Ravenloft - Dominic Mendelsohn

Race: Human

Class: Ranger

Level: 6

HP:

Sex: Male

Age: 29

Height: 6'1''

Weight: 82kg

Languages Known: English, Latin





Strength: 11

Dexterity: 16

Constitution: 12

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 10

Charisma: 8



Fort: +6

Ref: +7

Will: +4



BaB: +6/+1



Feats and Abilities: Endurance, Urban Tracking, Improved Combat Style (Two Weapon Combat), Monster Knowledge, Quick Draw, Weapon Finesse, Iron Will, Stealthy



Skills:

Climb - 5

Sense Motive - 9

Ride - 2

Knowledge (Religion) - 5

Listen - 6

Spot - 8

Search - 6

Gather Information - 5

Use Rope - 3

Hide - 3

Move Silently - 3



Equipment:

Chain Shirt

Mwk Brace of Flintlock Pistols

14 Pistol Rounds

Rapier

Dagger

Heavy Horse

Heavy Crossbow

4 Silver Bolts

6 Blessed Iron Bolts

9 Bolts

Bible

Greatcoat

wb oli long time no see.

looks to me like a character that 100% fits the mood of the campaign etc, however theres a couple of things that might be worth thinking about. obv i not DM but off the top of me head:

crosses over too much in some areas with tromo's PC. the wilderness stuff etc. what id do to mitigate that is switch it more urban ranger maybe, lessen survival or drop it altogether- switch it for sense motive, bluff maybe. (handy in this dudes line of work).

also, witch hunter, vs spell caster. now we already have this issue with adelinde who's pious and likely to be not cool with EVIL magic, but this is another level on maybe. so be careful on that front and have a think about how we can cope with this long term.

on the plus side, magic is likely to be not very common or overt i reckon you guess correctly when you assume your magic like abilities will not exist.

so in short, id say this needs to be the rapier/pistol journeyman type dude and less ranger of the woods. IMHO.

Alright.

First of all, welcome back and nice PC, the type suits Ravenloft perfectly. However there is going to need to be some adjustment, much Mike has touched on but I'll repeat and add bits in when and where required.

1. I think you'd benefit from widening the range of the character from Witch Hunter to Monster/Evil Hunter. I'd then suggest switching to an urban style, I.E. routing out the hidden devils hiding amongst men.

This makes sense because evil monsters etc tend to live where their food is in supply, which is large population areas. Thus are the areas a hunter would end up lurking more so. As a bonus this also preserves Stanislav's rural aspect and gives you your own which I think is more fitting.

To achieve this you would switch Tracking for Urban Tracking. Urban Tracking uses Gather Information and lets you find people and stuff in built up areas. I'd also change Wild Empathy so that instead it gives you a +half PC level bonuses to Gather Information and Sense Motive. Two key skills for yourself.

Which means you really don't need survival at all, so seriously may wish to remove it entirely for the new skills.

2. No Animal Companion. No Spells.

3. Magic is really rare, in fact to the common man, it's just a thing of evil and doesn't really exist/has never really been seen. So to the common man, any magic is witchcraft and often (as in real life) plenty of people get burnt alive without magical ability (superstition etc).

You would be much better off having a more educated and experienced Hunter that knew that magic did exist, but it's mere existence isn't proof of evil, more the use of it (perhaps witnessed magic in the past being used for both good and evil, or perhaps a fellow witch hunter used some to kill an evil beast. If you'ved played Witcher 1 or 2, you could see how monster hunting and magic work). If he understands that magic is like a sword, a tool for the user, then things will be easier in the long run.

In fact the above change (although I suspect you had something else in mind with regards to magic) is basically required as there is a wizard in the group and I will not entertain in the slightest a PC that is going to burn him to the stake as soon as the first puffs of magic spring from his finger tips. Also, the above change gives him the mental change to perhaps learn and use magic himself.

So wait, I said no magic and now I'm talking about learning magic? Yeah, it's all done differently, the PHB is out of the window. We're not using any spells from it, they're all custom made and much more powerful. Anyone can learn them, but the truly powerful often have a cost.

4. I hope being either a Witch or Monster Hunter isn't going to be the sole, overbearing objective for the PC. I remember Endymion and his love of the hunt.. in fact he would rarely do anything at all unless it involved hunting. I won't and just can't have everything involving monsters and what not, so keep this in mind. If your PC decides that he doesn't want to attend a dinner with the other PCs and wanders off to find monsters or something.. well, I'm not running two sessions at once, okay?

I suppose what I'm saying is, I hope the guy isn't completely overwhelmed by the desire to find and kill evil stuff and can actually relax and live life from time to time.

5. Saturday. 6pm-7pm GMT start time. Depending when everyone has arrived or 7pm lastest with 2+ players. Kyngesreach server. See you then.

One last thing.

I'm going to do your favoured enemies differently to make sense and make it better/worse assuming you're happy with it (and this is assuming also that you switch to a monster hunter).

Every time you would get a favoured enemy, you don't (as it were), but what you get is Monster Knowledge and you get a +1 each time. From there on, any creature/monster you've researched and learnt about (may require several pieces of information or to fight the same monster many times) you receive your bonus against that creature.

You will have to keep track of what you get bonuses against and what you do not. But in the end, you should get a bonuses against a much larger selection of foes.

This system also promotes leg work and getting to know your opponent.

I will do one of the following, depending on how (and you) feel.

1. When you learn enough about an opponent, you get your full favoured enemy bonus against that creature.

2. For every piece of important information you learn about a creature, you receive a +1 bonus against that type of creature, limited to +5 but not by level.

So the way it would work..

1. If you knew enough about skeletons and wolves, you would get your full favoured enemy bonus against them (counting as +1 per rank).

2. If you knew 5 pieces of crucial information against skeletons and 2 against wolves. You would get +5 bonus versus skeletons and +3 against wolves, whether 1st or 20th level.

The latter is much nicer, but more record keeping for sure.

Ok I changed the wilderness stuff for gather information and sense motive, I also really like your idea for monster knowledge. While I want to keep the witch hunter theme I've no problem with a greater emphasis on ''witcher'' style monster hunting, I always had something like that in mind and intended to use my other favoured enemies for the ''classical'' horror monsters; werewolves, vampires, and the like. I also like the idea of doing the legwork IC rather than just having an unexplained bonus every five levels.

As for Trom's character, I don't know how he intends to play him. I don't have a problem with not immediately killing him simply for using magic, however, if we're going to go down the route of ''cant we just talk to the vampire lord/coven of evil wizards? I'm sure they're just misunderstood/who's to say feasting on the blood of the innocent is wrong?/what is 'evil' really?/I want to cut a deal for the grimoire of evil magic so I can use it for the greater good'' then sooner or later there will be a PK situation. Basically if we're playing a chaotic neutral party I'll make another PC.

In regards to "talking to the vampire lord" and "is feasting on blood really evil?" no, that's not how it's going to be at all. Don't worry about that. I don't even want to know your alignment, I'm sure I'll learn it through in game actions, but just follow the basic guidelines as everyone has.

What I was getting at is that Stanislav has the ability to use magic, thus by the virtual entire population of Ravenloft he would be considered a Warlock (/Witch). I just need your character to be more enlightened. It's pretty simple. Use/ability to use magic, does not equal Warlock/Witch and death sentence. Otherwise the game/group cannot co-exist.

If Stanislav uses his magic to melt an innocent girl though, then by all means get the pistols flowing. There is no restriction on that kinda stuff, but as long as it's because of in game actions and not set in stone background.

I would like you to be part of a world wide (yet small) group of Hunters, some of which use magic, so you're familiar with it and do not instantly considered it witchcraft and evil. It's more how it's used rather than it's existence.

As far as the favoured enemy/monster knowledge is concerned. You'll always use your maximum ranger bonus, but will be required to research and learn about your foe to receive it. Once you've learnt and researched your foe, it'll stay however. The bonus will be +1 per rank instead of +2 however, but it'll apply to a larger range of monsters as you learn about them. So overall, smaller bonus, larger audience.

You'll start with some monster knowledge, I'll get back to you about that on game day. Remind me however, I 99% won't forget to do it, but I may forget to tell you about it.

Btw.

Give yourself 6 blessed iron crossbow bolts and 6 silver crossbow bolts.

Ya know... I've eaten blood pudding and blood sausage before... and I am pretty sure they were made from the blood of innocent pigs/cows/sheep/etc... and I'm not evil. Well, not entirely anyway.