Before I get into specifics, I want to thank Hawkmoon again for last week's excellent Best Character Ever blog, even though he was almost completely wrong. If you've got a pitch for a blog, hit us up at pacg@paizo.com!
Now, let’s talk monks. The design team loves to talk about what makes a monk a monk. Is it a desire for self-perfection and superior discipline? Ridiculous aerial gymnastics? The ability to punch something really, really hard? Nobody was willing to admit that one of these qualities was clearly more important than the other two, so we just used all three. Let’s meet the band!
Birdwoman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Wing Nuance)
Fun fact: the design team immediately nicknamed this character “Rooboocoop” after I named her. These are the people I
First up is Rooboo, a tengu monk. As anyone who’s played Skull & Shackles through knows, tengu are Pathfinder’s bird people. You’ve seen the Tengu Rookery and the Jinx Eater, but never a tengu character.
My favorite thing about Rooboo is her avian power suite. She can fly away from situations she can’t handle, and, like a magpie, she’s good at grabbing shiny things. Movement is a bit of a thing with her, as you can see from her Flowing Monk role. Move twice on a turn? No problem. Dance away from trouble? Ain’t nothin’. She can even blow her allies out of harm’s way with some downdraft action.
You’ll also notice she has a very unusual combat power. We’ll get to that later.
When Your Fist/Elbow/Knee/Foot is a Hammer...
You may make the first strike. I shall make the last.
Athnul, named after a character I played in a campaign long ago, brings some old-school martial arts to the party. She’s a bare-handed terror who takes Runelords Sajan’s unarmed strike and gives it a twist. She’s not here to overcome barriers. Athnul is here to punch things until they die.
Her Keen Strike Monk role is based on an archetype from Inner Sea Races called the Hamatulatsu Master. This version of Athnul is about finding the most effective way to cause pain, and she’s willing to help her party members do the same. As a side note, I’m very fond of adding a little support to a primarily self-sufficient character. This is a co-op game, after all, and hybrid characters can show people the fun in playing a different kind of character than the type they usually select. This Athnul also gains some spell-like abilities, as represented by the Divine skill feat.
Kamas and Rochins and Temple Swords, Oh My
Who's the best character now?
We’ve also created a new version of our iconic monk Sajan for this deck, affectionately referred to in-house as Stabby Sajan. As you can see, he’s interested in weapons that have the Slashing trait, and he’s got a variant of his original blessing-recharge power that’s got a little more kick to it. This Sajan is rarely without the means to defend himself. Those who guard the temple don’t go unnoticed by the gods.
We wouldn’t give you a Sajan that wants weapons and then leave you with only a wellspring of resentment. Instead, we’ve created more than 10 new weapons in this deck, including a fancier temple sword or two.
Time to bust out your war fan katas!
These new temple swords use the Strength/Dexterity/Melee listing you might remember from the Iconic Heroes promo card, while the bulk of the new weapons in this class deck allow characters with the Acrobatics skill to show off a little. Any character with the Acrobatics skill can make use of these, so the Rogue Class Deck’s Wu Shen and the Sorcerer Class Deck’s Amaryllis just got a little love. (For a peek into the design crystal ball, consider what other sorts of characters might use such weapons.)
That’s it for this week. Next week, Paul Peterson returns with the goods on Wrath of the Righteous’s Adventure Deck 5!
Tanis O'Connor
Adventure Card Game Designer
