Aetrimonde

Well, it’s Christmas Eve, and I’m going to wrap up creating Gwynne of House Midwinter. If it’s not clear, I couldn’t resist the urge to make Gwynne a tongue-in-cheek take on a Christmas elf, especially because (once I worked out what the timing would be) I’d be wrapping her posts up today.

So like with the previous two sample characters, I’ll be finishing by showcasing one way that Gwynne could advance to level 5. Unlike with those two, I’ll also be showcasing some magical items that Gwynne will be making herself…

Level 1

By the time she gains her first level, Gwynne has only just gotten her first taste of adventuring. And one of the first things she will have picked up on is that she really, really can’t handle it when a bunch of Autumn thugs gang up and surround her. So, as a partial solution to this problem, she’s going to pick up Phantasm…which doesn’t directly solve her problem, but she’s saving up for a magical item…and in the meantime, she does have allies who will love getting to swing away as their foes flee.

She will also take the Improved Elven Rejoinder feat, allowing her a way of regaining her Elven Rejoinder power after it fails to save her from an attack. This is because, again, she keeps getting surrounded by enemies, and no matter how she tries to dodge, she inevitably gets hit eventually…

As her level-1 perk, Gwynne will take Contacts, specifically with some old classmates from her Magisterium-run academy, who like her are not fond of the changes being wrought by the pact with Winter.

Level 2

Gwynne continues to expand on her capabilities as a force-multiplier, and in this case, she does so literally, picking the Summon Arcane Soldier power as an offensive version of her Summon Defender Construct power. This uses her concentration, but it synergizes very nicely with Phantasm. Unlike her Defender Construct summons, Arcane Soldiers have an actual attack, which they can make when summoned, then once per round using Gwynne’s minor actions, and as opportune actions when provoked by the movement of an enemy. As a greater power, Summon Arcane Soldier will not be repeatedly usable in a gadget, but it will make an excellent emergency tool for her allies, who can deploy it as a last-minute distraction as they make an escape, or to cause some chaos as they sneak by a group of guards. And if Gwynne chose, she could hand out a pair of these Gadgets to allies, and use the power herself, to summon a total of three of these constructs for an encounter.

Gwynne has by now saved up some funds that she will use to build herself a magical item…just as soon as she takes the Enchant Magical Item feat allowing her to do so.

And now comes the question: what will she be making with this feat? Gwynne continues to have trouble handling herself in melee, with her abysmal <STR>, and so she will build herself a magical weapon overcoming that weakness.

The Magebrand enchantment allows placing an Arcane power into a melee weapon, and in the process turning the power into a melee power. Coupled with Gwynne’s Phantasm power, this creates a sword that can be just tapped against an enemy to make them flee into the waiting blades of Gwynne’s allies…or back off far enough that she can do some fleeing herself. To the left are the “raw” Magebrand enchantment, and the abbreviated form of the magical item made by applying it to Gwynne’s longsword.

As her perk for this level, Gwynne will take the Esoteric Knowledge [Faerie Law] perk, giving her some additional insight into how Sidhe pacts work and how she might ensnare Winter-sworn agents using the wording of their bargains.

Level 3

Gwynne continues to find nasty tricks that combine with Phantasm, this time picking up Illusory Hazard. This power causes a foe to see themselves surrounded by dangerous things, which might by itself be enough to keep the foe from moving…but if it chooses nonetheless to move, or is forced to move by, say, Phantasm, it then becomes staggered. This combination is a little tricky to pull off on Gwynne’s own because of how quickly Illusory Hazard wears off, but if she passes one power or the other (or a Phantasmagoric Armament) to an ally, they can work together to use this to its full effect.

At this point most of Gwynne’s attack powers have the Illusion keyword, and this seems like a good time to make them more accurate. The Focused Spells feat will let her add her expertise to her attack rolls with these powers, thus keeping up with the more powerful enemies she has begun to face.

Gwynne is still a friend to all children, and as her level 3 perk will take Perform [Illusory Pantomime], allowing her to put on one-woman children’s plays. She no longer relies on a cast of actors to hang her illusions on, as she did in the service of House Midwinter’s solstice spectaculars, but conjures her cast out of thin air…which is also a handy way to distract the guards of the Houses she now suspects to be controlled by the Winter Court, as her allies sneak in to do some pilfering.

Level 4

Gwynne will keep picking up more spells to make enemies move and provoke opportune strikes or suffer the effect of Illusory Hazard. In this case, she picks up Summon Unbound Anomaly, another Summon power, but this time one that creates a dangerous, uncontrolled nexus of magical energies. While it deals damage, it does so without an attack roll, based on proximity alone: it therefore encourages enemies to either flee or use their attacks to destroy it (which is also a desirable outcome).

And with the addition of this third Summon power to her repertoire, Gwynne will also take the Energized Constructs feat, allowing her to add the fire damage of her Fire Bolt power (or any other damage types she later picks up among her Arcane powers) to her constructs: a powerful tool against the frozen servants of the Winter Court.

In their last adventure, Gwynne and her allies ensnared and exposed the leadership of a minor House as Winter-sworn agents. This came as no comfort to the rank-and-file members of the House, who were discovered to be suffering from a variety of Sidhe bargains that they had been tricked into. Gwynne has sworn to break the victims’ curses and return to them their memories, true names, and everything else that the Sidhe took from them, and is now a minor celebrity among those freed from Winter. Gwynne takes the perk Fame [Victims of the Winter Court].

Level 5

As she hits level 5, Gwynne will lean further into trickery: she has a variety of summoning powers…but why not make it look like she has even more? The Illusory Phalanx power creates an entire crowd of images that Gwynne can make appear as a horde or shield wall of summoned creatures. Combined with actual summoning spells, Gwynne can make this especially convincing…and if she gets her allies to help out (since she can’t concentrate on both at once) she can scatter summoned Arcane Soldiers among the zone of illusions. Together, this creates an area in which enemies are distracted by the illusion, but unable to escape the zone without taking opportune strikes from the summoned creatures. And it only gets better if Gwynne’s allies themselves are in the zone and ready to strike as well…

Because Gwynne now has so many tricks that rely on combining multiple of her powers together via Gadgets, it makes sense to let her create as many as possible. So, she will take the Extra Gadgets feat, giving her an extra Gadget that she can create during each rest (bringing her total to 3).

Gwynne has now saved up some more funds, and (with the aid of a greater power source that she found in the vaults of a Winter-sworn agent she and her allies exposed), she will now make herself another magical item, this time a magical wand helping to make her illusions more convincing.

A greater power source allows Gwynne to combine two enchantments on the same item: Gwynne will use the Energy Control enchantment to make her Illusion powers more convincing (i.e. having a higher attack bonus), building on the bonus she already has from Focused Spells. And the Coruscating enchantment will allow her Illusion powers to “spill over,” dazzling creatures around her, which is another way for her to get out of trouble if surrounded. (It applies to the melee-ranged version of Phantasm in her Startling Sword, too!)

As her perk for this level. Gwynne will take Ritual Magic, and as her three initial choices will learn the rituals Dispel Curse (in order to, hopefully, free the victims of Sidhe curses), Fabricate (for its usefulness in creating cold iron weapons, which must not be worked with fire), and Planeshift (allowing her, and her now cold-iron-armed allies, to take the fight into Faerie itself).

Up Next

And that wraps up Gwynne of House Midwinter. In the next year, I’ll be putting together at least one more sample character in this blog, and having already revealed the Fighter, Skinchanger, and Artificer, I’ve decided that this next sample character will be an Inquisitor, a Divine class able to denounce enemies as wicked and bind them with holy magics. Keep an eye out for some polls where you can decide what kind of inquisitor this next character will be…