Heist of the Century: Resurrection. Pathfinder cloak & dagger intrigue action!

[Katina Tarask]

Description's in the description box.  Bio's at the bottom.

Question Mark: She easily passes for human, if slightly odd-looking when not in costume.

As for the weapons?  Wakizashi's a main weapon.  Kerambit's easier to hide.  If neither's a risk worth taking, the brush is innocuous enough to be taken anywhere, and the blowgun with the gold darts (pre-poisoned and coated) can be passed off as hair accessories.

[Question Mark]

So Lt, what's left on the checklist before we get this game rolling?

[Meliai]

   
Not having much luck finding a picture for her, I'll
swap this out once I have time to draw something.
Finn's hair is shorter and scruffier.

Finn Connelly
Commonborn spy
Character Sheet

Personality: Finn is exuberant and friendly, but difficult to pin down. Blessed with an abundance of personal charm and a silver tongue that could sell snake oil to a gorgon, deception comes easily to her. Combine this with the constant danger nipping at the heels of anyone with magical talent and you get a girl who tends to keep the world at arms length. Over the years she's gotten quite good at conversational misdirection, subtly rerouting chats any time the topic begins drifting to close to her numerous secrets with no one the wiser.
Finn is an excellent listener, having discovered early on that all it takes to gain many a person's trust is to provide a willing ear for them to air their grievances. In truth she genuinely enjoys speaking with others, and the need for personal secrecy can be draining at times.
Very little will get a visible rise from Finn unless she chooses to let it, but she has a somewhat volatile temper and is not above acts of petty revenge if she thinks she can get away with them.

Background: The youngest of three daughters born to a Caravan guard and a merchant, Finn's entire life has been spent traveling the continent. The Connelly family once lived in Sacrafel but fled generations ago, when the noble houses began snuffing out any signs of magic talent not stemming from their own lines. For as far back as any of the family records stretched, Abyssal-blooded sorcerers were common, a few rare cases manifesting the blood so strongly that the bearers grew horns, tails or other signs of their distant in-human ancestry. As the blood thinned fewer and fewer children showed magical talent, until the family began to believe it had finally died out. The sister's grew up with cautionary tales of distant relatives who'd been caught preforming magic and suffered horrific fates, so when Finn began to exhibit signs of arcane talent the three formed a conspiracy of sorts, keeping it secret from even their parents.
For her part, Finn seemed content to let her magic gather metaphorical dust. Instead she honed her social talents as she grew, as well as a knack for cooking. Eventually she was hired by the caravan master as a cook and, in a less official capacity, as a sort of peacekeeper. Long months on the roads wear at the mind, driving up tensions and sparking arguments between even the most peaceful of people, but Finn proved adept at defusing potentially explosive situations.

Recent history: 6 years ago Finn's eldest sister married a young man and moved with him to Sacrafel, giving birth to a daughter soon after. The sisters kept in touch, but just before the caravan was set to pass through the city Isabel's correspondence suddenly ceased. When the caravan arrived in the city Finn rushed to her sister's house only to find it empty. The caravan was forced to move on before long, but despite protests from her parents Finn stayed behind to try and find out what happened.

Skills: Equally comfortable infiltrating the nobility and their servants. Adept at mimicking accents and affecting behavioral quirks of a vast range of people thanks to travel experience. Oddly lucky.

Misc. Details

These are just notes for me, might contain some minor spoilers so don't read if you care about that sort of thing

• Refers to people by informal nicknames to avoid getting too attached to them
• Horribly depressed and lonely, obstinately refuses to let anyone know
• Hasn't really accepted the fact that her sister is most likely dead, liable to become suicidally reckless when confronted with reality if no one stops her.
• Niece is a Tiefling, could conceivably still be alive
• Fond of alley cats
• Insists on cooking for anyone she likes and deems "too skinny"
• Prone to stargazing
• Shuffles cards when she's nervous
• Refers to "The Lady"(luck) in the same sort of way most people would refer to a patron god
• Likely to become highly suspicious of, and possibly angry at, anyone she develops romantic feelings towards
• • Because it's obviously their fault
• • • Why won't they stop being so damn attractive?!
• I think I'm forgetting something
• I'll probably remember as soon as I hit post
• Oh well whatever no one's reading these

[Question Mark]

@Meliai   I laughed out loud at the end of the miscellaneous details, and cool character too!  It's so rare to find characters with such a heavy emphasis on avoiding combat, instead preferring to hide in plain sight.  And now this game has two!  How awesome is that?

[Crovonovin]

She looks great, Meliai!  Looks like we may be close to getting things underway.  I look forward to prowling the city's underbelly with (some) of you newcomers! 

[Meliai]

Thanks guys, Great to hear you like her! I'm really excited for this game :D

[Katina Tarask]

@Meliai   I laughed out loud at the end of the miscellaneous details, and cool character too!  It's so rare to find characters with such a heavy emphasis on avoiding combat, instead preferring to hide in plain sight.  And now this game has two!  How awesome is that?

Of course, if that's what you want out of a game, you probably should go for a different system.  The D&D system's always boiled down to, "Kill things.  Take their stuff," without much support for much else.

Such characters aren't rare.  They're just rare in D&D because it's something D&D sucks at.

[Question Mark]

Of course, if that's what you want out of a game, you probably should go for a different system.  The D&D system's always boiled down to, "Kill things.  Take their stuff," without much support for much else.

Such characters aren't rare.  They're just rare in D&D because it's something D&D sucks at.

I personally prefer a mix of the two.  I love the combined strategy and luck involved in Pathfinder combat, but I also like how there's always another option: you can run, hide, be diplomatic, etc.  Sure, most people prefer to bash things in the face until it stops moving and/or gives them shinies, and sure that's generally easier.  BUT you can always try another tactic, especially in urban environments with lots of NPC interaction.

Also, I'm still relatively new to systems: I have RL and online experience with 3.5, Pathfinder, and the occasional homebrew, but not much else.  So I work with what I know!  ;D

[Katina Tarask]

Thing is, the rules of the game do almost nothing to help make the run/hide/talk option interesting.  Often just a single d20 one which one side or the other auto-wins because they invested a ton in one skill while the opponent invested next to nothing in the counter, with a result as clear-cut as, "The person with a +16 mod just won the game," compared to the well-fleshed-out combats which can actually have some nuance to them.

Best advice I can give someone getting into system games?  Different games are good for different things.  Never ever treat D&D like the do-everything game; learn and play a lot of different games.

[Wintercat]

Looking good, Fox is still keeping a touch busy as it stands but hopefully we'll have a reply out of him at the weekend when he has a little more time available (as far as I know at least). I am curious what things may come to pass in time with these things, little plothooks and fleshing out a character can make things a lot more interesting at times. Hopefully all goes well and we'll be getting this show back on the road again soon, but I thought I'd say it though.

Very impressive, Meliai. That's a character that should carry forth an interesting tale.

[Question Mark]

*twiddling thumbs on a surprisingly comfy futon*

...So...  What happened to the original Heist of the Century?

[ShadowFox89]

 Someone stole it.

[Question Mark]

Someone stole it.

How?  Why?

[Crovonovin]

How?  Why?

I think that was a joke.   ;D

I believe LtFox was kept busy by the service, and therefore had no time to run the game any longer.

[Question Mark]

Oh.  Derp.

[Bloody Rose]

Are you still looking?

[Zaer Darkwail]

So far as I know; yes.

[LtFox]

Hello folks!

Meliai, character looks good.  Now we can launch the game sometime soon.

As for my take on the social aspects of the game, although the rules provide at best meager provisions for those, I run my game somewhat differently.  In general, skill ranks outside combat are used as yardsticks for the character's ability in any given skill, and I won't call for rolls that often outside combat, skillful and in-character role play is much more likely to get your way than a couple of dice rolls.  In combat, I mostly go with the rules as they are, though there is some flexibility.  If someone wants to do something that the rules don't say yay or nay for as is, just give me a word.  I'll then proceed to stab the rules until they cry and say what I want them to say.  That is to say, if you give me reasonable explanation, chances are rules will bend to allow it.

Zarazel:
I may be able to fit you in.  What kind of role were you thinking?

Shadowfox:  So, whatever happened to your character idea, or are you withdrawing for now?

Well, been slightly busy last week, but we should see significant progress this weekend.  You'll be getting quite a bit more details about the world in general, and Sacrafel in specific.  Who know, we might even kick the thing off the ground.

Cheers,
_LF_

[ShadowFox89]

 I don't think the homebrew class is gonna work. I'm not sure what slots I could fill, though I've been playing a lot of stealthy characters lately.

[LtFox]

Okay folks, the OOC and Character threads are up, and links are here:

OOC: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=136857.0

Character archive: https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=136856.0

Old players and those who have mostly completed characters, please post them into the Character thread so I can more easily keep track of how many characters we have game-ready.

We should be starting soon, sometime this week is the definite timeline, as long as I receive all the pertinent characters until then.

Cheers and keep up the good work!

LF