Aetrimonde

Short post today: we’ll be covering Valdo’s choice of skills, perks, and languages, and since I introduced all of these concepts the first time around when covering Etterjarl Ragnvald, it won’t take much length at all today.

Skills

Valdo gets the following preferred skills:

• Arcana and Engineering (Der Eisenwald culture)
• Intimidate and Warfare (Outlaw stratum)
• Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Intimidate, Nature, Perception (Skinchanger class)

He’s also automatically trained in Nature from the Skinchanger class.

Because I’m leaning into the creepy and horrifying aspects of the ghoul skinchanger concept, Intimidate is an easy pick. Endurance is also a nice pick that ties into Valdo’s ghoul ancestry. Since Valdo is a hunter of monsters, I’ll also give him Perception, so that he can spot them, and wrap up the last of his four preferred skill choices with Arcana, so that he knows a little bit about the monsters he hunts.

For his final skill choice, I’ll give Valdo Stealth, for the ability to sneak up on his prey.

Valdo’s trained skills will be:

• +4 Arcana
• +5 Endurance
• +1 Intimidate
• +4 Nature
• +2 Perception
• +3 Stealth

Perk

My initial thoughts on Valdo’s perk is that there are far too many good choices. He could easily have an Esoteric Knowledge perk relating to some type of monsters common in Der Eisenwald, like vampires, lycanthropes, flesh golems, etc. (I’m of the opinion that “Monsters of Der Eisenwald would be too broad a subject, overlapping heavily with the Arcana and Religion skills, so Valdo would have to pick just one.) He could have Profession [Monster Hunter], which would apply to the actual work of monster hunting (finding leads, choosing supplies, preparing traps…maybe raising mobs…). Or he could have a Fame perk representing his (in)famous takedown of an entire coven of vampire spawn.

In the interests of variety, I’ll give Valdo the perk Fame [Victims of Vampires], making him a well-known (if somewhat feared) hero among people who have suffered the depredations of vampires.

Languages

Like Ragnvald, Valdo will speak Westerling as the presumed common language of this campaign. He will also speak Victish, one of the two languages suggested by the Der Eisenwald culture.

Up Next

In the next post on Valdo, I’ll be getting into the real mechanical meat of his character: the choice of powers, feats, and equipment.