Order of the Torrent, Octavio Sabinus, is currently missing, and the rest of the Order is scattered around Golarion; this is in-universe “common knowledge”. You won’t be able to actually join the Order (and thusly take Hellknight archetype dedications) until level 4-5ish when that part of the story gets resolved in the campaign; meta-gamey knowledge.
We have a vague idea of what everyone is playing now:
Airen - gnome maestro bard, diva in training background
Mithinar - aasimar (human) CG? cleric of a CG deity who is important to the story and shall remain nameless since it might be a secret?
Ocelot - dhampir (human?) LG? (LN?) fighter who’s planning on joining the Order of the Torrent, an LG order of Hellknights tasked with rescuing the kidnapped
Quixote - Torvad Sarini, CN? CG? human investigator, estranged noble-scion/child-of-kintargo (feat and background) of the Sarini family of Kintargo who are enthusiastic Thrune followers
ChacoBlue - human (half-elf?) rogue spy? mastermind? scoundrel? of the now destroyed Thieves Guild of Kintargo who has decided not to run with the Red Jills, one of the successor gangs of the guild who are de facto aligned with House Thrune
Ryukan - (draconic) kobold sorcerer (draconic) who wants to undergo apotheosis and become a full disciple (draconic) of dragons (draconic); soooo draconic; may be an ex-asmodean (background) and may or may not have ties to House Sarini
I took the liberty of expanding upon Chaco’s rogue backtstory a bit to tie it more into the story of the campaign. If I can convince our gnome bard to be an extra in the upcoming operatic performance of Hunter of Heroes that’s now indefinitely on-hold thanks to the Thrunite takeover of the Kintargo Opera House, and confirm that our kobold (draconic) sorcerer has ties to either House Sarini and/or the Church of Asmodeus, then all six of my players will have hardcore hooks/ties directly to the story of the adventure path that will get resolved as the adventure path unfolds! Some of you will receive super-sekrit info packages - some of which maybe even two sentences long! - to go along with your backstories that have ties to the adventure path.
I want to reiterate that you do NOT have to pick a background for your character from that updated PDF for the Hell’s Rebels Players Guide that I provided you. You can take whatever (valid PF2) backgrounds you want from any sources we have access to in Fantasy Grounds. Another thing to remember from the updated PDF is that there is separate section for “Backgrounds” as there is for “Reasons to Protest”, and while they might overlap in feel they are not directly tied to each other; each character has a “Reason to Protest” to show up to the first encounter of the first adventure independent of their background.
There’s still a few questions you guys didn’t answer last night that may be helpful to each other and the story.
- Do any of you know each other before the adventure starts, before you run into each other at the protest in Aria Park (first encounter)?
- How do you collectively as a party plan on handling:
- breaking the law?
- dealing with surrendering adversaries? what if they’re evil?
- pitched battles in the streets? friendly fire? “innocent” casualties?
And lastly one topic I forgot to bring up last night.
Unfortunately, torture is something that is going to come up in this adventure path as a tool explicitly used by the bad-guys on their foes, including PCs that may get captured. If that is a concern to any of you send me a PM and I’ll see what we can do to ameliorate that.
No. Maybe.
The rebellion management is like a mini-game from a CPRG or MMO. You queue up your minions and send them out on tasks that add numbers to your various experience bars of the rebellion management sheet. Then you guys as a party go out and do the super cool missions (I.e. the raids and dungeons).
They may overlap kinda though. Like if you as a party go and do a rescue mission at the prison, you’ll free prisoners that have been captured by House Thrune. Some of those rescued prisoners will be grateful and will probably end up joining your rebellion as free minions.
As for the reverse, I honestly don’t know. If you tell your minions to go setup a black market and make the secrecy check, does that mean it’ll unlock a mission for you guys as a party to go to the black market location in Kintargo and defend it from a gang of thieves? /shrug. Sounds cool though.
Another thing I forgot to mention last night.
DMing 101: The game isn’t about the DM versus the players.
As much as I joke about it, I’m not actually trying to kill your characters when we play. We’re in this together, this collaborative story telling.
In the past two adventures, one for a couple of you, and zero for poor Airen who’s getting thrown in the deep end, I’ve been pulling my punches and going out of my way to make sure I don’t kill any characters. I won’t be pulling those punches anymore. Most of your adversaries in this adventure path are not going to be animals, simple constructs, or mindless undead. They will use combat tactics on you. You should do so in kind.
Couple of more details about Emilie.
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I’ll be taking the Star Struck background. Role-play wise I really like Star Struck. It matches what I want I want to do with this character - go around rescuing kidnapped people and working as a bodyguard for the various celebrities of Kintargo.
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She will be taking the Lawful Neutral alignment initially and then probably transitioning to Lawful Good later on as that most closely matches the ideals of the Order of the Torrent and also her idol - Octavio Sabinus. She gets weak in the knees whenever she thinks about him. She probably also screams at his concerts (or public service announcements - hellknights probably don’t have concerts but they should.)
I’m thinking that, as a minimum, she would have at least heard of @Quixote and @Airen 's characters due to their backgrounds. She could’ve even been friends with them if they agree and it makes sense to do so. It might be more likely however that the relationship was professional - for example hired security at an event or a body guard for a celebrity or perhaps an assistant to a detective.
Here are some things Emilie would probably say in an ethical dilemma. Hopefully all of this is consistent with being LG and moving the campaign along harmoniously:
- “You say our funds are running low? Can’t you um… do a pledge drive or something? I don’t need to know the details.”
- “Raiding a prison? Hmm. I don’t know how I feel about that. Can we at least bring it up for a vote before the revolutionary council?”
- “They’re holding Octavio in the prison?! Why didn’t you say so earlier? We have no choice but to take the law into our own hands then.”
- “Stealing medicines from an honest merchant? I’m sorry, even though our revolution desperately needs them, I cannot in good conscience support this.”
Upon being begged for mercy by Thrune’s minions:
“Drop your weapons and get out of here. Never dare to cross paths with me or my friends again.”
Upon receiving the surrender of a high ranking Thrunite:
“I am the law.”
“Everyone! Clear the streets and stay indoors. Its not safe out here.”
“The enemy are escaping?! Gods, we have to help these wounded civilians. We’ll catch those fiends another day.”
EDIT 1: Updated alignment to Lawful Neutral. Also, quick clarification regarding prisoners. She’s not above tying up minions for a brief period - like while trying to complete a mission. But she’s likely to view keeping them any longer than that to be more trouble than its worth.
EDIT 2: Updated some notes about potential before session relationships.
That’s fair. I’ll definitely be sad if my character dies, possibly even butt hurt for a little while, but I feel like the sting of defeat/death needs to be a real possibility otherwise victory is meaningless.
Especially for the hell knight test. Like, if you have to pull punches on that, then qualifying for the archetype is meaningless. I reckon I have just slightly better than 1/1 odds on that so… yeah, this character may not be around for very long.
OOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEE! Double your breath weapon pleasure and two different resistances! Having two draconic ancestries manifesting themselves in me ties right into my character’s alignment and his perspective on breaking the law. I will be neutral alignment and essentially this quote from Guardians of the Galaxy defines how my character sees things
I could do good or bad, leaning towards good, but I’m not opposed to breaking the law or doing some bad for the greater good or the benefit of the cause.
And yes I am a Kobold that aspires to be a dragon and embraces all things dragon. This Kobold doesn’t cringe 
I am definitely leaning towards the Ex-Asmodean background. I am thinking for a time I was with the Church of Asmodeus because I was indulging my bad side, but eventually I had a turn around and broke with them because I lost the desire to be straight evil/bad.
Well it isn’t a secret per se. I just didn’t want to commit until we had people focused on at least some type of character concept. Last night I was leaning towards Aasimar Human. But I think I changed my mind. I am going to be an Aasimar Elf.
Darliven Goldelf - Cleric of the Everbloom. He is going to be a CG Cleric of Milani.
He is going to be 180 years old. He was born in the year 4,535. And he was born with the Aasimar heritage. His parents were full elves that traveled through the world visiting places famous for Cultural events. In the year 4590 they arrived in the city of Kintargo with his Parents and spent about a year learning about the Opera House as well as the other art and entertainment the city was famed for. Later in his life he got the call to follow Milani as a cleric. He would often share tales of the various places he had visited with his parents while in training including his time at Kintargo.
When word reached the elders of the religious enclave he was at of the uprising happening in Cheliax, there was great concern about the followers of the Everbloom in Cheliax. So they sent a group of clerics into Cheliax in disguise to offer aid to the Everbloom followers and gauge the time to encourage people to take back their country.
Darliven was one of these. He goes under the name Rudolf, an itinerant elven trader who arrived in Kintargo via ship. He is meeting with merchants and people around the city looking for items up for sale that might be wanted by the outside world.
He will be taking the Leader Background @Rando updated.
He will be raising these skills: Medicine, Religion, and Diplomacy.
I will have him trained in Society, Stealth and the Deception skill. Being an Open Aasimar will likely cause issues in a Devil supported nation just on principle since it gives him obvious ties to Good heaven realms. So Deception to be able to disguise himself.
‘’
When the Silver Pigeons gets started, he will likely create a specific masked persona to use with it. Maybe “The Grand High Silver Saltpeter”.
Well that’s what I have so far.
Mith
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P.S. Apparently there’s a shotgun called the “silver pigeon”… see, they can be cool!
That could be-it was listed in the adventure players manual-i dont have the pe2 user manual yet. If the closest is scoundrel- im good w that.
| Rando Guild Member
August 7 |
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ChacoBlue:
Going for the rogue spy
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the spy is an archetype for rogues in PF1. The closest thing we would have in PF2 would probably be a scoundrel rogue, with the poison use being handled by rogue feats like um, poison weapon and such.
Ryukan:
For my Kobold Sorcerer, if I choose the Draconic bloodline for Sorcerer do i get to pick a dragon color separate from my Kobold dragon exemplar color? … could I end up having two breath weapons of different dragon colors/types?
As written. Yes. And, yes.
In a game that now allows tiefling leshies aka demonic cabbage or vampiric (dhamphir) halfling paladin (champion) assassin’s (archetype), then why couldn’t we have a kobold sorcerer who manifests the powers of two separate draconic bloodlines?
And quoting myself now from a PM (is that a faux-pas?)
The Order of the Torrent is still the best option for being a Hellknight.
The leader of the Order of the Torrent, Octavio Sabinus, is currently missing, and the rest of the Order is scattered around Golarion; this is in-universe “common knowledge”. You won’t be able to actually join the Order (and thusly take Hellknight archetype dedications) until level 4-5ish when that part of the story gets resolved in the campaign; meta-gamey knowledge.
@ChacoBlue what were you looking to do with the Spy racket for rogue? If you want to do more with poisons and also want some higher tier backstabbing and such you could possibly mix stuff from the Assassin and Poisoner archetypes from the Advanced Players Guide to create a real custom class that is more akin to the Spy racket from 1e than Scoundrel or any other 2e racket, really none of the 2e rackets come close to what the Spy was in 1e.
With archetypes once you pick an archetype dedication feat you can’t learn any other archetype dedication feats until you learn two more feats from the archetype you currently have. The dedication feat is the first feat for any archetype you pick up ta lvl 2. So if you say took the Poisoner archetype dedication feat at lvl 2 and then took two more poisoner feats at lvl 4 and 6 you could then start in on the Assassin archetype at lvl 8. Keep in mind you would be giving up taking any rogue class feats after lvl 1 because the archetype feats replace class feats.
IIRC, scoundrel racket is more for social encounters and feinting. Thief racket is probably best for sneaking around and stabbing things. Would go well with assassin archetype.
Yeah I looked at those, the thing with Scoundrel is the Feint and flat-footed effect, that is really groovy. The Scoundrel can attempt to Feint and on a success the target is flat-footed against everyone, not just the Scoundrel, and that is really handy for the whole party as well as setting up the Scoundrel for sneak attack. I would weigh that along against the Thief getting training in Thievery and the ability to use Dex as the damage bonus for finesse weapons.
Hey Ryu-the spy archetype was listed in the hells rebels ussr guide. I’m getting the pe2 user guide soon, i will have a btr chance of figuring out which way to go-even if generic rogue and add skills and knowledge that would allow more spy like ability.
| Ryukan Membership Officer - The dangle of my dongle is inversely proportionate to the rub of my hub
August 7 |
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@ChacoBlue what were you looking to do with the Spy racket for rogue? If you want to do more with poisons and also want some higher tier backstabbing and such you could possibly mix stuff from the Assassin and Poisoner archetypes from the Advanced Players Guide to create a real custom class that is more akin to the Spy racket from 1e than Scoundrel or any other 2e racket, really none of the 2e rackets come close to what the Spy was in 1e.
With archetypes once you pick an archetype dedication feat you can’t learn any other archetype dedication feats until you learn two more feats from the archetype you currently have. The dedication feat is the first feat for any archetype you pick up ta lvl 2. So if you say took the Poisoner archetype dedication feat at lvl 2 and then took two more poisoner feats at lvl 4 and 6 you could then start in on the Assassin archetype at lvl 8. Keep in mind you would be giving up taking any rogue class feats after lvl 1 because the archetype feats replace class feats.