Ah yes, the carnival life. Living out your days on the road, performing for others, and, on occasion, performing to distract others so that your compatriots can fleece them blind. The carnivalist embodies the very essence of the traveling performer and animal tamer, unafraid to make ends meet with a little con job and larceny.

  Out of necessity for their line of work, these rogues learn how to handle animals proficiently, so much so that they learn the secrets of familiar binding, giving them a loyal and clever ally in a small package.

By performing with their familiar or other trained pet, they can both distract and even fascinate their marks, and eventually, even command their animals to steal, lockpick, or disable devices as long as they maintain the performance.

With so much time spent training their pets, carnivalists are less adept at going for a foe’s weak points. However, the carnivalist does train their familiar to do the same, making up for their lack of precision with multiple angles of attack and the stealthiness of small animals.

Finally, the archetype is a master of animal training, giving animals new tricks or training in record time.

With the reduction to sneak attack, the carnivalist is a very non-combatant archetype, preferring to rely on allies and combat-trained pets to get the job done. The carnivalist is very much a go-to skill person, and benefits the most by having a wide variety of trained pets, as well as a good long list of magic items.

  The carnival troupe is a wellspring of excellent NPC ideas. Who else is/was in the rogue’s troupe? What were there relationships with each other and the rogue? Maybe the rest of the party are also carnival folk? Hmmm… That gives me an idea for a campaign based entirely around the circus life and adventuring…

    Our heroes come across a unicorn collapsed of exhaustion, the torn remnants of a net  draping his body. If aided, he claims he was assaulted by a group of deformed humanoids lead by a horrible gnome in a top hat, who desired to add him to his “show.”

  Congenital deformities are rare among elves, yet Kyvus Smoothwater is a rare exception. Born without arms, her relies on a pair of crude animated wooden limbs, and his monkey companion to perform everyday tasks, which includes training the various beasts of the troupe that took him in: Cirque de Tenebros.