Character Spotlight: Solvei, Part I - Background, Allies, Enemies, and Ability Scores · 4:34am Nov 21st, 2021
Spoiler alert for Chapter 654 - The Champion's Champion.
Following the formation of her bond with Lex Legis, the winter wolf known as Solvei has undergone a dramatic transformation. Now possessed of incredible power, as well as steadfast loyalty to her new "Master" (as she calls him now), Solvei is a force to be reckoned with, one which is completely at Lex's disposal. This article examines Solvei before her transformation, as well as overviews her family, the enemies that (quite literally) bedeviled them, and how her ability scores changed in the aftermath of her transformation. A subsequent article will examine the other powers she gained as a result of her connection to Lex.
Prominent Particularities of the Pack
Being a winter wolf, Solvei's stat block is what you'd expect it to be for her kind. However, as Rogue Genius Games' book Four Horsemen Present: Minmaxed Monsters reminds us, the majority of monsters are individuals. While your typical zombie or flesh golem will be just like every other member of its kind (unless their creator decided to imbue them with variant abilities), living creatures tend to diversify, meaning that they won't all be the same as what their basic stat block indicates; while this can sometimes be as prominent as having class levels, a template, or advanced natural Hit Dice, sometimes the points of differentiation are smaller. This was the case for Solvei before she met Lex.
Specifically, Solvei traded out the Skill Focus (perception) feat in favor of Combat Reflexes. That's actually not a very good substitution, since her Dexterity only grants her a single additional attack of opportunity. But it allows her to make those attacks of opportunity even while flat-footed, which helped to prevent her siblings from teasing her too badly when she was younger.
As the runt of her litter, Solvei also has the Frail major drawback. In exchange for this, she gains Skill Focus (sense motive), representing how she grew up sensitive to the feelings of others, a trait her father encouraged in her.
The rest of Solvei's pack have the following stat block adjustments:
Bolverk: A vicious brute to the core, Bolverk spent virtually all of his time alone in the wilderness, refining his skills as a killer. Because of this, he has the barbarian creature template.
Ebbe: Headstrong and boisterous, Ebbe has swapped out Skill Focus (perception) in favor of Power Attack.
Frode (deceased): Like his daughter, Frode was the runt of his litter, having the Frail major drawback. However, he was notable for his spiritual strength, possessing the oracle simple class template from The Genius Guide to Simple Class Templates for Monsters, with the feat he gained in exchange for having the Frail major drawback being Extra Revelation.
Frode's oracle mystery is Ancestor, with his selected revelations being Spirit Shield and Wisdom of the Ancestors. His usual spells (with the spell level noted in parenthesis) are calm emotions (2), diagnose disease (1), guidance (0), obscuring mist (1), and purify food and drink (0).
Kaja: The best tracker among her family, it's no surprise that Kaja has traded out Skill Focus (perception) in favor of the Beast Hunter feat.
Sten: Cautious and calculating, Sten has given up Skill Focus (perception) in order to take the Dodge feat.
Turid: Turid has kept the standard feat arrangement for winter wolves. However, she's recently hit middle age, and so takes a -1 penalty to her Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores, but also gains a +1 bonus to her Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
Falsehoods of the Phistophilus
The rule about individuals deviating from the norms established in their stat block doesn't just apply to Solvei and the rest of her pack. The phistophilus devil known as Prevarius also deviates from the standard presentation. In his case, however, the changes are a little more extensive.
Having been an osyluth devil before being promoted to phistophilus, Prevarius had long since come to appreciate physical combat. Far from seeing it as a chaotic exchange, he perceived it to be an intellectual exercise, as opponents would try to out-smart each other with varied tactics and strategies, pressing advantages or working to recover lost ground at a rapid-fire pace. It was a battle of wits played out physically, and although his role as a phistophilus is to get mortals to sell him their souls – a task to which he undertakes wholeheartedly – he still enjoys it greatly when things devolve into a fight.
In game terms, Prevarius hasn't traded away any of his skill-boosting feats (he knows he can't afford to let his social skills, such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, etc. slip, lest it reflect badly on his ability to con mortals out of their souls). Instead, he's given up his Dodge feat in favor of taking Cunning, which grants him 13 extra skill points. All of which he's put into a specific Martial Art skill (see pages 80-84 of Eclipse: The Codex Persona). As per the standard format for new martial arts, this one is presented below:
Red Ink (Int)
An extremely esoteric combat style, Red Ink focuses on utilizing paper as a cutting weapon, delivering slashes as sharp as any blade. Practitioners need to already possess some ability to manipulate and control the rigidity of their paper weapons, as this martial art focuses on refining the precision and control involved in such techniques. Given that fighting with paper is already an unorthodox style, those who invest in studying this martial art are atypical indeed. The style is typically only practiced among a select few phistophilus devils and scrollmasters, with exceptions being vanishingly rare.
- Requires: binding contract, scroll blade, or similar ability
- Basic Techniques: Attack 4, Defenses 2, Power 2, Synergy/Linguistics (+4; only to create or detect forgeries), Synergy/Spellcraft (+4; only to craft, identify, or learn spells from scrolls), Synergy/Use Magic Device (+4; scrolls only)
- Advanced/Master Techniques: Blinding Strike, Combat Reflexes, Reach, Whirlwind Attack
- Occult Techniques: Inner Strength, Ki Block, Serpent Strike, Touch Strike
With a total bonus of +20 in this martial art (13 ranks, +7 Int bonus), Prevarius knows the following techniques: Attack 3, Defenses 1, Power 2, Reach, Combat Reflexes, Inner Strength, and Ki Block.
Despite his combat prowess, Prevarius remains highly skilled at cutting deals. When he made a pact with Bolverk, Prevarius was able to grant him the half-fiend template, subsequently giving it to the rest of Solvei's pack after Bolverk killed Frode and made the others sign infernal contracts of their own. He also granted Bolverk a type VII necklace of fireballs (which, as a magic item worth 8,700 gp, was actually Bolverk receiving gear that was roughly commensurate to what he should have had as a 9th-level basic NPC).
Degron: The osyluth devil whom Prevarius prefers to summon if he needs backup during a fight, Degron is more vicious than most of his kind. He has eschewed the Alertness feat in favor of taking Ability Focus (poison) instead.
Solvei's Ability Scores Explained
When Lex formed his bond with Solvei, she gained a great deal of power as a result. However, he did more than simply imbue her with new magic and abilities; via the Night Mare's power, he drew out Solvei's full potential, which he then augmented and enhanced. But what does that mean in game terms?
Simply put, Lex allowed for Solvei's ability scores to be built as a PC – with the same 25-point buy as his own – rather than an NPC.
However, calculating precisely how much this changes her ability scores from the default listing in the winter wolf stat block requires a bit of reverse-engineering. Normally, when designing a character's ability scores, you go through the following four steps (in order):
- Purchase the base ability scores, using available points (25 in this case) as per Table: Ability Score Costs.
- Apply racial adjustments.
- Apply size adjustments.
- For every 4 Hit Dice, apply a +1 bonus to a single ability score.
So in order to work out Solvei's base stats, we'll need to go through this process backward.
Unfortunately, we run into some trouble right away. Because the fourth step applies its +1 bonus to any ability score desired, without any metric for which one is used for particular creatures or characters, we'll need to pick one – since typical winter wolves have 6 Hit Dice – of the base winter wolf's ability scores (Str 20, Dex 13, Con 18, Int 9, Wis 13, Cha 10) at random. Since it will be slightly more advantageous for Solvei's subsequent build if we choose an odd-numbered ability score (i.e. it makes the racial adjustments slightly higher), we'll go ahead and subtract the +1 ability bonus from Dexterity.
Fortunately, removing the size modifiers are easier. Since winter wolves are Large creatures and Medium size is the standard, we can just look at Table: Size Changes and remove the ability score adjustments in the row indicating what happens when a Medium Creature is adjusted to Large size (which is that they gain +8 Strength, -2 Dexterity, +4 Constitution). In conjunction with having removed the +1 bonus to Dexterity as outlined above, Solvei's stats thus far are Str 12, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 13, Cha 10.
That's important, because now we come to the part with racial modifiers. This one is a bit tricky, since unlike typical PC races, winter wolves don't have their racial ability score adjustments outlined ahead of time. In this case, we're going to go with the best rule that we have, which comes from page 7 of Savage Species. That's not exactly ideal, since that's a book for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (i.e. D&D 3.0) and we're working with Pathfinder 1st Edition, but since the latter doesn't offer any better guidelines, and the two games are extremely similar in how their game engines function, we'll go with that.
So what does Savage Species say to do? In this case, it outlines that the racial modifiers are what you have when you subtract either 10 or 11 (whichever gives you an even-numbered result) from each ability score. Using the values that we determined above (Str 12, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 9, Wis 13, Cha 10), we get the following for winter wolf racial adjustments to ability scores: Str +2, Dex +4, Con +4, Int -2, Wis +2, Cha +0. (You can see now why, back when we were picking where to remove that +1 bonus for the fourth Hit Die, choosing an odd-numbered ability score was more advantageous; if we'd removed it from an even-numbered ability score, such as Strength, the racial adjustment would be reduced by a factor of +2 here.)
Removing these ability score adjustments from the aforementioned values gives us, unsurprisingly, an ability score array of all 10s and 11s. Specifically, the following: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, Int 11, Wis 11, Cha 10. Which means we've finally reached the final step of the process. With these listings, we can go back and compare them to Table: Ability Score Costs and see how much of a point-buy Solvei had…which isn't very much at all. Four of her six ability scores are 10s, which cost 0 points to buy, and the remaining two are only 11, which cost 1 point each. So she's spent a grand total of 2 points on her base ability scores altogether.
That's bad, but not unexpectedly so. According to the rules for designing NPCs, basic NPCs have a stat array of 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8. If you compare that to the point-buy value in Table: Ability Score Costs, that only comes out to 3 points spent. So in that regard, your average winter wolf is being given almost the exact same point-buy allotment that your average human is; they're just receiving adjustments for race, size, and advanced natural Hit Dice.
Canny readers will note that, if we'd subtracted the +1 ability bonus for that fourth Hit Die from an even-numbered ability score – as noted earlier – then this would have come out to exactly 3 points spent on ability scores. Since that's a perfect match for what typical NPCs receive, we probably should have done that, but we're going to go ahead and fudge things a little bit here. Given that Lex has been ignoring what's essentially the central feature of the custom template the Night Mare gave him up until now (across several hundred chapters and more than a few fights), he's entitled to a bit of gratuity here.
So now that we know how Solvei's ability scores were generated, Lex can rebuild them, this time with a full 25-point value that's specific to Solvei herself.
In this case, he'll assign the points as follows:
- Strength 14 (5 points)
- Dexterity 14 (5 points)
- Constitution 14 (5 points)
- Intelligence 13 (3 points)
- Wisdom 14 (5 points)
- Charisma 12 (2 points)
We'll then apply the racial adjustments (Str +2, Dex +4, Con +4, Int -2, Wis +2, Cha +0) and the size adjustments (Str +8, Dex -2, Con +4), and add back in the +1 discretionary ability modifier (which, since it doesn't have to go into the same ability score that it was previously removed from, will be added to Intelligence here), gives us the following results: Str 24, Dex 16, Con 22, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 12. Not bad, overall.
Of course, that's Solvei brought up to her full potential. As mentioned earlier, Lex hasn't just brought forth Solvei's inner aptitudes; he's also enhanced them. To that end, she's also receiving another +1 discretionary ability point bonus – this one applied to Constitution – as well as a permanent +2 enhancement bonus to Strength and Constitution each. Additionally, she's getting a flat +4 bonus to all six of her ability scores on top of that.
After these adjustments, Solvei's final ability scores are the following:
Str 30, Dex 20, Con 29, Int 16, Wis 20, Cha 16.
So where did those additional bonuses that Lex granted her come from? That will be revealed in the next article, where we get to see Solvei's new statistics in full.
OW.
Get Solvei a tailbladee, those Combat Reflexes are going to be Brutal.
Just look up what a fully tooled Griffin can do. Very Nasty.
Then again, Int and Wis score allows Solvei to have an intresting collection of personal spells? Could she ride around on Tensors Floating Disk?
5609769 Given that she can now make six attack of opportunity per round (the standard one that everyone get, plus five more thanks to her new Dexterity bonus), Solvei can potentially devastate a large number of attackers at once...but only if they provoke those AoOs in the first place. It's a great feat for when you're outnumbered, or are facing enemies who are arrogant/foolish enough to be risk-prone, but if they don't put her in a position to use that feat, she won't be able to.
As for her using magic, well...the latest chapter (at the time of this post) has already mentioned that she's learned how to use ice-based magic. But so far there's no indication that she can engage in any other sort of magical abilities.