Herman the Reclusive's page

Focused Study: At 1st, 8th, and 16th level, such humans gain Skill Focus in a skill of their choice as a bonus feat. This racial trait replaces the bonus feat trait.

Heart of the Fey: These humans receive low-light vision, gain a +1 racial bonus on Reflex and Will saves, and treat Knowledge (nature) and Perception as class skills. This racial trait replaces skilled.

Blight-Burned: You were raised deep in the Fangwood Forest, but in your childhood the Darkblight overtook your community, and blighted fey attacked your friends and family. Even after escaping, you barely survived infection by the otherworldly fungal disease and still bear a terrible scar from your ordeal. You gain a +2 trait bonus on Fortitude saving throws against disease or poison (your choice), and your scar now throbs painfully in the presence of unnatural creatures, immediately alerting you to their presence. This sixth sense alerts you to the presence of aberrations, oozes, and all creatures with the blighted fey and fungal creature templates within 30 feet (though it doesn’t indicate their exact location). You can always act during the surprise round against such creatures, and you aren’t considered flat-footed against such creatures in the first round of combat.

Hedge Magician: Whenever you craft a magic item, you reduce the required gp cost to make the item by 5%.

Reactionary: You gain a +2 trait bonus on initiative checks.

Herb Lore: Herb witches are masters of herbalism, and they can use what they gather from garden or grove to duplicate many of the effects of alchemy. An herb witch can attempt Profession (herbalist) checks in place of Craft (alchemy) checks, and she gains a bonus on Profession (herbalist) checks equal to half her class level.

Herb witches are adept at brewing thick herbal cure-alls called remedies. An herb witch prepares these remedies while communing with her familiar, during which she can prepare a number of remedies equal to 3 + her Intelligence modifier (minimum 1 remedy). A remedy becomes inert if it leaves the herb witch’s possession, reactivating as soon as it returns to her keeping. A witch can never have more remedies than 3 + her Intelligence modifier.

As a standard action, the herb witch can administer a remedy to herself or a creature within reach which consumes the remedy. The herb witch attempts a Profession (herbalist) check against the save DC of any one disease or poison currently afflicting the consumer. If she is successful, the affliction is suppressed for 1 minute. At 10th level, if she exceeds the DC of the check by 10 or more, the affliction immediately ends. If the disease or poison doesn’t allow saving throws, the remedy is ineffective.

An herb witch can also use a remedy to attempt to remove the blinded, deafened, fatigued, nauseated, sickened, and staggered conditions. This requires a Profession (herbalist) check with a DC equal to the spell or effect that caused the condition, or a DC 25 check if the condition was caused by an effect that doesn’t allow a saving throw. If the herb witch succeeds, the condition is removed unless the condition is permanent; at 10th level, if the herb witch succeeds by 10 or more, her remedy can remove a permanent condition.

Only a single condition, disease, or poison can be removed with each application of a remedy, and a creature can only benefit from one herbal remedy each day, whether or not the herb witch succeeds at her skill check.

This replaces the hexes gained at 1st and 10th levels.

Hex: Witches learn a number of magic tricks, called hexes, that grant them powers or weaken foes. At 1st level, a witch gains one hex of her choice. She gains an additional hex at 2nd level and for every 2 levels attained after 2nd level. A witch cannot select an individual hex more than once.

Unless otherwise noted, using a hex is a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. The save to resist a hex is equal to 10 + 1/2 the witch’s level + the witch’s Intelligence modifier.

Witch’s Familiar: At 1st level, a witch forms a close bond with a familiar, a creature that teaches her magic and helps to guide her along her path. Familiars also aid a witch by granting her skill bonuses, additional spells, and help with some types of magic. This functions like the wizard’s arcane bond class feature, except as noted in the Witch’s Familiar section.

A witch must commune with her familiar each day to prepare her spells. Familiars store all of the spells that a witch knows, and a witch cannot prepare a spell that is not stored by her familiar. A witch’s familiar begins play storing all of the 0-level witch spells plus three 1st-level spells of the witch’s choice. The witch also selects a number of additional 1st-level spells equal to her Intelligence modifier to store in her familiar. At each new witch level, she adds two new spells of any spell level or levels that she can cast (based on her new witch level) to her familiar. A witch can also add additional spells to her familiar through a special ritual.

Patron Spells: At 1st level, when a witch gains her familiar, she must also select a patron. This patron is a vague and mysterious force, granting the witch power for reasons that she might not entirely understand. While these forces need not be named, they typically hold influence over one of the following forces. At 2nd level, and every two levels thereafter, a witch’s patron adds new spells to a witch’s list of spells known. These spells are also automatically added to the list of spells stored by the familiar. The spells gained depend upon the patron chosen. Each patron is listed by its theme. Its actual name is up to the GM and the witch to decide.

An herb witch must choose a patron with a theme compatible with the needs of the natural world, selected from the following list: ancestors, animals, death, elements, healing, plague, strength, time, water, winter, wisdom, or woodlands.

This alters the witch’s patron spells.

Time Patron: 2nd - ventriloquism, 4th - silence, 6th - haste, 8th - threefold aspect, 10th - teleport, 12th - disintegrate, 14th - expend, 16th - temporal stasis, 18th - time stop

Craft Wondrous Items: You can create a wide variety of magic wondrous items. Crafting a wondrous item takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its price. To create a wondrous item, you must use up raw materials costing half of its base price.

You can also mend a broken wondrous item if it is one that you could make. Doing so costs half the raw materials and half the time it would take to craft that item.

Scribe Scroll: You can create a scroll of any spell that you know. Scribing a scroll takes 2 hours if its base price is 250 gp or less, otherwise scribing a scroll takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in its base price. To scribe a scroll, you must use up raw materials costing half of this base price.

Skill Focus (Profession: Herbalist): You get a +3 bonus on all checks involving the chosen skill. If you have 10 or more ranks in that skill, this bonus increases to +6.

Herman was born in a small village somewhere inside the Fangwood, the chirping of birds rousing him each morning to greet the sunlight gently filtering through the leaves. He would accompany his mother as she went from house to house, fixing a knife who’s handle had broken off or reapplying the wards to keep mosquitoes and flies from coming inside. Everyone was always happy to see his mother, and happy to see Herman and give him little cakes or breads or berries to eat while his mother worked.

It was on one of these visits to his aunt’s house that Herman noticed his mother acting strangely, speaking harshly behind a closed door before leaving suddenly - and without him! Herman tried to follow, but his aunt shut him in a room and locked the door. By the time he’d kicked out the window and run back to the village, all he could see was fire and smoke and strange figures covered in what looked like soot or black mold laughing as they stabbed humans with needle-like blades. The boy ran through the smoke, trying desperately to find his mother. At the doorway of his house, wreathed by the flames quickly climbing the walls, her body lay still. Herman rushed to her, grabbing her hand to pull her away from the fire - but as he did, the soot covering her arms stung his hands like wasp stings. The boy dropped his mother’s arm, reflexively wiping the tears from his face before bawling from the pain as the black mold on his hands spread to his eyes.

He ran. Behind him, cruel laughter mixed with the screams of the dying and the roar of the fire. He looked behind him once, seeing through his tears a thin figure following him on gossamer wings. He didn’t look back again as he fled into the forest, the creature’s high-pitched, whining giggle echoing in his ears. Desperately he tried to wipe the soot from his hands on his clothes, leaves, anything he could. It wasn’t until he tripped and fell into a stream that the burning sensation stopped, black grit dissolving into the water. He huddled underneath a tree that night, afraid to sleep, afraid to return to his village lest the thin creatures on strange wings find him and finish what they started.

He survived. He lived off berries, finding out through experience which ones tasted good and which ones would leave his insides twisted like a knotted rope. He scavenged, listening to the sounds of crows to find the remains of a wolf’s fresh kill and steal a piece before the predator returned. He lived wild for a long time - so long that by the time he emerged from the forest on the outskirts of Phaendar, he barely remembered how to form words in his mouth. The townsfolk of Phaendar tried to take in the feral child, but he knew better than to stay put. If he stopped moving, the dark creatures would find him and burn the village around him, cut him with their needle blades, smear their black mold into his eyes and blind him forever this time. He left town, living in the woods nearby and only returning by the light of the quarter moon.

He grew. He stayed vigilant, and the strangle figures did not kill him. Slowly, an idea sprouted in his mind. Could I go back? Keep that from happening? Save Mother? He became obsessed with the thought, slowly learning words again to ask for books of magic and spells and fairytale creatures and ways to tear apart time and stitch it back together like the clothes he wore. And something heard his pleas, promising him the power to do just that through whispers in his dreams. Herman knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, and to never trust that a gift is given without strings attached. But he can’t turn his back on the chance to save his mother, his family, his home - and he won’t let his new home be taken from him without a fight next time!

A tall man with matted hair full of leaves and twigs, this man looks at you with wild eyes and clutches his walking stick close to his chest. His clothes are tattered and covered in mud, several patches almost falling off from haphazard stitches with what looks like blades of grass. He whips his head around suddenly, looking behind him for… something? At his feet, a rabbit with equally-wild eyes twitches nervously.