Heartless Winter


Strange Aeons

Grand Lodge

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Running this AP for my homegroup, I have to wonder what was up with Winter. She's a cleric of Pharasma, and when she requests the PCs to help out- one of the tasks is tending to some wounded.
Winter is a cleric, with two wounded wards in her care... why can't she just heal them herself?
She also has Create Water, yet she asks the survivors to collect water from the windows. Likewise, couldn't she use "Purify Food & Drink" to prevent a bad cook from ruining everyone's evening meal?

Any ideas how I should role play her lack of compassion for her own wards?


The purify question is easily answered. No one knows you're.a bad cook (and should have your food purified) until you ruin everyone's meals.

The healing spell question is a little trickier. It's possible she used her daily allotment healing others? She also may be worried they won't make it if they don't get healed by morning when she gets more?

The create water one seems like she's just stingy about handing out divine solutions when mundane ones exist.

This is just speculation -- maybe some excuses you can give your players.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I re-statted her as a Cult Hunter Investigator. No alchemical lab, no components, no extracts. There, problem solved.

Grand Lodge

Then comes the problem of them asking her to possibly help. I wouldn't know how to restat her as the Investigator.

I'll probably just play her off as not wanting to spread false hope. if she can heal, and create water, what else could she possibly do?
So, she's keeping a low profile with her abilities.


I played it off as her being extremely paranoid about using her spells -- just in case she needs them for "later." Now this really doesn't make sense when you realize "well you're about to sleep for the day, and create water is almost infinite," but I also figured that she's just super paranoid and honestly probably not thinking straight given the current situation.


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Not sure if I'm late here, but what I've done is simply change her from cleric to inquisitor. No stat change is really necessary and you can explain her lack of healing simply because she doesn't know the spells.

She is still connected to the church and also fits her 'theme' of an investigator.


Honestly, I'd just hand-wave it.

If you really want to, you can say that the people she is tending are suffering from a long-term debilitating effect that can't be fixed by cure light wounds, such as an infection: that's a disease effect and she is not of sufficient level to cast remove disease.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

That's how I'd rationalize it, W&A. Winter's not an adventurer - she's basically a cloistered priestess who was assigned to this job by her Mother Superior. Despite being 3rd level, she's way out of her depth.

Personally, I'd modify her spell list so she doesn't have useful stuff like create water or purify food & water prepared, simply because it hadn't crossed her mind to prepare it. She doesn't have Knowledge (arcana) or Spellcraft, so she doesn't exactly have a head for magic. That way, the PCs get to be the ones to suggest using those spells either in place of mundane resource gathering, or perhaps in addition to it.

Paizo Employee Developer

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My thoughts on it were like this: Winter is being conservative with her spells, knowing that if she used everything at once, the group might not have enough if something deadly happened. She has a lot of people to look after and having any amount of help is a good thing that will help set her mind at ease. Like others have said above, she's in way over her head, and being a calm and careful person, she's not rushing to any decisions until they need to be made, especially when it comes to using precious resources.

Now, if her available healing is something that bothers you about the narrative and you want to change something to make more sense, I'd just drop the "Attend Wounded" task instead of changing her class. That task was there because it makes sense that some of the survivors would be hurt, but it also talks mainly about using the Heal skill, which takes time—enough time for the PCs to talk with Winter while they help out the survivors.

Also, I probably shouldn't have mentioned water being a resource that the survivors need to worry about.


I've been running it that she's loosing connection to Pharasma through doubt and fear. The strange mist surround her, the living rise from slumber as ghouls and she can't trust strangers lest they be shapechangers. She's trapped in a chapel servicing patients. She prays to Pharasma but feels a loss of the divine connection. Her doubts blind her, the chapel just may be her tomb... everyone's tomb. She holds tight to that last spark of the divine favor of Pharasma and she doesn't want to loose it needlessly, every channel precious, every spell may be her last.

Effect: What she's got is all she gets. Winter's spells and channels don't replenish over the course of the book. Adds to the limited resourcing the players get.


My take on this is that I'm going to make Winter an Inquisitor. The picture of her already looks like an investigator-type clergy, in my opinion.

To make things more interesting, she is an inquisitor that took Inflict Wounds instead of Cure Wounds as one of her spells. That, and having eyes of different colors (and some roll to identify her as a Changeling) should make players suspicious of her, at least in the begining.

Paranoia is a very good way to instill fear in the players.


Adam Daigle wrote:

My thoughts on it were like this: Winter is being conservative with her spells, knowing that if she used everything at once, the group might not have enough if something deadly happened. She has a lot of people to look after and having any amount of help is a good thing that will help set her mind at ease. Like others have said above, she's in way over her head, and being a calm and careful person, she's not rushing to any decisions until they need to be made, especially when it comes to using precious resources.

Now, if her available healing is something that bothers you about the narrative and you want to change something to make more sense, I'd just drop the "Attend Wounded" task instead of changing her class. That task was there because it makes sense that some of the survivors would be hurt, but it also talks mainly about using the Heal skill, which takes time—enough time for the PCs to talk with Winter while they help out the survivors.

Also, I probably shouldn't have mentioned water being a resource that the survivors need to worry about.

The way that I did it was that the patients ultimately fought against the healing (aka making will saves against the healing) as this is a mental institution after all.


Adam Daigle wrote:
Also, I probably shouldn't have mentioned water being a resource that the survivors need to worry about.

The water collection doesn't make sense as a necessity, but it does in terms of giving the survivors a task to perform connected with their ongoing survival.

Paizo Employee Developer

Good point. Thanks for the backup. :)

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Personally, I would have expected that Winter is keeping her healing spells for healing the guards during an altercation with the Dopplegangers, or some other sort of attack on the survivors. This also means Winter is a backup healing resource the players can call on once they've made an impression on her, especially if they have been working to help the other survivors.

Scarab Sages

It's also worth noting that she does not have a holy symbol in her stat block. This obviously means she cannot heal reliably. Perhaps she's simply not willing to take that risk.

There is a wooden holy symbol of Pharasma in location B11. Perhaps she dropped it there fleeing from the ghouls and doppelgangers during earlier events.


I played this that Winter wants people to be helped, and is capable of using these spells, and this WAS her plan prior to the PC's showing up, but that now that the PCs are here, her plan changes.

I played Winter as very suspicious of the PCs and their motives. She wants to save any channels in case of ghoul attack, and save any cure spells she has in case one or more of the PCs turn out to be dopplegangers. Can she (or her people) do some of the tasks needed? Sure...but she primarily assigns these tasks to the PCs so that she can have someone watch them and report back to her on what the PCs are up to, how willingly they help out, if they seem genuinely concerned, etc. (I had Winter always have a guard on the PCs at first 24-7 who kept their distance and tried to look inconspicuous who's duty was to report back to Winter at the end of their shift). After the party cleared out Oathsday and helped get the boilers running I then had Winter trust the PCs enough to leave them unwatched).

Create water also only makes 2 gallons of water per level and consumes a spell slot. It's recommended in disaster situations to have 1 gallon of water available per person per day for drinking, cleaning, teeth brushing, etc.

She simply does not have enough water for all the people she is protecting unless the PC's fix the boiler room, etc.

If the survivors have another water source, she also gets to use this spell slot on something else.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Quote:
Create water also only makes 2 gallons of water per level and consumes a spell slot.

Except it's an orison, so can be cast every single round of every waking hour, if need be. Assuming the camp has 30 people (which I think is a little exaggerated), she could make enough water for all of them for a day in 18 seconds...(Level 5 = 10 gallons per cast, enough for 10 people at a go). The real problem might be something to store the water in afterwards.

Also...it's an orison...there likely isn't much else she needs this slot for right now for the defense of the camp. Her current spell selection is clearly set up for keeping the camp safe (purify food and drink, stabilize, even guidance). Given she's a cleric of Pharasma, and she likely knows there are undead about, she should probably have Disrupt Undead available, but that's about it.

Quote:
It's also worth noting that she does not have a holy symbol in her stat block. This obviously means she cannot heal reliably.

Actually, neither Lesser Restoration or Cure Light Wounds needs a Divine Focus. Nor does Deathwatch. Even if Winter doesn't have a Holy Symbol (which I think is just an oversight - I don't recall any clerics in Pathfinder material having their holy symbols explicitly listed in their equipment, unless it's valuable), she's still pretty capable of healing.


I ran it as Winter being wise, as befits the wisdom score. She was already the leader of the refugees, making herself the water provider, food purifier, and healing dispenser would make the refugees too reliant on her. With shapechangers a very real and known threat, the risk of her being replaced was already bad enough, but if the refugees were also dependent on her for the previously mentioned items, such a loss would be devastating even if the doppleganger-Winter was dealt with.

Better to "play it safe" and hold her divine powers in reserve for truly desperate moments.

And there is also the fact that the asylum itself has a strong negative focus on divine remedies. That attitude might permeate the surviving staff (and some patients) as well.

Just how I saw it.


YogoZuno wrote:
Quote:

Create water also only makes 2 gallons of water per level and consumes a spell slot.

Except it's an orison, so can be cast every single round of every waking hour, if need be. Assuming the camp has 30 people (which I think is a little exaggerated), she could make enough water for all of them for a day in 18 seconds...(Level 5 = 10 gallons per cast, enough for 10 people at a go). The real problem might be something to store the water in afterwards.
Also...it's an orison...there likely isn't much else she needs this slot for right now for the defense of the camp. Her current spell selection is clearly set up for keeping the camp safe (purify food and drink, stabilize, even guidance). Given she's a cleric of Pharasma, and she likely knows there are undead about, she should probably have Disrupt Undead available, but that's about it.

Point taken. I hadn't considered that under the Orison rules she can create 2 gallons of water per level an infinite amount of times per day.

Pretty silly to think a first level cleric can practically create a lake if he wants.

I think I had calculated 30 people at one point when I did the math, so yeah, easy for her.

so then I'd go with the main idea of my post, she's doing it for the purpose of watching the PCs.


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I'm getting ready to run this in a week or so (just waiting for my current group to finish putting Hakotep I down for good, we had to pause mid-battle with him in our last session), and I have a feeling that my group is probably going to wonder some of these same questions, and I also don't want to let them get to the point where they're relying too heavily on her for aid. So I re-statted her as an Inquisitor, to make her more in line with her job, and to answer the question of 'why not' with 'she can't.' I upgraded her to level 4, so that she can still cast lesser restoration a couple times per day, but she doesn't know any cure spells and has no ranks in the Heal skill. I left her gear the same, so her only healing ability is the one, single, solitary potion of cure moderate, which she's holding onto for a dire emergency. Here's what I've got, in case anyone else wants to do something similar:

Winter Klaczka (Inquisitor 4):
Winter Klaczka
Female Changeling Inquisitor of Pharasma 4
N Med Humanoid (Changeling)
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., perception +4
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Defense
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AC
18, touch 13, flat-footed 15 (+4 armor, +2 dex, +1 dodge, +1 natural)
HP 25 (4d8+4)
Fort +5, Ref +4, Will +9
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Offense
-------------------------------------
Speed
30 ft.
Melee mwk dagger +3 (1d4-1/19-20) or 2 claws +2 (1d4-1)
Ranged mwk dagger +5 (1d4-1/19-20)
Special Attacks judgement 2/day
Domain Spell-Like Abilities (CL 4, concentration +8)
__7/day - gentle rest
Spells Known (CL 4, concentration +8)
__2nd (2/day) - calm emotions, lesser restoration
__1st (4/day) - bless, deathwatch, divine favor, protection from evil
__0 (at will) - disrupt undead, guidance, purify food/drink, stabilize
Domain Repose
-------------------------------------
Statistics
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Str
8, Dex 14, Con 10, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 15
BAB +3; CMB +2; CMD 14
Feats Combat Casting, Dodge, Precise Strike
Languages Common, Varisian
Skills bluff +6 (+8 vs creatures sexually attracted to her), diplomacy +6, intimidate +8, knowledge (religion) +6 (+9 to identify creatures), sense motive +12, spellcraft +6, survival +11 (+13 to follow tracks)
SQ Cunning Initiative, Detect Alignment, Monster Lore, Solo Tactics, Stern Gaze
Combat Gear potion of cure moderate wounds; Other Gear chain shirt, mwk dagger, cloak of resistance +1, wooden holy symbol of Pharasma

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