Comments on: Pimp My Character #2 – The lip reading scout

By: Shard2

Shard2 — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:45:24 +0000

You should have a halfling beastmaster ranger (the scout part) with a raptor (probably a falcon) beast companion. He could that teach the falcon how to read lips and report back to him comunicating through there bond not only would this character kick a– but would be way to much fun to play. Hope you get some cool ideas sean

By: Zutolor

Zutolor — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:50:11 +0000

You should do a deaf, blind, and mute wizard that was infused with the soul of an ancient dead god , and uses magical powers to see into the minds of the people around him. ie. he hears what the rogue next to him hears and sees what the paladin next to him sees.

By: sean

sean — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:45:24 +0000

This is awesome, lots of cool ideas. I will have to compile them up and churn something out that puts all this advice to good use!

By: Yax

Yax — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:39:08 +0000

You’re welcome! Thanks to everyone for taking the time to chip in. I’ll announce the winner soon, get in touch with the guys from AvatarArt and put everyone in touch… Soon…

By: Noumenon

Noumenon — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:54:21 +0000

Thanks to Yax for keeping the contest open for two weeks. Not only does someone win a sketch now, but some of the coolest ideas came after the halfway mark.

By: Labareda

Labareda — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:28:41 +0000

Escaping from a Yak Folk Slave Pen would be difficult because under 3.5 as Ethan pointed out they are like level 8.

When you punch the following information into an encounter calculator it gives the following results. So with a single 1st level escapee escaping past a single yak folk (CR8) the results are:
Effective Party Level: 0.3
Average Party Level: 1
Encounter Level: 8
Difficulty Factor: 12
Difficulty: Obscene
Advice to Party: Find A New DM.

Given this analysis and taking into account that race was not specified in the original post I think we could assume that our escapee is at least level 6-7 at time of escape (advice to party: Run Away! and Pull Out All The Stops.). Which would indicate that said character had character levels prior to capture which would indicate a 5th level 5 year old (assuming human) or that the character has monster levels. So a giant of some kind is an eminently reasonable conclusion. I do not have time to list other possible CR6+ level 1 characters however I would suggest that another reasonable conclusion is that Yaf is a… YAK FOLK!

or is Yaf short for… Mugandu

By: Ethan

Ethan — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:28:22 +0000

So,maybe he avoids slavery because he understands why people have slaves. Perhaps while he was a slave all he wanted to do was kill the slave drivers and get out, and free the whole world of slvaery, YAY! But something inside him knows why the yak folk use slaves, it gets the job done easier. If he were a neutral or evil character, this would work out becasue he might aspire to be a slave driver some day.

After he escaped, he came back, some weird messed up feeling of nestalgia…whatever you wanna call it, weird none the less, and he became thier slave trader. He traded many innocent people his whole life, and now that he is a little older, he quits…the sight smell or sound of any type of slave related actions gives him a sick stomach and an uneasy mind. he now wishes to repent for what he has done, and he wants to make up for it by freeing all of the slaves he ever traded ( the living ones at least). So he finds some other adventurers, pays them off or whatever, and uses their help to slowly infiltrate and destroy all of the slave camps (scouts are stealthy, they wouldn’t go in full on like a barbarian might).

By: Yax

Yax — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:59:44 +0000

Thanks for all the input! A couple more comments and Dungeon Mastering gives away an extra character sketch to a lucky reader.

Keep it up!

By: Noumenon

Noumenon — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:03:58 +0000

Wow, I just looked up the yak folk, I didn't know how powerful they were. Would a yak folk merge its body with a slave? Maybe when a yak folk was merged inside him, he felt the same disdain for slaves that the master felt, and it keeps him from sympathizing with slaves normally.

By: Ethan

Ethan — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:35:15 +0000

Yeah, they are in 3.5e Monster Manual 2. They are a pain to fight in a campaign because they have great arcane power, and have genies as a birth right. As a player race, they have a level adjustment of 7(a 1st level Yak folk equals an 8th level human), which is low considering their power.

Think of Minotaurs, but a littl smaller, and much smarter…but yes, they are portrayed as oriental in the book.

As far as escaping the camp, he may have had an “in” with a yak folk, maybe a greedy one, and Yaf told him he could give him more power or money (most yak folk don’t value money) so this slave runner gave him a leave, as long as he came back with this “prize”