Imperial Heroes: Pregenerated Characters (PFRPG) PDF

Now available!

This one sounds like it'll be worth it just to see how they put together the bladebound magus, the scrollmaster, and the invulnerable rager (my own take on the latter always ended up with a gnome version of Yosemite Sam, for some reason).

When your design decisions are in Neil Spicer's hands, rest assured you're getting pregens done right. These aren't "elf from the forest" or "dwarf from underground" or any other tired caricatures and stereotypes when it comes to story and characterization, and they aren't "I have a greataxe and Power Attack" or "I have a chain shirt and a rapier and Weapon Finesse" when it comes to mechanics. Inventiveness, creativity, detail, craftsmanship, and top-notch production values are what we are all about, and we think you'll be very pleased with what you find in these pages.

... A goblin ninja.

A goblin ninja who idolizes SHALELU. o.O;

I wonder how he's managed to insinuate himself into this group? Aside from the whole "shadowing Shalelu" thing...

He's easily overlooked. It's right there in his name!

Maybe he's like a feral cat that just keeps following the party around, and he doesn't seem like he's hurting anybody and he seems to be helping out so... ummm... okay. Sure, he can tag along. :)

And then, in the ruthless meritocracy that is an adventuring party, he proves his worth and eventually the others come to accept him as an unorthodox ally but nevertheless very handy to have around.

Hey, it could happen!

A goblin ninja who idolizes SHALELU. o.O

It's a funny story, but Clark was the one who originally envisioned and inspired that character. He absolutely wanted to see a goblin ninja after running his group through We Be Goblins. However, as you know, the challenge in realistically having a goblin accompany the PCs through the Far East adventure path is that the Elven Protector (whom you've rightly surmised) absolutely hates goblins with all the fervor of a ranger and her favored enemy. So, how to pull it off?

Simple. Make it so that the goblin is actually enamored with her. He idolizes her. Give him the highest possible Stealth skill so that even if she gets angry with him or tries to leave him behind, he always manages to show up. Usually, right when the party needs him. After that happens enough times, grudging acceptance starts to set in. Especially when others can determine that Nurch is different from all the other goblins. He's not evil. He's not exactly good, either, but his motives still drive him to do things that wind up aiding the party and protecting the Destined Empress.

In the end, I wanted to do Clark's idea justice and pull it off as credibly as all the other backstories of the characters in the adventure path could allow. I'm happy with how it came out. Hopefully, everyone else will be, too. Nurch the Easily Overlooked has the potential for a whole lot of fun. And that's the whole point of these pregens.

My two cents,
--Neil

When I ran "We Be Goblins" for my home group, I added Nurch in as an extra character since we had more than 4 players, and he worked out great and was a lot of fun, so anybody running that adventure by itself (or its upcoming sequel) could certainly use Nurch to great effect!

I wonder how he compares to the goblin ninja from the awesome Heirs of Dhakaan Eberron novels. But then those were very different goblins...

I'm no Eberron expert, so Neil could have been inspired by that, or Clark could have since the idea for Nurch was one of his contributions to the product.

I'm not versed enough in Eberron to draw any inspiration from it. I don't think I've run a campaign there and own none of the books for that setting. Additionally, I doubt that weighed on Clark's mind either. His inspiration for Nurch came shortly after he used We Be Golbins as a lead-in prequel to his Jade Regent campaign. He liked the goblins. He liked the ninjas from Tian Xia. Chocolate. Peanut butter. The rest is history.

Hrm...
Apparently, the Goblin emotionally attached to the Goblin-murderer character concept is not as unique as I thought...

Granted, I came at the solution from a different angle.

A variation of fantasy Stockolm Syndrome? :)

>:D

Yay! A 5-star review! And someone finally beat Endzeitgeist to it. Cool. Much appreciated, Minstrel_Wyrm. :-)

Also, one point of clarification on the art for this one. The images for each of the pregens actually came from different artists this go-around: Tanyaporn Sangsnit of Thailand (who did the majority), Frank Hessefort, and Colby Stevenson. Meanwhile, Hugo did the stylings for Gothic Heroes and he's already at work on the character illustrations for the upcoming Conquering Heroes.

Agreed - thanks for the review, and the encouragement to everyone else to check it out! The product is selling extremely well - in fact, even though we only released it just over a week ago, it ended up being our best-selling product for the month of February!

An excellent sequel to an excellent antecedent in Gothic Heroes, with another pregen product coming down the pike PDQ! Hail the Heroes!!! :)

Yay! A 5-star review! And someone finally beat Endzeitgeist to it. Cool. Much appreciated, Minstrel_Wyrm. :-)

Also, one point of clarification on the art for this one. The images for each of the pregens actually came from different artists this go-around: Tanyaporn Sangsnit of Thailand (who did the majority), Frank Hessefort, and Colby Stevenson. Meanwhile, Hugo did the stylings for Gothic Heroes and he's already at work on the character illustrations for the upcoming Conquering Heroes.

Oops ... no disrespect meant toward Tanyaporn, Frank, or Colby ... and to amend that ... FANTASTIC illustrations gang! (I can even edit my review to reflect the proper praise). :) Thanks for pointing that out Neil. ;)

Also @ Neil and Jason ... my pleasure to do the review (and encourage gamers to buy it) Jade Regent has been one of my favorite APs in recent "history" and anything that supports it deserves some praise.

Glad you enjoyed, and we *do* have more Far East Plug-Ins on the way to get your JR fix!

BTW, I should note that the fact that Imperial Heroes was our leading seller in February even though it was only out a week during the month might lead folks to believe that our other products were not doing well. Quite the contrary, though it's the shortest month of the year we actually have sold more product this month than any month in our history! It's just a sweet valentine surprise that Imperial Heroes has not only done well but has been a smash hit! Maybe it will take aim at The Way of Ki as our best-selling first month for a product! We will see.

Just a quick note:

Nurch may have Easily Overlooked his point buy. I calculate him to be 25 point buy, instead of 20. Reduce his Cha from 14 to 12, his Bluff from +5 to +4, and you should be right.

Saroune Anzoletta Female Human Transmuter. I calculate her to be 23 point buy, instead of 20. Reduce her Cha from 13 to 10, her Perform (Dance) from +2 to +1, and she's good to go.

Cheers :-)

Nurch may have Easily Overlooked his point buy. I calculate him to be 25 point buy, instead of 20. Reduce his Cha from 14 to 12, his Bluff from +5 to +4, and you should be right.

I went back and checked my turnover to verify. Interestingly enough, I had his original stat-block calculation correct in the spreadsheet I was using, but something got mistranslated when I transcribed it over to the actual manuscript. Basically, Nurch should be Cha 12 rather than Cha 14. His Bluff skill is correctly calculated, however. It's just a typo on the Cha score. Here's the official breakdown: Before his racial modifiers (as a goblin), Nurch's ability scores based on 20-point buy are Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 8, Cha 14. So, that's (5+5+5+2-2+5), which is a 20-point buy. After you apply his racial modifiers of -2 Str, +4 Dex, and -2 Cha, he should end up as Str 12, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 12, Wis 8, Cha 12. His skill scores were all correctly calculated based on that. But his stat-block listing erroneously indicated Cha 14 when it should have been Cha 12. His Bluff score is fine (1 rank, +1 Cha, +3 class skill).

I'll ask Jason to go back and update the Cha score for everyone. Once that happens, he'll upload a revised file, which should notify everyone that they can download the corrected PDF again.

Saroune Anzoletta Female Human Transmuter. I calculate her to be 23 point buy, instead of 20. Reduce her Cha from 13 to 10, her Perform (Dance) from +2 to +1, and she's good to go.

Actually, Saroune is correctly calculated. The 3-point discrepancy in your calculation is probably because you left out the 1-point bump from her physical enhancement transmuter ability. She's got a +1 Dex taking her Dex 15 to Dex 16. In point-buy, that would cost you 3 points, but with her school specialization, it's free. So, she's fine as-is. If you want to know her baseline stats, they're: Str 10, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 13. She applies her +2 racial bonus as a human to her Int and her +1 physical enhancement bonus as a transmuter to her Dex. That gets her to Str 10, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 13 with a 20-point buy. Since she prepares that physical enhancement every day when she prepares her spells, I wanted to go ahead and incorporate it into the stat-block, especially since it isn't something you can suppress with dispel magic, etc.

Regardless, thanks for double-checking us. And that's for checking out the product.

Do you guys have any agreement with Wolflair to put these into Hero Lab files?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: I had a conversation with the HeroLab guys about this topic before, and even brought it up with Jason. Primarily, it boiled down to us expending additional effort to create the HeroLab files to include with our products...i.e., if you bought a copy of Imperial Heroes (or even something rules-related like The Way of Ki), the product would also come with a HeroLab file you could import to add our content to the base engine. Unfortunately, that was going to require additional time and effort on our part and there didn't really seem to be a huge outcry for it. I know Jason polls the LG fans from time to time to gauge their interest in it. But right now, it seems like our efforts are better spent on churning out new gaming content moreso than learning the in's and out's of HeroLab just to add the creation of those files to our workload when there isn't a high demand for it.

If I made it up for my own use, would there be anywhere I could share it without violating various copyrights and licenses?

Unfortunately, no. You can make such files for use in your home games without any problem. But, sharing it with others violates the copyrighted material, and disincents others from picking up the PDF if you've got significant elements already built into the HeroLab files for them. I know Clark had similar concerns when folks created characters here on the Paizo messageboards for their play-by-post game and created aliases using the pregens from Gothic Heroes and copy/pasted everything (not just the stat-blocks, but also the character histories and background information) into their profiles. That too is a violation of copyright.

So, bottom line, it's okay to make copies of something for use at the table in your home games...even to share with your friends (assuming they're each going to play one of the pregens). But, when you start recreating the material and then making it available for free where anyone can come and access it, you're essentially undercutting all the hard work the designers put into it, because those people no longer need the PDF. That's why the copyright is there. It protects against that. Make sense?

What Neil said. :)

Yup. Makes sense.

It's kind of a shame, of course, but I completely understand where you're coming from.

That said, I do love the pre-gens. Any word yet on which AP is getting the pre-gen treatment next?

Conquering Heroes trying to establish their own monarchy in a certain place known as the Lost Lands. ;-)

Awesome!

So... that would be Second Darkness then? :)

Anyone who believes that, will be sorely disappointed. ;-P

They'd be *really* lost then!

Was not meaning to imply Nurch was inspired by the Eberronian goblin ninja. He was just such a memorable character in the novels, a yoda like ninja clan leader who later had a winter wolf ally.

But Eberrons goblinoids where the heirs of a lost warrior empire (think samurai like hobgoblins and ninja goblin clans). You can read more on the Heirs of Dhakaan here.

Nurch should be quite and interestingly different with Paizo's take on goblins...

DarkWhite wrote:

Nurch may have Easily Overlooked his point buy. I calculate him to be 25 point buy, instead of 20. Reduce his Cha from 14 to 12, his Bluff from +5 to +4, and you should be right.

Basically, Nurch should be Cha 12 rather than Cha 14. His Bluff skill is correctly calculated, however. It's just a typo on the Cha score.

I'll ask Jason to go back and update the Cha score for everyone. Once that happens, he'll upload a revised file, which should notify everyone that they can download the corrected PDF again.

DarkWhite wrote:

Saroune Anzoletta Female Human Transmuter. I calculate her to be 23 point buy, instead of 20. Reduce her Cha from 13 to 10, her Perform (Dance) from +2 to +1, and she's good to go.

Actually, Saroune is correctly calculated. The 3-point discrepancy in your calculation is probably because you left out the 1-point bump from her physical enhancement transmuter ability. She's got a +1 Dex taking her Dex 15 to Dex 16. In point-buy, that would cost you 3 points, but with her school specialization, it's free. So, she's fine as-is.

Thanks for the reply. You're right, I just did a quick check over the other charcters point-buy after I noticed Nurch, and didn't consider Saroune's transmuter ability.

Cheers :-)

Elven curve blades are not-great choices for magi in general, and are illegal choices for black blades in particular. Caladrel is therefore somewhat problematic as written.

Elven curve blades are not-great choices for magi in general, and are illegal choices for black blades in particular. Caladrel is therefore somewhat problematic as written.

Ahh! Right you are. Should have substituted that for something else. With a magus needing one hand free for spell combat and a black blade being specified as requiring a one-handed slashing weapon, the two-handed elven curve blade would be problematic if it became his black blade at 3rd level. That was an oversight on my part. However, it shouldn't be all that difficult to revamp him to a one-handed weapon wielder when he gets to 3rd level, discarding the elven curve blade for something else. Maybe for added flavor in line with the Asian-themed AP, it could be replaced with a nine-ring broadsword or katana instead. Or, just based on traditional elves, it could be a longsword or rapier. My actual preference would be to do it as a dueling sword so Caladrel has the option to wield it in one or two hands, while still applying his Dex modifier rather than Str. Since he doesn't get his actual black blade until 3rd level, that would let him pick up both Weapon Finesse and Exotic Weapon Proficiency (dueling sword) to cover what he'd need. In the meantime, he can start out with a rapier (to make Weapon Finesse relevant) until he acquires a dueling sword.

Yeah, dueling sword was my thought as well for a patch - it delays his Weapon Focus by two levels, but otherwise works quite well with his build and general design philosophy. He can even use it out of the gate if he wants - it costs him a point of attack bonus, but isn't completely unoptimal, and he can still two-hand it for the damage bonus.

One could also say, given his Roleplaying Ideas, at 3rd level, his prized elvish curved blade morphs into the Blackblade, to a form suited for such use instead of discarding his cherished blade.

Jason and I are planning to take a look at it. We'll likely make an adjustment to Caladrel and then repost an updated PDF.

Adjustments have been made (for Caladrel and Nurch) and turned over to Jason and the layout crew. An updated PDF should be on its way soon.

Reviewed first on Endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine, posted here, on OBS and on d20pfsrd.com's shop. cheers!

Thanks for the review Endy! I already posted up a link to your review site here and on the Legendary Games website and facebook page.

Thanks as always for the kind words and detailed, in-depth reviews. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. :)

Thank you very much for the links and kind words, Jason - I have two more reviews drafted by now and they'll see the light of day soon! :)

Much obliged, Endy. I'm always interested to see what you think of our work. And thanks for sharing those insights with the buying public so they make better informed purchasing decisions. Your commentary spurs us to make awesome things into Legendary things.

Did the updated PDF with the "corrected" Caladrel ever get released?

EDIT: Bah! I hit "post" before I was finished! I hate that! (Wow...talk about First World Problems! :) )

I created a new weapon for Caladrel. Looking at the artwork for him, it seems fair to assume the Elven Curve Blade was influenced by the "farithivago" sword carried by Arwen in the "Fellowship of the Ring". I'd always assumed ECB's were the big, two-handed sword/halberd hybrids carried by the 2nd Age Elves at the battle of Mount Doom, in the prologue of that movie.

Anyway, I created an elven version of a bastard sword/katana hybrid, figuring the elves probably created a light, flexible, razor-sharp sword that can be used one-handed with the appropriate exotic weapon proficiency. So it does 1d10 damage, has a crit range of 18-20/x2, and can be used one-handed with "Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Farithivago" (which Caladrel can pick up at 3rd level).

In the mean-time, he can use it two-handed, and switch to one-handed (with a -4 penalty) if he wants to use spell combat. I figure the extra damage and the higher crit threat make up for the occasional penalty, plus, from a fluff point of view, he can keep the sword that's been talking to him the whole time. :)

Did the updated PDF with the "corrected" Caladrel ever get released?

It did, although it still has an error in it. It lists Caladrel has having Exotic Weapon Proficiency (dueling sword), but his stats reflect Weapon Finesse instead - which is good, because he doesn't qualify for EWP at 1st level anyway. So he should be listed as having Weapon Finesse, and will pick up the EWP at 3rd when the blade becomes intelligent.