We covered why it’s a good idea to offer some campaign-specific class features for the Really Wild West (index of articles here) Campaign Hack for Starfinder in our first such article, which went over soldier class features. We continue to explore the classes with new class features for the envoy.

There are numerous Western and pulp-adventure tropes that work for an envoy character in the Really Wild West, including merchants, cattle barons, carpetbaggers, snake-oil salesmen, reporters, tourists and vacationers from Back East (be they sightseers, big game hunters, or displaced nobles struggling to carve out a new empire), diplomats, traders, and activists, to name just a few!

We offer four new envoy improvisations, and two new envoy expertise talents.

Envoy Improvisations [Any level]

Factor (Ex): You have a factor, a CR 0 NPC that helps make arrangements for you. The factor doesn’t even go adventuring for you, and generally doesn’t even travel with you, preferring to handle your affairs by telephone, telegraph, Babbage-Bell message, and courier. You can only communicate with your factor when you have access to a settlement or the Babbage-Bell Grid.

Your factor can handle one request at a time, and all requests take at least 24 hours. A factor can research a question (taking time to take 20, with a +1 bonus, thus answering anything a DC 21 check can find), make travel arrangements or housing (ensuring you get the needed number of seats or rooms at a location, at the normal cost), keep your funds secure (and wiring them to banks and stores as you direct), make inquiries about location conditions and agents (making a Diplomacy check to gather information with a bonus equal to 5 + your level), and do such minor tasks as receiving and sending mail, looking after objects you end to them, and whatever else the GM considers appropriate. They are not a spellcaster, crafter, famous personage, or combatant in any way.

In some cases when dealing with officials or members of high society, the GM may grant you a circumstance bonus to Diplomacy checks to do things such as ask for an audience or open negotiations if you do so through your factor.

Have Thing, Will Travel (Ex): (Sense-dependent) You possess one weapon that you are well-known for carrying, or that is itself recognizable (either as a unique weapon, or as one of a class of renowned weapons). You can choose what weapon this is each time you gain a new level, and if lost you can replace it with another weapon with 24 hours of adjustments and spreading rumors.

You can draw this weapon without taking an action as part of any move action or full action, and as part of rolling for initiative. When you draw the weapon in this way outside of combat or in the surprise round of combat, you may make an Intimidate check to demoralize a single creature within 30 feet of you also without taking an action. Any creature within 60 feet of you when you do this is immune to this ability of yours for 24 hours.

Put A Price on their Head (Ex): You can put a bounty on a foe, dead or alive, to encourage bounty hunters, law agents, allies, sellswords, and gunslingers to make their best effort against that target. You can only do this in a settlement with a Babbage-Bell station, and you must either make a Successful DC 15 Diplomacy check to accuse the target of a crime you reasonably believe they have committed, or have the GM make a Bluff check in secret (DC 15 + 1-1/2 target’s CR, +10 if viewed as friendly by the settlement, +20 if viewed as helpful) to accuse them of something believable, with the ability only working on a successful check.

You must offer at least 100 credits for the target, to be brought to justice dead or alive. You must pay ¼ of this amount in advance. The GM then makes a secret Diplomacy check for you (DC 15 + 1-1/2 target’s CR). If it is successful, within 24 hours everyone who could reasonably have heard about the bounty gains the benefit of your Get ‘Em improvisation when attacking the target, even if you are not present. On a failed check there is no benefit, but you do not know if the check succeeded until you witness someone attack the target.

The bonus lasts 30 days, and you can then renew it by doubling the bounty (and paying 25% of the new amount in advance). If you learn the check failed, you can make a new check my doubling the bounty. If you do not renew a bounty, you cannot set a new bounty on the same target for 30 days.

If someone brings in the target and claims the bounty, you must pay it, or you cannot use this ability again in the same territory (generally an area the size of a US state) until you do so.

You must have Get ‘Em to select this improvisation.

References (Ex): You have a series of references you can use as your bona fides in certain segments of society. These may be names of people who will vouch for you (and who you can describe well enough to convince others such vouchsafing is likely), passwords and phrases, physical letters of recommendation or letters of credit, secret handshakes, or any combination of similar methods. You know exactly which references to call on in what circumstances, allowing you to benefit from these to a degree other characters can’t match.

Select a “reference alignment” within one step of your own alignment. When dealing with official members of an organization with an alignment within one step of your reference alignment, or officials or people with influence in a settlement with an alignment within one step of your reference alignment, you can make a Diplomacy check to change the attitude of that character as a move action by calling on your references. This only works once (ever) per character, and only if the character is unfriendly or indifferent toward you. (Hostile creatures don’t care what your references are, and friendly or helpful creatures already like you well enough not to care either).

Additionally, in a settlement with an alignment within one step of your reference alignment, treat your character level as 1 higher for purposes of determining what you can buy.

Expertise Talents

Interlocutor (Ex; Culture): You know a number of languages, and can often work out how to communicate with someone who only knows a language related to yours. You gain a number of bonus languages equal to your ranks in Culture (increasing whenever you put an additional rank in Culture).

When you meet someone who speaks a language, but with whom you do not share a common language, you may roll your expertise die (by itself). On a result of 1-5 you have no special advantage communicating with the target. On a result of 6 or 7, you have found a related language and can convey very simple concepts with a minute of work. On a result of 8 or more, you find a common language similar enough to easily communicate basic concepts.

Look Harmless (Ex; Bluff): If you do not have a weapon or obviously dangerous item or spell readied for use, and a creature has never seen you make an attack, rather than add your expertise die to a Bluff check, you can make a Bluff check as a standard action to convince the target you are no threat. This is a Bluff check to lie, but it does not take a modifier for the target being hostile or unfriendly. If the check succeeds, and there is any other target in line of sight making attacks against the target or the target’s allies, the target does not attack you, favoring attacking more dangerous-looking foes.

This immediately ends if you are witnessed take any action that works against the target’s best interests, or aiding the target’s foes. If you target gives you instructions (such as “don’t move!”) and you do not follow them, you must make another check with a cumulative -5 penalty for every instruction you have not followed.

If you attack the target while it believes you are harmless, it is treated as flat-footed against your first attack.

In the coming weeks, we’ll look at class features for the rest of the Starfinder core classes, to give them Really Wild West-specific options!

PATREON
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