So here's the final image: small scary creature on the back of a medium one that looks like a black tiger with blood red stripes. Her hair is made of angry looking snakes, hizzingly waving around - they're all staring at you. She's juggling knifes as her mount charges at you. The running sound is that of a galloping horse! Then suddenly many things happen in quick succession. One of the snakes on her head shoots at you and hits your arm, you're grappled. She is not, nor is her mount. As it jumps at you to pounce you, she throws two daggers right where it hurts (perhaps sneak attack?) and catches the third one she was juggling out of the air, as not to lose it. Surprisingly the mount dodges you, only moments before you were to be ripped into shreds, and comes to a halt behind you. Is it just toying with you? She quickly pulls out two new knives and continues juggling all three, now laughing a horrible laughter right behind your back.
You spend your turn trying to break free, and succeed, ripping that strange feeling snake off your arm. You turn around to face her and are hard pressed not to scream in fear. You've seen a lot of things in your adventure career but this seems so strange. The tiger's face looks slightly too long, and the limbs bend slightly strangely. What kind of creature is this?! [it says if you succeed your breaking grapple check you get to "act normally" - but it also says it costs a standard action. Not sure if you get to attack or not, but let's allow it.] You storm at her with your big axe and want to chop off that head with the stunningly beautiful face... it flickers and for a moment you see the most grotesque visage you've ever seen underneath. This monster must die, but your attack misses and as soon as it's her turn again another snake hits you in the face and then wraps itself around your neck, it's constricting, and you're grappled again, while she is not, so she stabs you in the face.
You didn't even notice her companion hopping out of a bush running up behind you, now charging with an axe, moments later chopping straight through the snakes around your neck, taking your head clean off. You don't realize that instead of a severed snake body, white hair glides to the ground before it dissipates, nor that the scary tiger is really a pony. The glimps of her face that you saw was that of perhaps the worlds ugliest goblin.
How is this possible?
I was thinking 2 level dip in white haired witch with a bunch of low level illusions running. Perhaps a Goblin (for the stupidly high dexterity) - got kicked out for writing and was way too smart anyways. Just didn't belong with the others. Amazingly ugly. Under the influence of multiple low level illusions.
The backup is in many ways her opposite. He would have to be someone charismatic to get the two of them access to go anywhere and do anything. - He respects her pure power and personality, how special she is, enough to ignore her huge charisma penalty. Also with her illusions she can be someone else every night, what ever he desires... though man when her illusions flicker, that can be some really traumatic s!+$. :D He could be a THW sneak-attacker, with UMD and lousy dexterity. He's not that smart but very intuitive (wise). I want an okay AC but with lousy dex... are there such things as mobile heavy armors? Perhaps the witch could boost him with mage armor or bark skin...
At higher levels he handles animals and she can ride a real tiger...
Did I mention she has a crow that's just as much into valuable s@#+ as her? - She's not greedy in a quantity kind of way, but definitively in a quality one. She might give a few gold coins to some villagers for whom it'll make a big difference, but if she later lacks the gold to buy a really cool artifact, that might not stop her to go acquire it anyways...
Not sure if this is a player concept or a set of NPCs, but I'd like to make it work so that it could be either. I'll definitively need some advice and help for making these work by the rules as much as possible though.
Interested in helping me out?
Thanks so much
Julix
I'm not quite sure if this is a character concept or a riddle. You could probably accomplish a lot of what you're looking for with Summoners and eidolons.
Maybe I could have said it more clearly... I want to find ways to turn these ideas and concepts into mechanical possibilities, but yeah, I guess it is a little like a riddle. One with multiple possible answers (i.e. anything that can get this done within mechanics). Could you elaborate on your idea, Devilkiller? What elements of my ideas would a summoner be able to do?
-----Juggling knives and riding---------------
The juggling daggers would be a slight of hand thing, right? - I looked into it a little bit and found that the character being young would add +2 to dexterity. So a young goblin with 18+4+2=24 dex at 1 NPC level. However there's only an arcane base NPC, not a magic one, so I guess she'd go with the expert base and give up the fancy hair/magic etc for now. With +1 skill point in Slight of hand, +3 from the expert class and an astonishing +7 from dexterity, for total of +11 at lvl 1. - Is that high enough to reliably juggle in mounted combat?
Riding is second nature to this goblin too, with all the bonuses above and an additional +4 for being a goblin for a total of +15 to ride checks! This should make the juggling-while-riding part easier, and these two parts of the concept possible.
However at this point it's not even a glass canon, but merely a glass figure: with a lowered strength and constitution and 1 attack per round there's no bang. While throwing it's using really nice attack roll, due to high dex, but for next to no damage. Perhaps add +1 to damage from River Rat trait while using daggers. To go anywhere else with it, there's huge feat hunger (such as weapon finesse, TWF, quick draw, etc), and probably player classes.
----------Hair as snakes----------
White haired witch basically uses her hair as another limb with reach and an on-hit-grapple ability. I think this is a natural secondary attack, and thus suffers from -5 to-hit penalty. High dexterity and weapon finesse could somewhat mitigate that, and get it to hit at least sometimes. Once the illusions are in even misses should be really scary.
However the witch doesn't have any low level illusions. The knife master rogue archetype would have good synergy with the juggling idea above (more damage using dagger for sneak attack) - and once they're grappled I should be able to use sneak attack on them, right? --- Rogues also have UMD. However I did want her to be really ugly, so the charisma penalty to UMD could be really intense. Silent image is a first level bard spell, but there ought to be an easier way.
How about read magic (0-th level cantrip for witches) on a scroll, and then pass the spellcraft check to read a scroll with --- nevermind. In order to activate the scroll it doesn't only have to be another arcane spell, she has to have it on her list... *Does anyone know of a way to get her to use silent image?*
A Summoner could easily make the tiger-like creature as an eidolon. If you’re stuck fleshing out the concept with one character it might even be possible to come up with a mount via Improved Familiar, especially since Imps and Quasits can assume the shapes of size Medium animals. You can pick up a familiar with the Eldritch Heritage feat or by just taking a level of Sorcerer or Witch. A Beast Bonded Witch would be able to give the familiar feats to make it better in combat. How and if you can qualify for Improved Familiar might vary from table to table, so be sure to ask your DM if you’re planning on this. You could also consider using the Summon Monster spell or SLA to simply summon a mount. The SM list has fiendish leopards and later on even fiendish lions and dire tigers.
The snake haired woman could also be an eidolon since you pretty much have free reign to describe how your eidolon looks. You wouldn’t need any illusion magic to generate her unusual appearance though with Alter Self on the Summoner spell list it wouldn’t be tough to disguise her as a halfling sometimes if you wanted. While it might be a little tough to simulate the exact effects of attacking with snake-like hair an eidolon could get at least as close as a white haired witch by simply putting Tentacles on her head. If you’re willing to invest a little more you could take the Tail evolution several times and put Sting attacks on your Tails. If your eidolon’s “tails” are on her head and her “stings” are snake bites I think that’s just descriptive license. Sting attacks can carry poison, so this seems like a good way to handle the snake-hair long term when you get enough evolution points. You could also make her proficient with daggers via either an evolution or feat. I’d think that the Mounted Combat feat and an evolution to give her +8 to Ride checks might fit well with the mounted theme.
The axeman could be the Summoner. My girlfriend has a Barbarian2/Summoner12 PC who is quite effective. I’m sure other effective combinations are possible. Maybe the snake lady or her mount could take teamwork feats like Outflank to help boost your combat effectiveness. I can’t say without further analysis if this would be an especially effective build, but it should at least be doable. I’ll try to stat up a Summoner and eidolon for this concept since even if you don’t decide to go with it I’ll probably learn something useful I can use in another build.
Sorry, I didn't see the reply until now. Yes I'd be curious to see the build. Also here's the "image" I was trying to get to with words. Sometimes you just got to make the artwork to express the idea :D Image.
I figured if she's an NPC it would be much cooler if things aren't as they seem, so she can scare the s~%* out of a village and the low level PCs will be worried as well when they go get her. Action economy will ultimately be how they beat her. In the village once she grapples one with her hair the rest just flee. The PCs will work together probably.
Alchemist gives tentacles and vivisectionist gives sneak attack...
lvl 2 Witch would be enough for most of the effects if combined with the right tools. There's a trait that lets you use your intelligence to UMD, instead of charisma. The daggers only work if her dex is through the roof, or if the players have low armor class. Armor class doesn't go up as fast as other things with levels for most classes - then again at second level they might not yet have had the money to buy high AC armors.
At the time of the post I didn't quite realize how much freedom you get as a GM for just making s~*+ up, as long as it still ends up being a balanced encounter. i.e. not all NPCs should be playable as PCs. Still the mechanical constraints of building it like a PC can be really good for creativity for coming up with how it works. I'll give it some more thought. My players are just about level 3 now and 5 of them, soon enough they'll be level 4. So I guess that gives me a fair bit more room for other classes to make this a viable adventure.
Don't have the complete story figured out yet... but it could be cool :)
P.S. My players are Goblins, and I was thinking the not-really-tiger could be a pony, which is almost a horse and thus haaaated by the players. :)
Wow, that's quite a hiatus. I actually wrote up a build thinking that it might make a fun monster for my PCs to face. Please note this is not a very effective build. I was just trying to come up with something close to the image you presented.
This would be easier and more effective if there were two PCs, a Synthesist Summoner with an eidolon kind of like the one below, and a Barbarian/Druid with a big axe and a tiger animal companion. Not much work would be required for the conversion, but I think I've overshot the level you were looking for by quite a bit.
Snake Lady - Level 11 Small biped eidolon
Starting Statistics: Size Small; Speed 30 ft.; AC +2 natural armor; Saves Fort (good), Ref (bad), Will (good); Attack 2 claws (1d4); Ability Scores Str 12, Dex 14, Con 11, Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 11; Free Evolutions claws, limbs (arms), limbs (legs).
11th level - HD9, 5 feats, +8 armor bonus, +4 str/dex, evolution pool 15 points, max natural attacks 5
Ability Scores Str 16, Dex 23(27), Con 12(16), Int 7, Wis 10, Cha 11 = +1 dex due to HD, +1 con due to HD, +4 dex from evolutions, belt of +4 dex/con, +2 con from ioun stone
Feats: 1-Weapon Finesse, 3-Mounted Combat, 5-Power Attack, 7-Ability Focus (Poison), 9-Trick Riding
Evolutions (15) - skilled (Ride) -1, tail -1, tail -1, tail -1, sting -1, sting -1, sting -1, poison -2, ability increase (dex) -2, ability increase (dex) -2, weapon training -2
AC 33/38/42 (+10 natural armor, +4 mage armor, +8 dex, +1 size/+5 barkskin/+4 shield)
BAB+9 CMB+11 CMD29
Melee: 2 claws +19 (1d3+4), 3 stings +19 (1d3+4)
Power Attack: 2 claws +16 (1d3+10), 3 stings +16 (1d3+10)
Ranged:
(Greater Magic Fang +1/+1 on all natural weapons)
I’d consider ditching the weapon training for the daggers. Then you could give the rider energy attacks (say acid) or maybe raise her AC with improved natural armor. You could also give that +4 AC to the Summoner via Aspect. You could always use evolution surges to help the rider gain weapon proficiencies if needed.
I included Power Attack in the build since the eidolon’s Small size makes damage a little low. A holy amulet (if you’re fighting evil foes) or anything else which gives her some bonus damage dice would be very helpful. For instance, her damage potential without Power Attack is just 30, but that would leap to 65 against evil foes if she had a holy amulet. Add Power Attack and that becomes 95, which seems pretty respectable. Add on energy attacks and you could hit around 112. That’s not exactly great for an eidolon, especially since you’re likely to miss challenging foes half the time and only do around 60 actual DPR, but combined with the raging Barbarian/Summoner it might actually be kind of impressive.
Stuff like dropping Ability Focus (Poison) and Extra Rage to get Outflank
Uncle Istvan - Human Barbarian2/Summoner11
Starting Ability Scores: Str16 Dex12 Con14 Int7 Wis12 Cha16 = 20 point buy with +2 racial bonus
Level 13 Ability Scores: Str19(21) Dex12 Con14(16) Int7 Wis12 Cha16(20) = +3 Str due to levels, pink rhomboid ioun stone, deep red ioun stone, headband of +4 Chr
HP 114/153 (2d12+8 plus 11d8+44/+39 from rage)
AC 26/24 (+1 dex, +10 armor, +2 deflection, +2 shield ally, +1 dusty rose ioun stone/-2 rage)
Feats
Human - Power Attack!
1 - Raging Vitality
3 - Spell Focus (Conjuration)
5 - Augment Summoning
7 - Furious Focus
9 - Extra Rage
11 - Improved Share Spells
13 - Improved Crit
That build assumes that you’ll summon mounts for your rider via spells. If you’d rather use a familiar as a mount you could try
Human - Skill Focus: Knowledge (Planes)
1 - Power Attack
3 - Eldritch Heritage (Arcane)
5 - Raging Vitality
7 - Extra Rage
9 - Improved Familiar
11 - Improved Share Spells
13 - Improved Crit
This PC’s AC seems a little weak, so you might want to consider casting Barkskin for another +5 before combat. You could also consider giving him a bardiche or even the Lunge feat so he can fight from behind the eidolon. You could consider taking the “Heart of the Fields” racial trait so you can ignore the fatigue from dropping out of rage once per day. If you do you’ll get just 1 skill point per level before favored class bonuses though.
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Summoner. You'll have the Tiger as of 1st level as an Eidolon, you won't get the snake hair until 10th when you get some Evolutions for yourself (a tentacle or two is appropriate), but you can easily be a Goblin or particularly unattractive Halfling or Gnome.
Your Summoner can easily have a thrown weapon focus, which covers the knives, and do solid damage given their number of buff spells (a blinkback belt and agile dagger would help with this). And you can reflavor Black Tentacles to cover the 'snakes grappling you' thing if you like.