STATISTICS
Str 18 (+4) [16 base, +2 racial]
Dex 13 (+1)
Con 14 (+2)
Int 10 (0) [12 base, -2 racial]
Wis 14 (+2)
Cha 12 (+1) [10 base, +2 racial]
FEATS Dead Inside (Story) [Lvl 1]: When you are the target of a spell or spell-like ability with the emotion or fear descriptor, you can roll your saving throw twice and take the better result.
Goal: You overcome your detached state by taking part in an important emotional event, such as finding true love or taking great pleasure in an act of unrepentant evil.
TRAITS Infernal Bastard (Campaign): You gain a +1 trait bonus on Will saves.
Defensive Strategist (Religion): You aren’t flat-footed during a surprise round that you don’t get to act in or before you get to act at the start of a battle.
Total Points: 6 [1x(4 Paladin + 0 Int + 2 background)]
AC penalty is 0
LANGUAGES
Common, Abyssal.
EQUIPMENT
Explorer’s Outfit (free)
Scale Mail (50gp)
Shortbow (30gp)
Heavy Mace (12gp)
Heavy Steel Shield (30gp)
Paladin’s Kit (12 gp)
Spoiler:
backpack, a bedroll, a belt pouch, a cheap holy text, a flint and steel, an iron pot, a mess kit, rope, soap, torches (10), trail rations (5 days), a waterskin, and a wooden holy symbol.
41 gold 0 silver 0 copper
Weight Carried: -lbs.
SPECIAL ABILITIES Light from the Darkness: Tieflings who deny the evil of their heritage to go on to become heroes refuse to use the dark magic of their blood, but their struggle grants them uncanny resilience against evil’s touch. As long as they retain a good alignment, they gain the aasimar’s incorruptible alternate racial trait (Corruption Resistance vs. evil 1/day. 1hr/lvl duration if cast on self). This racial trait replaces the spell-like ability racial trait.
Prehensile Tail: Many tieflings have tails, but some have long, flexible tails that can be used to carry items. While they cannot wield weapons with their tails, they can use them to retrieve small, stowed objects carried on their persons as a swift action. This racial trait replaces fiendish sorcery.
Scaled Skin: The skin of these tieflings provides some energy resistance, but is also as hard as armor. Choose one of the following energy types: cold, electricity, or fire. A tiefling with this trait gains resistance 5 in the chosen energy type and also gains a +1 natural armor bonus to AC. This racial trait replaces fiendish resistance.
Skilled: A Demon-spawn tiefling gains a +2 racial bonus on Disable Device and Perception checks.
Favoured Class Bonuses (Paladin): 1x HP.
Proficiencies: Paladins are proficient with all simple and martial weapons, with all types of armor (heavy, medium, and light), and with shields (except tower shields).
All is Darkness: Everything around a tortured crusader is so bleak that detecting evil only reminds her that the odds are always against her. A tortured crusader doesn’t gain the detect evil or divine grace class features. At 1st level, a tortured crusader gains the smite evil ability, but she doesn’t add her Charisma bonus to attack rolls or a deflection bonus equal to her Charisma bonus to her AC against the target of her smite. At 2nd level, she adds a +4 bonus to attack rolls and a +4 deflection bonus to AC against the target of her smite.
Aura of Good: The power of a paladin's aura of good (see the detect good spell) is equal to her paladin level.
Detect Evil: At will, a paladin can use detect evil, as the spell. A paladin can, as a move action, concentrate on a single item or individual within 60 feet and determine if it is evil, learning the strength of its aura as if having studied it for 3 rounds. While focusing on one individual or object, the paladin does not detect evil in any other object or individual within range.
Self-Sufficient: A tortured crusader adds Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (dungeoneering), Knowledge (planes), Perception, Stealth, Survival, and Use Magic Device to her list of class skills, instead of Diplomacy and Handle Animal. She gains a number of skill ranks equal to 4 + her Intelligence modifier at each level, instead of gaining a number of skill ranks equal to 2 + her Intelligence modifier.
This ability alters the paladin’s class skills and skill ranks per level.
Smite Evil: Once per day, a paladin can call out to the powers of good to aid her in her struggle against evil. As a swift action, the paladin chooses one target within sight to smite. If this target is evil, the paladin adds her Cha bonus (if any) to her attack rolls and adds her paladin level to all damage rolls made against the target of her smite. If the target of smite evil is an outsider with the evil subtype, an evil-aligned dragon, or an undead creature, the bonus to damage on the first successful attack increases to 2 points of damage per level the paladin possesses. Regardless of the target, smite evil attacks automatically bypass any DR the creature might possess.
The smite evil effect remains until the target of the smite is dead or the next time the paladin rests and regains her uses of this ability. At 4th level, and at every three levels thereafter, the paladin may smite evil one additional time per day, as indicated on Table: Paladin, to a maximum of seven times per day at 19th level.
Torment: A tortured crusader’s great suffering in the face of inevitable horror strengthens her faith and resolve, even as it makes her introverted and far less personable than most paladins. A tortured crusader uses Wisdom instead of Charisma as her key spellcasting ability score (to determine her spell DCs, bonus spells per day, bonus on concentration checks, and so on), and to determine the effects of lay on hands.
This ability alters the paladin’s spellcasting, smite evil, and lay on hands.
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APPEARANCE
The Spawn of Rovagug are monsters, capable of destroying kingdoms before being brought down. Some of those spawn have spawn of their own, passing destructive power down through generations although it weakens at every pass. The only thing in Tyrek’s favour is that the hideous appearance of the Spawn has lessened as well – marginally.
Put simply Tyrek is ugly, extremely so. His limbs are oversized, his facial bones seem too big for his red skin and his eyes are both mismatched and lop-sided. One ear has been reduced to a stub on one side of his head and the misalignment is only amplified by his black horns. Tyrek does have the strength to match his size and his scars show that he is no stranger to physical pain. He is never going to win a beauty contest however.
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BACKGROUND
Cheliax despises tieflings but especially those who show the unmistakable taint of Rovagug. Most tieflings are neglected, stuffed into orphanages and left to grow into criminals without any more help or care from the state. Tyrek however, with the mark of the Rough Beast forming a huge birthmark on his chest, was given to the temple of Asmodeus where the clerics determined that the chaos must be beaten from the child until he was forged into a suitable weapon to sacrifice to Asmodeus’ dark plans.
Thus Tyrek grew up utterly without love. He was fed sufficiently and worked brutally, expected to train with weapons, clean the temple, master scripture and above all to be grateful for everything that the temple of Asmodeus did for him. He learned to fight, survived ‘training bouts’ with students far older than himself and studied not only the teachings of Asmodeus but those of the entire Godclaw.
Now grown Tyrek is no believer in Asmodeus, he has suffered too much and too long at the hands of that Church to offer them his devotion. But when yet another message came from Westcrown, begging the Church to investigate the shadow curse haunting the former capital, Tyrek obeyed orders and set off to investigate.
In his heart he knows that his mission is a suicidal one, and no-one in the Citadel of Spite would weep if he never returned, but a small voice inside himself reminds him that it is better that he face down the darkness than someone else.
At least that way no-one important will get hurt.
Small comfort that, but in a life that has been devoid of it, comfort none-the-less.
***
What Tyrek doesn’t know is that, far above in the Heavens, his lovelorn life has earned the pity of the Goddess of Love herself, and while she is bound by ancient law to never aid the Children of Rovagug, there is another goddess who can…
