Thursday, December 1, 2016

Gudbrand Andersen Lillesund Character

This post is for Maxwell's male human assassin.

Please look at the creation I made for Rowan.  This will follow the same general pattern.  Adjusting for age, Gudbrand gains +1 strength and +1 constitution for being mature.  Humans do not adjust for race.  This gives you:

Strength: 17 +1 to hit, +1 damage
Intelligence: 13
Wisdom: 11
Constitution: 14
Dexterity: 16 -2 armor class, +1 initiative bonus
Charisma: 10

As an assassin, you start with 1d8 for hit points.  This is a recent change I am making to the assassin character, changing it from a "thief" class to a "fighter" class.  At first level, hit points are always maximum, so you start with 8 hit points.  You weigh 160 lbs., giving you a d8 for mass hit points.  I rolled a 5, so you start with 13 hit points.

Your maximum encumbrance is 169 lbs.  You do not suffer any movement penalty if you carry 68 lb. or less.

Natural armor class is 7.  Your THAC0 is 20.

I'm afraid that there are three classes for which I have no sage abilities arranged: the assassin, monk and bard.  I will be working on these things.  In the meantime, you should decide on three weapon proficiencies that your character will possess.  Assassins can use any weapon, so pick from this list.

A "strange environment" for your character is anything that cannot occur in the temperate to arctic zone of your experience, or your familiarity with the sea.  Thus, a subterranean environment, a jungle or hot desert, anywhere underwater or flying through the air will give you a +2 initiative at the start of a battle.

The medal you won can be explained by your -4 penalty when throwing things at long range.  -5 is typical.  Therefore, we'll say you won a medal for throwing/firing a weapon.  If you wouldn't mind picking a throwing weapon as a proficiency (it would be nice if you picked something traditional for a Norwegian); if you're resistant to that, we can work out something else.

Your penalty of -1 to hit if you're awoken from a sleep lasts the length of the combat that follows.

The -1 modifier when speaking to spellcasters and sages is to charisma checks you must make; effectively, your charisma is 9 with these persons.  A "sage" is someone who possesses 100 points of knowledge in any subject.

27 comments:

Alexis Smolensk said...

Maxwell writes in an email:

"For one proficiency I'll surely take the hand axe, as axes seem suitably traditional. Thus I won my medal at throwing axes.

Can I backstab/assassinate with any melee weapon, or are there restrictions? Furthermore, while I assume it can't be done with a missile weapon, does a throw at point-blank range work?

My second proficiency is the godentag if I can backstab with that, and the longsword otherwise.

I want to hear back from you on the above questions, so I'll wait to pick a third proficiency until a little later. Hope that's alright. Sorry again I am kind of rushing around right now."

Alexis Smolensk said...

Backstabbing must be done with a blade of some kind. Assassination can be done with anything. Presume for the moment that you cannot assassinate with a thrown or fired weapon (it is a sage ability of higher than amateur level, unspecified at this time).

The godentag is a club with a spike driven through it, so it can't be used to backstab. It can be used to assassinate.

Maxwell Joslyn said...

OK, more complicated than I realized. In that case my proficiencies will be: hand axe, longsword, sling.

Alexis Smolensk said...

Good. That's all for today. I'll generate a pricing table for Stavanger tomorrow morning.

Maxwell Joslyn said...

Alexis,

The new background color for the comments on this blog (the light gray) makes the white text hard to read. Can you please change the background of the comments to the same gray as the post?

Anonymous said...

Test post as Gudbrand.

Anonymous said...

Second test post as Gudbrand. Wow there are a lot of steps when you don't want to use Google.

Alexis Smolensk said...

I fixed the comment background color. Took a lot of steps for that, too.

Maxwell Joslyn said...

Since we will spend so much time reading down in this section, I appreciate it!

Alexis Smolensk said...

It is too early to make a decision about your sage abilities, but here's a list to whet your appetite:

Assassin Sage Abilities

Maxwell Joslyn said...

The Gudbrand account (an AIM one) I was able to use the other day got locked for "suspicious activity." I went to make a new google account and it won't accept my phone number, saying it's not valid for the purposes of verification. I don't know what to do about this anymore. The AIM account would go into an infinite loop when I tried to comment (plus now it got locked anyway); Wordpress accounts no longer offer OpenID; and now google, which I honestly expected to be foolproof, doesn't work either. I'll keep trying

Alexis Smolensk said...

DO NOT USE YOUR PHONE NUMBER.

You can make a google account without the phone. I always do. Everytime I use the phone, it goofs things.

Try it. You'll see the phone isn't necessary.

Maxwell Joslyn said...

It seems to be necessary. I filled in all the other info, but even when I left the phone number field blank, on the next page it still asked for a phone number for verification before completing the process.

Maxwell Joslyn said...

I've tried using online "receive an SMS" services for this portion and google won't accept any of them as valid at the verification step. My own real phone number won't work either, which suggests this is a problem in google's phone-number-validation website. Who knows?

I tried going through the account process from both the blogger and gmail "get started" pages. I'm pretty frustrated. I'll try it again later and keep working on my equipment.

Embla Strand said...

I did not need to use a phone number, either, and I supplied my own, non-gmail e-mail account for this profile.

Alexis Smolensk said...

I did this process; when it asked for a phone number I simply ignored it. I'll have to sign out to see the page again. One moment.

Alexis Smolensk said...

Yep. No problem. Try creating a brand new gmail email address, rather than using your old email address for a new account. Don't try to make a new nick using your old details; pretend you're an entirely new person who has never used the internet before.

Gudbrand Andersen said...

I am happy to report that when it came time to record my google miseries in a video, they stopped appearing. I present to you Gudbrand's character account, and his blog. Here is the post with his character sheet and equipment as they exist right now:

https://gudbrand-andersen.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-guddest-of-brands.html

Does leather armor reduce AP by -1?

You mentioned writing a comprehensive CLO post soon, so I'll wait til then to calculate my CLO and reassess my clothing loadout.

Alexis Smolensk said...

Leather armor reduces armor class. Total weight reduces action points. Have you seen the encumbrance calculator?

You'll see a link for "Calculate Your Encumbrance!" on the Stavanger Market page.


Gudbrand Andersen said...

Forgive me, Alexis, I should have been clearer.

I have my encumbrance calculated (I copied the calculator into my character sheet). I know that total weight reduces AP and that higher armor lowers (improves) one's AC. All of that is familiar to me.

But I was under the impression that you also played rules in which heavier armors could also impose an AP penalty, with the higher of the armor or the carried weight's AP penalty being used. I remember it being leather armors are -1, mail and the other armors between mail and plate are -2, and plate is -3. Thus even if you aren't carrying much beside the armor, so that its weight alone wouldn't impact your AP, its bulkiness would serve to limit your AP anyway.

Am I mistaken? I found the below table on my hard drive, from a version of my rules, and thought for sure I'd originally based it on your work:

http://imgur.com/5rxCMFw

Alexis Smolensk said...

Kismet on the other campaign site asked me the same question.

We'll be using only encumbrance for this campaign. The other system, based on armor type, is for those campaigns not willing to embrace encumbrance.

Kismet, upon hearing this, wrote, "I for one embrace our new encumbrance overlords."

That's my feeling as well.

Gudbrand Andersen said...

For my 16 Dexterity, do I get a +1 to hit with ranged weapons?

Alexis Smolensk said...

Yes, that is correct ~ +1 to hit with hurled and fired weapons due to your dexterity.

Alexis Smolensk said...

I feel that you have enough detail now to choose your assassin's sage abilities. I'll expand whatever study you choose, that you rate as an amateur in ~ and you do have an assassination ability, whatever you choose (see under Murder).

http://tao-of-dnd.wikispaces.com/Assassin+Sage+Abilities

Let me know what you pick.

Maxwell Joslyn said...

It's really hard to choose. Presumably the downside to dragging my heels is that I have NO abilities until I make my selection. I'm OK with that, as we're in the middle of a fight just now.

Alexis Smolensk said...

I can't see the issue. You're thinking that the wrong choice will somehow cripple you. I remember during the classes that decision-making was a hard issue for you. I can't reward indecisiveness, however.

I don't know what I can say. This is the game.

Gudbrand Andersen said...

I wasn't being negative at all in my comment. There's no issue at all with how this works or what the tradeoffs are. I'm not refraining because I'm worried about making the wrong choice. I just want to take my time to think about how I want to play Gudbrand most of the time and where the field and specialty should go to reflect that, to give me a leg up on that kind of play.

Last time I rushed something I brought a sling to a swordfight, dithered around with a piece of twine, then got the shit beaten out of me by bugs. I wanna improve on that ... and there's no reason to rush myself when it might be all over for Gudbrand pretty soon. I'll pick them after the fight or not at all, eh?