Ultimate Relationships #1: The Lonely Lyrakien (PFRPG) PDF

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The Lonely Lyrakien is a charming sprite, a heavenly emissary of Lady Luck, and a companion to heroes. With her former master long lost, she seeks new adventure in the company of those with the courage to overthrow tyranny without and to follow their lucky stars on a journey to discover new lands and new adventures even as they discover the truth hidden in their own hearts.

The original Ultimate Relationships provided the basic rules and structure for building effective and fun relationships with NPCs in the game, and this ongoing series takes that a step further by providing you with a fully developed, robustly detailed NPC in every product, some drawn from published Adventure Paths, others from Legendary Games products, and still others entirely new. Each installment includes the character's game statistics as well as the relationship characteristics that make them a long-running campaign character that your players will talk about for years to come.

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

4/5

This installment of the Ultimate Relationship-series clocks in at 7 pages - 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page how to use/SRD leaving us with 4 pages of content, so let's take a look!

All right, so this series provides romantic interests for the PCs as per the Ultimate Relationship-rules, so I'm assuming you're familiar with them. If not, check out that pdf first (and/or my review for it).

This time around, would be a lyrakien azata cleric, whose level 3 statblock (sans CR) is provided. Associated with luck, the lyrakien has recently lost her human companion - praying to her deity, she is guided towards the PCs. Gifts will not help securing deeper connection, but shared experiences of unique beauty will. The character dislikes cruel jokes and the like. Convincing her to join the party should not be too hard. There is a crisis point the GM can relatively freely adapt, basically a point of no return, where she may require convincing to stay, with starting attitudes and individual options to entice her to stay around.

Advancement is covered briefly and there is a certain chance she may be doing other things on a given day before rank 4. Cohort status is unlocked at rank 7. As a lyrakien, she is obviously none too constant and romancing her is not too easy - on-again-off-again relationships can be expected until rank 10. Boon-wise, rank 7 grants either Knowledge (planes) or Perform (Comedy) as a class skills and also unlocks +1 to saves versus entangle/paralysis. Rank 10 doubles trait-bonuses shared and allows for 2/day immediate action 1-round the effects of freedom of movement, though the pdf fails to specify the CL - I assume her CL. Or is that supposed to be SU, since it only pertains the effects, not the spell per se? Not sure here.

As far as rank-up requirements are concerned, they are much more diverse than one would think - while Perform (Comedy) is often used, so are different Knowledge-checks and even Sense Motive. Finally, Fly can be part of the deal. The romance, as a whole, is interesting and alternatives, once breakthroughs have been achieved, are provided - the romance, as a whole, feels believable.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good, though e.g. when separating lines are used is a bit inconsistent - still nothing grievous to complain about. Layout adheres to a nice two-column full-color standard and the pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length. The lyrakien has a nice full-color artwork, though fans of LG have seen it before.

Mark Seifter's first romance in the series is interesting, unique enough and believable. The lyrakien is pretty hard to romance, as she should be - and yes, I did enjoy reading this little pdf. At the same time, it's a bit of a pity that one boon is a bit wonky in the details. Still, overall a solid, nice, inexpensive offering that adds a bit of romance to the game - my final verdict will clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.


Courting a butterfly

5/5

This is a review for 'Ultimate Relationships #1: The Lonely Lyrakien', a supplement by Legendary Games. I'm not a native speaker (I'm German), so I may have fumbled my language skill checks from time to time. Give me a note if I wrote something wrong and I'll try to make myself more clear.

Ultimate Relationship in general
First of all, the Ultimate-Relationship NPCs need Ultimate Relationships (also by Legendary Games) to fully function, for Ultimate Relationships gives the groundwork this supplements build on, so plan to add this to the costs. Ultimate Relationships is good on its own though, so that's no real problem aside from the price tag. All in all, Ultimate Relationships improves the interest in the NPCs, improves role playing, and encourages a friendly race to reach and master the 'Breakthroughs' with the various NPCs. When my group leveled up, they always had a look at their notes regarding the NPCs while doing the skill points. 'If I put something into this skill, it will help me with this NPC... ' was something I liked hearing behind my screen. And getting through breaktroughs with NPCs is often celebrated like the win against a boss monster.

The Lonely Lyrakien
Now on to the supplement itself. Ultimate Relationships has about 4 pages for one NPC, a female little flying cleric. The supplement is based on Spivey from the Jade Regent Adventure Path (Brinewall Legacy). Her stats, her equipment and everything else are identical to the original, which are also shown on D20pfsrd. I can understand the lack of change for the stat part, but I'd have liked to see some other equipment or spells for some choice, maybe even something unique out of another product Legendary Games has to offer. A 'During Combat' section would also have been appreciated.

Next we get an interesting history of the characters which is useful for the Jade Regent, but for other adventures also. The author always looked into how to use her outside of that Path, and I like that very much. I also like the Preferred Gift and Interactions part, which really helps to bring her personality to life, especially the hints regarding her relationship with the 'Mute Harpy' (Zaiobe of Brinewall Castle I'd guess) which I hope will be seen soon in an additional part of the Relationship-series. Affinity Notes and thoughts about her joining the party are following the guidelines given in the Jade Regent Adventure Path, but the new system is well incorporated in her decision process and so the players are given more opportunities to sway her the right way. Well done indeed! The Romance-Part is cute, her alignment is reflected in her participation, only her advancement is a bit sketchy, I would have liked to see a statblock or two of her being of higher (cleric) level.

Regarding boons I like both of them since they fit her theme, are useful and not too powerful. I'm not sure if I understand the 'specialization' right – is it a Skill Focus? Aside from this, thumbs up!

Now we'll get to the Rank Ups, and here I had to laugh time and again – the author captures the feeling that the PCs are trying to catch the attentions of a cute butterfly. But there's more under the surface of this particular azata, which I don't want to spoiler here, but which gives her personality beside her religion and alignment and should keep the interest of a roleplaying group. Oh, and if you really want to get her attention, I hope you'll get a broomstick or other method to fly – those earthbound beings will never truly understand a creature of travels, starlight and wings!

Conclusion:
If you want to see an interesting NPC joining your party for a longer time and you like role playing, then you'll want to get your hands on this supplement (and its 'mother' Ultimate Relationships), even if you don't plan to play Jade Regent. Azata are able to be improved familiars for arcane casters of level 7 or higher. Those are not also clerics, but The Lonely Lyrakien is good enough for me to handwave this just for the relationship. I'll settle for 5 out of 5 stars for this interesting character, just barely missing the Crown, but I hope to see more of her in the 'Mute Harpy'. Great Job!

Have fun!


Community Manager

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Wow, I just downloaded and read this. It was touching and very well written, I cannot wait to use this character as an NPC. Thank you! If this is the quality of the line, this first entry has made me a permanent subscriber!


Swashbucklersdc wrote:
Wow, I just downloaded and read this. It was touching and very well written, I cannot wait to use this character as an NPC. Thank you! If this is the quality of the line, this first entry has made me a permanent subscriber!

I hope that my additions to the line will continue to meet or exceed your quality expectations! And on a personal note, it's really gratifying to me particularly that you found it touching.

UR basically started from my translation of the stuff I wrote up for my home game (where I'm running the Far Eastern Adventure Path) for public consumption, and my home players love that little lyrakien (recent party vote determined that something bad happens every time she's not there, so they said they're never leaving her behind again).

Anyways, please leave a review to get the word out to others!


Reviewed. Have Fun!

Now I have to root for Aeysha Villani (out of Region F in 'Road to Destiny') and the Mute Harpy both!

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

Thanks for the review, Oliver!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Indeed, many thanks Oliver. I love the imagery in the way you liken the breakthroughs to boss fights in all your reviews, and I've used that imagery from your review in conversation myself after your review of the original UR.

Reviews always make me want to finish more, and the morale bonus increases my speed, so it's definitely true that more reviews means more URs sooner!


Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop.

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