About Gronne of MesringWelcome, kind stranger, and thanks for reading! Background story:
Gronne was born as the daughter of a retired Cleric of Tempus and a simple basketweaver in the village of Mesring in the nation Of Aglarond. Her father was a member of the order of the broken blade, since a particularly unfortunate encounter with an ancient blue dragon left him lame, or so he claimed. His mumblings about ‘those damned abyssal chickens’ in the night were just a coincidence, he said. Still, for as long as she could remember, het father regaled her with the most wonderful tales of the most exotic place he’d visited in his youth. From the Majestic capital city of Cormyr to the recently reclaimed Elven homeland of Myth Drannor, from the plains of Tymanther to the dark reaches of the underdark – each more exciting than the last. He told her the lates of the great battles there, fought to protect the people of the realms from the likes of the Netherese, Shar, the Spellplagued-mutated creatures roaming the lands and maybe, when she was lucky, tales of the Dragons themselves! With such inspiration, there was no chance she’d settle for a quiet life in the middle of nowhere, no matter how beautiful the forests around there could be. So, when she’d grown old enough and had learned the fundamentals of the sword and divine magic from her father, she set out on a journey of her own. Well, almost of her own. She travelled alongside her older brother, Groltz, a talented Paladin himself who insisted on her needing to be kept safe, while she always vehemently denied this. There was no way she was too reckless! None at all. She was just honoring her diety by always rushing in first! On their way, they slowly formed a trusted band of companions, from the flame-scarred elven armsmaster Glamlach to the enigmatic Eladrin Wizard Vaynarin, backed up by the bubbly Sunan cleric Tudette and the shady maybe-assassin Remus, who always enjoyed tormenting her brother. And later, they were joined the goliath Barbarian Tali and her stalk-… er, trusted gnome companion, the extraordinarily annoying yet effective bard Tom Pock. Everyone had a purpose. Her own function was to plan their tactics and take command of the fights, and she did it flawlessly. Together they formed a band, touring the land, and for a while all was well. However, she soon grew impatient. Sure, the first few odd jobs were good experience, and she didn’t expect to shoot straight to the top. Helping some farmers in Tymanther when their cattle disappeared turned out to be a case of a fledgling blue dragon, and infiltrating the prison city of Wheloon to exfiltrate a Cormyran spy was also practice against semi-organised bandits. And no matter where you went, there always seemed to be the local assortment of goblins and crazy wizards trying to experiment on the spellplagued beings, which NEVER turned out well. But none of that brought them into the big leagues. These were jobs that could be done by anyone; any of the plenty other adventuring bands roaming Faerun. They needed something more to stand out, to break through into the short list of adventurers who were called on when truly important matters arose, who could claim true glory and face the worthiest of opponants. And then there was an opportunity. Shortly after Remus mysteriously disappeared, a call came from the former crusader city of Elturel. The companion, an artificial sun that had in the past kept the surrounding lands safe from undead (recently reconfigured to protect against the beings from spellplagued wasteland to the west), had malfunctioned and the city was under siege. As a gift from Amaunator, the sun god, it somehow failing was a bad enough sign on its own. But even worse was that it seemed to be a coordinated attack by spellplagued beings, which was completely unheard of. Thus, nearly every available band set out rushing to Elturel through the major teleportation circles linking most capital cities, starting what would become perhaps the bloodiest battle in recent history.
Still, they played their part, coordinating with local defenders - each and every one an accomplished soldier - as best as able.
The companion, who had merely been inactive during the entire ordeal, reactivated. Dispersing necrotic energy, effectively slowly killing all living beings in the vicinity. With no time to evacuate or call back the more experienced defenders still engaged with the aboleths, it was a crisis. The bands of defenders that were still in the walls were rushed through to the tower holding the artefact. There, they learned two truths from the remaining loremaster – the companion wasn’t, in fact, merely an artefact, but rather a piece of the heart of the sun god, Amaunator himself. And somehow, something had managed to form a link to the thing and was corrupting it from within the negative energy plane. In fact, it seemed to be slowly being drawn into it. To stop this, everyone able and willing would be teleported to the source, into the negative energy plane itself and basically ensuring their own deaths. Whatever protective spells could be cast to delay the overwhelming necrotic process there gave them only minutes to live, at most, and that was discounting the actual threat on the other side. It was an insane and desperate gamble. Vaynarin, their wizard and her now maybe more than friend, thought they weren’t ready, and he was probably right. But what choice did they have? So she volunteered and the others followed. As far as she could tell, everyone in the room had followed too. What was on the other side was a single, actual lich, backup up by an ossortment of bone golems. The heroes never stood a chance. True to her modus operandi, Gronne had charged in first and was paralyzed by the very first death spell cast. From there, she was barely conscious as she watched as her friends and companions started dying one by one. There was a healing spell cast on her by someone. It cleared her mind back through the screaming. They were already down to half strength. She immediately grabbed her own potion, spit out the following black liquid from her throat and slightly repositioned her body. She knew she would get only one shot at this. Her one hope was that the Lich would not notice her among his choice of many other targets.
Of course, the lich noticed and hit her with a green finger-type spell she didn’t recognize. Her pulse, however, had stopped. She knew she was effectively already dead. She stumbled the last steps of the run purely by earlier momentum and fell. There was a vague sensation of some other spell hitting her just as she barely managed to touch the corrupted piece of the sun god’s heart. She collapsed. And then nothing. … But maybe, just as the sun itself rises anew each day, so too can a once fallen hero rise again. ----------------------
What happened to Gronne exactly at the end is left open so you can bend it to whatever you would like and would fit. Some possibilities I thought of were that the lich (unnamed so any of them could be used if needed) might have tried a panic teleport on her when she somehow didn’t drop dead right away after the finger of death, which meant her body would have been teleported away to a random location either while holding part of the companion, or after absorbing a small part of it into herself. That would explain why she’d end up in Sigil with a spark of divinity/mythic power. She might have been slightly more powerful before the start, but not by much. She has been dead for possibly quite some time and would need to get used to being mythic and alive again. And to shake off effect from the negative energy plane. Some other plothooks might be whether her own spark is now corrupted or not, if she should bring it back to the Realms, whether any long-lived race from her team actually survived or more likely, was raised by the lich as an undead servant, etc. I have a lot of fond memories of the other mentioned NPC’s and could easily make and name even more to work with. Also... is this Gronne even her own original body? Or is there a lich-raised original of her out there somewhere, and is she just a reincarnation of her prior self? Personality:
Gronne is young and fairly brash woman who is dedicated to growing stronger and making the best combatants out of both herself and her allies. She’s positive-minded and truly enjoys fighting and discussing different aspects of the art of war. Even though what happened right before waking up was quite traumatic, she’d probably start out optimistic since if she’s fine, there’s a good chance her friends would be too. …Right? In the orginal campaign, she started out as a brash frontliner who relied on brute force and daring to win her fights, but as time went on and the gained experience, she become more thoughtful and tactical. I will probably portray her growth as team-focused melee character as such. I will also roleplay her abilities fitting of the warlord and teamwork theme. She has never been outside of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms, and I imagine some things in the planescape setting might be true culture shocks to her, such as the widespread existence of guns. If you’ve seen the Wonder Woman movie, I envision her character in combats to be that. Even if she’d get beaten down, she’d just smile and get back up. Nothing to get your blood pumping like an actual challenge! She’s respectful even to her opponents in life-and-death sitations since she realizes that without adversity, the population would grow weaker and thereby less able to defend themselves against potential external threats. They’re willing to potentially give up their lives so that she can grow from the experience, which is a valuable sacrifice. Or, if she lost, they taught her at least something about her weakness. Appearance:
Gronne is a dark-skinned younger female human, pretty if you like the athletic or soldier type. She is more of a lithe-type of athlete rather than an overly muscular one, but there is just as much deadliness in her swift cuts. She had Jet-black hair and green eyes. Her armor is well-mainted but also contains many instances of battle damage. She carries herself with an aura of confidence in her abilities. On prominent display on her shield is the symbol of Tempus, the Foehammer. (Her dark skin is a reference to her original incarnation as a black-scaled dragonborn. After retrieving the part of Amaunator's heart and dying, the original story reward was that you were reincarnated as a member of a race of your choice.) Party role and build breakdown/development plan:
Essentially, I tried to recreate the Warlord class from d&d 4th edition in pathfinder. This is only possible with the mythic rules active since it relies heavily on the Marshall mythic path abilities (which resemble a lot of the Warlord’s powers from back then), backed up by either the champion path or the hierophant path. A warlord was essentially characterized by being able to do these four things: -Able to grant additional attacks to allies. This was probably their most defining feature. Most of their best abilites were characterised by attacking something alongside an ally and making your allies even more awesome. -Had access to amazing group party buffs. -And was a fully capable main healer, one of the best ones available (this was flavored as urging people to shrug off wounds and fight on despite them). -They were decently tanky and capable of holding their own in melee combat. In fact, many of their abilities only worked if you fought an enemy yourself in melee, which then granted some benefit to other allies. From this, there are two possible variations that I feel approximate this combination. -A cleric build, that provides tons of buffs and healing and is a support character with an okay melee ability. This one combines very well with any type of ally except bards with inspire courage and/or good hope, since then there would be some overlap in main class abilities. -A warpriest build, which focusses on being a melee tank/damage dealer who focusses more on the conditional Marshall abilities to buff allies. (all of the abilities that say: when you hit an enemy, x happens, such as them losing their dexterity bonus, or allies getting a higher crit chance, etc.) Later on, it can use teamwork feats and greater trip to also indirectly buff allies and add more attacks to them, since this build can actually spare the feats to invest in those. This one does a lot more damage and is tougher to take down too, but cannot be a main healer since it gives up hierophant and only gets level 6 cleric spells very late. On the flipside, because of this it would REALLY like a bard and/or healer to support it, so if all you need is a focused melee DPS or tank for the group, this option should fill that role! Both builds offer melee attack granting from level 1 due to the bloodrager (Id rager archetype with kindness emotional focus) archetype, see https://www.aonprd.com/PhantomFocusDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Kindness Since it gives her this ability in place of a bloodline one during rage: Opening Strike (Su): As a standard action, the phantom can make a melee attack against a foe. If this attack hits, the spiritualist designates one ally threatening that enemy. This ally can make a single attack at his full base attack bonus against that enemy as an immediate action. Of course, for this to be worth anything there would have to be at least 1 other melee character in the party. I’ll just stubbornly hope that will be the case! (I feel this is decently in flavor since it’s basically a team attack move, which is what warlords were all about).
Decisive Strike (Su)
Rally (Su)
Warpriest 'Warlord' build, tank/damage dealer role:
This is how I originally didn’t envision the build, but it came to me when I was reading the warpriest and went through all the Marshall abilities that I would not be able to pick in the cleric build. I’m excited to play this one since I haven’t played a warpriest before and their toolkit seems amazing. It can take all the amazing and fun martial feats I’d normally have no room for. Also, it might be a better pick since there seem to be a lot of other full divine caster/bard submissions that can hav overlap with the Evangelist option. The short of it is that this build gives up the bard song and the fullcasting/ capacity to heal, and instead goes for the champion mythic path, which grants access to pounce (fleet foot) and impossible speed. This essentially allows her to pounce everywhere when combined with an artefact armor (legendary item general path ability) that can fly. This should be enough to constantly keep her in melee and hitting targets enough to use the marshall ‘on hit’ abilities well. It will use a combination of dual weapon fighting, shield bashing, mythic power attack, mythic weapon finesse and maybe mythic combat reflexes combat with ever ready (and greater trip) to do good damage. It can eventually also get access to greater trip to grant attacks that way and can take teamwork feats with allies to boost teamplays.
It can also probably function well as a main tank. Between high dex, light/medium armor, shields and many bonus feats from warpriest into things like a defensive stance (crane style), mythic combat expertise (the mythic version is amazing for a tank), mythic shield focus and the like, it should do fine. I’ll probably use the mythic path abilities to get access to minor arcane casting for some additional defensive buffs. Actually, I haven’t decided where to use most path abilities and mythic feats aside form these basics. I guess I’ll make it up as I go along and tailor it to the group’s needs! Statblock Gronne, level 3 human ‘warlord’( Urban Id Bloodrager 1, arsenal chaplain Warpriest 2)
Basic and defensive stats
HP: = 30 / 30
Feats : 1. weapon finesse
Mythic feats :
Mythic path abilities :
Traits :
Offense:
Buffs and limited offensive abilities: Divine favor: +2 luck bonus to attack and damage rolls. Focused rage (reflavored to simply focus): Adds +2 hit/damage on melee and + 2 to hit on bows since dexterity is increased by 4 during rage (rage has no other statistical effects, 12 rounds/day).
Fervor 3x/day: As a swift action, heal 1d6 hit points to self (standard to other target), or as switch cast a prepared single target spell on self. Mythic power 5/day. Warpriest spells:
Special abilities :
War Mind (minor): At 1st level, you can touch an ally and grant it a tactical advantage for 1 minute. At the start of its turn each round, it can select one of the following bonuses: +10 feet to base land speed, +1 dodge bonus to AC, +1 insight bonus on attack rolls, or a +1 luck bonus on saving throws. Each bonus selected lasts for 1 round. Battle Lust (major): At 10th level, you can touch an ally and grant it a thirst for battle. All of the ally’s melee attacks are treated as if they had the vicious weapon special ability, but the additional damage dealt to the ally from that special ability is nonlethal. In addition, the ally receives a +4 insight bonus on attack rolls made to confirm critical hits. These benefits last for 1 minute. During rage (12 rounds/day), can use:
During rage, the bonus to aid another when using the aid another action is increased by 1.
Rally (Su) Note: depends on party composition, can only select one.
Decisive Strike (Su) Note: depends on party composition, can only select one. As a swift action, you can expend one use of mythic power to give one ally within 30 feet the ability to immediately make a single melee or ranged attack on your turn. Add your tier as a bonus on the attack roll. The damage dealt by this attack bypasses all damage reduction. This attack doesn’t count toward the ally’s actions on its turn. Fleet Charge (Ex)
Surge (Su)
Hard to Kill (Ex)
Equipment Breastplate (250 g), heavy shield, masterwork coldiron kukri (308 g?), heavy steel shield (20 g), spring loaded wrist sheet x 2 (10 g), potion sponge with potion of air bubble and touch of the sea (100 g), potion of longarm (50 g), Composite longbow (12 str) = 175 g, 20 x durable coldiron arrow (40 g), 20 x arrow (1g), dagger x 2 (1 g), soldier’s outfit (5g), commoner’s outfit.
[/b] Skills: 4/level (+2 once from bloodrager level).
Breakdown: Perception 3 ranks, diplomacy 2 ranks, heal 2 ranks, acrobatics 3 ranks, sense motive 1 rank, intimidate 2 ranks, knowledge history 1 rank. If the background skillsystem is used, she has knowledge: religion and knowledge: planes as background skills. Evangelist ‘warlord’ build, buffer/healer role:
This is how I originally envisioned the build and is a bloodrager 1/Evangelist 9 (cleric kit)/Evangelist 10 (prestige class) with the marshall and hierophant mythic paths (starts as either one and takes dual path as the first mythic ability). The build essentially works around eventually getting lightning performance and inspired defenses from the marshall path (it has bardic performance from being an evangelist cleric). Combined, these eventually give a party wide massive attack and save bonus. It will also be able to cast good hope at cleric level 7 to additionally provide a morale bonus to attacks. Lastly, since she is a hierophant she could use mythic power to cast any known cleric utility buff or healing spell whenever needed, so long s mythic power is available. These factors combined fullfill the criteria of the buffer and add extra damage to the attacks granted to other allies. From mythic rank 3 upwards it will focus on getting the divine metamagic mastery feats from the hierophant along with the ability that reaches healing spell range to eventually be able to cast quickened heals at close range (instead of touch) without a spell level increase, at the campaign end even quickened mass heal. I’m also considering taking the path ability that temporarily lets you remain healing when you die. It should be a great main healer, though probably a bit weak in out of combat healing at the very start. I am considering taking the channel energy feat along with the skill unlock feat for the Heal skill at level 5 to help shore up the healing department during the game. For the last few remaining path abilities, I am not sure what to take yet. I’m considering a legendary item able to cast some arcane spells or becoming a god with the domain granting abilities (because it’s awesome, and sun would be appropriate given the background), whatever suits the party more. What this build is less good at however is being in melee and ranged combat. It will have a decent AC and basic melee capacity with rage and mythic weapon finesse but nothing past that. It also has no way to ‘pounce’. In that sense, she is reliant on her buffed allies and offensive spellcasting to help her deal damage. Statblock Gronne, level 3 human ‘warlord’( Urban Id Bloodrager 1, evangelist cleric 2)
Basic and defensive stats
HP: = 30 / 30 (12 (level 1 bloodrager + 14 (cleric 2 levels with con mod) + 4 (mythic tier 1)
Feats : 1. Channel energy.
(Intended pickups: Skill unlock: heal at level 5. Then deific obedience at 7, at 9 prestigeous spellcaster, 11 quicken spell.) Mythic feats :
Mythic path abilities :
Traits
Drawback: Pride. Offense :
Buffs and limited offensive abilities:
Cleric spells:
Special Mythic Abilities
Decisive Strike (Su)
Surge (Su)
Hard to Kill (Ex)
Equipment
Skills: 4/level (+2 once from bloodrager level).
Breakdown: Perception 3 ranks, diplomacy 3 ranks, heal 3 ranks and skill focus, sense motive 1 rank, perform: oratory 1 rank, intimidate 1 rank, knowledge: planes 3 ranks. f the background skillsystem is used, she has knowledge: religion and knowledge: history as background skills. |
