So, this is a combination of a couple topics, all of which don't really 'fit' into anything on the Community Boards.
It's a bit about our campaign, but mostly about a particular character in our party that all of us get a huge kick out of. It's also to give some people who 'may' accept a drawing request a bit of insight on the character.
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Our GM's campaign is actually PRPG-run Kingmaker-styled in the world of the boardgame called Descent: Sea of Blood. Think Kingmaker but on the open seas with pirates and lots of islands to explore. We have a guildhall/base that will likely be moveable further into the campaign and we travel on a ship that we invest in and upgrade slowly, but steadily.
This story revolves around a not-so intelligent level 3 human druid, Xavier Muldoon. The rest of his party and his animal companion velociraptor, Clever Girl, have come across many sticky situations. This is typically due to Xaviar turning normal, casual sights into near-death encounters.
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He does *not* have Spellcraft or Knowledge (arcana), so whenever something casts Entangle (or other druid-known spells) on him, he's udderly befuddled as to what the heck's going on (and in many cases counters with an entangle or similar spell of his own).
The best example of this was one of our party's first encounters. While on horseback, we were attacked by a few Grigs protecting treasure they mistakenly thought we were after. One cast entangle and all the horses we were riding succeeded in saving and walked out on the following round - except for Xavier's. Not knowing what cursed the ground before him, he promptly retaliated with an Entangle spell of his own. *6* rounds later we had dealt with all but one of the grigs and Xavier was still failing to get his horse to move from the same spot. The following round an infuriated Xavier hopped from his horse only to be entangled himself. When the horse's turn came, it freed itself from the entangle and ran away from the battle. Over a minute passed before Xavier was able to finally escape the entangle, long after the fight had ended. By then we had chased down his horse and brought it back.
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Better yet, *every* time he's used wild empathy he's failed miserably by at least 5. I think we're nearing a dozen times now.
At first level we came across a few dolphins that were caught in some nets and he attempted to wild empathy them after freeing them. He failed, resulting in a few dolphins taking him out with a couple lucky crits (unbelieveable, but true; 20-some damage in a couple rounds). Fortunately, we were in fairly shallow water and able to pull his bleeding, unconcious body to safety. Several days later we encountered some river elk (6 of 'em) near another town's port and he figured it'd be neat to wild empathy them (We had a few things to do further inland and any help we could get would have been useful). He rolls a natural 1. Moments later we see him screaming in horror as 6 elk trample him to a bloody pulp. An unnecessary bloodbath later (everyone lived, but we still had to KO all of the elk), we revived him from his near death state. At our destination, we came across a bear that had been injured by a trap. "I got this guys." - One minute later we had another combat on our hands. He went down the first round. I think we had to kill the bear.
Pretty much, this has happened throughout our campaign. Averaging once every three to four sessions - A couple constrictors, a giant frog, giant crab, a young orca, shocker lizards, the list goes on. Until this last encounter, which oddly enough wasn't his fault for the most part.
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In addition to a boat, we have a land-boat. Effectively an oversized wagon with odds and ends (pulled by our Summoner's Augment Summoned Mounts), it allows a couple of our characters to craft (poorly, but craft nonetheless) while traveling. We use it whenever we're on any island greater than 6 hexes in size with hills, plains, or roads of the sort. Clerics of a nearby island requested we clear another adjacent island of any threats. In addition, we were to recover a stolen artifact that was buried at the grave of a fairly well renowed pirate. On our way to said grave we saw a shambling mound in the distance. (Just like in Kingmaker, encountering higher CR creatures is not unheard of, just unlikely. Plus our party should have taken all precautions we could have)
Xavier's last words: "That looks dangerous." The paladin, believing that anything 'dangerous' should be dealt with or destroyed before the nearby clerics reinhabit the island, turned the cart to engage the monster. Having also failed his Knowledge(nature) check, all Xavier knew was it was a plant-like creature of fairly large proportions. Engaging it like any other creature, we soon found that it was a tad beyond our expectations when it immediately attacked and crushed our monk to death in the first two rounds of battle. With our Rogue/Wizard using a recently aquired Lightning Bolt wand on it and the (not so) well versed Xavier using Flaming Sphere on it a couple times our damage dealers weren't exactly contributing towards defeating the shambler (It gains 1d4 Con at 9HD when struck by Lightning damage and has DR 10 vs fire). A dozen rounds later, our Monk, Paladin, Druid (Xavier), and his raptor lay dead, all constricted to death within moments of coming in contact with the beast. All that remained was our Rogue/Wizard and Summoner, who managed to whittle the creature to death with a magic missle wand.
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Regardless, I think the plan when we meet again is to toss the corpses into our new bag of holding and make a quick dash back to the clerics, which should take less than a week if all goes well. The monk and paladin are thinking about creating new characters hopefully revolving around the new variants in the APG when it releases, but we've decided for the most part that Xavier needs to be ressed (Unless there's something absolutely amazing in the APG he should be playing as). His failures are too epic to permanantly perish at such a low level.
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Which brings me to my request. Any drawings picturing the unintentional antics of the great Xavier Muldoon would be greatly appreciated. We've gone as far as joking about the horrible things he must be doing to provoke the animals into attacking him, like throwing salted bacon (from wild boars we killed) into the eyes of bears or offering jerky or raw fish to the elk. All the while, his velociraptor had to endure her master's failure and prepare to protect him from danger time after time (while doing as good a job at not ::facepalming:: around him whenever possible). May she rest in peace.
Our level 3 party is as follows:
Name: Alignment/Race/Class
Demico: LG Human Monk
Xavier Muldoon: NG Human Druid
Gob Lightfoot: LG Halfling Paladin
Jan Jansen: CG Gnome Summoner (props to anyone knowing the source of this name :) )
(Can't recall): CG Elven Rogue/Wizard
Xavier's stats are:
STR 16
DEX 14
CON 12
INT 7
WIS 18
CHA 12
I might also add that another running gag for our party is a dump stat in INT. It just so happens that our Monk, Paladin and Druid (all of whom just died) also share a 7 intelligence. We're not the brightest bunch of adventures. The Summoner's Eidolon is even on par with these characters, tipping the scales to make the party's combined median *and* modal INT a whopping 7.
The next time we meet, I'll have to take another gander at Xavier's background/description and update it in here accordingly. :)
We went on a two week hiatus due to a few of us taking vacation breaks during the summer. :) I'll update it by Wednesday, as we plan on meeting tomorrow evening.
I wasn't intially going to update since it seemed that nobody was *that* interested in the topic, but I'll do it for you, Jester. :D
First of all, Xavier and Gob have been reincarnated. Being a party of 3rd level characters, it's all that could be afforded. Gob is now a spell resistant dwarf and Xavier is a half-elf.
So the player running Xavier hadn't really thought about a thorough background for the druid, aside from the fact he was captured somewhere along his journeys as a fascinating 'subject' on a slaver's ship which started our campaign. (The majority of us met while freeing ourselves from being enslaved.)
He decided to create a bit of back-story in regards to his actual background - on the grounds he review a bit of the pathfinder campaign setting. He's fairly new to the Pathfinder setting, so I've let him borrow a couple books to see where he wants to focus his origins.
The monk is currently in a perpetual state of gentle repose, and may be reincarnated if/when the player in control of that character returns from his own hiatus. Our GM has allowed us to modify our races and classes with any variants with permission. We also need to provide some evidence of our characters actually making sense with the new changes. (eg: No monks with extreme melee abilities suddenly becoming a Zen archer, only monks that at least show some interest in ranged weaponry.) Currently this hasn't changed anyone much. Gob has become a Hopitalier and Xavier may become a GM-approved variant. Our summoner also is a lot more on-par with the rest of us, now that he can't summon an earth elemental along with his already sick eidolon.
Since the APG has released, our party has been looking at a lot of the different variants and we've been contemplating creating something for him that focuses on plant-based druid abilities. His luck when communicating with all animals continues to fail miserably, and he figured that using a modification of the animal shamans could make an interesting character - with the motive for doing what he does in addition to further explaining why he fails as a druid in respect to fauna in general.
We took the time to do one quick encounter before returning to our 'base' of operations and ran into a feline creature (which apparently appears in Kingmaker) that we had to knock out. The thing nearly succeeded in killing Xavier (as he currently has two permanent negative levels from the reincarnation). On the bright side, he never had the chance to even use Wild Empathy this time...