Aetrimonde

I’m almost done with Gwynne of House Midwinter, elf artificer (and blatant holiday elf…). Today, I’ll be filling in the numbers based on all the choices made in the previous posts.

Health and Healing

As an artificer, Gwynne has a base of 24 hit points; expertise brings that to 28, and +1 <CON> will bring it up to 32, making her squishier than either Valdo or Ragnvald. Her injury value will be 16.

The artificer class also provides 3 base resurgences, increased to 4 by Gwynne’s <CON>. A resurgence or other large heal will restore 1d10 + 2 hit points.

Gwynne has fewer hit points than Ragnvald, or even Valdo, and I think that reinforces my decision to design her as a support character. She won’t be able to take a lot of hits, and should remain far from the thick of a fight.

Defenses

As always, defenses are 10 + half Gwynne’s expertise bonus (+1) + some other relevant values:

• AC: 15 = 11 + 3 (maille shirt) + 1 (<GRA>)
• Brawn: 12 = 11 + 1 (<CON>)
• Poise: 12 = 11 + 1 (<GRA>)
• Wit: 17 = 11 + 2 (artificer) + 4 (<INT>)
• Composure: 13 = 11 + 2 (<WIS>)

So Gwynne is going to be getting hit a lot, except by attacks vs. her Wit (like illusions, feints, etc.). She can perhaps fix that by using her Ward power on herself, which will do a lot to protect her against AC and Poise.

Attacks and Damage

Gwynne has only three attacks worth noting: her longsword, her longbow, and her Fire Bolt power. Each uses a different ability:

• The longsword, using <STR>, has a +2 precision bonus, but with -1 <STR>, the total attack bonus will be a paltry +1, and it will deal only 1d8 – 1 damage.
• The longbow will be a little bit better: with +1 precision and +1 <DEX>, it will have a +2 attack bonus and deal 1d10 + 1 damage. (No risk of rolling 0 damage here, although it will still suffer heavily against anything with notable armor resistance…)
• However, Fire Bolt is much better, since it uses Gwynne’s +4 <INT>. With a +4 vs. Poise attack bonus, dealing 1d8 + 4 fire damage and 1d4 + 2 (based on +2 <CHA>) repeated fire damage, this will be Gwynne’s mainstay when she has to do her own fighting.

Skills

Gwynne’s maille shirt comes with a -1 encumbrance penalty, which must be factored into her skills:

Acrobatics +0	History +6 (Trained)	Persuasion +2
Arcana +6 (Trained)	Insight +4 (Trained)	Religion +4
Athletics -2	Intimidate +2	Society +4
Deception +2	Medicine +6 (Trained)	Stealth +0
Endurance +0	Nature +4	Subterfuge +2 (Trained)
Engineering +6 (Trained)	Perception +2 (Trained)	Warfare +4

Gwynne has broadly decent skill bonuses, thanks to her high <INT> being used in knowledge skills like Nature, and her moderate <CHA> being used in social skills. Where she suffers is in physical skills, where she has poor-to-awful abilities, not to mention encumbrance.

Movement

With base speed of 6, a maille shirt with no movement penalties, and +1 <GRA>, Gwynne is moderately mobile: she can, at least, step back away from an attacker in order to throw a Fire Bolt, although if she gets surrounded she may have trouble getting away. The Lightfooted elf feature will also be helpful when she needs to move through rough terrain.

Carrying Capacity

Gwynne’s -1 <STR> will give her a low carrying capacity at 40kg of bulk. Between her armor, weapons, and various other pieces of kit, she’s already pushing this limit a little bit.

Initiative

Like Valdo, Gwynne has +0 <CUN> and thus +0 initiative, meaning that she’ll generally not be going first in a fight. Unlike Valdo, Gwynne doesn’t have the powers that would reward ambushing. This isn’t actually the worst thing: as a support character, going later in the initiative order can let Gwynne see what the other combatants do and then provide healing and support as needed.

Up Next

Gwynne is almost finished: like Ragnvald and Valdo before her, I’ll wrap up by walking through one way that she could advance through the first few levels of her adventuring career. And, since I’ve now introduced some of the mechanics behind magical items, we’ll be covering some items that she might find, buy, or make during those levels!

In the meantime, here’s Gwynne’s level-0 character sheet: