There are some notable house rules in place. The biggest one is that multiple attacks with the same weapon are turned into one attack with the base weapon damage multiplied by the number of attacks; so a 6th level hasted fighter w/14 Str and a longsword (no other bonuses) has a full attack that's +9 (3d8+2), while standard action attacks are +9 (1d8+2). If he was a shortsword TWF, it would be something like +7/+7 (3d6+2/2d6+2).
Another major house-rule is bardic music. There are two versions of inspire courage, offensive and defensive. The offensive gives a +1 attack, AC, weapon damage, and +5' to base speed. The defensive one gives +1 AC, saves, fast heal 1, and 5 temporary hit points (once per encounter for the last part). When the performance effect improves, all of the bonuses above are increased appropriately, and inspirational boost roughly exists.
Another house-rule is that Charisma is used for Will saves instead of Wisdom.
The other players of the party include
- Alden: A bard with a 20 Charisma and RPs similar to a cheesy politician running for office
- Malachai: human APG archery fighter who's vaguely gruff
- Ivaneve: A female human APG free hand fighter with her sword grafted to her arm in place of a hand. The player *loves* playing monstrous characters (metal masks welded to face, overly-scarred bruisers, people-eating gnolls, etc), and frequently they're personality mirrors the looks
- Jespelcaba: gnomish APG mobility fighter who acts like a hyperactive kid without Ritalin, making a point to tear to shreds every monster we kill and will take nearly half an hour to convince to not kill a kobold on sight (even one that we found in a prison, surrendered itself to us, & offered peace with its non-aggressive tribe)
- Earl: A paladin with ranks in Knowledge (tactics) and is still trying to come to terms with just how omnipresent ACP has been
I'm not sure what kind of personality to give him, at least as far behavior in-game or with the other characters. Any help there would be appreciated.Middle-aged elven diviner 3
Init +9 (act in surprise round); HP 19; AC 12 (+2 Dex), CMB/CMD -1/11; Saves +2/+3/+5 (+2 enchant), sleep immune
Stats 6, 14, 12, 20, 14, 14
Feats Scribe Scroll, Improved Initiative, Craft Wondrous
Traits Focused Mind (+2 concentrate), Warrior of Old (+2 initiative)
Skills Knowledge (arcana, architecture and engineering, history, planes) +11, Perception +7, Sense Motive +5, Spellcraft +11 (+13 identify)
Languages Aboleth, Azlanti, Common, Draconic, Elven, Hallit, Sylvan
Notable Equipment 867g4s, bonded item (ring), scrolls (mage armor, 162.5 scroll materials)
Spells 4/4+1/2+1, DC 15+SL, +9 concentration, +2 vs SR
Backstory Each of your race has a thousand goals and only one lifetime; Each member of our race but one goal and a thousand lifetimes. You shall become one with our purpose and your life will be put to better use then your limited perspective could even comprehend. If it might console you, know that the tales of your deeds shall outlive the rest of your species.
So thinks the aboleth race, many a resident of the Mordent Spire will make a brush with such a mind in order to understand what they fight. Amongst his people, future hunters are brought to a submerged speaking chamber, where the Azlanti people would commune with their cultural benefactors. Here the elf is tasked seek out a fragment within the ruins, abandoned before even the Starfall, while the memory stones and glyphs imprint themselves as they did on the Azlanti, attempting to put them in their place.
Marduk, strong of breath and stroke, seemed an ideal candidate to eventually become a hunter. However, he was too curious, and uncovered something best left forgotten. It was a master glyph of mental communion, and its magic was strong. Marduk’s brush with the mind of an aboleth became a cold dive into the abyss of their living consciousness and juggernaut of memories.
He screamed.
It was decades before he could form thoughts & memories again, a babbling idiot in Mordent Spire. His body atrophied with neglect as his mind slowly relearned how to be singular. Most of the Mordent Spire remember echoes of their experience, giving them a far-off look that unnerves those who don’t understand. For Marduk, his return to sanity brought terrible memories and understanding, as well as terror at the sea.
His mind retained the shape necessary for magic, some say it bordered on sorcery or psionics, and his studies of wizardry were like a fish relearning how to swim. Knowledge came easiest, as magic would almost coax him into tapping into the memories he nearly drowned in. While this helped him adapt and recover, he retained his fear of the sea and the aboleths beneath. So, he left where he thought he could escape their tentacled reach. Rarely, other elves meet with their brethren of the Mordent Spire, and Marduk sought them out to go to one of their cities. Once there, he took the gate to Kyonin to be as far from the sea as possible.
From there, he walked.
Marduk was uncertain of his thoughts in the beginning, so he shunned civilization. Eventually, he came upon a pair of gnomes seeking to rediscover the fabled Honey Horse, with a mane of honeycomb and a beehive tail. Their illusions and nonsense mythology dazzled Marduk, breaking him of his morose reverie with his first laugh in nearly a century. With that, his abject horror of the aboleths lessened, and purpose grew to fill the void left behind. He returned to civilization, finding himself in a land called Brevoy.
He knows the danger aboleths pose to the world, and Marduk fears them so. A single lifetime cannot face thousands. Perhaps a nation could fight them, a thousand lifetimes united in one goal. It will take time, but the aboleths see farther than even a single elf’s lifetime, but a nation can rise in that gap.
He has patience.
We've already got a few sessions under our belt, since I'm level 3 and all. Of course, I've got some gripes under my belt already too. I got the hairy eyeball for this one combat that started while we were on non-warhorses; instead of trying to control the horse (DC 15 Ride, failure = full-round action), I chose to accept landing prone with my move-action dismount so I could still cast a spell while the enemies were 60'+ through difficult terrain (undergrowth). The reason why I was looked down on was the whole 'playing by the rules instead of my character' BS.
Last session I got chastised for assuming an invisible creature was in a certain square by using rules-knowledge; specifically the knowledge of seeing the creature move 5' (out of reach of the fighter) then cast a spell to make itself disappear. I cast grease over the area where it likely was, and the gnome tipped over the cauldron "in frustration", which helped the others justify knowing which square it was in. The next round, we saw it reappear on the other side of the room in the motions of casting a spell (one of those one round cast time ones, like summon monster); and I probably would've been chastised at assuming it was an illusion and blasting the area near where it should be (party had normal movement blocked), had one of the other PCs not decide to charge it and discover it to be an illusion (giving us all a save at a +2, which only I made besides the charger who auto-made it). Everybody who failed the save treated it as real, despite two of our character's protests to ignore the illusion, so they all made their own attacks on it (thus revealing automatically for just themselves).
