In this series, we recreate a character from our favorite works in Pathfinder Second Edition.
This installment’s character: Empress Emily Kaldwin, from the Dishonored franchise!
Pathfinder Second Edition (“2E”) continues Pathfinder’s great tradition of heavily customizable characters. In that spirit, we’ll recreate characters from other media in 2E rules.
Each build will stick to a few rules:
- It will be at the lowest level needed to achieve some core aspect
- It won’t use setting-specific options unless it achieves some core aspect
- It will use only official Pathfinder 2E content
If you have any character’s you’d like to see converted, let me know!
Check out the last Cloning Factory subject: Yoshi!
The Goal
Emily Kaldwin is the canonical protagonist of Dishonored 2, a promotion from her status as Distressed Child in the series’ first installment. Now Empress of the Empire of the Isles, Emily has spent the intervening years being trained by Royal Protector Corvo Attano (star of a 1E Cloning Factory post) in the arts of stealth and espionage. As the game begins, Emily is ousted from power. She puts these skills and potentially supernatural powers granted by the Outsider to work in order to regain her throne.
Emily mirrors her father greatly. She is an expert spy, incredible with a sword, and highly resourceful. However, whereas her father’s suite of powers enabled him to quickly and directly bypass or neutralize a threat, Emily’s powers emphasize the reach and influence of her royal position. Of all Emily’s powers, there are a few we will replicate here:
- Far Reach: A tentacle strike Emily may use to pull enemies nearer to her or to navigate her environment as a grappling hook.
- Doppelganger: Creation of a false clone of Emily to distract enemies and activate traps.
- Mesmerize: Summoning of an eldritch object that fascinates all nearby.
The Emily we build will represent a character of noble birth and maturity, controlling battlefields through stealth and swordplay, while manipulating her enemies like a pawns.
The Build
Ancestry
Human is a natural choice for Emily, as no other humanoid race is shown to exist in the Dishonored setting. We’ll apply her bonuses to STR (for Athletics) and CHA. Of the Human heritages, we’ll proceed with Skilled, selecting Stealth. Emily displays an impressive breadth of skill, rather than an innate knack for learning and intellect.
Our feat selections will follow this path:
- 1st: Natural Skill (Intimidate, Deception)
- 5th: Arcane Tattoo (Enchantment)
- The Outsider marks his chosen with a tattoo on their left hand. Emily’s abilities focus on manipulation of hearts and minds; selecting the thematically appropriate Enchantment school provides her with the Daze cantrip.
- 9th: Ornate Tattoo
- Extending our embrace of the Outsider’s gifts lets us access a 1st level arcane Enchantment spell. We will pick up Befuddle, w good spells which is not on the Occult spell list.
Background
Emily is the noble in the Empire of the Isles, and fittingly there is a Noble background. We’ll select DEX and CHA for our ability boosts here. The background provides the Society skill, Geneaology lore, and the Courtly Graces feat. With Courtly Graces, we can use our Society skill to Make an Impression on and Impersonate nobles. Emily is not shown to possess a silver tongue, but she rightly trades on her authority as Empress.
Class
There are many options to build Emily; I chose to focus on Emily’s abilities as a nimble combatant with a dip into her eldritch empowering by the Outsider.
Thief is the main chassis of the build, for this reason. the Thief racket will give Emily her Dexterity bonus on attacks with her shortsword, excellent for her style of play. We’ll select the Nimble Dodge, Unbalancing Blow, and Nimble Roll feats from the class. These will allow Emily to control her opponents while in melee combat and endure the group assaults in which she may sometimes find herself. With the Fighter’s Combat Flexibility feature, Emily may put her improvisational skills to work by selecting a new feat each day. In her operations, Emily should wield a shortsword and a light crossbow. Though no official firearm rules exist yet (and I won’t burden you with my homebrew ones), Emily also wields a pistol and a collection of alchemical bombs and weaponry.
With our other class feats, we’ll select the Sorcerer dedication and its Aberrant bloodline. The dedication feats within that will be Basic Bloodline Spell and Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting. The former provides us with Tentacular Limbs (Far Reach) and the latter provides us access to Occult spells that emulate Emily’s other powers in-game: Color Spray, Illusory Creature (Doppelganger), and Hypnotic Pattern (Mesmerize)
All-in-all, we’ll follow this build path:
- 1st: Snagging Strike
- 2nd: Dueling Parry
- 4th: Sorcerer Dedication
- 6th: Basic Bloodline Spell
- 8th: Dueling Riposte
- 10th: Basic Sorcerer Spellcasting
Skills
Emily’s skills are like those of her father. However, where Corvo was a Protector foremost and a noble second, Emily must wear both of these titles. To that end, we will will lean a little more into Emily’s role as Empress while also allowing her to sneak, leap, and grapple like her father.
By 10th level, Emily will have attained these proficiencies:
- Master: Stealth, Acrobatics, Society
- Expert: Athletics, Deception, Thievery
- Trained: Geneaology Lore, Intimidation, Diplomacy, Intimidation, Medicine, Occultism, Religion
And have gained these skill feats:
- Background: Courtly Graces
- 1st: Hefty Hauler
- 2nd: Cat Fall
- 3rd: Read Lips
- 3rd: (General) Lengthy Diversion
- 4th: Quick Jump
- 5th: Subtle Theft
- 6th: Steady Balance
- 7th: Rapid Mantel
- 7th: (General) Foil Senses
- 8th: Connections
- 9th: Lie to Me
- 10th: Nimble Crawl
The below statblock does not include any magical items. I’ve left that up for anyone looking to run the character in a setting that best fits them.
All hail Empress Emily Kaldwin. Some alternate builds for Emily included a Monk chassis and a Fighter build, the latter emphasizing her swordplay. Both are great options if you’re looking to build a character like this. Try them and see what best brings Emily to life for you.
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