Zinli Steelworker's page

Gnome, Gunslinger (Firebrand) (1)
Alignment: CG
Hair: Parakeet Green
Eyes: Lilac
Deity: Cayden Cailean
Init: +3; Perception +7
Favored Class: Gunslinger (+1 Skill)
Languages: Common, Gnome, Sylvan, Orc

Special Abilities:
Master Tinker:Gnomes experiment with all manner of mechanical devices. Gnomes with this racial trait gain a +1 bonus on Disable Device and Knowledge (engineering) checks. They are treated as proficient with any weapon they have personally crafted. This racial trait replaces defensive training and hatred.

Gnome Magic: 1/day—dancing lights, ghost sound, prestidigitation, and speak with animals. The caster level for these effects is equal to the gnome's level. The DC for these spells is equal to 10 + the spell's level + the gnome's Charisma modifier. (DC 14)

Illusion Resistance: Gnomes get a +2 racial saving throw bonus against illusion spells or effects.

Obsessive: +2 on Craft (weapons) checks.

Keen Senses: Gnomes receive a +2 racial bonus on Perception skill checks

Nimble: gains a +1 dodge bonus to AC while wearing light or no armor. Anything that causes the gunslinger to lose her Dexterity bonus to AC also causes the gunslinger to lose this dodge bonus.

Weapon Familiarity: Gnomes treat any weapon with the word “gnome” in its name as a martial weapon.

Grit (Ex): (Charisma Modifier: 3 points at the start of each day)
Critical Hit with a Firearm: Each time the gunslinger confirms a critical hit with a firearm attack while in the heat of combat, she regains 1 grit point. Confirming a critical hit on a helpless or unaware creature or on a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the gunslinger's character level does not restore grit.

Killing Blow with a Firearm: When the gunslinger reduces a creature to 0 or fewer hit points with a firearm attack while in the heat of combat, she regains 1 grit point. Destroying an unattended object, reducing a helpless or unaware creature to 0 or fewer hit points, or reducing a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the gunslinger's character level to 0 or fewer hit points does not restore any grit.

Wild Card (Ex): A firebrand uses her Charisma instead of Wisdom to determine the number of grit points she gains at the start of each day and to determine the DCs of her gunslinger deeds. A firebrand treats direct hits with her bombs as firearm attacks for the purpose of regaining grit (see the bombs ability on page 5). This ability works in all other ways like the gunslinger’s grit class feature.

Deeds:
Dragon Fire (Ex): A firebrand is a master of the volatile substance known as dragon’s breath. At 1st level, as a swift action, the firebrand can spend 1 grit point to add her Charisma modifier to the DCs of all dragon’s breath cartridges (Ultimate Equipment 42) she fires until the end of her turn. Her attacks with dragon’s breath cartridges misfire only if a 1 is rolled on two or more of the damage dice.

Gunslinger's Dodge (Ex): At 1st level, the gunslinger gains an uncanny knack for getting out of the way of ranged attacks. When a ranged attack is made against the gunslinger, she can spend 1 grit point to move 5 feet as an immediate action; doing so grants the gunslinger a +2 bonus to AC against the triggering attack. This movement is not a 5-foot step, and provokes attacks of opportunity. Alternatively, the gunslinger can drop prone to gain a +4 bonus to AC against the triggering attack. The gunslinger can only perform this deed while wearing medium or light armor, and while carrying no more than a light load.

Quick Clear (Ex): At 1st level, as a standard action, the gunslinger can remove the broken condition from a single firearm she is currently wielding, as long as that condition was gained by a firearm misfire. The gunslinger must have at least 1 grit point to perform this deed. Alternatively, if the gunslinger spends 1 grit point to perform this deed, she can perform quick clear as a move-equivalent action instead of a standard action.
------------
DEFENSE
------------
AC: 17, touch 15, flat-footed 13 (+2 Armor, +3 Dex, +1 Size, +1 Nimble)
HP: 11
Fort: +3
Ref +5
Will +1 (/+3 against emotion, fear, and illusion spells or effects)
------------
OFFENSE
-----------
Spd: 20 feet
Melee:
Gnome Pincher (+1/1d4/x2)

Ranged:
Dragon Pistol (1d4/ Range 20 feet/ Misfire 1-2 (5 feet)/ Capacity 1/ x4)
30 Bullets, 20 Black Powder Doses, 2 Alchemical Cartridges (Dragon’s Breath)
----------------------------
Equipment and Money
---------------------------
Starting Money: 300 PO
Combat gear:
Defense: Leather Armor
Offense: Gnome Pincher, Dragon Pistol, 30 Bullets, 20 Black Powder Doses, Alchemical Dragon’s Breath Cartridges (2)

Other possessions: Artisan's Tools (Common), Alchemist Kit, Blanket, Bedroll, Bottle of Applejack, Finely Crafted Goggles, Gunsmith's kit, Flint and Steel, Lantern (bullseye), Masterwork Backpack, Oil, lamp (3), 2 Powder Horns (20 Doses), Silk Rope (50 ft), Soap, Trail Rations (2)

Spare Money:
PP: 0
GP: 43
SP: 4
CP: 1

Other valuable:
Carried Weight: 49,5 lbs
Encumbrance:
0-33 (38) lbs: Light Load
34 (39)-66 (76) lbs: Medium Load
67 (77)-100 (115) lbs: Heavy Load
-------------
Statistics:
--------------
Str 10
Dex 17
Con 13
Int 12
Wis 12
Cha 16
Base Attack: +1; CMB: +0, CMD: 13

Feats:
Low-Light Vision
Armor Proficiency, Light
Simple Weapons Proficiency
Martial Weapons Proficiency (+ gnome weapons)
Gunsmithing (If you have access to a gunsmith’s kit, you can create and restore firearms, craft bullets, and mix black powder for all types of firearms. You do not need to make a Craft check to create firearms and ammunition or to restore firearms.)
Technologist (You are considered to be trained in any skill used against a technology-based subject. If the skill in question requires training to use even against non-technological subjects, you must still have ranks in that skill in order to gain the benefit of Technologist.)

Traits:

Unblemished Barrel : Your skill with firearms speeds your repair of such weapons. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Craft (alchemy) and Craft (weapons) checks, and it takes you only 30 minutes to remove the broken condition from a firearm.
Skymetal Smith: The fires atop Torch Hill have long been a boon to smiths and metalworkers, and your family is no exception. Whether you grew up in Torch or simply made several trips here with your parents to use the fire, this was to be your first time to use the torch for your own project. You managed to use the fires to craft a small weapon or piece of armor from skymetal, but not long thereafter the fires went out. The violet flames are as much a part of your upbringing as anything else, and their loss distresses you; you hope to find a way to rekindle the torch below the hill. You’ve long hoped to work with skymetal, and begin the game with a small metal bauble made of the skymetal of your choice—you made this item yourself. The item is nothing more than a valuable art object worth 100 gp. You can sell it to gain an additional 100 gp when creating your character, but if you keep it, your pride in its crafting grants you a +2 trait bonus on Will saving throws made against emotion and fear effects. You lose this bonus if you willingly sell or give up the item, but if it is destroyed or lost through no fault of your own, you retain a +1 trait bonus on such Will saves.
Friend in Every Town: You have no problem making friends and learning information from them wherever you go. You gain a +1 trait bonus on all Knowledge (local) checks and Diplomacy checks. Diplomacy is always a class skill for you.

Drawback:
Impatient: You love leaping into battle at the earliest opportunity, and it frustrates you to wait for others to act. You can’t delay or ready actions, and if you are the last of your allies to act in a round of combat, you take a –1 penalty on ability checks, attack rolls, saving throws, and skill checks.

Skills: 6 (Base 4/ +1 Int/+1 Bonus FC)
Acrobatics: +7
Craft (weapons): +8
Craft (alchemy): +6
Knowledge (engineering): +6
Knowledge (local): +6
Perception: +7
Languages (4): Common, Gnome, Sylvan, Orc

Zinli’s father is one of the rare Mendevian Crusaders who survived long enough to actually get a chance to retire. After decades of defending the world against the horrors of the Sarkoris Wastes, even the thrill of waging a hopeless battle in the thick of action started to wear off. Almost overnight, he changed tack, decided to leave his position to become a blacksmith, and deserted at the first opportunity by jumping onto the first wagon sent for Mendev to gather supplies for the Crusaders. Once he had left the Worldwound behind him, it was surprisingly easy to sneak away to Numeria without much more equipement than the clothes on his back, a light purse and a couple of weapons. He missed neither his Crusader armour nor his homeland.

Gnomes can be remarkably adaptative when fighting off the early symptoms of the Blight, and Panabemi Steelworker proved no exception. Enamoured with the harsh beauty of Numeria and the rare metals it offered to a budding bladesmith, he threw himself body and soul into his new obsession, making fast progress. While on an apprenticeship on Torch to familiarise himself with skymetal, he met and fell in love with Kei Cutterwamble, stubborn owner of one of the only bakeries open in Numeria, and living testament to gnome determination in the face of impossibility.

Zinli remembers almost nothing of her early childhood in Torch, except for the smell of pastry dough coming out of her mother’s ovens, and the nights she spent painfully trying to stay awake long enough to get to see her father when he came home. Her clearest memories are of when Panabemi would take her to see the gigantic smithies where he worked, and the ever-burning violet flames that fascinated her.

When she reached the age of seven, her parents decided to go their own ways. Having completed his apprenticeship, Panabemi wished to establish his shop in a more recluse part of Numeria, where there would be less competition, and Kei categorically refused to give up on her bakery. It was decided that Zinli should follow her father, for her early interest in smithery meant she probably wouldn’t be as happy if she stayed a baker’s daughter.

It proved to have been an excellent decision -the older Zinli got, the more her interest in her father’s job deepened, to the point of obsession. Soon, Panabemi would let her observe him for hours as he crafted elaborate weaponry, talking her through the procedure while she hanged on his every word. As a teenager, she began assisting him in his smithy; and on the single occasion she stayed a few months at her mother’s place in Torch, before the inevitable collapse of her bakery, she would never miss an opportunity to climb atop the hill to see the violet flames melt and twist the skymetal into elaborated weapons -prompting the other smiths to half-jokingly refer to her as their future apprentice.

When Zinli came of age and it became evident that she would pursue a career as a blacksmith, her father decided to gift her one of the few souvenirs he had kept from his time as a Crusader: a battered and broken dragon pistol, found on a battlefield, and apparently beyond repair. But the Steelworkers were not known to give up when faced with an impossibility.

While she moved from city to city in Numeria, perfecting her craft under the guidance of the best weaponsmiths she could find, Zinli devoted all of her free time on working on the worn-out pistol, pulling it apart to rebuild it once again, moving intricate pieces by the hair’s breadth, gently coaxing it into its former glory. She learned how to craft bullets and black powder. She painstakingly practised her shooting on empty bottles, dealt with more misfires than the average person could endure without throwing their hands in frustration, and still, patiently, little by little, fixed, replaced, tested, and tinkered, until the pistol could finally (but more or less accurately) hit its target.

Armed with this new piece of technology, Zinli established herself in her beloved Torch, working at the same smithies as her father did in the hopes of mastering skymetal one day -but with one slight variation: one day, Zinli promised herself, she would learn how to craft firearms, and open up her own shop filled with technological marvels. She has already started to get acquainted with the delicate, strange pieces of machinery created by Numerian technologists, in hopes to combine those new learnings with what she already knows about metalworking.

Optimistic, enthusiastic and prompt to smile, Zinli is quickly thrilled by something she hasn't experienced before -especially if it involves doing pretty cool things with her gun. Very curious and light-minded by nature, she shows patience and diligence only when something interests her greatly, to the point of getting hyper-focused on a project: she can easily spend hours glued to a smithy or an alchemist’s lab to get something right. When not working, Zinli is highly sociable, and her love for games and a good drink has earned her many a friend – mostly in taverns.

Few things can frighten her, and Zinli is astonishingly nonplussed by her daily dealings with highly unstable, potentially explosive weapons. She carries enough black powder on her person to blow up herself -and, potentially, others- to smithereens at the slightest mistake -something that seems to delight rather than worry her. A risk-taker to the core, Zinli is impulsive enough to alarm most non-gnomes with her highly dangerous lifestyle -and, amazingly, she has occasionally proven capable of making even gnomes feel uncomfortably unsafe around her. Many in Torch still remember the day she caused a fire in a tavern after a fellow blacksmith teased her into ‘proving’ her pistol really worked on a drunken dare, earning her the nickname ‘Firecracker.’

2. If you've been on the site playing for a year or so and are in a handful of games but haven't been playing pbp for multiple years, why do you think games fail? And why do people leave?

3 if you're a long time player and you know what it takes fora successful game why do you quit an AP? What keeps you 'into it'?

4. Finally look over your inactive games if you've applied for a lot and end up quiting or it fails ...why? In other words if there's a huge amount of inactive games whether started by you or applied for by you and there's very little played or finished...why?

1-2. Reading these questions, I feel like my 'gamer' experience (it if even deserves such a name) sits somewhere between 1 and 2. Even though I've been on this website since 2014, I was only 16 at the time, having been drawn into RPGs and later PBP by my dad, who taught me the ropes. Because I live in the French countryside, I simply never had the opportunity to play with a real-life group, and it took a few years before I became experienced enough to create semi-decent characters, and learn how to cooperate with the group. For these reasons, I do not really think of myself as an "old" or "experienced" player, but rather as someone who is still learning from the advice and help of more experienced players how to be better at RPGs.

In my case, taking a break from Paizo was simply a matter of RL circumstances. I've joined this website in 2014, back when I was only 16, and when I left high school to get into uni the workload simply became too much. I took a two-years break, and got back into Paizo in 2018, when I realized that I had enough downtime to get back into playing. At least two of the long-terms campaigns I was recruited in have lasted to these days, and I've completed several short (months-long) scenarios. It has helped me realize that the key to being a steady player is not necessarily to post everyday- sometimes, life gets intense, you lose a bit of interest, or you simply don't know what your character should do next in a given situation. Rather, it is essential to communicate with everyone (and especially the GM) to let them know why your responses are getting a bit slow, and not hesitate to ask questions about the game mechanics if you're finding yourself stuck and unable to figure out what to do next.

2-3. In the years I've been on Paizo, I've tended to notice that people who left (assuming an explanation was given) did it because of a combination of the above. More often than not, major life changes get in the way, and people have to leave in a hurry. Other times, their posting slows down until they're so far behind they can't plan on their character's next move. But I think that the case of the people leaving very early on, when the game has barely started, touches on a major issue in PbP.

Basically, it's very, very hard to figure out what type of game the group should play once everyone gets recruited, much harder than in real life. We all know that people play RPGs for different reasons. Some like to focus on the maths, on making the most powerful characters possible to watch them win every time. Others are completely uninterested in power gaming, and create a character to be immersed in the story. And I feel like on PBP, you don't know what everyone is trying to get out of the game until it has already started, which could explain why you so rarely start the game with the players you've recruited.

The reasons behind why a game "fails" or is "successful" are complex, but I feel like it all boils down to the key issue in RL games: ensure that every player feels involved in the story, that they get what they're looking for and are immersed in a friendly and cooperative dynamic with the rest of the players. No one should feel like they've shown up in the wrong game, or that they're being left out. Having a solid group that enjoys playing together also helps when some players inevitably leave, because major life changes are bound to occur, if we're thinking long-term. The Reign of Winter campaign I've been in since 2019 survived a change of GM and about 4-5 people leaving, because there always remained enough enthusiastic people who wanted to try and seek out new recruits.

4. I don't think I ever quit an AP aside from my two-years break between 2016 and 2018. Most of the games that screeched to a stop did so when the GMs had to leave because of RL reasons. However, I have occasionally grown frustrated with games to the point where it severely slowed or limited my posts, mainly because I didn't find what I was looking for in them. As a player who likes RPGs for its experience of cooperative storytelling, I have a hard time staying involved with GMs that prefer focusing on driving the plot forwards without really weaving the PC's backstories or relationships into it (leaving very little room for RP).

That being said, I've also seen story-driven games that didn't work out because the GM let the players be masters of their own decisions to the point where everyone was kind of running around in circles with no idea of what to do next to make any sort of progress. It tended to lead to collective discouragement and weariness. I tend to attribute it, again, to the limitations of PBP, where players necessarily have a harder time communicating with their GMs about difficulties, and vice-versa.

I guess that the best GMs I had the pleasure of playing with are the ones that managed to estimate the right balance between setting an overarching plot in place and letting the players contribute to it. In PbP especially, it is beyond crucial to seek transparent communication between the GM and the players, and the greatest cohesion possible in the group.

So yeah- lots of talking and negotiating involved before and during the game!

As he was wondering what to do with it, Zinli offered her help. She studied it for days and nights, disassembling and reassembling it tirelessly, reading book after book on firearms and gunpowder, until she figured out how to make it work. When she announced her parents that this wonderful new technology would help her exploring the world and becoming an adventurer, they weren't that surprised. They kissed their daughter goodbye, and she left, thinking she would never return.

The first few weeks were a bliss as she travelled the country alone to her leisure, selling her talents or her weapons here and there to make some easy cash.

It all came to a crashing end, however, when, in her hubris, she challenge a couple of armor-clad hobgoblins belonging to the Ironfang Legion in a bar to a shooting contest, crossbows versus pistol. Unbeknownst to her, they were better versed in the wielding of clubs than the shooting of crossbows, and quite sore losers. They ambushed her as she got back in the road in the morning, beat her up half to death, and would have made off with her weapon if a group of adventurers, alerted by her screaming, would not have interfered.

It took her days to be capable of standing up, and, with almost no money, she had to return to her parents' house.

Now, a few months after the attack, she has agreed to help her father sell his weapons at Phaendar's Market Day, but secretly hasn't given up her dreams of adventure.