I've been starting to dive into fleshing out a couple of the companions that got shorter entries focusing on both Harrim and Jaethal. For the former, the brief bits in the book feel right. For Jaethal on the other hand I'm questioning the NE Champion suggestion w/ Cleric multiclass. The tenet of "Subvert or corrupt everything in your path that is pure and good, and sow doubt among those upholding such ideals." feels too active, non-nuanced for her. She's selfish, hedonistic, coldly calculating, and dismissive of the value of most things, but not an active desecrator. And for me that makes her more interesting, and her suggestions/etc to the party wouldn't be as cartoony-evil/instantly dismissible, while still potentially leading to moral complications.
Fighter w/ Cleric dedication or Cleric (warpriest) with Mauler dedication both feel like they might work just about as well mechanically, while keeping her personality more "its complicated".
(A quick scan of the others don't highlight any problems either, Octavio/Regongar are both simple to build. K&K I'd build with the playtest rules for now before updating, instead of the sorcerer suggestion.)
I was surprised to see Jaethal suggested to be a Champion, as that’s fairly different from the Inquisitor she was in the game.
Creative Director
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I was surprised to see Jaethal suggested to be a Champion, as that’s fairly different from the Inquisitor she was in the game.
That choice was made because inquisitor wasn't expected to be a 2nd edition class anytime close to when this book would come out. Champion is the closest analogy for her character I decided, so I went with that. Since she doesn't actually have stats in this, if someone in some possible future has access to a 2E inquisitor (there's no plans for anything like that at this time, just to manage expectations), feel free to stat her up as one.
Playing around more this morning with alternative builds for Jaethal, I'm thinking that precision ranger w/ cleric dedication might get closer that what I was trying before.
Though perhaps I can reconcile the desecrator tenet with her crpg personality by channelling the combination of her previous elven lifespan/undead immortality into such long term planning/vision that it still feels more passive/background desceration -- maybe with a touch of (internal) arrogance that she feels just her presence is enough to corrupt the good around her.
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FWIW, and thanks to a build posted by Nicolas Paradise in a thread about Harrim, I built Jaethal on Pathbuilder as an Ancient Elf (MC Cleric) Vindicator Ranger with the Revenant rare background to give her void healing.
And I added Battle Medicine as a bonus feat, since the background does not give you any.
FWIW, and thanks to a build posted by Nicolas Paradise in a thread about Harrim, I built Jaethal on Pathbuilder as an Ancient Elf (MC Cleric) Vindicator Ranger with the Revenant rare background to give her void healing.
And I added Battle Medicine as a bonus feat, since the background does not give you any.
I would like to see how you built Vindicator for her. When I tried to rework her this way it didn't feel as good as being some other mix of classes because Vindicator has no 2h weapon feats or really combat feats that support that play style at all for her Scythe.
Revenant is what I used for the background also.
It may be interesting to just build her using NPC rules because if you play the Owlcat CRPG and allow her to indulge her powers she gets some bonous abilities that can't easily be emulated with class and skill feats.