Erasmus Cutler

[Kenneth New]

Erasmus Cutler is a half-elven bard from Andoran. He is the nephew of Barnaby Cutler, an artificer who recently disappeared in Numeria. His family has become concerned and has asked Erasmus to travel to Numeria and try to find out what happened to him.

Erasmus's father is Barnaby Cutler's younger brother. His mother is an elven bard who was also his mentor.

Erasmus stands 5 foot 6 inches tall and weighs about 150 lbs. He has skin the color of light caramel and dark brown (sable) hair. The slight points to his ears and the grayish purple color of his large, almond shaped eyes betray his elven heritage.

Erasmus is a bard, with perfect pitch and tone. He's proficient in a variety of instruments, and his training in the College of Lore gives him a wide breadth of knowledge. He's friendly, outgoing and charming.

Erasmus brings reasonable levels of healing, and proficiency with the following skills: acrobatics, arcana, deception, history, insight, investigation, perception, perform, persuade, and stealth. He also gets half his proficiency bonus to all other skills not listed above.

Erasmus is pretty good with a bow (+4 to hit, d6+2 damage) and a gladius (+4 to hit, d6+2 damage). He also has taken the Magic Initiate Feat which gave him firebolt (120 ft range, +5 to hit, d10 fire damage) and green flame blade (requires a melee hit, does 3 points fire to target adjacent to the original target). His other cantrips are Message, and Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation. His bard spells are level 4 are Healing Word, Thunderwave, Heroism, Dissonant Whispers, Disguise Self, Lesser Restoration and Invisibility.

[Kenneth New]

After much deliberation, I decided to replace Quincy with Erasmus for several reasons.

• Bards are better healers than Artificers. He has healing word and lesser restoration and has access to greater restoration and raise dead at higher levels (and sooner if we find scrolls).
• He fills an apparent need for a charisma based character with appropriate skills who can interact with NPCs without the hindrance of story based limitations. (He's not of a race that most NPCs find strange, novel or off-putting).
• When I first created Quincy, he was designed to be the archeologist, trap-finder with a little bit of blaster thrown in. It turns out that there were other archeologists and trap finders in the group.
• Wizards in 5e are pretty good blasters (unlike 3e) and John's witch is converting to a warlock (a darn good blaster as well).
• Being the archeologist/tinkerer in the group who experiments with alien/advanced tech is cool, but it's less cool when so many people are doing it. I don't blame anyone. That's why I chose the idea, but I'd rather do something else if too many other people are doing it.
• We had a healing deficit in this group that was bound to grow worse at higher levels. I believe that the current configuration is better. Brandy is playing a paladin (I love the fallen Aasimar striving for redemption through struggle). John's warlock has cure light wounds (1st level once per day) and spare the dying. Luke's character has the healer feat and can heal people once per short rest with a healing kit (only 5 gp for 10 uses in 5e). My bard has healing word and lesser restoration, as well as the healing rest ability to allow people to regain bonus hp when they spend one or more hit dice during a short rest.