Aetrimonde

Today, I’m getting down to the details on Valdo the Bat-Eater, the ghoul skinchanger. I’ll be picking his powers, feats (he gets an extra!), and starting equipment.

Powers

I’m going to approach Valdo’s powers a bit differently than I did Ragnvald’s. The Martial powers Ragnvald was choosing from can really be divided into just three groups: melee attacks, ranged attacks, and utility. There were very few melee attacks that wouldn’t have worked with Ragnvald’s chosen armament of a warhammer and shield.

Valdo, by comparison, is a Spiritual character, and Spiritual powers are divided into many more groups. There is first a division into four overarching types of spirits: ancient, animal, elemental, and land. As a skinchanger, Valdo will find Animal powers to be the most consistently useful. But within the Animal powers, there is a further division into five different types of animal, each with their own keyword: Bear, Panther, Serpent, Stag, and Wolf. I’m going to start off by deciding exactly what kind of animal spirits Valdo has bonded, and let that inform his choice of powers (and therefore playstyle).

Neither serpents nor stags seem like appropriate spirit animals for a ghoul: ghouls have no particular association with poisons, and stags…aren’t predators. Wolves could be a great spirit animal for a ghoul skinchanger who hunts in a pack with other ghouls…but Valdo is a lone hunter without a pack. This leaves bears and panthers as Valdo’s spirit animal, and I like the mechanics of both: Bear powers are about overwhelming force with a minor focus on surviving wounds (which meshes nicely with the ghoul ancestry); Panther powers are about mobility and attacks from ambush (which I like for Valdo the monster hunter).

With that choice settled, what will Valdo want his powers to accomplish? As a skinwalker, his class features are centered around doing damage, but he doesn’t have as much staying power as Ragnvald. So a good set of priorities for his powers may be:

• Two purely damaging attacks.
• A mobile damaging attack, letting Valdo disengage afterward.
• A way to recover from taking damage.

Let’s see how we can meet these priorities.

Feline Cunning will give Valdo a high-damage power he can use almost at-will. It does need the target to be flatfooted, but between flanking and stealth, Valdo can easily find a flatfooted target, and adding <CON> to damage is a significant increase to the damage it will deal. This is an Implement power, the first I’ve shown off; that keyword just means that the power can be used through an appropriate implement (a wand, staff, etc.), although it is not required.

Ursine Pin does not, itself, do a lot of damage, but it enables Valdo to do a lot more damage with other attacks. This power works by allowing Valdo to grab a target (which prevents it from moving, although there is more to it than this), knock it prone (which makes it flatfooted, enabling Feline Cunning), and causes Valdo’s other attacks (including Feline Cunning) to do more damage. It also allows Valdo to move into his target’s space; while he is allowed to do it safely, and thus will not provoke opportune strikes from other creatures, entering an enemy’s space always provokes an opportune strike from that enemy. Valdo may want to do this anyways, because certain feats provide benefits to Bear powers when in the target’s space.

Bounding Leap is a safer attack, allowing Valdo to leap in, attack an enemy, and then leap safely away. He may want to use this if he isn’t sure he can handle being in close quarters with a powerful-looking enemy. It does not grant additional movement, however: any movement that Valdo uses up to make the leaps that are part of this power count against his normal movement. The power also might have a niche use as a power dealing more immediate damage than Ursine Pin, and not requiring a flatfooted target like Feline Cunning, but as it deals only 2d8 + <WIS> damage, the greater power use it would cost is a steep price.

Fury of the Bear is not, actually, a way to recover after taking damage. But Valdo has a lot of ways to recover from or avoid dying to damage already, just from his ancestry features. If it turns out he needs more survivability, he can always pick up another power along those lines later. What Fury of the Bear offers is a way to strike back harder after taking some damage.

Feats

Valdo gets two feats at level 0, thanks to the Spirit Bond feature giving him a Multiclass Initiate feat for another Spiritual class. Let’s pick that one out first.

Valdo could begin multiclassing as either a Druid, Shaman, or Wakener. I think the Wakener would be simplest to make work with Valdo’s powers and feats, so we’ll go with that. The Wakener Initiate feat gives Valdo a choice of two class features from the Wakener class, in limited form: of the two, I think Spirit Domain is most interesting.

Spirit Domain creates a zone where enemies are challenged by Valdo, and his animal spirits have free rein. While in the zone, he can see and target all other squares in the zone with his attack powers, regardless of range (so he could use Feline Cunning without needing to be adjacent to the target, for example). The zone starts off filling a Pulse 1 (the space he used it in plus all squares within 1 square of it), but grows each time he uses a Spiritual power within it (only up to a Pulse 2, though, until he multiclasses further).

Describing the effect of Spirit Domain is a great opportunity to make Valdo memorable! Given that it challenges enemies, and his powers are all tied to animal spirits, I shall say that Valdo’s Spirit Domain creates an area filled with phantom bears and panthers that harass his enemies from every angle.

As for Valdo’s normal feat, there are a number of options that would work nicely for him.

Perhaps the simplest choice, given that he is a damage-dealer, Mighty Spirits would allow Valdo to deal increased damage (+2 now, up to +6 at higher levels) with Spiritual powers featuring either of two keywords. Given his choices of powers, these keywords should undoubtedly be Bear and Panther.

Improved Ghoulish Tenacity will give Valdo another way to recover his Ghoulish Tenacity power. Normally he would regain the use of this power if he avoids being brought down to 0 hit points until the start of his turn, but with this feat, even if he is brought down, he still regains the power as soon as he is healed above his injured value.

The Bear Totem feat would give Valdo a new choice of benefit that he could gain from Spirit Transformation, increasing the damage dice of Spiritual powers. And it stacks with the benefit granting +2 damage to Spiritual powers! With this feat, he could have Feline Cunning dealing 2d8 + 1d6 + 9 damage within two turns. As a side note, there is a Totem Animal feat like this for all five animal keywords…

Alternately, Valdo could just increase his Wild Strike damage from 1d6 to 1d8, which is a smaller boost, but doesn’t require as much setup as the Bear Totem option.

Or, rounding out the options for increasing his damage, Valdo could take Razor Claws, causing his Panther powers to also deal some repeated bleed damage. While this wouldn’t deal as much damage up front, and some creatures are immune to bleed damage, this would probably have the largest effect in the long run.

I like the Bear Totem option, so that’s what Valdo will take as his second feat.

Equipment

Unlike Ragnvald, Valdo really doesn’t need a melee weapon, since between his Carnivorous Bite and Spirit Transformation, he has multiple good unarmed attacks. But he does need an implement (a totem) for his Spiritual powers, and he does need armor. He should also probably pick up a ranged weapon of some kind, since all of his powers are melee-ranged. (This is something we can fix at higher levels.)

For his totem, Valdo could pick out a totemic staff, scepter, or wand, or he could pay to have a weapon turned into a totem. (This is unique to totems; implements for Arcane and Divine powers have their own special options in addition to the same staff, scepter, or wand forms.) As a monster hunter, and one who has hunted vampires, I like the idea of giving him a totemic hunting crossbow, festooned with the claws and fangs of his totem animals. He won’t actually be at all accurate with it, thanks to his -1 <DEX>, but it gives him an option. The crossbow costs 10gp; turning it into a totem costs another 20gp, and a pack of 20 bolts for it will be 1 more gp.

Valdo will want light armor, thanks to that same -1 <DEX>. He has +1 <GRA>, thankfully. His Spirit Transformation feature will give him 3 (<CON>) armor resistance if wearing light armor, and it doesn’t stack with resistance from actual armor, so there’s no need for him to pick out an armor with resistance. A leather greatcoat, offering +2 AC, will cost him another 10gp.

Next up, Valdo will pick up the same Basic Adventurer’s Kit that Ragnvald did, running another 15gp. And…that’s really all he needs! All that gear comes to a grand total of 56gp, leaving him 44gp for incidentals. Compared to Ragnvald, he’s rolling in liquid assets…which I kind of like, since it suggests that Valdo doesn’t really spend money on himself, as he sees no point in fripperies.

Up Next

With all the decisions made for Valdo, the next post in this series will work out all the math for him and provide a copy of his character sheet. And then, just in time for Halloween, I’ll present some options as to how Valdo might advance up to level 5.

I’ll also be sprinkling in some posts about enemies, and since it’s spooky season, lots of them will be undead…including some vampires like the ones Valdo has hunted. Stay tuned!