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This is a character I played a long while back and has became one of my favorite fantasy characters. He respects all gods equally so has no preference in blessings. He became an archer out of necessity while adventuring and was known as one of the best shot in the land after adventuring for a few years. I say this was from his know how and studies but one can argue he was just a natural shot. In the roleplay he never used spells but had a working knowledge of the of how to cast. He studied religious lores and histories extensively. In the play group he was apart of he was used as the parties diplomat more times then not and everyone turned to him for help with knowledge related needs. He didn't ever use armor in the time I roleplayed him but he has used a shield (badly).
Salis the Lorekeeper
Sex: Male
Race: Elf
Class: Scholar
Str 4 □ +1 □ +2
Dex 8 □ +1 □ +2 □ +3
Acro +2
Con 6 □+1 □ +2
Int 12 □ +1 □ +2 □ +3 □ +4
Know +2
Wis 6 □ +1 □ +2
Divine +2
Chr 6 □ +1 □ +2
Diplomacy +2
Fav Card: Blessing
Weapons 2 □ □
Armor - □
Spells - □ □
Items 5 □ □ □
Ally 4 □ □ □
Blessings 4 □ □ □ □
Hand size 5 □
□ Weapons
May discard to use Int: Know for combat in place of
melee or ranged. weapons may still be added (□ recharge instead)
Add 1d4 to another character at the same location for knowledge or diplomacy checks
□ you may bury an item instead of banishing it.
Scholar monk
□ +2 for checks to acquire an ally (□ item) (□ +4)
□ Once per turn you may bury an item to randomly return a buried item to your hand.
□ May evade encounters
□ +2 (□ +4) to your noncombat check to defeat a barrier
□ When a blessing is played you may recharge a random card in a character at this locations discard.
Warrior Scholar
□ When you play a blessing it gains recharge divine 5
□ +2 for checks to acquire a weapon (□ ally) (□ +4)
□ + 2 craft (□ when you play a item you may recharge a card from your discard at random.)
□ +2 (□ +4) to your noncombat check to defeat a barrier
Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
I'll try to help. I made a character too and got lots of great feedback, so hopefully you'll get the same.
But whatever I or anyone else says, I encourage to make a character you'll have fun with. So what if I say he's overpowered? I'm not playing with you. If you (and your group of teammates) are all fine with how the game feels when you play your character, then by all means play him the way that makes you guys enjoy the game.
First, you've got too many card feat check boxes. You have 15, there should only be 10.
I like the unique flavor of your powers. Power 1 might be a bit too powerful, especially since you can take weapon proficiency too. If you take weapon proficiency, you are effectively as powerful as Amiri's non-buried attack when using a weapon and you can also uses bows just as powerfully. So its sort of like Amiri's damage level plus Valeros' weapon master role. And then you can eventually recharge the card instead of discarding it.
Your other two powers don't seem too powerful. Bury items instead of banishing them would just let you keep them for the next scenario. And the addition to knowledge and diplomacy will only help Valeros, Seoni and Lem with Diplomacy & Lem, Lini, and Ezren with knowledge. Everyone else will have to roll 1d4 + your 1d4 boost if they want to use your power.
Your role cards are definitely on the powerful side too. For the first one you basically have now made it so your "bury an item instead of banish" now means you only have to banish 1 item and then you can keep swapping it with another item.
In the second role the divine 5 recharge on a blessing will probably be automatic by the time you take it. Even with no skill feats in Wisdom your divine minimum roll is a 3 (1d6 + 2). Two skill feat checks and now a 5 is the minimum and so the recharge check is automatic and you are recharging every blessing. You are now better than Sajan who can only do that for combat. You can explore for a recharge, add 1 or 2 dice for a recharge all kind of stuff. That might make you the most powerful character in the game.
That's just my advice. Building a character is tough. It can be hard to make a character in this game equate with the character you've used in an RPG or that is in your head. Good luck.
As Hawkmoon said, if you have fun, do whatever you want.
And i totaly agree with Hawkmoon in the first two points too.
It should be 10 card feat boxes and a potential of 1d12 + 1d10 is pretty impressive. You could consider something like Seoni but without the magic and fire trait.
Something like this:
Know their Weakness: For your combat check, you may discard ([]recharge) a card to use your Knowledge die + 1d6+1 instead. This counts as playing a weapon.
Another idea for this power would be to reduce the difficulty:
Know their Weakness: Before your combat check, you can make a Knowledge check against the Difficulty of the combat check to reduce it by 3 ([]4).
The helping 1d4 for knowledge and diplomacy seems redundant to me, you can only really help those that are already good at it. And it has to be at your location, that makes the power really weak.
Have you thought about an additional cost to grant the skills?
Add 1d4 to a knowledge or diplomacy check of another character at your location. You (or them) may recharge a card to gain the skills Knowlegde: Intelligence+0 and Diplomacy: Charisma+0 for this check.
I wrote you or them because normaly you have to pay if you do something, but i think in this case it would be more appropiate for them to pay to simulate the learning effort and the smoking heads.
Burying instead of banishing is alright on the base card, but on the role card it could mean that essentialy all your items would be the same item if you want it to be. So you could have 5-8 Poiton of Healing if you chose. I would buff the cost a little bit to compensate, like bury a item and discard a card.
I´m very irritated by the way you wrote your power feat checkboxes.
Is it your intention that you have to first get the box that helps you to get another boon before you can get the +4?
Or did you mean it like this?
□ Add +2 ([]+4) for checks to acquire an ally (□ item)
Next are your blessing powers. Do you really mean to heal at least yourself for every blessing that is played? That would be really powerful.
Or do you mean something like, for every blessing that is play to help you, or for every blessing that is played by you?
And again as Hawkmoon said, recharge of 5 for the blessings is way to easy. Try out recharge divine 3 or 4 + current adventure deck number to keep it in check with you leveling up. (Easy at the start but goes up to a difficulty of 9 or 10)
These are my thoughts and suggestions, i hope they help you.
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Oops On the card feats. I must have miss counted. Fixed that.
As for The knowledge I still want to allow use of a weapon, that way it can gain the magic trait magic. Also it feels more like he is using the weapon rather than breaking it to cast a spell. I did like the thought of reducing the combat value but as the game goes on that ability would lose any likelihood of working or wouldn't really be needed. It was suppose to mimic Seoni's abilities but not automatically gain magic instead it was to gain magic only if a magic weapon was used. Instead I think I may change it to.
Discard(□ Recharge) a blessing from your hand to use your knowledge die + weapon instead of your melee or ranged. This way he has to give up a specific type to use the effect cutting down on the number of times he can do this.
The ability to add a d4 I can see what your saying with it. I actually like the idea you had with that one. I think I will use that.
Add 1d4 to a knowledge or diplomacy check of another character at your location. You (or them) may recharge a card to gain the skills Knowlegde: Intelligence+0 and Diplomacy: Charisma+0 for this check.
I really don't want to put the extra cost of discard a card with it since the more the ability is used the more unlikely it is that the card you want will be what you get. But I agree that it may end up being of powered if left unchecked.
They are written in the order of how you have to acquire them. AS is how the cards are suppose to go. Based on the FAQ page. I would have liked to write them +2 (□ +4)(□ Boon) But I felt that getting the ability to add the bonus to a different boon should come first in these specific cases.
Oh I wrote that wrong it suppose to be when you play a blessing. Sorry about that.
Yah this was the hardest thing for me to balance out. I want to get it t were blessings of the gods are what he use with out giving them instant recharge. (since he doesn't follow one god in particular.) I do like the + current adventure path number as I didn't want it to be unusable early on but I didn't want it to be instant later on ether. The problem is that the maximum doll that this can make is a 10 6+2+2 So at the end only 1 out of every six is a successful recharge and at that point in the game the ability should be easier to trigger rather than harder. I may self am thinking of setting it back to my original thought of 7. That way at first a 5 or 6 is needed to recharge it while at max wisdom a 3 or better is needed.
So the rehash will be.
Str 4 □ +1 □ +2
Dex 8 □ +1 □ +2 □ +3
Acro +2
Con 6 □+1 □ +2
Int 12 □ +1 □ +2 □ +3 □ +4
Know +2
Wis 6 □ +1 □ +2
Divine +2
Chr 6 □ +1 □ +2
Diplomacy +2
Fav Card: Blessing
Weapons 2 □
Armor - □
Spells - □ □
Items 5 □
Ally 4 □ □
Blessings 4 □ □ □
Hand size 5 □
□ Weapons
Discard(□ Recharge) a blessing from your hand to use your knowledge die + weapon instead of your melee or ranged.
Add 1d4 to a knowledge or diplomacy check of another character at your location. You (or them) may recharge a card to gain the skills Knowledge: Intelligence+0 and Diplomacy: Charisma+0 for this check.
□ you may bury an item instead of banishing it.
Scholar monk
□ +2 for checks to acquire an ally (□ item) (□ +4)
□ Unsure currently
□ May evade encounters
□ +2 (□ +4) to your noncombat check to defeat a barrier
□ When you play a blessing you may recharge a random card in a character at this locations discard.
Warrior Scholar
□ When you play a blessing it gains recharge divine 7
□ +2 for checks to acquire a weapon (□ ally) (□ +4)
□ + 2 craft (□ when you play a item you may recharge a card from your discard at random.)
□ +2 (□ +4) to your noncombat check to defeat a barrier
A few more questions.
Does your first ability only work if you are playing a weapon? Because it kinda sounds like that.
If the answer is yes, you should clarify it, take the spell Fiery Weapon as an example.
If the answer is no, you should just cut the + weapon out.
To clarify what i meant with the helping power.
You or them should recharge, and i wanted to let you have that choice because you know the flavour of your char better.
If you really want that either you or another can recharge, then just cut the ().
And lastly, if first ([] item) then ([] +4) is the intend, leave it like that.
All i meant was, that with □ Add +2 ([]+4) for checks to acquire an ally (□ item), you have the option which one you take first, because the leftmost box has only to be checked first if the boxes are adjacent.
Recharge of 7 sounds reasonable, more of this aspect would need playtesting.
And just a really small suggestion. Try to word your powers so that they are in line with the rest of the game, you get more immersion that way.
I hope i could help.
Interesting character... High Intelligence but no spells. And no armor. Basically, you've got no means of reducing damage except Items, which you don't have a lot of. The limited number of Blessings means you're not going to be able to use your power very often, and when you do you won't be able to recover them until you get a power feat. So you'd basically have to hope you get lucky and draw one of your few weapons or you'll be out of blessings soon.
Have you play tested this? I'm curious how it went, because this sounds like it would be a hard character to do well with.
From a thematic standpoint, I would expect a scholar/lorekeeper to be less combat savvy (or at least more spell than weapon oriented), and more of a support role, such as reducing combat difficulties (proposed), adding to knowledge checks (which you have in place), or disabling monster powers (which would be cool power), etc. You could also have some tie to cards with the "Book" trait (reveal for some effect).
Specific comments regarding your powers...
Discard(□ Recharge) a blessing from your hand to use your knowledge die + weapon instead of your melee or ranged.
The way this first power reads is that it simply replaces your Melee/Ranged die with Knowledge, in which case the "+ weapon" is not needed (actually, it implies you can double your weapon die, so it should be deleted regardless).
So in effect, this character could reveal a weapon (for example, Short sword) making the combat check Strength/Melee + 1d6. You would then discard a blessing to change the "Melee" from a 1d4 to 1d12 + 2. Your combat roll would then be 1d12 + 1d6 + 2. As worded, it would work in both combat and non-combat situations. Basically, it's a more powerful but more limited version of Lini's wild form (discard to roll 1d10 instead of Str/Dex for any check).
There's currently nothing stopping you from declaring an unarmed Melee strike, discarding a blessing, and rolling 1d12+2; this could be used for any Melee combat roll. If it was meant to work only with a weapon, it should be worded "When using a weapon, discard..." (and still cut out the "+weapon" part).
I like the concept of the power: using your knowledge to give you an edge. However, I think the mechanics of changing 1d4/1d8 to 1d12+2 might be too much of an edge (I go back and forth), especially for Melee. For melee, that blessing would normally add 1-4 (1d4) but with this power is instead adds 2-10 (1d4 + 1d6), which I think may be a bit over powered (slightly better than Blessing of Gorum). For Ranged, it's a fairly even trade: you lose the second die, but your range changes from 2-16 to 3-15 (min+1, max-1).
However, one subtle note: when you discard a blessing by activating this power, and you lose the ability to recharge it because you're not actually playing the blessing (you're playing the power). So with this in mind, I think the discard effect is somewhat balanced (Melee) to under powered (Ranged), but then becomes overpowered when you advance it with the power feat, IMO.
Just a thought for consideration:
When you play a blessing into a combat check, add your Knowledge bonus to that check.
This balances out the effect upon Melee/Ranged checks, but still lets you play your blessings normally (match blessing deck, use your role power, etc) and makes it useful for others as well.
I did like the thought of reducing the combat value but as the game goes on that ability would lose any likelihood of working or wouldn't really be needed.
I also like the reduced combat difficulty, as it seems to fit better and make more sense than actually fighting with your knowledge (unless it's a spelling bee). I'm not sure I get how it "would lose any likelihood of working or wouldn't really be needed" later in the game; reducing difficulty is always helpful, especially later in the game. Matching the combat difficulty might be tough depending on the monsters in later adventures (maybe base it on scenario number?), but remember you'll be advancing as you play through the game too.
Another thought to consider:
Before a combat check at your location, you may perform a Knowledge check with a difficulty of 10 + the current scenario number, if any; if successful, reduce the difficulty of that check by 2 ([] 4).
I would second (and actually stress) wording your powers like existing powers; the closer you are to actual game phrasing, the more likely people will be to understand your character's powers. Be explicit when and where you want (or don't want) something to happen, or to whom it applies ("you" vs "another character" vs "any character", etc). Also, when you read them (including any selected feat options), it should be an actual sentence (Scholar Monks' first power).
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I have not play tested this as of yet. I wanted to get a solid foundation before I play him out.
Thematically this is based off a character I used to play while he was a lorekeeper he was very good with a bow. In 3 to 4 years of play I only was injured once for 3 points of damage. This was not from a lack of getting in the middle of combat as he would be right beside the main fighters of the party many times. The character still preferred to not have to fight but he wasn't afraid of it.
The more I mill adding Know bonus to a blessing roll the more it seems to fit with the character. Better than using his Int for the roll.
I do really like how the Knowledge check ability is set there. Having the standard difficulty negates the need to use a blessing to lower a foe combat value before you need the blessing to combat the foe. I think i may rearrange his ability so that I can give the combat ability to the warrior scholar role and the combat value reduction to the monk side. I think thematically this fits well with both roles.
Fenris I thought that you had to acquire your feat's left to right? If not great I prefer how it looks doing it 2(4)(boon).
As for writing it so that it is closer to the game terms. That is something that I have been doing little by little. Majority of the time I had been trying to write it from memory.
Ok so this should be the play test form. Thank you for all your input any more is still appreciated. I plan on making more this was just the first on the list.
Str 4 □ +1 □ +2
Dex 8 □ +1 □ +2 □ +3
Acro +2
Con 6 □+1 □ +2
Int 12 □ +1 □ +2 □ +3 □ +4
Know +2
Wis 6 □ +1 □ +2
Divine +2
Chr 6 □ +1 □ +2
Diplomacy +2
Fav Card: Blessing
Weapons 2 □
Armor - □
Spells - □ □
Items 5 □
Ally 4 □ □
Blessings 4 □ □ □
Hand size 5 □
□ Weapons
When you play a blessing it gains recharge divine 7
Add 1d4 to another character at this location for a check to acquire a boon(□ Defeat a barrier) that requires Knowledge or Diplomacy. Characters may still add this to the check if using Intelligence or Charisma instead.
□ you may bury an item instead of banishing it.
Scholar monk
□ Add 2(□ 4) for checks to acquire an ally (□ item)
□ Before a combat check at your location, you may perform a Knowledge check with a difficulty of 10 + the current scenario number, if any; if successful, reduce the difficulty of that check by 2 (□4).
□ Add 2 (□ 4) to your noncombat check to defeat a barrier
□ When you play a blessing you may recharge a random card in a character at this locations discard.
Warrior Scholar
□ When you play a blessing to add to a combat check you may add your knowledge bonus to that roll.
□ Add 2(□ 4) for checks to acquire a weapon (□ ally)
□ Gain the skill Craft: Intelligence +2 (□ when you play a item you may recharge a card from your discard at random.)
□ Add 2 (□ 4) to your noncombat check to defeat a barrier
Thank you again for all the help.
It´s only left to right if the boxes are adjacent, it´s in the FAQ.
Ezren's Illusionist role card says "▢ Add 2 (▢ 4) to your check to acquire a spell (▢ or ally)." I know I have to check the "Add 2" box before I can check the "(▢ 4)" box, but do I have to check the "(▢ 4)" box before I check the "(▢ or Ally)" box?
No, you may check the "(▢ or Ally)" box first, if you like.
Resolution: On page 7 of the rulebook, under "Feats," change the following:
"...you must check the unchecked box farthest to the left before you can check subsequent boxes"
to
"...you must check the unchecked box farthest to the left before you can check any immediately adjacent boxes"
And i would add an "additionally" to your combat power, because you could misread it to not get any normal blessing bonus.
□ When you play a blessing to add to a combat check you may additionally add your knowledge bonus to that roll.