#simplicité.

— — this verse is a homebrew. the reason for that is that my game is super modded and my impression of kaien in this verse is colored by the hundred-some of them i have installed. besides, i need basically every crossover verse to coincide with his canon experience (at least up to a certain point), and vanilla bg3 couldn't give me that 💖

BASICS.

NAME:    kaien. he's sure there used to be more to it (had to have been, at some point — a mouthful of it), but it's beyond him at this point. he wouldn't know where to start looking for it, even if he cared to. AGE:    around the 250 mark. RACE:    *umbran. on the surface, kaien bears the appearance of an elf (█████ ███ father / ███ ███ mother). * born from the union of shadow and arcane ambition, umbrans walk the thin line between the seen and the unseen, wielding powers that draw from the very essence of dusk and shadow. SUBRACE:    █████████. CLASS:    *slayer and fighter multiclass. * skilled at tracking down targets, slayers are consummate hunters, living for the chase and the deadly strike that brings it to a close. slayers spend most of their time honing their weapon skills, studying the habits and anatomy of foes, and practicing combat maneuvers. SUBCLASS:    *executioner. * streetwise and ruthless, they operate independently, often making their talents available to the highest bidder. though a few unscrupulous executioners exploit this arrangement and force families to pay higher rates for their services, most of these assassins follow a strict personal code and maintain absolute transparency with their employers. LANGUAGES:    common. undercommon. elvish. RELIGION:    agnostic. agnostics rely on personal conviction, logic, or the strength of their own abilities, viewing the gods as fallible beings rather than infallible entities worthy of worship. he acknowledges the gods exist, he just doesn't conform to any religious belief.  BACKGROUND:    noble. urban bounty hunter.

DETAILS.

RACE FEATURES: your connection to the shadow realm grants you power over darkness and the ability to perceive and manipulate the hidden threads of magic that weave through the night. you have evolved to see perfectly in the darkest of environments, able to discern colors, shapes, and details in total darkness. you gain proficiency in perception. however, you are also marked by your new nature, your appearance and aura forever altered, and your vulnerability to light becoming a constant reminder of the price of your power. ABILITY: your touch possesses the shadow taint, which drains the strength and vitality of your victims, potentially even killing them. SUBRACE FEATURES: as a █████████, you don't suffer the effects of extreme heat and have resistance to non-magical fire damage. CLASS FEATURES:

quarry: you gain advanage on attack rolls and do 1-6 bonus damage against studied targets.

studied target: when you attack your quarry, you gain an additional 1-6 piercing damage.

bounty hunter: you gain proficiency in investigation.

urban tracker: an expert at navigating the wild within the city, you gain proficiency in sleight of hand.

blind fighting: you have blindsight with a range of 3m. within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn't behind total cover, even if you're blinded or in darkness.

SUBCLASS FEATURES:

bloodstained hands: executioners are trained to cause excruciating pain when striking targets, often leaving them reeling in agony or completely incapacitated. whenever you strike a studied target you cause your target to bleed for the next 2 turns.

painful strike: while your targets are bleeding out, you choose to increase their suffering by lacing your weapons with poison. whenever you strike a studied target you cause your target to take an additional 1-6 poison damage and poison your target.

BACKGROUND SKILLS: insight and persuasion. BACKGROUND FEATURES: ear to the ground: you are in frequent contact with people in the segment of society that your chosen quarries move through. these people might be associated with the criminal underworld, the rough-and-tumble folk of the streets, or members of high society. this connection comes in the form of a contact in any city you visit, a person who provides information about the people and places of the local area.

NOTES.

kaien suffers from near-total retrograde amnesia. the memories he does have are fragmented and episodic, restricted to his years living with a human family and working as a bounty hunter across faerûn. he remembers neither his origins nor the circumstances that led to him becoming an umbran.

he's immune to the shadow curse and is free to traverse the shadow-cursed lands without the need for spell protection.

he's sensitive to exposure to direct sunlight, but the detrimental effects have presently been mitigated by the tadpole.

kaien's role in the verse is intended to be a companion role, but i'm not too fussed about this either way. whatever works 👍

during act one, he can be found at the same location as gandrel the monster-hunter (at his camp, specifically) and promptly recruited as a companion upon discovering he shares the party's affliction. otherwise, kaien meets the party as soon as they enter the shadow-cursed lands during act two and automatically joins as a companion for the entire duration of the act. he can be dismissed following the beginning of act three, but otherwise chooses to remain in the party as a permanent companion.

despite his elven constitution, kaien doesn't trance. still, he requires little sleep (2 to 4 hours max.) and foregoes it more often than not, sometimes for days at a time. insomniacs unite?

as a companion, kaien's approval or disapproval is never vocalized outside of camp. if you want to know what he thinks of you and where you stand with him, you need to explicitly ask.

any free time he has, he uses to look out for jobs. (ex: if the party skips the save mayrina questline, he seeks out and kills the sea hag himself at the request of mayrina's brothers.) * the exp. from these side-quests is party-shared regardless of participation.

he is romanceable. just as an aside...