Scoffney Shever

Personality

While his family continually pushes him into poliics, Scoffney is not particularly interested. Fairly apathetic and possessing no work ethic at all, Scoffney tends to wander through life, letting it happen to him as it may.

Appearance

Not your average dwarf, Scoffney is more slight of build and smiling, sometimes giggling, in presentation. He has Auburn hair and brown eyes.

Affiliations

Born into Hose Shever, Scoffney tries to deal with them as little as possible. He knows enough not to antagonize family members, but most of them view him as a slacker. This causes some to simply ignore him, while others feel obligated to "rehabilitate" him.

What little drive Scoffney does have is dedicated to the Longfingers Guild. Scoffney knows the location of, and is welcome within, their headquarters in the Undercity. Finding this headquarters, in fact, is a requirement for membership.

Scoffney is a guildsman in the Delver's Guild, giving him access to guild information, library, maproom and waystations. He also gains a 10% discount at Ebbert's Outfitters.

On the rare occasions that Scoffney feels a religious urge, his thoughts tend toward The Lady, a goddess of luck, fate, long shots and last chances. She is also a protection goddess. Jode, the goddess of music, also gets the occasional notice.

Associations

Some people Scoffney knows:

• Gunther Edlund runs the Smoke Shop, a gun and technology store in the North Market. Gunther considers Scoffney to be a good customer, with a fine eye for guns.
• Chelsean Featherhair, a shoal elf, works as a magical information gatherer for the Longfingers Guild. She is extremely self-serving and uses any of her assets to achieve her goals. While she and Scoffney don't particularly like each other, everything Scoffney knows about magic, he learned from her. She lives in the Longfingers Guild Headquarters.
• Yul Havan runs Havan's Haven, a barber shop in Midtown, with his daughter Melanope. On the rare occasion Scoffney cares about beard maintenance, Yul is the man to go to. Yul also lets Scoffney perform quietly for the patrons for tips, from time to time.
• Bleetwiss Hodgewocket joined the Longfingers Guild at the same time Scoffney did. The gnome is extremely interested in exploring the Dungeon, and took up thievery to fund expeditions into it. What little dungeon exploration Scoffney has done has been with him.
• Motesa Shever was Scoffney's mother, a dwarf who married into House Shever. She died of a drug overdose when he was a boy.
• Rogad Shever, Scoffney's father, was adopted into House Shever when very young, raised as the son of Miriam Shever and Martell Lerack. Rogad blames Scoffney for his wife's death. Rogad spends most of his time on the Shever Estate in the Nobles' Quarter.
• Katerina Shever grew up with Scoffney and remains one of the only members of the house who speaks to him, and even then not very often. She is also the granddaughter of Miriam Shever and Martell Lerack, making her Scoffney's cousin. While growing up, only Katerina encouraged his musical pursuits. A talented actor and singer herself, she is a student at the Imperial Conservatory of Music in the Nobles' Quarter. Katerina is thought to be dating Raule Kath, a well-known singer and songwriter from House Kath.

Rumors

• Nivae Tamelli is easily the greatest bard in Ptolus, though she no longer performs that often. It is said that she has turned down many offers to lead the Knights of the Chord, a martial order dedicated to drawing power from music.
• A mysterious pro-technology group known as the Shuul makes the best guns in Ptolus. Scoffney first became aware of them about a year ago when members of a rival crime organization, the Killraven Crime Syndicate began to carry their guns. The Shuul also employ agents with a very distinctive look: goggle, mask, lether coats, toolbelts and guns.
• Recently the ancient airship that is moored to a tall tower on the Shever Estate became operational again. Scoffney has heard that the Shuul helped House Shever get it working.
• Scoffney sometimes visits the Ghostly Minstrel in Delver's Square, usually looking for an angle to get owner Tarin Ursalatao to let him perform. One night, he saw legendary adventurer Sheva Callister there, and would swear she was joking with a ghost.

Future Advancement

Some possibilities for future advancement. This is not an exhaustive list.

The most obvious use for a new level is to continue with either rogue or bard. These would provide:

• Rogue 3: +1 BAB, +1 Fort save, +1 Will save, sneak attack damage to 2d6, trap sense +1, +1d6 hp, +11 skill points
• Bard 4: +1 BAB, +1 Reflex save, +1 Will save, learn two second level spells, cast one extra 1st level spell and 1 2nd level spell per day

Not to many prestige classes leverage the rogue/bard mix, so there will probably not be many that would appeal to Scoffney. Some exceptions are:

• The Dungeon Delver prestige class has some cool dungeon-crawling features, which would be useful in a setting like Ptolus. To qualify for it, Scoffney would need to bump a number of skills and acquire the Endurance and Blind-Fight feats.
• The Virtuoso prestige class would put Scoffney well into the performer part of his personality. He would need to buy some specific skills to qualify for this.
• The Seeker of the Song is a more esoteric prestige class dealing with the power of primal music. It requires 13 ranks in knowledge (arcana) and perform skills and the Skill Focus (Perform) feat.
• The Stonelord leverages a dwarfs afinity for stone for a variety of funky, earth-based effects. He would need some craft and language skills as well as the Endurance feat.

All characters gain a feat every three levels. Since his next level will make his total character level (CL) 6, he gets a new feat of his choice. His next such feat will come at CL 9. Some of the feats he has the prerequisites for are (there are, of course, others):

• Scoffney has Combat Expertise. He has not really used this and, in retrospect, some other feat (like Point Blank Shot) might have been a better choice. Les will allow Scoffney to swap this feat for another one, if desired.
• Retroactively applying the "alternate class features" from Complete Mage, Les would allow Scoffney to swap the Evasion ability he gained as a second level rogue with Spell Reflection, if desired. With this ability, any spell aimed at you that misses is sent back at the caster (who rerolls to hit herself).
• Retroactively applying the "alternate class features" from Complete Mage, Les would allow Scoffney to swap the Countersong bardic music ability with the Spellbreaker song ability, if desired. While this song is active, enemies casting spells with verbal components have a 20% chance of spell failure.
• Point Blank Shot: Adds +1 to attack and damage for ranged attacks at less than 30 ft. Also acts a as gateway feat to a large number of other ranged attack feats.
• Precise Shot (requires Point Blank Shot): Eliminates the -4 penalty for firing into melee.
• Far Shot (requires Point Blank Shot): Increases range by 50% (100% for thrown weapons).
• Rapid Shot (requires Point Blank Shot): Gain an extra ranged attack per round when making a full attack. The attack is at your highest base attack bonus, but each attack you make in that round (the extra one and the normal ones) takes a -2 penalty. This feat does not provide any additional reload ability, so to use this with guns, you'd either need Rapid Reload, a gun that could somehow fire more than one shot per round, or multiple guns.
• Shot on the Run (requires Point Blank Shot): Move both before and after ranged attacks, though you cannot exceed your normal movement rate.
• Rapid Reload: Reload a gun or light crossbow with a free action, or a heavy crossbow with a move action. You still need both hands free to do this and reloading still provokes an attack of opportunity.
• Skill Focus (Perform): Adds +3 to all Perform skill checks. This feat is a prereq for the Seeker of the Song prestige class.
• Melodic Casting (requires four ranks each of Perform and Spellcraft): Cast spells and activate magic items by command word or spell completion while using a bardic music ability. Also may use Perform skill in place of Concentration in most cases.
• Extra Music: Gain four additional uses of bardic music per day.
• Lingering Song: The bardic songs of inspire courage, inspire greatness, or inspire heroics, the effect lasts for 1 minute after an inspired ally stops hearing you play.
• Arterial Strike: On a sneak attack, forgo 1d6 of extra damage to deal 1 point per round until the target is healed (magically or with the Heal skill).

When spending skill points, if Scoffney wants to eventually take levels in the prestige classes mention above, they have some specific skill requirements that should be planned for. Some other non-obvious skill choices would be to branch out into other types of performance, such as Perform (strings) or Sense Motive. Scoffney is also the only member of the group who has Escape Artist, Forgery, Gather Info and Rope Use as class skills (meaning these skills cost twice as much for others to learn). He might also look at the Use Magic Device skill, which allows him to use magic items he could not otherwise use.

Scoffney doesn't have many things the require spending money, so can spend cash on goodies. Some possibilities:

• Additional and/or multi-barrel guns, depending on the feats you pick.
• Scoffney can use scrolls of any spells on the Bard spell list, so picking up some of these would expand his spell repertoire.
• Similarly, scoffney can use wands containing any spells on the Bard spell list.
• Scoffney uses a number of skills that are hindered by armor. By using masterwork armor, the "armor check" penalty of his current armor is only -1, but it could be reduced to zero by downgrading his armor to masterwork studded leather (325gp). He could also go for magical studded leather (+1, 1,200gp, +2 4200gp), or leather with special abilities like Shadow (+5 to Hide checks, +3,750gp) or Silent Move (+5 to Move Silent checks, +3,750gp).
• Being a dwarf, Scoffney is slower than the rest of the party, so magic to help him move faster might be useful, like boots of striding and springing (5,500gp).

Data

• Character sheet