Fimbulvinter

[Steerpike]

I'm open to swaps to a certain extent. Swapping for Scribe Scroll seems fair; it's a rooster, after all, not a tiger or something. Alternatively you could just buy a rooster as a pet, it just wouldn't have stuff like Link.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Thanks!  Here's the skald/paladin version, cockerel included.

[ic=Mjorðir "Véogrímr" Brúnnulfson]Male human skald 1/paladin (oathbound; Týr) 2
Medium humanoid (human [Blóðbard])
Init +0; Senses Perception +4
Languages North-Speech
Aura good
____________________________________________________________

AC 19, touch 10, flat-footed 19; CMD 14
(armor +6, shield +3)
hp 26 (1d8+2d10+6)
Resistance cold 2
Fort +11*, Ref +4*, Will +11* (with resistance); +5 vs cold weather exposure
____________________________________________________________

Speed 20 ft. (30 ft. without armor)
Melee Randgríð (shield-hungry) +6 (1d8+2, x3)
Melee large shield bash +4 (1d4+2)
Ranged javelin +2 (1d6+2)
Base Atk +2; CMB +4
Special Actions lay on hands 4/day (1d6), raging song 6/day (inspired rage (+2 Str & Con, +1 Will, -1 AC)), smite chaos 1/day (+3 atk & AC, +2 dmg)
Combat Gear javelin (x2)
____________________________________________________________

Skald Spells Known (CL 1st; Concentration +4)
1st (2/day)—cause fear (DC 14), saving finale
0th—dancing lights, daze (DC 14), open/close, resistance
____________________________________________________________

SQ bardic knowledge +1, bird companion, divine grace,
Str 14, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 16
Feats Iron Will, Shield Focus, Weapon Focus (battleaxe)^B
Skills Climb +1 (+6 without armor), Diplomacy +9, Handle Animal +7, Heal +4, Intimidate +7, Knowledge (nobility) +5, Knowledge (religion) +5, Perception +4, Perform (oratory) +7, Perform (singing) +7, Ride -3 (+4 without armor), Sense Motive +4; ACP -7 (-5 without shield)
Possessions combat gear plus Randgríð (masterwork skeggöx (battleaxe)), Hrôgarnautr (Hrôg's gift; troll-bone lamellar), cold weather outfit, Langlif (long-life; heavy wooden shield), holy symbols (Bragi, Forseti, & Týr), manacles, 6 gp worth of braid-beads.[/ic]

[ic=Gyllhani, the Víðópnisson]Male rooster
Small animal (bird companion)
Init +2; Senses Perception +12; low-light vision
____________________________________________________________

AC 14, touch 13, flat-footed 11; CMD 13
(Dex +2, natural armor +1, size +1)
hp 6 ((2d8+2)/2)
Resistance cold 2
Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +2
____________________________________________________________

Speed 10 ft., fly 80 ft. (average)
Melee bite +1 (1d4), 2 talons +1 (1d4)
CMB +0
____________________________________________________________

SQ link, tricks (aid, roam)
Str 10, Dex 15, Con 12, Int 2, Wis 16, Cha 6
Feats Skill Focus (Perception)
Skills Fly +11, Perception +12[/ic]

[Kindling]

[ic=RAGNVALDR]Level 3 Fighter
XP: 5000

STR 16 +3
DEX 14 +2
CON 14 +2
INT 10 +0
WIS 10 +0
CHA 10 +0

Max HP: 32
Current HP: 32

BAB +3
AC 12 (18 in chainmail)
CMB +6
CMD 18

FORT +5 (+7 vs cold weather in furs)
REF +3
WILL +1 (+2 with Bravery)

Speed: 30ft
Armour check penalty (DEX/STR): -4 in chainmail
Carrying capacity: 76/77-153/154-230

Melee attacks:
Spear +8 1d8+3(+4 two-handed) x3 
Dagger +6 1d4+3 19-20/x2
Unarmed +6 1d3+3 x2 nonlethal

Ranged attacks:
Spear +7 1d8+3 x3 20ft.
Dagger +5 1d4+3 19-20/x2 10ft.

Skills:

Climb  4 (+3 STR)
Intimidate 5
Handle Animal 4
Profession (sailor) 4
Survival 6

Feats & class abilities:

Armour Training: -1 to armour check penalty and +1 to maximum DEX bonus when wearing armour, may move at full speed in medium armour
Bravery: +1 to Will saves against fear
Dazzling Display (spear): may Intimidate all foes within 30ft as a full-round action
Furious Focus: no power attack penalty on first attack per round when two-handed
Power Attack: -1 attack for +2 damage or +3 damage when two-handed
Shield of Swings: full attack when two-handed, 1/2 damage for +4 shield bonus
Weapon Focus (spear): +1 to attacks with spears

Equipment: 

Masterwork spear
Dagger x4
Chainmail
Combat-trained dog, "Aslaug"
Backpack 
Bedroll
Winter blanket
Furs [/ic]

New and improved Ragnvaldr 2.0! I'm assuming we're using the "medium" xp progression?
Only thing that I don't have on there obviously is any loot that was amassed - shall we assume he's spent it all on mead since we last played?

[Steerpike]

Looks great Kindling!

If you can remember any specific items you had (I think there was an arm-band you picked up?), feel free to include them in your inventory; otherwise, yeah, assume it's been spent on food, shelter, mending your clothes, repairing your weapons, that kind of thing.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Will we be using a character thread, perchance?

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Posted the skald/paladin version, now with updated kennings for his arms & armor.

[brain]

I'm... kinda interested in getting in on this, if possible--I haven't gotten a good rp fix in a while, and vikings. (If you got too many folks, or if the time is in general EST working hours, then it'd be a nogo? Either way I'd understand. ^_^)

[Steerpike]

I'm kind of thinking of running it more West Marches style than anything - lots of players, but not everyone is present at every adventure. That's effectively how it turned out last time. That way scheduling isn't a big headache and if a player misses one session they can jump in on another. Missing characters could be in the mead-hall or camp, resting or recuperating from injuries, maintaining equipment, etcetera. Kinda like how in something like Mass Effect you've got a cast of characters but only three at a time actually go out on a mission.

That's a long-winded way of saying, hey, the more the merrier!

(Incidentally I'm on the West Coast, and a lot of the games I've run have had players in Europe and Australia, so time zones aren't usually too too much of an issue)

[Polycarp]

I read over Kylfa's old character sheet and the fact that Fimbulvinter was my first ever PF game really showed - every feat I picked was worthless.  Taking grappling feats is pointless when, in a few levels, you can turn into a bear with Grab, and Multiattack literally does nothing because in PF (unlike 3rd ed) claw/claw/bite is all primary.  :angry:

I still don't know whether I'll be able to play, but just in case I'll do a rebuild of Kylfa and post him in that new thread.

[Steerpike]

Feel free to tweak, yeah. Long enough has passed that I'm not fussed. Once the game starts I'll be a stickler and make people pay retraining costs, but enough has changed in the Pathfinder system that it's worth revisiting things if only for that.

EDIT: New players, remember to roll on the Rumour list (I may come up with a few more of these):

Rumours

Rumours blow as freely as the winter winds across the North, though few are wholly accurate, and doubtless most are exaggerated or otherwise faulty.

Roll a 1d10 1d2 times and read the corresponding spoiler tag(s).  It goes without saying not to look at the rumours you don't roll.  These rumours represent snatches of gossip, overheard conversation, and other hearsay.  Rumours reported in the section on the tribes can be considered general knowledge (such as King Geirmund Greatmane's bounty on wolves).

If you're an Ægiran, you automatically know either rumour 2 or 5 (pick one and roll 1d2 – on a 2, roll again to learn another rumour, rerolling if you get the same rumour twice).  If you're an Austrogoth, you automatically know rumour 6, if you're a Hrafnii you automatically know rumour 10, and if you're a Görning you automatically know either rumour 1 or 4 (again, roll 1d2 and learn a second random rumour on a 2).

1 - [spoiler]Insane Seeresses: The imminent arrival of Ragnarök is causing seeresses who peer too deeply into the future to go insane.  They say it begins with nightmares and hallucinations, flashes of the impending Doom; those who behold the final battle in its terrible, enormous totality, however, are driven hopeless insane.  To avoid this fate, those skilled in the Seid should avoid divining too extensively.[/spoiler]

2 - [spoiler]Strange Island: A strange new island has appeared in the west near Ériu.  Called Hy-Brasil by the Fir Bolg, some claim the island rose from the sea, others that it simply appeared out of a bank of mist, others still that it floated across the ocean from some distant corner of the earth and has now come to rest.  Whatever the case, Northern adventurers have returned from the isle with tales of fabulous treasures found within ancient, empty cities.  Other rumours suggest that these cities may not be empty after all...[/spoiler]

3 - [spoiler]Army of the Dead: They say that an army of the dishonoured dead – shades from Hel itself – has established a camp in the Eyði – the savage, contested wasteland west of the Gjöll River.  These vile ghost-warriors, the Again-Walkers, slay all living beings they come across and pull their spirits from their corpses, cheating them of Valhalla to add to their own ranks; shadow-fleshed and screaming, they cannot be harmed by ordinary weapons.  They say their commanders are Hel-Giants, Jötnar who died dishonourably – Hrímgrímnir, Helreginn, Hyrm, and Modgud.[/spoiler]

4 - [spoiler]Rift to Svartálfaheim: Rumour holds that somewhere deep in the Slaughterstone Mountains an earthquake has caused a great rift to open which leads to Svartálfaheim itself, the subterranean Homeworld of the Dwarfs.  Though climbing through the mountains in the midst of Fimbulvinter is perilous, the wonders of the Dvergar are legendary.  Whether or not the Dwarfs are emerging from the rift into Midgard is unknown.[/spoiler]

5 - [spoiler]Skræling Uprising: Reports from the west hold that a group of Skræling thralls being transported to the North along with goods from the distant lands across the ocean managed to kill the crew of their ship and have landed in the North.  Ruthless freedom-fighters, they are now roving the Northlands freeing any Skræling or Thule thralls they come across and killing their masters, taking their scalps for trophies.  It is said that some of their number are shamans capable of summoning a terrible flesh-eating spirit that possesses certain of their warriors, transforming them into something called "Wendigos."[/spoiler]

6 - [spoiler]Plague in Austragötaland: A horrible sickness is sweeping Austragötaland.  Some say it's a Southron plague, others a punishment sent by the Gods to cleanse the land of the Fathermen.  The Faith, of course, contends that the plague has been sent by their deity to punish heathens and sinners – a holy fever which burns the brows of unbelievers and other depraved souls.  Their priests are busy administering holy cures to those they deem pious enough to merit them.[/spoiler]

7 - [spoiler]The Wrathsword: A mysterious wanderer claiming to wield the sword known as Gram, the Wrathsword, has been seen abroad.  Some say this individual is a hero, a dragon-slayer who was given the sword by the ghost of the famous warrior Sivard.  Others insist that he is nothing more than a thief, a tomb-robber who despoiled Sivard's barrow and stole the legendary blade.  Others still dismiss these stories as the fabrications of increasingly desperate vagabond Skalds hoping to exchange fanciful tales for their suppers.[/spoiler]

8 - [spoiler]Hræsvelgr: Sightings of the Giant in eagle-form known as Hræsvelgr have been reported across the North – brief glimpses of the massive creature high above the clouds, or perched momentarily on a mountaintop.  The Corpse Swallower, as he is known, is supposed to sit at the End of the World and fan his great wings to make the wind blow.  His appearance in the North is said to account for the wild gales and blizzards that afflict the land.  They say that Hræsvelgr is larger than the largest mammoth, a bird so huge that he can devour an aurochs at a single sitting.[/spoiler]

9 - [spoiler]Fire in Myrkwood: They say that Myrkwood, the great forest which separates the North of Midgard from the lands of the now-dispersing Húna, is partially aflame.  The fire is said to be uncannily hot and ferocious, somehow able to resist snow, rain, and sleet.  Some of the Myrkari woodsmen are fleeing their homes, and beasts driven from the wild, strange wood are roving northwards to escape the flames.  No one knows what caused the fire.[/spoiler]

10 - [spoiler]Sky-Stone: A falling star has landed somewhere in the Hrafnlands.  This queer black rock is being used by a local weapon-smith to forge blades of extraordinary quality – wounds caused by the black swords and axes crafted from the sky-stone are said to smoulder and smoke.  Some Hrafnii mercenaries and brigands are already employing these powerful weapons against their foes.[/spoiler]

[sparkletwist]

Once the game starts I'll be a stickler and make people pay retraining costs

Why? What's actually gained by doing it this way?

There are generally three reasons why you'd want to retrain your character, and, compared to something ad hoc where you just ask the DM if you can make changes and then make them, assigning strict mechanics with a cost to retraining tends to punish the two "good" ones while subtly encouraging the "bad" one.

The three reasons are:

- Mechanics don't match concept - The character was built along lines that don't allow its mechanics to reflect the concept the player had in mind. In a system like Pathfinder with lots of fiddly bits and space for optimizations, this can happen pretty easily. Assessing a penalty in time and gold for a player who just wants a character that plays like the idea they had in their head seems pretty pointless-- it needlessly penalizes inexperienced players, encourages system mastery in a rather obnoxious hard-line way, and discourages any sort of experimentation. As long as the character is recognizably the same character with the same fluff, who cares if to make that character perform better mechanically you need to make a few tweaks under the hood?

- Evolving character concept - The character has grown and changed, and old capabilities that are no longer used are pushed aside to make room for new ones. I can understand sometimes wanting to assign some cost to this, but, on the other hand, sometimes the events of the narrative already impose a cost and suggest an opportunity to make changes. People grow and change over time, and the system of leveling up supports the "grow" part without a lot of room for the "change" part. I mean, how many times has it happened that somebody joined a game starting at level 5 with a character that would've been severely underpowered and probably a bit stupid at level 1? Well, why should the people who have been in that game since level 1 be punished-- why can't they be allowed to evolve their character concepts too and create something that feels a bit more holistic at the game's current level? Granted, some players may try to justify some pretty strange and "convenient" changes, but they usually go into the third category below.

- Powergaming shenanigans: Stuff like putting all your skill ranks into Stealth the session you know there is going to be a stealthy mission, or taking an item crafting feat only to craft a bunch of stuff at half price and promptly retraining it, or whatever. Basically, the kind of stuff that the DM would, in an ad hoc system, just promptly refuse-- and most players wouldn't even ask for. The problem is, by supporting a rigid mechanical structure for retraining, the system actually sort of encourages these kinds of shenanigans by putting the onus on the DM to justify why retraining is not available, rather than on the player to justify why the suggested changes are better for the game and the character, rather than just being a munchkin. If there is some interesting narrative reason why the character could and should get certain abilities, the DM and player should probably figure that out separately and make it a costly magic item that requires a special homebrew feat to activate, or some other contrived combination that has a definite cost but is now part of the story rather than a rules exploit.

[TheMeanestGuest]

I'll rework Andreas sometime this weekend.

Do you still have that awesome map you drew?

[Steerpike]

Why? What's actually gained by doing it this way?

Well, in the past I haven't allowed retraining at all.

Allowing any kind of "automatic" or unlimited retraining isn't a great idea, in my opinion, because it lets characters completely alter themselves according to the circumstances they find themselves in: as you say, powergaming shenanigans.

If someone actually does feel that the mechanics are truly failing their concept, or they made a serious mistake (they thought a feat did something different, for example, or you realize you really should have put that 14 in Strength instead of Wisdom, or whatever), I'm open to making small changes without paying costs or spending time retooling. So, I suppose I should amend my statement that I'll be "strict" about ad-hoc retraining: I'll be strict but not to the point of bull-headed rigidity. If something is really bugging a player, I can understand the need to tweak the occasional skill or spell. Fair enough. I shall not be a tryant  :P

I'm fine with the idea of an evolving character concept being modeled both by levelling and retraining, but I prefer for both of those things to carry expenditures of in-game effort and resources.

I'm actually OK with the players, say, deciding that they need to become very stealthy for a stealth mission and so spending valuable time and money training in stealth. I wouldn't call that shenanigans or a "bad' use of retraining - I'd call that smart in-game logic. Like, if there's a war coming, and everyone needs to be trained in martial weapon-use, I'm OK with the characters spending time and money to train themselves up for combat while letting their other skills get rusty. That said, this is only going to work for non-urgent missions, adventures where the timeline permits retraining.

I should perhaps point out that this is a game where magical items will almost never be for sale. If PCs start amassing large quantities of coin, retraining is one thing they could spend money on.

Partly, sparkletwist, this might down to our differences in gaming philosophy and the way we prioritize different aspects of roleplaying. Pathfinder isn't exactly a paragon of simulationism, but I like that the retraining rules provide an in-game explanation and mechanic that at least "feels" somewhat realistic in a way that ad hoc retcons do not.

Do you still have that awesome map you drew?

Which map?

EDIT: I should add: if people are really against retraining, we could just remove it. I like to think it adds flexibility and encourages experimentation but in a way that still preserves a certain air of verisimilitude.

[TheMeanestGuest]

I dunno. It was hand drawn and was of the northlands.

[Steerpike]

There are two maps of the Blodlands/Hrafnlands (reposted at the start of the Saga thread). Did I have another? Maybe some kind of combined map? Perhaps I need to go digging again...