Otavio's page

About Otavio

Name Otavio Stivalo
Male | Human (Taldan) | Ranger (Dandy) 3
Alignment CG | Size Medium | Type Humanoid (Human)
Init +2; Perception +6
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Defense
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AC 21, touch 14, flat-footed 18 (+6 armor, +1 buckler, +2 Dex, +1 dodge. +1 deflection)
hp 34 (3d10)
Fort +6, Ref +6, Will +2
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Offense
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Speed 20 ft. (30 ft.)
Melee Longsword +7 (1d8+3 / 19-20 x2 | S)
Melee Dagger +6 (1d3+3 / 19-20 x2 | S or P)
Special: +2 to attack and damage against courtiers, officials, nobles, and gentry from Taldor (Favored Nation)
Special: +1 dodge bonus to AC, -0 to hit (Combat Expertise)
Special: +1 to attack and damage from Bimble's Flagbearer feat
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Statistics
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Str 16, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 14
Base Atk +3; CMB +6; CMD 19 (20 with Combat Expertise)
Feats Dodge, Toughness, Combat Expertise (Fencing Style), Endurance, Drunken Brawler
Languages Common

SKILLS
1 Knowledge Local* (2) +6
2 Diplomacy* (2) +8
3 Sense Motive* (2) +9
4 Perception* (2) +6
5 Stealth* (2) +8 (-3 ACP)
6 Bluff* (2) +8
7 Intimidate* (2) +8
BG Perform Oratory* (2) +11
BG Artristy: Poetry* (2) +6
Notes:
-gain +2 bluff, diplomacy, knowledge, perception, sense motive and survival checks against courtiers, officials, nobles and gentry from Taldor.
-a +2 bonus to a bluff, diplomacy or intimidate check.
-gain a +2 bonus on initiative checks, Knowledge (geography), Perception, Stealth, and Survival skill checks when in urban environments.

TRAITS
1 Rising Star: You gain a +1 trait bonus on Sense Motive, Survival and Artistry: Perform Oratory. Perform Oratory is a class skill. Once each day, you can invoke your patron’s reputation or name one of your own prominent works to gain a +2 circumstance bonus on a single Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check. You begin the game with a masterwork collection of poetry (+2 to perform oratory),a gift from your patron.
2 Threatening Defender: the penalty from Combat Expertise is reduced by 1.
3 Lion’s Audacity: You attack life with the ferocity of a charging lion and inspire others with your audacious deeds. Once per day when you make a charge attack, you can inspire allies within 30 feet. They gain an additional +2 trait bonus on attack and damage rolls when they make a charge attack before the beginning of your next turn.
4 Vain: Whenever you fail an opposed CHA check, you take a -2 penalty on all CHA checks for the next 24 hours (drawback).

SPECIAL
Favored Nation: Taldor - gain +2 bonus on Bluff, Diplomacy, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival checks against courtiers, officials, nobles, and gentry from that nation. Likewise, he gains a +2 bonus on weapon attack and damage rolls against them. A dandy can attempt the appropriate Knowledge checks untrained to identify such people from the selected country.
Dandy Skills: add Bluff, Diplomacy, Knowledge (local), Knowledge (nobility), and Sense Motive to the list of class skills, instead of Handle Animal, Knowledge (dungeoneering), Knowledge (geography), Knowledge (nature), and Survival.
Rumor Empathy (Ex): A dandy can alter the flow and spread of rumors in his favor. This functions similarly to wild empathy, except that it takes 1 day (8 hours of work), instead of 1 minute, and it affects the general tenor of a rumor instead of a wild animal. A successful rumor empathy check allows the dandy to increase or decrease the rumor’s tone by one step. For example, he could make an indifferent rumor friendly and thus positive toward its target, or an unfriendly rumor hostile and thus even more negative toward its target than it was originally. The difficulty of influencing a rumor depends on the size of the community in which it is spreading. The DC of the check is 15 in a village or smaller settlement. This DC increases by 5 and the number of days required to attempt the check increases by 2 for every settlement size category larger than a village—to a maximum of DC 40 and 11 days to affect a rumor spreading through an entire metropolis. If the rumor is only spreading through a smaller segment of the population, such as the elven district in a larger metropolis, use the population of that smaller segment to determine the DC and number of days of work required to use rumor empathy. The DC also increases by 10 if the rumor is about the dandy himself, since the dandy is obviously a biased source with respects to rumors about his own person. This ability replaces wild empathy.
Track: add half level to Survival skill checks to follow tracks.
Combat Style Feat: Combat Expertise (Fencing Style)
Human Bonus Feat
Skilled: gain one extra skill point per level.
Drunken Brawler: When drinking alcohol gain a –2 REF saves, temp HP equal to level, and a +2 alchemical bonus on Fortitude and Will saves. Lasts 1 hour or until temp HP are lost, whichever occurs first. Regardless, the penalty lasts for a full hour.
Endurance: You gain a +4 bonus on the following checks and saves: Swim checks made to resist nonlethal damage from exhaustion; Constitution checks made to continue running; Constitution checks made to avoid nonlethal damage from a forced march; Constitution checks made to hold your breath; Constitution checks made to avoid nonlethal damage from starvation or thirst; Fortitude saves made to avoid nonlethal damage from hot or cold environments; and Fortitude saves made to resist damage from suffocation. You may sleep in light or medium armor without becoming fatigued.
Favored Terrain Urban: gain a +2 bonus on initiative checks, Knowledge (geography), Perception, Stealth, and Survival skill checks when he is in this terrain. A ranger traveling through his favored terrain normally leaves no trail and cannot be tracked (though he may leave a trail if he so chooses).

Gear
MW Longsword, MW Breastplate, MW Buckler, sunrod (2x), alchemist fire (1x), holy symbol of Cayden (flask, contains brandy), MW book of olde poetry, a writer’s kit, bottle of gin, flask of Dwarvish mushroom whiskey.

Background
Otavio was born and raised in Oparra and as such is a resident, but he has left the city for a couple of years in his late teens to roam the countryside for (mercenary) work and inspiration. Work was rarely found unless it involved being underpaid and willing to engage in violence, what with the many conflicts between local lords, but sources for inspiration were so plentiful that the poet returned to Oparra with more poetry floating through his head than his mind could handle.
On his return to Oparra, with enough gold lining his pockets to kick back and take some time to process his creative thoughts and deal with that aching thirst, Otavio started writing poetry. Reciting it at the taverns and inns he frequented took a couple of drinks at first, but later on he managed to do it even while sober. Booze was the key to drown out the bad memories and nagging voices in his head and put afloat his most inner thoughts and feelings. Booze was the encouragement he needed to take the stage and share his works. Booze loosened his tongue so that he dared voice his real thoughts and opinions on life. Booze both opened and closed doors for the poet, to the point that his one-time love interest put him for the choice: me or the bottle.
Now, she’s gone and the poet inside him knows that if he doesn’t start moderating his alcohol intake, he’ll never have the years he need to hone his artistic skills so that he can one day call himself a master poet. An as of yet unmentioned but equally important bit is that Otavio has found himself a patron, a person of great renown and even greater wealth, someone who believes in him. Believes! Little does he know that this patron might just turn his life upside down by introducing him to a certain group of people involved in the ongoing succession conflict ...

Appearance
Bouncing between the haggard looks of a handsome drunkard and the carefully constructed poet persona before alcohol comes into play, Otavio takes great pride in his looks. Simple yet elegant clothes indicate his social status, but also helps to separate him from the chaff. Otavio normally dons a stylish black coat with polished bronze buttons and a high puffy collar that kisses the ears, with a straight-forward black gilette and white shirt underneath. Sturdy black leather boots that go up and past the ankles collect the puffy ends of his - what a surprise - black trousers. Depending on his mood he either lets his coppery brown hair grow to the point where it needs a knot or, when the emotion overwhelms him, has it cut short to the point where it barely covers his ears. Right now, his hair is mid-length and recovering from his past-break-up hairmageddon.

Personality
Otavio has a thirst for life and doesn’t know when to stop drinking when life’s cornucopia is overflowing. This translates to as much that when his pockets are overflowing, he spends it lavishly on wine, food, liquor, art and the left-over coppers on ale. He consumes all that life has to give him and when Otavio develops a passion for something or someone, it can turn into a Gnomish obsession. The ebb and tide of booze washes away such sentiments over time, making space for a new obsession and so the dandy bounces from one high to another. The lows that linger in between bring out the disgruntled artiste and tend to turn his overly obsessive self into an ambitious monster with a one-mind track: to achieve success, to make the cornucopia overflow once again. He has seen how horrible life can be and under no circumstances does Otavio want to return to that life.

Characters link to Taldor, and specifically Oparra: How long have you been in Oparra? Are you a resident? If not, why are you here now?
Otavio was born and raised in Oparra to a moderately well-off family of cobblers and tailors. The sixth son of an untalented shoemaker, Otavio left the city for a couple of years in his late teens to roam the countryside for (mercenary) work and inspiration. He wouldn’t be a shoemaker, he’d be a true artist. Work, however, was rarely found unless it involved being underpaid and willing to engage in violence, what with the many conflicts between local lords, but sources for inspiration were so plentiful that the would-be poet returned to Oparra with more poetry floating through his head than his mind could handle.
Otavio is a resident.

Livelihood: How does/has your character make a living?
He writes poetry and performs oral recitations of his own work and the works of bygone poets. As the booze starts to flow more and more profanity will start to creep in, helping Otavio to alter the original works, sometimes elevating them to new levels. This is usually where he gets taken off the stage by the more concerned innkeep, theater boss or owner of the art gallery.
Before his current stint in Oparra, Otavio spent a couple of years as a sellsword, fighting for whoever actually bothered to pay their soldiers.
Nowadays Otavio has the benefit of having a patron, someone who helps steer his career in the right direction. Someone who can convince him to stop craddling that damned bottle. I have left this patron unnamed as I figure it is best to work out who this patron might be with you, the DM, to help integrate Otavio into the campaign.

Motivation: Why are you interested in Taldan politics? Why would someone take interest in you regarding politics?
His mercenary work threw Otavio into the deep end of the everyday misery and drudgery that dominate the life of the Taldor lower class. Paired with the brutality of conflict and the impact this has on the mortal psyche, the poet feels that Taldor needs change. Swords, so he feels, are too sharp an object for such change and will only cause a mess. Words, why not words? Otavio believes words can be shaped into any tool you want them to be and hopes that through his works, he can help facilitate change.
Why would someone take an artist serious when it comes to politics? Perhaps because he has a point. There’s too much conflict, too much pressure on the common people, and the system simply isn’t working anymore. Maybe he’s just a charming bastard who, in his vice-riddled ways, happens to have a knack for electrifying people’s souls with energetic speeches and impromptu bits of poetry.
He definitely isn’t a lord, does not behave like a lord, nor fights like a lord and in that regard Otavio is not a typical political powerplayer. All he can achieve will have to be done through mixing hard work and talent. Oh, and a lot of alcohol.

Otavio's appearance after a long night out.