Byron, Sentinel & Thanks to my Patrons!

Here’s another character from my novel. Byron is Angela’s beloved, a dark knight in search of redemption.
Also, this is the day of the month I publicly thank my patrons who donate at least $3 to my Patreon page. So thank you to Zabor and Cecil Maye!

Sir Byron Wylde

Human sentinel 1

LN Medium humanoid (human)

Init +5; Senses Perception +2

Defense

AC 17, touch 13, flat-footed 14 (+4 armor, +3 Dex)

hp 15 (1d12+3)

Fort +5, Ref +3, Will  +5

Defensive Abilities sentinel’s reserve, wise reflexes

Offense

Speed 30 ft.

Melee spear +5 (1d8+3, x3) or lance +4 (1d8+3, x3)

Ranged spear +5 (1d8+3, x3)

Special Attacks guardian challenge

Martial
Tradition Dedicated Lancer (Equipment sphere: Pikeman Training, Spear Dancer; Lancer sphere: Adamant Stalker); PAM Wis
Beastmastery sphere- DC 13, Talents Broad Skills, Drawbacks Monster Tamer (magical beasts)

- handle animal (tame: train an animal to readily obey your commands in and out of combat)

- broad skills (your beastmastery talents only apply to magical beasts)

Equipment sphere - DC 13, Talents Pikeman Training, Spear Dancer

- pikeman training (discipline) (proficiency with the bardiche, bec de corbin, bill, glaive, glaive-guisarme, guisarme, halberd, hooked lance, lance, mancatcher, and ranseur. Deal +2 damage with a weapon with the brace weapon special feature against a target moving into your threatened area)

- spear dancer (treat any spear or polearm as though it had the finesse weapon special feature, and may wield it as a one-handed weapon)

Guardian sphere- DC 13, Talents none, Drawbacks none

- challenge (inflict a -2 penalty on attack rolls that do not include you as a target and a +2 bonus on attack rolls targeting only you to a challenged creature)

Lancer sphere - DC 13, Talents Adamant Stalker, Drawbacks none
- impale (impale an opponent with a successful lethal attack)

- adamant stalker (follow an enemy taking a 5-foot step)

Statistics

Str 17, Dex 16, Con 17, Int 13, Wis 16, Cha 14

Base Atk +1, CMB +4, CMD 17

Traits Adopted, Bound by Honor, Warrior of Old

Feats Iron Will, Weapon Focus (spear)

Skills Diplomacy +6, Handle Animal +6, Intimidate +6, Knowledge (nobility) +5, Ride +7, Sense Motive +7

Languages Common, Elven

Gear cavalier’s kit (23 gp), chain shirt (100 gp), lance (10 gp), 2 vials of liquid life (40 gp), spear (2 gp)

Special Abilities

Beastmastery Sphere The Beastmastery sphere focuses on all forms of animal handling.
Unlike most other spheres which rest squarely on the related core rules, talents and abilities granted by the Beastmastery sphere override certain skill functions (particularly Handle Animal and Ride). No additional checks are required outside of those listed in the associated ability. Some abilities call out joint actions. These actions require both the user and his animal ally to pay the requisite action cost.
Animal Allies: Some talents and abilities reference animal allies; your animal companions, familiars, tame creatures, and any creature actively serving as your mount with an Intelligence score of 2 or less are considered your animal allies. Animal allies always act on your initiative.
Special: Animal companions, Conjuration sphere companions, drake companions, eidolons, and familiars cannot gain this sphere or talents from this sphere.
When you first take the Beastmastery sphere, choose one of the following packages: Handle Animal or Ride.

Monster Tamer (Requires Handle Animal Package) You may not use your trainer ability on creatures of the animal type. Choose one creature type other than the animal type. If a (beastmastery) talent specifies a creature of the animal type, it instead applies to your chosen type. You must take Broad Skills with the bonus talent from this drawback, though you may not affect creatures of a type other than your chosen type unless this drawback is bought off.

Beastmastery: Handle Animal You gain 5 ranks in the Handle Animal skill, plus 5 ranks per talent spent in the Beastmastery sphere (maximum equal to your total Hit Dice). If you possess skill ranks in Handle Animal, you may choose to retrain them, but you do not gain ranks when only temporarily gaining this package, such as through the armiger’s customized weapons class feature.
You also gain the following ability:

Beastmastery: Tame (Handle Animal) You may attempt to train an animal to readily obey your commands in and out of combat. This requires 8 hours and a creature of the animal type that has an attitude toward you of indifferent or better. This time may be divided as per the magic item crafting rules. You may only train one creature at a time with this ability. At the end of this period, make a Handle Animal check with a DC of 10 + the creature’s Hit Dice. If successful, the creature is now considered tame.
You may not tame a creature with more Hit Dice than you have ranks in Handle Animal. You may have multiple tame creatures under your control, but their total Hit Dice cannot exceed your ranks in Handle Animal. If you attempt to tame a creature that would exceed your Hit Dice cap, you must choose which other creatures to release. Animal companions and familiars, such as from class features, the Animal Companion talent, or the Pet talent, never count against this Hit Dice cap.
You may not use this ability on a creature with the swarm subtype. A creature with a template adds the challenge rating adjustment of the template to its HD (minimum increase +0) for determining if you may tame it and for how many creatures you can have tame. Variant creatures with increased challenge ratings (such as a pyrohydra compared to a normal hydra, if using the Broad Skills talent), treats the challenge rating increase of the variant as if it were a template for this purpose. A creature whose permanent Intelligence score is raised above 2 is no longer a valid target for this ability and is automatically released. This effect ends if you go two full days without spending at least 1 hour training your tame creatures.
This is treated as an extraordinary mind-affecting compulsion effect for the purposes of opposed control checks, such as another compulsion effect affecting your tame creature. Use your ranks in Handle Animal in place of your caster level for the opposed check.

Beastmastery: Broad Skills (handle animal) You may tame creatures of animal intelligence (Intelligence scores of 1 or 2) of any type, though you take a -4 penalty on the check on creatures not of the animal type. Only permanent Intelligence counts for determining if a creature can be affected; ability drain, damage, or other penalties or effects that reduce Intelligence to not allow a creature to be affected. You may also tame mindless creatures of the ooze, plant, or vermin type, bypassing any immunity to mind-affecting effects granted by the their type. Mindless creatures serving you as a mount count as animal allies. Creatures not of the animal type count as twice their Hit Dice against the total amount you may have tame at once. This increase does not stack with the increase for creatures with the swarm subtype from the Beekeeper talent.
If you possess the Animal Empathy talent, it is likewise expanded with the same penalty.

Defender’s Soul A sentinel gains the Guardian sphere as a bonus sphere, although she must select the challenge package. If she already possesses the Guardian sphere challenge package, she instead gains a Guardian talent for which she qualifies.

Equipment: Pikeman Training (discipline) You gain proficiency with the bardiche, bec de corbin, bill, glaive, glaive-guisarme, guisarme, halberd, hooked lance, lance, mancatcher, and ranseur. Whenever you use a readied action to make an attack with a weapon with the brace weapon special feature against a target moving into your threatened area, that attack deals an additional +2 damage. At +10 base attack bonus, this bonus damage is instead increased to +4.

Equipment: Spear Dancer You may treat any spear or polearm you wield as though it had the finesse weapon special feature, and may wield it as a one-handed weapon. Spears and polearms include weapons like the amentum, boar spear, doru, elven branched spear, glaive, guisarme, harpoon, lance, longspear, naginata, pilum, planson, shortspear, sibat, spear, tiger fork, and trident or other weapons based on GM approval.

Guardian Challenge (Ex) At 1st level, whenever a sentinel uses the challenge ability of the Guardian sphere, for the duration of the challenge she gains a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls against a challenged creature. At 5th level and every four levels thereafter, these bonuses increase by +1, to a maximum of +5 at 17th level.

Guardian Sphere Guardians specialize in protecting their allies and drawing the ire of their enemies.
You gain a delayed damage pool equal to your 3 x your base attack bonus. When you receive damage, as part of taking the damage you may redirect all or part of it to your delayed damage pool. Apply damage reduction and resistance before redirecting the damage. You may not redirect damage that would exceed the maximum capacity of the damage pool. Your delayed damage pool empties at the end of your turn each round, inflicting any damage stored in the pool on you, bypassing any damage reduction or resistance you possess and resetting to 0. Any additional effects of the attack, such as poison, are still incurred immediately even if the entire damage of the attack is redirected to the delayed damage pool. Any healing you receive in excess of your maximum hp automatically reduces the amount of damage in your delayed damage pool.
Should you lose access to the Guardian sphere, any damage (or other effects if you possess certain talents) is incurred at the end of your turn.
In addition, choose one of the following packages:

Guardian: Challenge As a move action, you may issue a challenge to a creature you can see. You may expend martial focus to reduce this to a swift action. A creature must be able to perceive your challenge to be affected by it. The creature takes a -2 penalty on attack rolls that do not include you as a target and a +2 bonus on attack rolls targeting only you. Creatures receiving this effect are aware of it, though do not gain insight to its duration. This penalty (but not bonus) increases by 1 for every 4 points of base attack bonus you possess. The challenge lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3 + 1/2 your base attack bonus. When you issue a new challenge, any previous challenge you have active ends. Multiple challenges do not stack; if a creature is affected by challenges from more than one creature, they suffer no penalty against the source of any challenge against them and likewise gain the bonus against the sources of all of the challenges. Creatures with no Intelligence score (Intelligence score of (-)) cannot be targeted by your challenge.

Lancer Sphere All practitioners of the Lancer sphere gain the following ability:

Lancer: Impale When making a melee attack with the attack action that deals lethal damage, you can take a -2 penalty on the attack roll; if the attack is successful, your weapon impales the creature, forcing it into a square within your reach if it was not already. An impaled creature cannot move and is battered for as long as it remains impaled. An impaled creature who attempts to cast a spell or use a spell-like ability must make a concentration check (DC 10 + your CMB + spell level), or lose the spell. Weapons used to impale a creature cannot be used for attacks except for those against the impaled creature (you cannot impale more than a single creature with your unarmed strikes), ignoring armor, natural armor, and shield bonuses to AC. A creature can only be impaled by a single weapon; attempting to impale an already impaled creature automatically fails. Controlling an impaling weapon requires the same amount of hands as wielding the weapon does.

This impalement may be broken when you lose control of the weapon used for the attack (such as by being disarmed), or by the impaled creature making a combat maneuver check as a standard action with a DC equal to your CMD. If you control the weapon being used to impale a creature, you may choose to automatically remove the weapon as a move action. When the impaled creature loses the impaled condition, they take bleed damage equal to the damage dice of the weapon used to impale the creature. If a creature is impaled by a weapon that is not controlled by another creature, they are able to move, but all movement speeds they possess are reduced by ½ (minimum 5 ft.).

You must make an opposed Strength check against the impaled creature to move as a part of the move action (this Strength check is made by your mount if you are mounted), moving up to half of your base speed while the impaled creature is dragged along with you (this movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity).

If you are impaling two or more creatures, you must make an opposed Strength check against all currently impaled creatures in order to move, and if you are subjected to forced movement, you must make an opposed Strength check against all impaled creature; failing this check against any impaled creature forces you to release any weapons you’re using to impale a creature (or to end impaling a creature with your unarmed strikes or natural attacks) immediately, while success drags any impaled creatures with you during this forced movement.

You can also choose to release the weapon as a free action without dealing damage (although you cannot release natural weapons). A creature may attempt a grapple check against an impaled creature’s CMD to assume control of the weapon impaling that creature as long as another creature is not controlling it. If so, the creature making the attempt receives a +4 bonus on the grapple check.

Talents with the (impale) tag can only be used against creatures who are impaled by this ability when you are controlling the impaling weapon.

Lancer: Adamant Stalker Whenever a creature within your threatened area attempts to take a 5-foot step away from you, you may also make a 5-foot step as an immediate action so long as you end your movement with the creature in your threatened range. If you take this step, you cannot take a 5-foot step during your next turn. If you take an action to move during your next turn, subtract 5 ft. from your total movement. You can select this talent a second time; if you do, the creature also provokes an attack of opportunity from you at the end of your movement.

Sentinel’s Reserve (Ex) Each day, a sentinel gains a number of reserve points equal to 1/2 her sentinel level + her Wisdom modifier (minimum 1). She can spend a reserve point as a swift action to gain an amount of temporary hit points equal to two times her base attack bonus + her Wisdom modifier; these temporary hit points last for 1 minute or until lost, whichever comes first. She regains reserve points after resting for 8 hours, although she may only regain reserve points once every 24 hours.

Wise Reflexes (Ex) A sentinel can use her Wisdom modifier in place of her Dexterity when determining her initiative and Reflex save bonus, although this bonus cannot exceed her class level.

Build

Byron is built with a 4d6 roll, discard lower system and 175 gp starting wealth. Favored Class Bonus is +2 negative hit points that can be reached before dying. If using a lower point buy, you can lower Intelligence. If using a higher point buy (or rolling really well), your most important attributes are Wisdom and Strength. Wisdom is your casting statistic and affects the save DCs of all your magic and martial talents as well as your spell pool, and increases your Will saving throws. Strength is your combat statistic and increases your attack and damage rolls, making you a fearsome warrior. Charisma is important too, since it increases your Diplomacy bonus and helps in social situations, and Constitution gives you extra hit points and a better Fortitude save. Finally, Dexterity increases your Reflex save and Armor Class, and is useful to fight while mounted and/or flying.

Playing Byron
Byron is embittered and cynical, and will have to pass through many trials to find his true self and a purpose in life. Though he doesn’t trust people, his sense of honor and loyalty to his given word will guide him in battle.

Future Abilities

Martial Talents Animal Companion, Armor Training, Cold Iron Call, Coordinated Attack, Defend Other, Double Impale, Durable, Endure Pain, Extra Beastmastery Package, Focusing Finale, Guardian’s Focus, I Will Hear, Indomitable, Knightly Training, Mass Challenge, Polearm Mastery, Skirmish Rider, Terrifying Pierce, Warleader Sphere

Feats Diehard, Divine Defiance, Endurance, Focused Disbelief, Heroic Will, Mounted Combat, Ride-By Attack, Unimpeachable Honor, Weapon Focus (lance)

Skills Intimidate and Ride are your most useful skills. Fly is useful too for the times you’ll be riding a flying steed.

Acquire a flying mount as your companion.