Death & Dysentery On the Minkai Trail

There were actually two new mechanical rulesets in the Jade Regent Player's Guide (or JRPG for short). Relationship rules were one of them, and those rules eventually made it into the Ultimate Campaign book along with alternate rules from other APs (such as the Kingdom-building rules from Kingmaker). The other set of rules is the ones for caravans. In Jade Regent the caravan is the backbone of your heroic journey of thousands of miles from Aemiko's home in Varisia to her family's ancestral home in Minkai, especially since she's towing an ancient family legacy McGuffin that that can't be teleported. The idea is thus a simple one where the players can influence and shape the caravan's ability by directing its growth and investing in its capabilities until it's the finest caravan on the continent.

Each caravan has four core statistics, which start at 1 and can be up to 10:

Offense: Your basic fighting power
Defense: Your sturdiness
Mobility: Your ability to maneuver around obstacles and dangers
Morale: The general spirits of your caravan crew as a whole

Which are then combined with your miscellaneous bonuses to create your derived statistics

Attack: What you roll when the caravan is fighting things, 1d20 + your Offense + other bonuses
AC: What people roll against when attacking you, 10 + Defense + other bonuses
Security: Rolled for dealing with hazards, 1d20 + Mobility + other bonuses
Resolve: What you roll when you've got people problems, 1d20 + Morale + other bonuses

Caravans are made up of a series of wagons with different functions that make up the core of the caravan. All wagons have several basic stats:

HP: The toughness of your caravan, derived from a sum of the HP of every wagon in the caravan. Lose all of them and you're stuck until you fix it
Travelers: How much space you have for yourselves, your NPC friends, your minions and any passengers you feel like picking up. Some wagons have more room for passengers than others, and most passengers can help make your caravan's abilities better
Cargo Capacity: Your space for supplies, loot and upgrades. Some wagons have more room for supplies than others
Consumption: How much food supplies you go through each day, feeding your crew and the horses that pull your caravan

Your caravan also has a level equal to that of the highest level PC in the party. Every time the caravan levels it gets a feat which you can spend to improve its capabilities ranging from traveling speed to capacity to consumption to abilities scores.

With further simple rules for things like repairs, trading and hirelings, the idea is that you'd take your wagon train on an epic journey of thousands of miles, braving hazards, fending off foes, making friends and maybe some money along the way. Oregon Trail but with elves.

Only one little problem... the caravan rules don't really do what they're supposed to do.

Your caravan starts with a single point in all four of the basic statistics (offense/defense/morale/mobility). You then have three random floating points to assign after that. The only way to boost your statistics after that is with the Enhanced Caravan feat, which boosts two stats by +1 each to a maximum of 10, but the feat can be taken as many times as you wish provided your caravan is level 2 or higher. This is a bit of a problem because 11 out of the 16 caravan feats require a 3 or higher in a particular statistic before you can use them.

You do get circumstance bonuses from having people working in your caravan. Guards provide a +1 bonus to your offense score, Guides and Scouts provide a +1 bonus to Security, and Entertainers provide a +1 to Resolve, stacking up to a +5 bonus from five workers. You also get a +1 morale bonus to Attack, Security and Resolve for each PC hanging around, to a maximum of +4. Similarly, you can buy a ballista to provide a +1 to attack, or buy up to two armored wagons for +3 to AC each, two prisoner wagons for +2 Security each, and 1 Royal Carriage for +4 Resolve. But then you start running into bottlenecks.

Each wagon can only hold up to a certain number of traveler spots (between 2 and 6) and a certain number of spaces for cargo supplies (between 1 and 10), but you only get up to five wagons in your caravan and one of them is supposed to be the Fortune Teller wagon (2 passengers, 4 cargo) unless you like taking a -2 penalty to Attack, Security and Resolve checks. If you want more wagons you need to take the Extra Wagons feat for 2 extra wagons per feat instance (up to three times for six extra wagons), and that requires you to sink at least two points into your Mobility stat to get to Mobility 3.

But all of this also costs money. Wagon costs range from 300 gp for the most basic supply wagons for cargo to 500 gp for a covered wagon for passengers to 2,500 for a Royal Carriage, 4,000 for a Prisoner Wagon and 5,000 apiece for an Armored Wagon. Every wagon in your train requires a driver in order to move, and that driver can't do any other job while driving. If you want to stock up on minions, you're going to have to pay them monthly wages, and guards, guides, scouts and entertainers command a premium rate at 100 gp for a scout and 50 gp for the others, compared to 10 gp for a driver or cook or someone to repair your wagon (though given that you need drivers to move the wagon and can only repair when you spend a day not moving, how much would it cost per month to get a driver who can fix wheels?).

Fortunately you don't have to pay a monthly wage to any PCs or significant NPCs such as Ameiko and the other bachelor(ette)s, making them ideal for the high-end jobs. Even better is that anyone capable of casting a spell can sub in for any of the high-end jobs even if they wouldn't normally qualify (because magic can do anything), and the only casters in the party will be PCs or significant NPCs. There aren't a whole lot of named NPCs to recruit though; aside from Kelda in the 1st module and Ulf in the 2nd, about the only other named NPC who is reasonably likely to join you is Spivey, a tiny fairy-like outsider who you encounter in the 1st module.



Spivey is probably the best of the caravan companions, because not only is she a spellcasting wild card but her size means she doesn't take up any additional space on the caravan and you don't need to track her food usage since she barely eats. She's basically a free ball of benefits.

Every horse pulling a wagon and every human riding on it boosts your caravan's consumption and means you'll go through 1 unit of provisions per point of consumption per day. 10 units of provisions costs 5 gp, so every point of consumption is 1/2 a gp per day. You can have people serve as cook to reduce consumption by 2 per chef down to the minimum of the number of wagons you have, but if you're hiring cook to save supplies you're also going to be spending 10 gp a month per cook to save 1 gp per day, except the cook also needs to eat so you're only saving 1/2 a gp per day and you're still capped at 5 cooks. Past that there's the efficient consumption feat which basically functions as a free cook per feat slot, but that's almost certainly an even higher opportunity cost than just hiring a cook, especially when expert travelers boosts the bonus you can get from jobs (including cooks) by 1 per feat (though it also requires a very high 5 Morale before you qualify for it). You can otherwise gain supplies by having your scouts hunt for 2 provisions per day, but they won't provide the Security bonus for scouting. Far easier is just to have your casters like Koya magically spit out food once they hit level 5 or so since it costs nothing but spell slots that you're not otherwise using while traveling from day to day. Fixing your wagon is a bit more complicated, since it requires you to use up one unit of repair materials to restore a Security check's worth of HP to your caravan, and repair materials go for 25 gp per unit. You can use the scavengers caravan feat to find a unit or more per week if your Security check is decent, which lets you stock up, but saving 25 gp per unit may not really be all that worthwhile in the long run.

Trading is done by buying trade goods for 10 gp apiece from a settlement and then dragging them somewhere else. Upon arrival at a different settlement, up to five traders can sell a unit of trade goods apiece, each rolling a Resolve check to determine how much you get from it. Since it's based on the check result, you want at least a +10 in Resolve in order to guarantee a profit, and thus one of the better options is to roll up with a royal carriage (+4 to Resolve) and have 5 people on the team switch over to entertainer (especially spellcasters) for +1 Resolve apiece. Even with nothing else invested in Morale aside from your starting number and your +4 to Resolve from team PC, you're still earning 15 to 34 gp per cargo unit, or maybe more with more investment. There are no modifiers for things like distance or exotic goods, so the best trade routes are the shortest local ones possible rather than any high-risk long-distance trading. Even if you invest in this and can reliably turn up 20 or more GP in pure profit per unit of goods, the five trader limit means that you're still only earning a 100 gp or so in profit per settlement, which means it's going to take a ridiculous amount of time before you can afford several thousand gp specialized wagons, making trading more of a novelty than a form of legitimate enterprise for a serious adventurer (which is par for the course, I guess).

The dangers of the road are much less of a novelty. Your caravan has an HP count that's determined simply by a sum of the HP totals of every wagon in the caravan, from your basic wagon having 20 HP up to an armored wagon having 60 HP (and a horse train having 10 HP). Your caravan might lose HP from events and hazards, but most of the time damage comes from combat. Caravan combat represents the people aboard your caravan getting into a fight with a blob of some other enemies (bandits, goblins, wolves, zombies, etc) or an enemy big enough to threaten a caravan on its own such as a giant or dragon. The two sides make attack rolls against AC and do damage on a hit, with your caravan dealing 1d6+your level in damage on a successful hit, though you can boost that damage by 1d6 per instance of the increased damage feat (three max for a total of 4d6 + level). There's still not all that much for the actual PCs to do during a caravan fight aside from watch one player roll for the caravan and maybe cast a spell to add +1 to attack, but that's a different problem.

So, what's the opposition like? Well, funny story that. See, while the rules for caravans use their own subsystem, the rules for the caravan encounters determine the the encounter's Attack, AC, HP and damage based on the average stats for a monster of that CR. But while a monster of a given CR is assumed to be a standard challenge for a party of four equal-level PCs, a caravan barely qualifies as one PC, and a PC with almost no class features and a troubling gear dependency at that. Thanks to HP being a function of the number of wagons you bolt together you can kind of muddle your way through the first module's encounters by virtue of having a large blob of HP to tank your way through enemy damage as you plink your way through their comparatively smaller amount of HP. But things don't really stay that way.

Book 3 is about the journey the characters take to Tian Xia by crossing over three thousand miles of ice and passing by the north pole. It's the time when the characters' survival skills are pushed to the limit, and is the big shining moment when the caravan rules run front and center alongside the PCs.


_{Feel the spirit of adventure as you challenge the unknown!}

So, how does it stack up?

Our caravan is level 7 because we're level 7 at the start of this module, which means it does 1d6+7 damage.

As to the rest of our stats, that's a little harder to figure out.

Because we have no real plan we just put one of each of our three starting points into Offense, Defense and Mobility to bring them to 2 each, then splashed around on feats, taking Enhanced Caravan when we needed it. So let's say our Offense is 4 and the rest of our stats are 3. We haven't really bothered upgrading the caravan all that much, so it's just the starting three wagons of Fortune Teller, Covered and Supply, so no major stat changes. We've got our four PCs, the core four NPCs, plus Ulf because his hiring was plot-mandated and we also hired some dudes to drive the caravan and cook and stuff like that. Shalelu and Ulf are scouting, Koya is fortune telling, Ameiko and our rogue are entertainers, Sandru and our fighter are guarding, our cleric is healing the guards and our wizard is using spells to guide. We've got basic supplies, some trade goods, repair gear and we even remembered to buy some cold-weather gear because we're not totally ignorant.

So taking into account our +2 to +3 bonuses from jobs and the +4 team hero bonuses, we've got a caravan that looks like this:

Attack: +11; damage 1d6 +7; AC: 13; HP 70; Security +10; Resolve + 9

Here comes a run-of-the-mill random encounter from the start of the of the module, a bog standard pack of starving predators (wolves, bears, whatever):

AC: 20; hp 85; Attack +13; damage 6d8+3

Well... we do about 10.5 damage per hit, assuming we hit every single round it will take us about eight or nine rounds to defeat them. Our accuracy means we only hit 60% of the time, so we should be able to win in 14 rounds or so. Actually, since the animals will flee at 30 HP, we only need to fight for about 9 rounds. Unfortunately, they do 30 damage a hit on average and hit us on anything but a natural 1. We're wolf chow in 3 rounds.

Ok, backing up a bit. At the start of the module there's a broken-down armored wagon that we can repair and add to our caravan (assuming didn't miss the check to find it, had a spare wagon slot, didn't already have two armored wagons and had a spare driver/pair of animals to put on it). We do that, and we get a free +3 to AC and an extra 60 HP. Come on wolves, it's time for a rematch!

Well, with our extra AC they only hit us 90% of the time, and with the extra HP we're wolf chow in 5 rounds.

Welp.

Ok, fuck you wolves, you mess with the bull, you're getting the horns!

We switch all of our ability points into Defense, then take Enhanced Caravan every chance we get to pump our Defense even higher, putting the rest of those stat points into Offense and then we're buying two armored wagons and so many guards and ballistas (also entertainers, guides, and scouts). We are now better, faster, stronger!

Attack: +19; damage 1d6+7; HP: 190; AC 26; Security +10; Resolve +10

We only miss on a natural 1, so we'll take these guys down in 5 rounds. With 10 Defense (the maximum) and 2 armored wagons at +3 AC apiece we have just about the highest defense possible!

The wolves still hit us on a 13 or higher, and in the course of 5 rounds take off almost a third of our HP. That's going to take five or six repair attempts to patch up and at 25 gp per unit of repair supplies it's not exactly nothing.

But hey, we can avoid this encounter by making a DC 22 Security check, so we only have about a 55% chance of having to fight these guys, 45% if we throw food at them. If we devoted ourselves to Security checks we could probably make this pretty easily by having a good Maneuverability score, getting +4 from our PCs, +5 from scouts and guides, and +4 from a pair of Prisoner wagons (+2 security each). Discretion is the better part of valor after all, no sense wasting our resources on dangerous fights!

Of course, you're rolling random encounters at a 10% rate every day you spend out there, and that rate climbs by 10% every day without an encounter until you finally get one and reset the meter. Some of those encounters are nice like finding wrecked caravans with supplies for you to scavenge, but others involve needing to maneuver your caravan away from chasms or fighting off wildlife before it eats your horses and forces you to abandon your wagon. Even if you take a day or two to repair damage from the previous encounters you're still going to be rolling for more random encounters including monsters attacking your encampment. The best way to avoid rolling too many random encounters is simply to haul ass across the pole as fast as humanly possible, but that involves spending feats (and more feats on getting the prerequisite ability scores), and/or money and wagon and cargo slots for horses and enhanced undercarriages. If you're diverting resources into trying to run into as few random encounters as possible you're probably going to be ill-equipped for the ones you do run into.

The predators are probably the easiest fight in the module and it's an avoidable random encounter; here's one of the harder ones, and it's a mandated plot fight:

Band of Yeti: AC 23; HP 115; Attack +17; damage 8d8+4

Additionally at the start of the fight the caravan needs to make a DC 24 Resolve check or be rendered paralyzed with fear for a round, unable to attack or move and taking a -4 penalty to AC. The yeti receive one wave of reinforcements each round for five rounds, adding 20 HP per round and prompting a DC 18 Resolve check against the fear effect. We can solve the reinforcement problem by having the PCs scout and destroy them before the caravan gets there, which is doable provided we're ok with the fact that these are neutral creatures, we're in their territory and the only reason they're attacking us to begin with is because their chieftain is being mind-controlled by the boss of the module (who is personally out to get us). So let's get killing!

At this point we're level 9, so we have two more feats for our caravan. We can boost our stats, but our defense is as high as it will go, so let's just boost our damage then with those two feats.

Attack: +19; damage 3d6+9; HP: 190; AC 26; Security +10; Resolve +10

Assuming we've already exterminated the population of their village to deny them reinforcements it'll take about 7 rounds to beat them and it will take them about 8 rounds to bust through our HP and AC. If we fail that first Resolve check (which we only have a 35% chance of making), then we lose a round of attacks and they will likely be able to dismantle us. We could swap out our 1st level feat for Circle the Wagons to boost our AC by 4 and lower the expected damage per round by another 8 points or so, but it will drag the fight out another round and won't help us if we get paralyzed with fear. If we failed or chose not to exterminate the local population then we will be treading water in the damage race for up to five rounds because they're replenishing HP as fast as we can dish it out, assuming we don't miss or blow any one of our five 65% shots at save-or-suck. We could swap out one of our non-armored wagons for the royal carriage and its +4 to Resolve checks, but that's 2,500 gp and means less room for supplies (such as the quite frankly unrealistic amount of ballistas that go into giving us that +19 attack). Fortunately, there are two plot-related morale boosts earlier in the module, so our resolve check can actually be boosted by another 3, which is enough to survive the secondary morale checks even if the added HP means we're going to lose the damage race.

This is one of the strongest offense and defense builds you can have at this point of the game incorporating an unfeasible amount of financial investment in staff and equipment and this is still a dicey fight that will likely dismantle most of our HP and leave us with some expensive repairs over the next few days assuming we have any spare parts in the remaining cargo space not occupied by food, cold weather supplies, trade goods or ballistas. And unlike with food supplies the rules aren't really clear about if you can repair the caravan using magic spells. If you didn't go all-in on being a barely-competent murder machine then things get significantly worse.

Didn't fully upgrade your AC to the maximum? You lose
Didn't heavily invest in attack upgrades? You lose
Didn't up your damage? You lose
Decided that your trade caravan should have more resources dedicated to trading? You lose
Didn't realize that your heroes are also going to be fighting a separate fight during this fight and thus their caravan jobs might be empty? You lose
Didn't take on a dozen or so extra hands and their ensuing several-hundred gp per month salary? You lose
Tried to build your caravan around avoiding and evading fights? You lose

But hey, only entitled WoW babies wander around thinking they're going to win every fight (especially the climatic ones at the end of the modules). You win some, you lose some, your caravan hits 0 HP... what's the worst that can happen?

JRPG posted:

All non-significant NPCs are slain if your caravan is destroyed, as are all horses used to draw the wagons (with the exception of special PC mounts or animal companions). All equipment purchased for the caravan is either destroyed or looted by the victors. If any surviving characters can serve as wainwrights, you might be able to repair your wagons enough to be serviceable, but you’ll still need to find additional animals to draw your caravan’s wagons—in such a disaster, it’s generally a better option to press on without your caravan or, more likely, retreat to the nearest settlement to buy new wagons and hire new help to try again.

You lose everything. Every copper you put into equipment, hirelings and supplies is now wasted, as is every cent you've wasted on wagons if you somehow can't conjure up draft animals in the middle of Arctic tundra (even taming the local wildlife will take two weeks of rolling for encounters). When it comes to your caravan your offense is a whisper, your AC is paper and your HP count is made of money, making every random encounter a risky proposition because even taking a non-fatal amount of damage can leave you burning through supplies and random encounter opportunities. Lose a single fight and you're exactly where you'd be had you simply ignored the caravan and used the money to buy horses for everyone.


_{The smoke symbolizes your investments turning to ash}

Blatant Lies, JRPG posted:

If all of this sounds kind of scary, remember that your caravan will, on average, be tougher than most of the enemies it encounters. If you take care of your caravan, keep it in good repair, and know when to retreat or avoid combat, you should be able to avoid meeting such a devastating fate as total caravan destruction.

By pegging the opposition to the monster math Paizo created a system where the enemy numbers go up much faster than the players' ability to boost their own combat capabilities, even when absurdly optimized. Since combat and noncombat abilities draw from the same pool of stats, feats, equipment slots and money, investing in one means you're not investing in the other, so combat caravans are wrecked by random hazards and trade or maneuverability caravans get absolutely cratered in unavoidable fights (be they plot or random-encounter). It's a giant pile-up of design errors and bad decision, with the end result of a horrible malfunctioning mess that was complained about up and down the forums and the most commonly suggested fix being "don't use the caravan rules." It was supposed to be the system's crowning moment but it went over like a lead balloon and later modules kept the caravan encounters to a page or two in the back. Book 6 introduced the Masterwork Wagon (1,500 gp, 40 HP, 1 consumption, 6 cargo, 6 travelers, +1 AC, no limit) but they were still money sinks and by that point it was too little, too late.

With Jade Regent caravan system James Jacobs created a set of rules so bad that even Paizo couldn't repackage them later on. He stated that the caravan's weak points came from a lack of playtesting, and while that statement is technically true the problems with the caravan system are so huge that should have been noticed while they were being written. Simply taking a minute to notice that the numbers on the monsters go up without effort while the numbers on the players don't would have spotted the problem, as would have spending 10 minutes to create a sample mid-level caravan and comparing it to a monster to notice that one set of numbers was much bigger than the other.

Even if you devoted resources towards fixing yourself in a fight, the other half of the Oregon Trail Simulation meant that there were plenty of ways to fail in the wilderness.  While the caravan rules are different than the dysentery disease itself that players could face, there are a few disease-esque events that crop up in Book 3. One of them is a random encounter with a bunch of headless mummies and if the caravan gets hit it needs to take make a DC 18 Security check or be cursed and take a cumulative -1 penalty to AC, Security and Resolve checks, which means it becomes easier and easier for the mummies to dogpile you into a death spiral (and since these guys are about as tough as the yetis they don't need all that much help doing it). Removing the penalty requires a casting of remove disease and either remove curse or break enchantment per instance of the penalty (a -4 penalty will require 4 castings), so you'd better have one or more clerics on hand to help you or you're in for a short trip (though by this point at least you made it to the last third of the module somehow).

Another random encounter is the Creeping Rot encounter, which means your provisions have been contaminated with some sort of sickness (could it be dysentery? Only the DM knows). Each day it persists it destroys 1 box of provisions (food for 10 people), and you take a cumulative -1 penalty to AC, Attack and Resolve checks plus a 25% penalty to speed. So after four days of this you're immobilized. You need to make a DC 25 Security check to contain the spread for a day, but you can only stop entirely and remove the penalties it by succeeding on two consecutive successful checks. This is one of the highest Caravan DCs in the module, but you do get a bonus to the check for every healer on the caravan and every character able to purify food or remove diseases.

Needless to say, running out of food is very bad because you start taking 1d6 points of damage every 12 hours and can't heal until you have enough food to feed your entire caravan. Lack of food also fatigues your caravan, halving its movement speed and causing a -2 penalty to all checks, which means it takes twice as much time to get to some place with food and you're probably going to do a lot worse in any random encounter you come across. When combined with Creeping Rot it's possible that you can run out of food and not be able to move at all to find more, and thus will be forced to use casters, scouts and cooks just to try to stay food solvent. While you can run across cannibals in the module, there isn't a direct conversion rate between crew members and stores of food and stocking up on people meat from the cannibals means that you take a permanent -2 penalty to resolve because the rest of the caravan can't believe you just did that.

There are also rules for Fording Rivers, though sadly they aren't very exciting: You make a Security check to find a place to ford, then a security check to ford it (no rules for caulking the wagons and floating them across though). Each check takes one or more hours with a failure meaning you have to either increase the DC by 4 or turn back and start over, plus every hour you roll to see if someone shows up and tries to steal your shit and/or eat you. If you detour through the hill country (where the cannibals live) then you have to make four DC 22 checks at 1d4 hours apiece to ford that particular river at the end of the route, compared to only two DC 17 checks if you follow the traditional trade route (and thus are easier to spot/ambush, also there is somewhat less treasure in those encounters).

While I mentioned how painful combat can be, failing Security checks checks isn't a picnic either. There aren't very many fixed encounters that rely on Security aside from an avalanche if you travel through the hill country, where you need to make two DC 20 Security checks with a -4 penalty from terrain to avoid being taking damage, being buried and then having to spend 1d12 hours per wagon digging them out (assuming the check succeeds). Another one is the giant murder storm that the ghost of the module boss sends after you if the caravan attempts to deviate from the plot railroad, where you have to make 3 DC 25 Resolve and Security checks per day, with failure on the Resolve checks giving a cumulative -2 penalty to Security and Resolve checks until you get out of the murder storm and failure on the Security checks cutting your speed by a third for the day and dealing 5d6 damage. In other words, you're going to die quickly unless you do what the NPCs want you to do (shades of the Mines of Moria here). While you aren't guaranteed to face any particular random encounter, there still are enough hazards such as broken wheels or poisonous swamps that you're going to want to have a decent Security score.

You might be thinking "well, guess that means I'm going to have to go light on Resolve if I want to afford everything else" and you'd be right except for one other piece of mechanics I forgot to mention: Unrest. Basically, whenever you lose a wagon, a minion, or a day of travel, or get knocked down to 25% HP or lower you need to roll a Resolve check of DC 20+your current Unrest to avoid gaining another point of Unrest. If your Unrest exceeds your Morale score (not your Resolve, your basic Morale, which starts at 1 and can only go up to 10 if you heavily invest in it) then you take a -1 cumulative penalty to AC, Attack, Security and Resolve for each point of Unrest above your morale and you then need to make a Resolve check each day at DC 20 + your current Unrest. Failing this check means you only travel half as far, while failing by 5 or more means either you don't move at all or the caravan goes half your move speed in a completely random direction other than the one you wanted which is really bad when you're in the middle of hostile terrain. The only way to reduce Unrest is either through leveling, boosting Morale or through doing things the people like (such as adding wagons or improvements to your wagons, taking a day off or having a feast), but the latter option requires you to succeed at the same DC 20 + current Unrest Resolve check in order for it to actually have any effect.

So if your Morale wasn't particular good to start with because you were boosting other stats just to survive in combat, one or two bad events and failed Resolve checks mean you develop a penalty to all checks which leads to more bad events and failed Resolve checks and could snowball your way past your ability to keep order or make progress since spending time camped in the tundra trying to make them like you means you're just going to be burning through supplies. Sadly you can't commissar your way out of this, so about the only option that doesn't involve making rolls with increasing penalties is to give them 1 unit of trade goods for 1 point of Unrest reduction, or 1 unit of party treasure (about 500 gp) for 3 points of Unrest reduction, but each time you try to bribe them the cost goes up by another unit for the same reduction. You can't be clever and swipe it back because the treasure mysteriously vanishes from the caravan even if there's nowhere within hundreds of miles that they could have spent it. Unrest occurs even if the caravan is pretty much all PCs and named NPC friends by volume- you may be a party of eight dragon slayers but one wagon driver didn't like how you stalled out fighting slimes and now he's going to turn this caravan around.

The caravan rules have so many possible fail states and fail spirals that you can't really cover all the potential holes; only luck (or ditching it) will save you.

Game designers take note: the caravan rules aren't a pile of garbage because of failure to do playtesting, they're a pile of garbage because of failure to do basic math.

Winning The Game Of Love

In spring, a young adventurer's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. And in the eve wake of the most commercialized holy day of love, the Feast of St. Valentine, you might find yourself wondering: my adventurers can kill and heal, craft and steal, but are there rules somewhere out there beneath the pale moonlight that will teach them how to love?

Of course there are! In Pathfinder, there are rules for growing and developing your relationships with the NPCs of your (GM's) choice! We can take the complex, subtle and nuanced interaction of human hearts and apply the time-honored technique of making numbers go up.

The relationship rules were originally invented for the Jade Regent adventure path and were originally printed in the player's guide for it along with some information on the key NPCs who were further fleshed out in the adventure path modules themselves. Taking more than a little inspiration from recent Bioware RPGs such as Dragon Age II, the rules let you build a relationship with the NPCs as you level and at a high enough relationship (31+) you can gain a Devotion boon whose mechanical benefit represents you looking out for one another or learning something from your friendship. With a higher score you could even opt to turn it into a romantic relationship. Without further ado about nothing, let's meet our lucky bachelor(ettes)!


Sandru Vhiski, a former adventurer who used his earnings to become the owner of a trade caravan


Koya Mvashti, a long-lived fortune-teller who raised Sandru after he lost his family, who still harbors a desire to travel and see the world.


Shalelu Andosana, an elven ranger and wilderness expert who originally appeared in the Rise of the Runelords adventure path


Ameiko Kaijitsu, another Rise of the Runelords alum, a former adventurer who now owns a tavern. Also the last living heir of an ancient Minkai Imperial Dynasty in the far east, whose quest to reclaim that throne serves as the driving force of the adventure path. Based on a former PC of Paizo Creative Director James Jacobs.

If your players should notice that one of these options is considerably more powerful and important than the others then they're going to have to fight for it- the player's guide says that an NPC can only be in a romance with one PC at a time unless the DM says otherwise. Of course, it says nothing about the converse and you know what that means...



This looks like a job for THE SHELYNATOR

Shelyn: Pathfinder goddess of art, beauty, love and music.


Bards, bringers of art, beauty and charm.

Azata, a type of outsider who love freedom, emotion and many other things including art and beauty.

Aasimar: descendents of good outsiders, while the Musetouched are the music and beauty loving descendents of the Azata.

We are an azata-blooded aasimar bard who worships Shelyn. Not just any bard, but a geisha bard, because an orientalist adventure deserves an orientalist archetype. We're also a savant when it comes to performance. Our starting feat is Skill Focus: Perform because we are most art.




Our starting relationship score is based on our charisma modifier, which as a bard from a race with a charisma bonus should be somewhere between a +3 and +5. We might also have a +4 bonus to that relationship if one of our traits links our background to one of the NPCs (some of these traits work better for romancing NPCs than others). Not much happens at first level because not much can happen at first level- you can only make checks to change your relationship every time you gain a level. So we go strolling, plot happens and we're now level 2. At this point we can now court in earnest!

There are a couple of different ways to boost the relationship as you level. The most basic is to add a point to one of the scores each time you level up, but since we're playing multiball mode this isn't that helpful. The other way to boost friendships is through bribery: every time you level you can present NPCs with a single gift whose value isn't as important as the sentiment behind it, so we can find or make something nice and affordable to hand out to all of our buddies just to show them how much we care. The limiter on this is that not only do you get one shot per level per NPC, but you also have to succeed in a Diplomacy check whose difficulty is equal to your current relationship score. Since our current relationship scores are equal to our Charisma modifier at the start, and the Diplomacy check is 1d20 + our Diplomacy skill + our Charisma modifier, there's no way to fail this at level 2, or even at higher levels because we'd be increasing our Diplomacy skill and relationship score at roughly the same pace of once per level. But why settle for acceptable when you can turn up the heat? Succeeding on the Diplomacy check by 10 or more means that the relationship goes up by +2 instead of +1. You could pray to the dice gods to favor you, but if you're coming at the Empress you'd rather not miss. So let's get diplomatic.

At level 1 bards normally pick up Bardic Knowledge, which lets them add half their level (minimum 1) to Knowledge checks and make those checks untrained to ensure that a bard will probably know a little bit about anything and everything even if you invest nothing in learning about it. Nice, but the Geisha has Geisha Knowledge, which only adds that 1/2 level bonus to Knowledge (nobility) checks and adds the rest to Craft (calligraphy) checks, Diplomacy checks, and one type of Perform check chosen from act, dance, oratory, percussion, string instruments, or sing. The Diplomacy bonus is a good start but we can do one better because of the one little thing that bards get at 2nd level: Versatile Performance. Versatile Performance is a class feature that lets you substitute your skill in Perform for two other skill checks, so your skill with acting can help you disguise yourself or fast talk your way through trouble. In the Shelynator's case, one of the skills boosted by Geisha Knowledge can be Perform (Oratory), which we can also substitute for Diplomacy checks, allowing us to compare a lot of people to a summer's day! With our skill focus, racial bonus (azata-blooded are good at performances), trait bonus and class skill bonus, at level 2 we're looking at 1d20+charisma + 12 against a DC equal to our charisma modifier. We can't fail. Even if we also selected our other trait to boost one of the starting relationship scores by 4, we'd only fail on a natural 1, and if we can get a +2 bonus to our perform check from a masterwork instrument (which would be... a megaphone?) we can still make it, and even if we can't do that, we've got one other thing... spells. Tap Inner Beauty is a 1st level spell that gives us a +2 insight bonus to Charisma-based checks and also happens to be one of the signature spells of Shelyn's followers. Just light that puppy up before you hand in your gift and you're golden.

At 3rd level the Shelynator qualifies for the Deific Obedience feat to prove how much you love Shelyn. Deific Obedience lets you perform a daily ritual to show your devotion to your deity, getting minor bonuses that become much more potent at higher levels (12 and up). In Shelyn's case, it's as follows:

Inner Sea Gods posted:

Obedience: Paint a small picture, compose a short poem or song, dance a scene from a ballet, or create another work of art, whispering praise to Shelyn’s beauty and grace as you do so. The art piece need be neither large nor complex, but heartfelt and made to the best of your ability. Gift the piece of art to a stranger and pay her a sincere compliment as you do so. If there are no suitable individuals around to receive the gift, leave it in an obvious place with a note praising Shelyn and asking whoever finds it to take it with your warmest wishes. Gain a +4 sacred bonus on Craft and Perform checks.

I'm not entirely sure how you leave an interpretive dance behind for strangers to find each day, especially when book 3 of the adventure path involves you spending a better part of a year heading to Fantasy Asia by trekking across the Arctic Circle, but we are going to litter the tundra with sonnets in exchange for an even bigger bonus to our Perform checks. At level 4 we gain access to 2nd level spells, including heroism, which is an all-purpose spell that boosts your murder abilities in addition to your skill checks, plus Seducer's Eyes to better charm those who find us attractive (such as our romantic interests), and even Bestow Insight to replace our Tap Inner Beauty spell with an even bigger bonus as we level. Bestow Insight is supposed to be for humans, but aasimar with the Scion of Humanity trait also count as humans for things like feats and spells (which is both good and bad for characters, but that's a different story).

By level 6 or 7 you qualify for magic items such as bracers of the glib entertainer or the Blade of Three Fancies if you're not interested in Divine Obedience. Furthermore, as a bard you're probably first in line for items such as the Headband of Alluring Charisma to boost your various skills and abilities, and the relationship rules explicitly state that long term charisma boosts such as those from your magic headband will boost your Relationship score- so don't feel too bad about dropping 36k on a magic hat to save (or secure) your marriage! Similarly, you'll probably be boosting your Charisma score with ability points every 4 levels, and the Adventure Path ends at level 16.

Fifteen level-ups at +2 apiece will add +30 to your relationship score by the end of the module, more than enough to boost you to the "Devotion" tier of relationships and pick up a nice little mechanical trait for your time. This means that with a starting charisma score modifier of between 3 and 5, plus another 4 to 5 points of Charisma boosters from leveling and magic hats the Shelynator will have a minimum relationship score of 37, or 38 if you can get someone to craft you a +6 charisma headband instead of a +4 one. Is it good enough for love though? Let's take a look at the romance thresholds:

Koya Mvashti: 32
Shalelu Andosana: 35
Sandru Vhiski: 38
Ameiko Kaijitsu: 40

With a +6 headband you can grab any of the first three, and if you also have Childhood Crush (Ameiko) then the +4 relationship bonus will push you past the threshold for her as well. This is before you add in the dozen or more bonus points per NPC you can pick up in the adventure just by doing things the character in question likes ranging from helping others, to seeing cool locations to making friends or money or just murdering a bunch of goblins, and then there's the 15 free floating relationship points you can use from your 15 level-ups which you can use to patch up any rough spots or start the romancing a few levels early (don't invest in any one too quickly or you'll outrun your Perform check and only be getting 1 point per gift per NPC per level).

Now it's one thing to have a relationship score worthy of a romance, but it's quite another to actually start it. In order to set a course for smoochville in Jade Regent you first need to succeed in a Sense Motive check with a difficulty equal to the relationship score to find out if the object of your affection is thinking what you're thinking. This is a bit of a problem because Sense Motive is a completely different skill that uses Wisdom instead of your Charisma skill, and a DC of 30+ isn't exactly small potatoes, requiring a fair amount of bonuses from leveling, ability scores and miscellaneous bonuses in addition to just plain rolling well. It's not all bad because some of our spells such as heroism boost skill checks in general. It's also not all bad because we're still the Shelynator.

Versatile Performance lets you substitute your Perform skill for two different skills and we chose Perform (oratory) because one of those skills we can tag in for is Diplomacy... and the other is Sense Motive, thus letting us use our ridiculous bonus to steamroll our way through any opposition. Once that stage is clear all that's left is a Diplomacy check against a difficulty of 10 + the NPC's level + the NPC's Charisma modifier, and even at the end of the game it's still going to be less than their relationship thresholds. Shelynation complete, romance engaged. The only thing that will stop you at this point is if your relationship score somehow backslides below the romance threshold. That's pretty easy to avoid though, just don't be a dick because that's how things get weird.

Jade Regent doesn't just borrow the relationship meter from Dragon Age II but it also borrows the choice of paths. You can have a friendly relationship built on trust and support, or a competitive relationship built on rivalry and opposition. The type of relationship is chosen once you develop it, though it's not easy to switch paths once it's in motion. You can still boost your competitive relationship with points as you level, but while the chief source of relationship boosting for friendships is gifting, the chief source of relationship boosting for competitive relationships is insults. Instead of making a diplomacy check when you turn in your gift, you can make an Intimidate check as part of a particular insult once per level per NPC, boosting your competitive relationship by 1 or by 2 if you beat the usual DC by 10 or more. Reaching a score of 31 or higher will give you an Enmity boon where you've managed to piss each other off so hard that you learned something from it (even if it's only from watching out for retaliation). While gifts aren't supposed to cost much, insults are even cheaper and come in an abundance of forms. Just one little trick will help you reach enmity with any of the campaign NPCs- be an absolute bigot. Mock, belittle and otherwise insult their sex, race, religion, body or ability and you are guaranteed to get a response. Nobody likes a bigot.

Versatile Performance means the Shelynator can burn as easily as charm thanks to the power of musical training. The percussion option lets you use your Perform in place of Handle Animal or Intimidate for your personal insult purposes (presumably using really racist triangle solos). Pounding your way up into the 30s is as easy as pie. Your usual charisma bonuses apply, but an interesting question is raised when you run across some of the various events in the books. Giving a gift will raise a friendly relationship or lower a competitive one, while an insult will do the opposite, but what happens when you trigger any of the events in the book that raise your relationship when it's a competitive one? Since the rules for relationship bonuses offered by traits, charisma and leveling don't care if you're in a friendly or competitive relationship then it's probably arguable that other events will raise your competitive relationship as well even if it's out of a grudging respect for a person you don't personally like. The alternative is that those things become a huge waste of time and effort by undoing any progress you've made with a competitive relationship, which isn't very fun (even though your racist dick of a character probably deserves it).

Should you decide to switch gears in a relationship it gets a bit more complicated. Switching from friendly to competitive is simple: just be a total dick. Your relationship will be switched and its score will be promptly halved with no roll required as the pain of your rejection burns some bridges behind you. Making nice is harder, since it requires a Diplomacy check 10 higher than the relationship score of your current competitive relationship. So if the Shelynator has spent the entire campaign antagonizing a single NPC for +2 competitive per level (+30), boosting the relationship each level with the free point (+15), hit up all the story events that boost that relationship (+15) and has a fantastic Charisma modifier (+12) and relationship trait (+4), you could be looking a relationship score of 76 or higher if you allow for more relationship building from plot events (Ameiko in particular gets kidnapped more often than Princess Peach- rescuing her should probably count for something), another level or two (+2 insult and +1 free point per level) and even more ridiculous charisma scores from some combination of wishes/aging/succubi/vampirism/mythic, you could even crack the 80s.

How could you possibly hope to hit a DC of 90 using a completely different skill from what you used to intimidate? Well, the good news is that it's not a completely different skill- as a worshipper of Shelyn and a bard the Shelynator qualifies for Persuasive Performer, which lets you use any Perform skill in place of Diplomacy, thus increasing your versatility even further by allowing you to use your racist triangle skills to play a song of reconciliation and healing. With just the spells and items we've already acquired we're in the mid-70s for the skill check, and we can boost it further with even more feats or just by spamming bestow insight on a half dozen people and ordering them to play back-up on the tambourine (and our Deific Obedience feat also can boost our Versatile Performance skill even higher at high levels). If we really work at it we can probably hit 1d20+100 with this thing.

So after a long campaign of insults and rivalry we devote all of our strength and skill to creating the best triangle medley of reconciliation that the world has ever seen! Regardless of the roll, your song touches the heart of your rival and blasts away all enmity with its healing dingle! The power of friendship fills your hearts, halving your Relationship score in the process, but since it was in the 70s to maybe even 80 that means it's somewhere in the oddly convenient range of 35 to 40. Do you believe that love can bloom in the dungeon? Roll a Sense Motive Check and a Diplomacy check to find out!

Some of you might point out that this requires a ridiculous expenditure of resources that make it incredibly impractical for anything other than a hyper-focused character, and it's not possible to go multiball on this one since it requires the use of your free floating points from your level-up. You'd be right; this is a ridiculous waste of resources because none of this is actually needed. There's one more little rule in the romance section

Jade Regent Player's Guide posted:

Note that a PC can have a romance with an NPC with whom she has a competitive relationship—opposites do sometimes attract, after all—but this kind of romance can be more difficult to begin. If the PC’s Diplomacy check to start a romance is successful, the romance begins, and the nature of the PC’s relationship with that NPC immediately changes from competitive to friendly. This change does not necessitate reducing the Relationship Score by half in this case

You can be a toxic asshole whose relationships are defined by a steady stream of abuse and bigotry, but all of that is in the past with the power of makeouts. You can build your relationship score through intimidation, and since it uses the same Sense Motive and Diplomacy tools that the friendship track uses, all that means is that there's just one more skill you have to be good with. Of course, the Diplomacy DC is still based on 10 + level + Charisma modifier, but Ameiko is the one with the highest Charisma at 18 (with Shaelu at a whopping 8) and the NPCs tend to be lower level than you are towards the end of the game. Ameiko might still boost her Charisma score by a few points as she levels, but even she is unlikely to have a Diplomacy DC higher than the low 30s. Even a standard investment in Diplomacy is enough to have a good shot at hitting those numbers (especially with spell support), which means that the skills required for a bad romance are primarily Intimidate with a single good Sense Motive check and a decent Diplomacy check later on. The Shelynator can do this, but since there are no Versatile Performance skills that boost both Intimidate and Sense Motive you're going to need to invest in more than one performance (which isn't too bad, you get a Versatile Performance at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th and 18th level, and about half of your abilities support Performance checks in general). But if you're going to invest in Intimidate and Sense motive then there's one other class you can consider.


The Inquisitor. At 1st level, the Inquisitor gains the Stern Gaze feature, which adds half of your level to your Intimidate and Sense Motive skills, while being a half-orc inquisitor means you can choose a character option that also adds half your level to Intimidate checks, effectively granting you an extra point of intimidate every level (well, two points per two levels) and thus letting you keep pace with rising relationship scores. It gets even easier since the Conversion Inquisition option lets you use your Wisdom modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate checks, which means you only need one ability score for talking purposes-Wisdom also governs your Sense Motive skill and a host of features including spellcasting and Will saves, in addition to boosting Perception (the most used skill in the game).

Of course, if you're using Wisdom as your primary ability score, your Charisma score is going to suffer for it and thus you aren't going to get those free extra 5 to 10 points of relationship score that the Shelynator gets. But low starting relationship means it's incredibly easy to meet the DCs as you level, especially since intimidate is one of the easiest skills to boost- you get a +4 to intimidate checks if you're larger than your target and ensuring that your insults hurt your rival's feelings more because your rival must now nurse a height complex. While you can pretty effortlessly get the +30 Insult boosts from 15 levels, pushing yourself over the romance threshold is going to require you to lean on the plot boosters or maybe even spend some of your precious free relationship points. You're going to be getting your groove on several levels behind the Shelynator, but at least you're getting it and building yourself a harem through the power of verbal abuse and hatefucking.

As long as we're branching out into new bold new worlds for ability scores, there's a few methods to use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for Diplomacy, such as the Student of Philosophy trait or the Diabolical Negotiator feat provided you worship Asmodeus. On the downside you're going to be even further behind than an Inquisitor since not only are you lacking in the Shelynator's star power but also the Inquisitor's 1/2 level boosts and thus have to scrounge for all your bonuses the old fashion way through feats, items and spells. On the up side you can logic your way into somebody's pants.


The new investigator has a little bit of an easier time with this since there's the empiricist archetype with the ability to use your Intelligence instead of Wisdom for Sense Motive as well to help you pave the way to romance, plus you have the ability to roll an extra die and add it to some of your checks- not the greatest bonus, but at least it's something. You even share the focused scrutiny spell with the bard and inquisitor, allowing you to focus on a single target for a +5 to Diplomacy and Intimidate and +10 to Sense Motive checks. Even the wizard can have some options if you're using Intelligence for Diplomacy, since it can be boosted further by being an enchanter and having a thrush or adorable pig as your familar (and since the Thrush shares your skill points and can also talk then it can even aid your Diplomacy checks to hit on NPCs and thus redefine "wingman"). With a helping of effort you might even be able to consistently land the +2 gifts and get a sweetheart or three who loves you for your logical brain.



Should the desires of the Shelynator and friends not be slaked even by the initial buffet of NPCs, Paizo served up a second course with two more NPCs:


Kelda Oxgutter, a northern barbarian woman you rescue in the first module. You can take her back to her people, but maybe she'll decide to hang around and guard your caravan.


Ulf Gormundr, another northerner you free from prison because you need his ranger skills to help your party make the trek across the Arctic Circle without all of you horribly dying of frostbite and dysentery.

If you're looking for love, Kelda has a manageable 36 threshold, but Ulf requires a formidable 42, making him harder to love than Ameiko. It's not impossible if you're heavily invested, but you're going to start running into one of the biggest brick walls in the relationship system: time. Out of the four key components to boosting your relationship score, both your freebie points and your gift/insult opportunities are tied to you gaining a level, which means you have only a certain number of opportunities to use them- up to 15 in Jade Regent since it ends with you hitting level 16. Kelda comes in when you're level 3 or maybe even level 2 if you manage to rescue her first, so you're only a little behind on opportunities compared to the original four NPCs, but Ulf isn't picked up until the very end of the second module just as you hit level 7 or maybe even after that. Assuming you got him out early and immediately start buttering him up you've got to even farther than Ameiko with only 3/5ths the amount of time to do it (9 level-ups). Even the Shelynator is going to feel the burn- dumping nine levels of +2 gifts and freebie points will only get you to 27, requiring you to make up the rest of it somehow (unlike Ameiko, it's highly unlikely that you'll have a campaign trait that gives you a free +4 to your relationship score). Should you fall head over heels for an NPC in the 3rd (lvl 7), 4th (lvl 10) or 5th (lvl 12) module, you'll have even less time to get into the 30s and your relationship progress will rest almost entirely on a combination of having ridiculous Charisma and an absolute truckload of plot events, making it all but impossible for your average character. On the flip-side, spending more than a dozen levels in contact with the Shelynator will likely leave you enthralled by devotion and/or love (which will likely prompt you to spend even more levels in contact). You will be Shelynated, resistance is futile.

So what do you actually get from romancing everyone?  Well, very little. Reaching a relationship score of 31 or higher unlocks the Devotion tier (for friendly relationships) or the Enmity tier (for competitive relationships) and grants you a different boon depending on your relationship with the NPC. For simplicity, I'm going to use D for Devotion Boon, E for Emnity Boon and RS for Relationship Score.

Ameiko Kaijitsu:
D: Once per session gain the benefits of her inspire courage or inspire competence performance as a swift action, lasting for RS/10 in rounds
E: +4 to saves vs. sonic and mind-affecting attacks.

Koya Mvashti:
D: Each session, get RS x 10 gp in free potions of your choice from Koya, and save 10% on the cost of creating potions yourself
E: +4 to saves against illusion and Sense Motive checks vs. Bluff

Sandru Vhiski:
D: +1 dodge to AC whenever you move at least 10 feet in combat
E: +4 to Initiative

Shalelu Andosana:
D: +1 morale bonus to saves in wilderness areas, +3 morale bonus to saves while in the forest
E: +2 to attack rolls and weapon damage rolls against a creature type chosen from the ranger's favored enemy list

Kelda Oxgutter:
D: Gain a +5 enhancement bonus to move speed once per session as a swift action, lasting RS/10 rounds
E: +4 to saves vs. fear and enhancement

Ulf Gormundr:
D: +1 to attack rolls and weapon damage rolls for a round against any enemy who successfully attacks one of your allies
E: +2 to Initiative, Perception, Stealth and Survival checks on a terrain type chosen from the ranger's favored terrain list

None of these are keyed to romance, just normal relationship scores. For some people such as Sandru, the Enmity boon is far better than the Devotion boon (though honestly you're not supposed to know the boon beforehand), so from a pure mechanical standpoint you might want to be able to mix and match. If you don't care about romancing then a bard is better off picking a Versatile Performance like Keyboard (Diplomacy and Intimidate) to let you tailor your performance as needed, or picking up the Persuasive Performer feat to slap Diplomacy onto a Versatile Performance skill that already covers Intimidate such as the aforementioned Percussion, or possibly Versatile Performer (comedy), which covers Bluff and Intimidate.

Starting an actual romance through the Sense Motive/Diplomacy route offers no additional mechanical benefit unless you have the Childhood Crush trait. Childhood Crush normally gives you a +1 trait bonus to attacks against people that threaten your crush, but more importantly lets you make a DC 15 Charisma check once per day to get your crush to be nice to you, with a success granting a +1 trait bonus to all saves for the remainder of the day. In a game where a +1 trait bonus to a single save is already a pretty great bonus, +1 to all three is just fantastic for a trait. If you're involve in a romance with your crush you instead get that +1 trait all the time, which makes it one of the greatest traits in the game from a mechanical standpoint. Since the trait is only keyed to a single NPC (Ameiko, Sandru or Shalelu... sorry Koya fan) there's no real mechanical reason to go after more than one romance.

Past that it's just about being a bunch of nerds sitting around a table with the end game of trying to mechanically solve the question of how to get their stand-ins laid (which also describes a startling high number of Bioware romances). Going full Shelynator is just a way to embrace that role and snap up those romances before anyone else gets them.

But let's set aside talks of the Shelynator and multiballs and try to use it as the designers intended. You're a humble villager who has been nursing a crush on Ameiko since you were young and thus readily volunteer to serve as her noble protector as she fulfills her destiny! Think it's possible that a princess and a fighter like you... well, it worked for The Bodyguard, right?


_{AND IIII-EA-IIII WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOOOOUUUUUUU}

You've got the Childhood Crush trait that connects you to Ameiko, so that's a decent start. Unfortunately, you've got no real Charisma modifier to speak of because you're a fighter, not a paladin or swashbuckler who would actually use Charisma, and your Charisma modifier is unlikely to get much better as you level.

You can throw in your freebie points as you level, but even if you hit level 20 it still wouldn't be enough for her to notice you. You're going to have to use plot events! But even if you hit every single Ameiko-related plot event in the adventure path, that's only +15, putting you to 34+your low (or even negative) charisma modifier. You're going to also need to use some gifts. Unfortunately, you run into the next problem, namely that Diplomacy is not a class skill for you. This isn't the absolute end of the world here, because all a class skill does is give you a +3 to checks using it. Then again, that's something you could kind of use given your relative lack of Charisma. But hey, we can swap Childhood Crush trait for the Best Friend trait, granting us a +2 trait bonus to Diplomacy while making it a class skill and keeping our +4 to Relationship with Ameiko. By nursing a secret crush on our best friend all of our problems are solved! Except for the part where you're a fighter and thus only get 2 + Int skill points per level, forcing you to choose between spending them on skills that prevent you from dying in battle and skills that prevent you from dying alone. But hey, love is worth any cost! Your Diplomacy skill growth could keep up with rising relationship score were you not adding points from our level or getting plot events, but a combination of those two means that you're going to eventually outstrip ourselves after ten levels or so. Still, that should be enough when combined with the free points and massive pile of plot events. You're ready for love!

Right after you succeed at a DC 40 Sense Motive check to figure out if Ameiko is interested: a skill you can't afford using an ability score you don't prioritize against a DC that would be considerable for someone who actually specialized in it. You only get one chance to succeed at this check per level and as we've already discussed you don't exactly have a whole lot of levels to make this shot. But hey, you could be a Tactician fighter, which grants you more skill points and makes several skills class skills including Diplomacy and Sense Motive, but you run into the problem of a large portion of your archetype's features ranging from crap to actively insulting the player and there's still no guarantee that you'll be able to scrounge up enough Sense Motive bonuses to be able to reliably land a DC 40+ check (since every time you increase your relationship with Ameiko beyond 40 it just makes it harder to tell if she'll love you). You can have better luck with Intimidate since it's already a class skill, but without Sense Motive you're still going to be stuck as a rival.

Piles of plot events can compensate for low charisma and Diplomacy skills in order get you into the highest relationship brackets, but even they can't get you past the gates of love. Even if you go out of your way to build your fighter as a more talky character, your quest for romance is still liable to leave you as "just friends". Some classes just aren't made to be loved.

At this point you might be thinking "so the Relationship system is a series of repetitive number grinds that heavily rewards those who optimize around it and punishes relationships involving characters who either don't invest or involve themselves in characters who show up too late. If the only equalizer in the system is having interesting story events and meaningful character interaction, why have a numerical relationship system at all?"

Well,