So my friends and I just got to book 2 and have begun divvying up the governmental roles. Then we thought, rather than hire NPCs to fill in the gaps we'd all make secondary characters. I thought about doing something a bit different for the Spy Master and suggested I make a druid. It seems pretty cool because I could use nature to spy and also the druid tends to be neutral/objective, so wouldn't likely be swayed by outside influences or his own motives.
I was wondering what archetypes/feats/traits/spells/magic items/strategies you think would be helpful in accomplishing this. For example, I saw the Pack Lord archetype that lets you have multiple animal companions and empathic link with them like a familiar.
Also we like to play with some party intrigue and so I was thinking about sending secret messages to the DM of various ways to try and weed out if there are any traitors in our party/secondary characters.
For example, one of the PCs secretly turned in a bounty and gained a large sum of money. He wasn't very covert about it, but we didn't know exactly how much he got. But then when we said like, "Dude we need that for the kingdom," he said "oh here's 5000gp" like it was nothing. So we kind of suspected him of potentially being a spy/thief. So I thought maybe feed him info/string him along via the Spy Master to see what he's up to whether it's treason or stealing from the kingdom or if he is in fact innocent.
If you have ideas on how to weed out certain potential problems within the party for various other PCs, without my actions swaying them to do wrong, let me know also.
I think there's urban Druid that let's u get that 13th level thousand faces ability much earlier
Having played a vanilla Druid in kingmaker (although not the spymaster), I do most of the groups scouting and some non-social spying, especially when I got to wild shape.
So I'd basically say you have a lot if flexibility here. With wild shape, plus a somewhat limited spell list (scrying, animal/plant/stone related charms, dominates or talking), all covers scouting or listening in. Add normal social skills can make u quite decent, archetype makes u even better(probably 6th or 9th level I think) , though I think some poison immunity may be delayed
Awaken animal. How many people really pay attention to rats, squirrels, and pigeons in a city?
Edit: or awakened plants. That tree in Central Park is actually an informant. Lol
For that matter generous casting of speak with plants, rocks, Animals, etc would accomplish a similar thing.
Druid is actually a genius class for a spymaster.