Character Backgrounds (Patronage Supplement)

Following are Backgrounds available to player characters in Patronage:

Realm Backgrounds

Alabastrian Empire Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Raised in the bosom of the greatest empire Patronage has ever known grants you certain advantages. Associated Skills: Diplomacy, History Associated Languages: Supernal Roleplaying Benefit: As a sophisticated urbanite, once per day, you may roll a Diplomacy or History (your choice) check in place of a Streetwise check. Duat Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Life in the dead lands is fraught with physical challenge and dedication to the intricate rituals of the Shinigami. Associated Skills: Athletics, Religion Roleplaying Benefit: If you use the total defense action, until the beginning of your next turn, you are considered an ally of any mindless undead not actively controlled by another. In such a state, they will not attack you unless you attack them or they are specifically commanded to attack you.

Fey Realm Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Raised to please the capricious Fey, you find your talents are also useful in the Free Kingdoms. Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Bluff Associated Languages: Elven, Goblin Roleplaying Benefit: You may engage in one form of entertainment (singing, acrobatics, storytelling, jesting, etc.) at a professional level. Fire Mountains Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Raised in the forges of the Elementals, you are hardy and skilled. Associated Skills: Endurance, Thievery Associated Languages: Dwarven, Primordial Roleplaying Benefit: You are professionally skilled in the smithing of a specific metal, or in mining. Green Lands Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You earned your battle scars playing the wargames of the Oni Associated Skills: Athletics, History Associated Languages: Giant Roleplaying Benefit: You are a professionally trained strategist and planner of military campaigns.

Mongrel Island Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You are trained either to hunt your prey relentlessly, or to evade your pursuers. Associated Skills: Perception, Stealth Associated Languages: Abyssal Roleplaying Benefit: After a short rest, you can hide an entire campsite from view, using your own Stealth check as the difficulty for passersby to notice it. Nereid Sea Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Before becoming an adventurer, you plied the Nereid Sea as a sailor (or perhaps a pirate). Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Nature Roleplaying Benefit: You have the skills of a professional sailor. Ochre Mountains Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Raised in the great temples of the Titans, you know how to achieve inner peace and tranquility. Associated Skills: Heal, Insight Associated Languages: Giant, Primordial Roleplaying Benefit: After an extended rest, you can roll any check on a disease chart twice and use the better result. You also heal any effects of mental or emotional trauma.

Free Kingdom Backgrounds

The Caliphate Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Life among the Ferroclasts is filled with purpose and strife. Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight Associated Languages: Elven, Goblin Roleplaying Benefit: You are a master artisan in one non-ferrous material. Carraway Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Raised in the cosmopolitan environment of Carraway, you understand cultural distinctions better than most. Associated Skills: Bluff, Perception Associated Languages: Elven, Supernal Roleplaying Benefit: You gain a +5 bonus to Bluff checks to appear as if you a native of any other region. Chisel Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You grew up in the rough and tumble streets of Chiseli society, fighting the Caliphate, the Empire, and one another. Associated Skills: Intimidate, Streetwise Associated Languages: Elven, Supernal Roleplaying Benefit: After an extended rest in any city, you will never get lost. Dragonseye Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You were raised with the high-minded ideals of the newest incarnation of the great hope for humanity. Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Heal Roleplaying Benefit: Your supreme confidence allows you to reroll one check in a skill in which you are trained during any Skill Challenge in which you participate.

Ironguard Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Life amongst the legions of Ironguard is full of martial discipline and ironclad honor. Associated Skills: Endurance, Perception Associated Languages: Dwarven Roleplaying Benefit: Your discipline is so well conditioned that you can go an extra minute without air, and extra day without water, and an extra three days without food before needing to make Endurance checks. Midhaven Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage The Dragonlands, the First Empire, the Second Empire, Alabastrian Empire, Ironguard, and the Caliphate have all left ruins throughout your Free Kingdom. You lived amongst them, played in them as a child, and practically slept in them. So you know how to pass among them without disturbing the treasures that may lie within. Associated Skills: Dungeoneering, Stealth Associated Languages: Draconic Roleplaying Benefit: Living in the most diverse community in Patronage, you have heard snippets of every tongue spoken. If you can listen to a conversation spoken in a language you do not speak for at least one minute, you can immediately recognize which language is being spoken. The DM also rolls a hidden saving throw for you. If successful, you can understand the general topic of conversation and the positions of the various participants. If the DM rolls a natural 1, you receive inaccurate information. Minia Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Life is hard in a land without landbonds, but your dedication to the cause helps guide you through. Associated Skills: Endurance, Nature Associated Languages: Elven Roleplaying Benefit: You can never get lost while in a land that is not governed by a Landbond.

Nidvalar Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Growing up in a Free Kingdom where technology is commonplace has granted you skills others cannot possess. Associated Skills: Arcane, Dungeoneering Associated Languages: Elven, Dwarven Roleplaying Benefit: You understand constructs better than they possibly understand themselves. Once per day, you may reroll any skill check opposed by a construct. Oncia Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You don't grow up in a pariah kingdom under the pariah immortal Queen Oncia without learning a thing or two about survival. Associated Skills: History, Streetwise Associated Languages: Supernal Roleplaying Benefit: Your keen sense of interpersonal relationships allows you to quickly determine who the important people are at any gathering. This gives you a +5 bonus to Insight checks to pierce the disguise of someone of importance posing as someone of lower station. Verdant Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You were raised along one of the Great Ways and have dedicated your life to its tenets. Associated Skills: Athletics, Insight Associated Languages: Giant Roleplaying Benefit: You have professional skills at a single service-based profession of your choice. Winteren Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage In a nation of reformed necromancers, slaves, and placid monks, you have observed much suffering. Associated Skills: Perception, Religion Associated Languages: Giant, Primordial Roleplaying Benefit: Your jaded nature makes it impossible to shake you. You do not suffer penalties from distractions during skill challenges and gain a +5 bonus to Bluff checks made to hide your reactions to unexpected information.

Wild Land Backgrounds

The Barrens Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage In the rough wooded world of the Barrens, you learned to survive the hard way. Associated Skills: Endurance, Streetwise Roleplaying Benefit: You are never lost within the Barrens. If someone is casting a ritual within a day's travel of you, you can feel it in your bones. Blackscale Swamp Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage Somehow you managed to convince the draconic humanoids of the Blackscale Swamp to raise you as one of their own. Associated Skills: Intimidate, Nature Associated Languages: Draconic Roleplaying Benefit: You and your friends may travel freely through the Blackscale Swamp. You are never lost within its confines.

Savage Sound Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You were raised on the decks of a ship that plied the dangerous saltwater Savage Sound. Associated Skills: Acrobatics, Perception Associated Languages: Abyssal Roleplaying Benefit: You have the skills of a professional sailor. Wild Forest Type: Regional Campaign Setting: Patronage You were raised in the anarchic woods astride the Fey Realm. Associated Skills: Arcane, Nature Associated Languages: Elven, Goblin Roleplaying Benefit: You have an overland movement rate through forest environments as fast as your regular overland movement. In any wooded environment you may start an encounter within the trees rather than on the ground.

Society Backgrounds

Clockwork Circle Type: Society Campaign Setting: Patronage You have studied the sacred and secret ways of making constructs from the outlaw band. Associated Skills: Arcane, Thievery Associated Languages: Dwarven, Elven Roleplaying Benefit: During an extended rest, you can reprogram any helpless minion construct or your level or lower to obey your commands. The constructs cannot attack, but will perform other menial tasks. It requires a short rest to command such minions to do any task more complex than following you from a short distance. You can have a number of minions equal to your Charisma modifier. If the minion is reduced to zero hit points while under your control, it is destroyed. Efthali Type: Society Campaign Setting: Patronage You trained in the dark arts under none other than the lich Efthal himself! Associated Skills: Arcane, Religion Roleplaying Benefit: Once during any Skill Challenge you can roll an Arcane check in place of an Intimidate check.

Loyalists Type: Society Campaign Setting: Patronage You work in secret for a restoration of the greater Alabastrian Empire. Associated Skills: Bluff, History Associated Languages: Supernal Roleplaying Benefit: You have learned a series of clandestine hand gestures that lets you identify other members of the Loyalists, as well as subtle markings where Loyalists stash useful resources for use by other members. Order of the Compass Type: Society Campaign Setting: Patronage You are a member of an ancient sect of knights dedicated to protecting the weary traveler. Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Nature Roleplaying Benefit: You can never get lost as long as you are within the Free Kingdoms. Pure Land Sect Type: Racial Prerequisite: Orc Campaign Setting: Patronage You have dedicated your life to keeping the Green Lands and Verdant clear of the impure. Associated Skills: Intimidate, Perception Associated Languages: Giant Roleplaying Benefit: When a skill in which you are trained is implicated in a Skill Challenge your group gets a +1 bonus for every other person in your party who is orc or half-orc, up to a maximum bonus of +5.

Ramhead Rangers Type: Society Campaign Setting: Patronage The Rangers trained you to liberate the enslaved and to fight for the downtrodden. Associated Skills: Athletics, Stealth Roleplaying Benefit: You gain a +5 bonus whenever trying to break an object that is restraining someone's freedom. Testament Type: Racial Prerequisite: Halfling Campaign Setting: Patronage You have been trained by the Testament to ferret out traitors to your race who seek to rule a realm or, Lucinda forbid, take a landbond. Associated Skills: Insight, Perception Roleplaying Benefit: You have access to any ritual that can dissolve a landbond, such as deposition, and may cast it without being able to otherwise cast Rituals. Your level must equal or exceed the ritual's level to cast it without a Ritual Caster feat, and you must still provide all necessary material components and foci.

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