Aetrimonde

Today, continuing with Ipki Chainbreaker, goblin Inquisitor, we’re going to go over Ipki’s choices of skills, perk, and feat.

Skills

Ipki gets Religion as a trained skill from her class (natural for a Divine class) and the following preferred skills to choose from:

• From the Inquisitor class: Deception, Insight, Perception, Religion, Society, Subterfuge.
• From the Unclaimed Reaches culture: Endurance, Nature.
• From the Unionist stratum: Intimidate, Persuasion.

As a side note, I think this might be the first sample character with no overlaps in their preferred skills.

To represent her concept as a hardline abolitionist, I want Ipki to have the Intimidate and Society skills as two of her choices from the preferred list: she knows how to put fear of Deum Radiant into the hearts of slavers, whether in person or through a campaign of social pressure.

However, as an Inquisitor, Ipki also needs to be able to work from the shadows: unlike a Paladin or Crusader, she can’t just march into a slave camp and start smiting. In order to infiltrate, sabotage, and undermine a batch of slavers, I’m also going to give her Deception and Subterfuge, from the preferred list, and Stealth as her one unrestricted choice.

Ipki’s trained skills will be:

• Deception (CHA): +6
• Intimidate (CHA): +6
• Religion (INT): +1
• Society (INT): +1
• Stealth (GRA): +3
• Subterfuge (DEX): +3

That +1 Religion is going to be interesting: it means that Ipki won’t necessarily know a lot about her own faith (although I would definitely give favor to many Religion checks related to Deum Radiant). Ipki will be strong in her faith, but not well-tutored: she knows in her heart what Deum Radiant asks of her, but perhaps can’t put it into words, and certainly won’t be winning any formal theological debates.

Perk

As a firebrand slave liberator, I think the natural perk for Ipki is Fame. Specifically, Ipki will be famed among Goblin Abolitionists. (Referring, to be clear, to abolitionists working to end goblin slavery, not abolitionists who are themselves goblins.)

Feat

As per usual, feats available to Ipki fall into familiar categories that improve ancestry or class features, or specific kinds of power. As an Inquisitor, Ipki has access to Doctrine feats that are available to Divine classes.

Devout Prayers is a fairly standard feat: it allows Ipki to add her expertise bonus to certain kinds of power. Ipki really wants to hit with her powers, so that she can apply their recoverable effects, so adding expertise to attack rolls is more valuable than doing so for damage rolls. She would want to pick the Wrath keyword, which encompasses all of the powers she has chosen so far.

Improved Goblin Discretion would allow Ipki to use Goblin Discretion defensively, when she is missed by an attack rather than when she misses. This is useful as a way for her to get out of the way of a sudden, unexpected attack, or set up to flank an attacker.

Ipki also has access to a few ancestry feats shared between Undersized ancestries (goblin and halfling in the Core Rulebook, although I have some others that didn’t make the cut…) and representing the benefits of their small size: Beneath Notice allows her to remain unseen at the start of a fight, which is useful for a character who wants to avoid drawing attention.

Surprise and Fear allows Ipki to apply recoverable effects during a surprise round and not worry that they will wear off before combat properly starts. This would be more useful if Ipki had some powers that applied recoverable effects to several enemies; perhaps it will be a good choice at a later level. (Author’s Note: Surprise and Fear is one of three feats whose names form a reference to a certain comedy sketch…)

Brilliant Denunciation is a Denunciation feat, a group of Inquisitor-specific feats that cause recoverable effects to multiply on Denounced targets. This one applies an additional dazzled condition, which would be redundant for Blinding Bolt (since it already blinds), but would add utility to Burning Bolt and Peal of Thunder.

As the final feat I’m going to preview here, Radiant Exemplar is an Exemplar feat, available to any Divine class but requiring that a character worship a specific deity. The CRB contains a couple of Exemplar feats for each of the faiths in the book; unsurprisingly, Deum Radiant’s Exemplar feats revolve around light. Radiant Exemplar gives Ipki access to a long-lasting, hands-free, no-concentration light source, which is a comparatively rare thing. And, the light can be improved with additional effects by a successive feat…

Of these options, I think that the most appropriate to Ipki’s character concept is Surprise and Fear, so I’ll be going with that. But several of these feats are useful enough that I’d probably be picking them up as Ipki gained levels.

Up Next

The next post on Ipki will tie her together: we’ll pick out some equipment, and then fill out some values on her character sheet. Stay tuned!