User:MisterSinister/Bounty Hunter

Summary::For people who like tying people up and carrying them away. Length::10 Minimum Level::1 Base Attack Bonus Progression::Good Fortitude Save Progression::Good Reflex Save Progression::Poor Will Save Progression::Good Class Ability::Alternative Magic Class Ability Progression::Other

Allowed Alignments::Lawful Good Allowed Alignments::Lawful Neutral Allowed Alignments::Lawful Evil Allowed Alignments::Neutral Good Allowed Alignments::Neutral Allowed Alignments::Neutral Evil Allowed Alignments::Chaotic Good Allowed Alignments::Chaotic Neutral Allowed Alignments::Chaotic Evil

Bounty Hunter
Sometimes, people want someone alive rather than dead. Maybe they have some useful information, maybe they just want to have them suffer and die at their own hands, maybe some other reason. The bounty hunter doesn't care - their job is to bring their target back, alive.

That's not to say that all bounty hunters are this unconcerned about their quarries. There are some who follow strict rules of capture, and others who only care about the money. They sometimes even join adventuring parties, where their skills at tracking, subdual and wide knowledge of different creatures and how they can be weakened proves extremely useful.

Making a Bounty Hunter
Bounty hunters are very sneaky, effective in combat, but focus more on finding and bringing down individual targets.

Abilities: Like all fighting types, bounty hunters prefer high Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, but a good Intelligence isn't amiss either.

Races: Members of all races can and do become bounty hunters.

Alignment: Bounty hunters can be of any alignment.

Starting Gold: 5d4&times;10 gp (125 gp).

Starting Age: Simple

Class Features
All of the following are class features of the bounty hunter.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Bounty hunters are proficient with all simple weapons, the sap, the longbow, the composite longbow, bolas, and the whip. They are proficient with light armour, but not with shields.

 : Bounty hunters have to deal with all sorts, and this can sometimes mean retrieving people from places weapons are not allowed. As a result, all of them know some kind of unarmed fighting style. You can call it 'Crane Style' or 'Naked Monkey Dance' or 'Pimp Slappin'' or whatever else you feel like.

A bounty hunter gains a natural slam attack, which deals 1d6 damage for a Medium creature. They can use either Strength or Dexterity on its attack and damage rolls. Nobody cares.

 : Bounty hunters have to bring whoever they're hunting back alive - that's how the deal works. Those that don't find themselves out of business, and possibly out of lives as well if they're not careful. This means that they can't simply kill whoever they're hunting - no matter how easy that would be.

Bounty hunters can always inflict nonlethal damage, even with things that normally don't permit it (such as spells). If they choose to do so with weapons, they don't take any penalty on attack rolls for doing so. Swords are just as good for braining people as anything else, after all.

 : Hundreds of people captured by bounty hunters often wonder how on earth they got knocked out so fast. Bounty hunters train in a variety of techniques to violently capture those they are after, most of which rely on surprise or distractions.

Whenever a bounty hunter makes an attack that requires an attack roll against a target that would be denied their Dexterity to AC for any reason, they deal an additional 1d6 damage for each two class levels they have (rounding up), but only if the attack would deal nonlethal damage. This can apply equally well to melee and ranged attacks - after all, why bother punching someone in the face when a sandbag arrow will do?

A bounty hunter can only perform such an attack once per turn (but can choose which attack has this effect). At 5th character level, and every 5 character levels after that, this increases by 1 (so thus, a 5th level bounty hunter can make two such attacks per turn, a 10th level one can make three such attacks, etc). If an ability with an attack roll would affect multiple targets, each separate target counts as one 'use' of this ability.

 : Bounty hunters tend to know a lot of stuff about the local area, and tend to pick up a lot of gossip and rumoured information, along with the skills to tell what's probably right and what's complete garbage. You also don't survive long as a bounty hunter if you don't know what the hell you're going after and how to bring it down.

Bounty hunters automatically receive a number of ranks in Knowledge (local) equal to their character level + 3. These function identically to normal ranks, and cannot be used to exceed the normal rank maximum that any character can have on a skill. If your campaign splits Knowledge (local) into a million skills for some weird reason, a bounty hunter has one such 'specialization' per character level (but you shouldn't do this, because it's not in the rules and is extremely retarded).

Additionally, a bounty hunter can use Knowledge (local) to identify any creature, as if they were using the appropriate Knowledge skill instead.

 : Bounty hunters have to hunt bounties - it's in their name, after all, and if they couldn't do that, this would be a WotC class. They also have to have some kind of reward for it - because if they didn't, this would be a WotC class. In short, WotC classes like keeping flavour and mechanics apart. Wait, what was I on about?

As a swift action, a bounty hunter can declare that they're hunting someone. They don't have to have seen them, but they need at least something to go on - a name, a physical description, a last known location, something like that. Whenever they roll any d20 for anything relating to finding, bringing down or capturing whoever they've chosen, they can roll it twice and choose the better result. The GM is encouraged to be reasonable about this ability - it should be useful, after all. However, a bounty hunter can only have one such individual named at a time. If the bounty hunter wants to change who they are hunting, they can do that, but not more than once every 24 hours.

If they find themselves in combat with whoever they've named, bounty hunters receive a +4 bonus to avoid AOOs for movement from anyone except the only they're after. If the bounty hunter successfully knocks out, ties up, or similarly incapacitates (but doesn't kill) whoever they're after, and then hand them over to a relevant authority (assuming they want them), they gain a bounty point. A bounty hunter can have a maximum number of bounty points equal to 3 + their character level at any one time. They can expend a bounty point to either set one of their d20 rolls to 15, or an enemy's d20 roll to 5, as a free action.

Bounty points are not granted for anyone captured whose CR or character level would be more than 1 point below the bounty hunter's. After all, there's no point hunting bags of rats.

 : As bounty hunters get more experienced, they find themselves having to deal with things that are much bigger than them. Whether they're hunting escaped circus animals or ogre pets who've wandered away too far, the ability to put something twice your size in an arm-lock can be very helpful.

From 2nd level, whenever a bounty hunter grapples, or gets grappled by, a creature that is bigger than they are, they receive a +4 bonus to their grapple check. They can also use any weapon they are proficient with in the grapple, even if they normally couldn't.

 : Bounty hunters who can't tie people up don't get very far in life. Thus, it makes sense that they would have picked up some basic roping skills even if they didn't specifically train in it.

For all Use Rope checks, a 2nd level bounty hunter can treat their BAB as their ranks in Use Rope if that would be higher. They can also use any rope at least 10ft long as a weapon with the same stats as a whip.

 : People like to hide in hidden areas, like false floors. If bounty hunters couldn't find them, they'd be useless, and after a while, hey get so good at it, that they can do it almost by instinct.

A 2nd level bounty hunter can use detect secret doors as a standard action at-will, except it's a supernatural ability.

 : A 2nd-level bounty hunter gets Track as a bonus feat (regardless of whether they meet the prerequisites), and can use Knowledge (local) instead of Survival to track creatures.

 : Bounty hunters have to be made of tough stuff, as the people they're tracking usually don't want to be found or taken. As a result, bounty hunters gain quite significant resistance to pain and other forms of deprivation, as well as any supernatural hindrances.

Bounty hunters are immune to any effect that stems from pain. They also need less sleep, requiring only four hours of sleep each night to become rested (creatures that don't sleep get no benefit). Lastly, they can spend a bounty point to end any one magical, spell-like or supernatural effect that affects only them.

 : After a while, bounty hunters have to go after bigger quarries, who usually have very nasty magical capabilities, or tend to just be huge and scary. Sometimes, the optimal strategy is a really fast takedown with such things, and bounty hunters become increasingly better at it.

From 3rd level, a bounty hunter that hits a creature vulnerable to their knock out ability, they can spend a bounty point and a swift action to have that attack deal triple normal damage, provided the bounty hunter deals nonlethal damage only. Any damage dice they gain from knock out are also multiplied similarly, but no other bonus damage dice are.

This cannot be used if the hit threatens a critical.

 : When bounty hunting for mages, one has to be exceptionally careful not to get afflicted by their magic. Thus, bounty hunters who make it this far have developed some kind of unusual magical protection - whether mage-blood tattoos, iron amulets sown into their clothing, bones of magical beasts, or something even more strange.

A 3rd level bounty hunter receives SR 10 + their character level. Against any ability that would take away control of their actions either permanently or temporarily, this becomes 12 + their character level instead.

 : Invisibility is a common foil of those who wish to track others, and a great number of other magical capabilities make individuals harder to pursue. Bounty hunters learn to work around these with ingenuity, lodestones and no small amount of luck.

Against a 3rd level bounty hunter, a quarry that has some ability that makes tracking them impossible, that disguises their appearance or changes their form, is still trackable and looks like its true self to the bounty hunter.

Additionally, the bounty hunter can use invisibility purge at-will as a standard action, with a caster level equal to their character level, except that it's considered a supernatural ability.

 : Undead are a nuisance for bounty hunters - they can't be knocked out, don't get scared, and tend to protect the kind of people that they want to bring in. As a result, experienced bounty hunters develop techniques for fighting the undead that border on the supernatural.

Against undead, a 3rd level bounty hunter's attacks are all considered to have the undead bane property. Additionally, the nonlethal damage requirements for knock out and takedown are waived against undead, which means that the bounty hunter can still get the benefit of these abilities against undead (as they are helpfully immune to nonlethal damage).

Additionally, a bounty hunter of 3rd level or higher can use command undead as a standard action, with a caster level equal to their character level, and a DC of 10 + 1/2 the bounty hunter's character level + the bounty hunter's Intelligence modifier, except that it is considered a supernatural ability.

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