Get by with a little help from my friends

When I was younger (teens and early 20s) I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons.  When I was playing a lot, and in school for that matter, I had tons of friends who played and we all had similar schedules and availabilities.  Since I've gotten older (I won't say more mature) the biggest struggle with RPGs I've had is getting a group of 4-6 friends who can all find the same time so sit together around a table and play.  When D&D 4th edition got released I really wanted to try it out so I decided to just get together with the 2 friends who were immediately available and play.  The challenge wasn't scaling the adventure back for 2 characters, I found the challenge was making sure that the adventure could be completed with the 'roles' that the characters fulfilled, this was further complicated by both players choosing to play wizardy characters (so no fighting, sneaking or healing in the group).  My Band-Aid fix to the problem was to have an NPC fighter and an NPC cleric accompany them on their adventures, although this was a workable solution over time it lead to an almost comedic need to constantly replace the 2 NPCs who were getting killed by the players choices and circumstances.

So fast forward to 2014 when I'm kicking off my Witchfire game.  I will again be running a small (2-3 players) group but this time one of the first players to commit has chosen to be a fighter so that's one key role filled.  The only other role that is essential in my opinion to a low-level Pathfinder group is a healer of some sort so I realised if another player doesn't choose that role I will have to dip back into the NPC pool, but this time I don't want the adventuring NPCs to represent a pool of Hit Points to be expended when the PCs don't want to risk themselves.  To this end I've decided to write and paint up a non-adventuring type of Cleric who may (if necessary) accompany the PCs on the adventure.

Basically our intrepid (yet to be named) Cleric is a young acolyte who although academically well  versed and knowledgeable is not a fearless walking spell-casting tank to supplement the party in combat.  If you think of the character Carl from Van Helsing you're probably not too far off.

The miniature is another from the Rusted Heroes line and was perfect for what I had in mind.  He certainly doesn't look like an Iron Kingdoms bad-ass warcaster/priest but that's exactly what I was trying to avoid so I'm happy.  The paint job was super-basic this time out, monk's robes and next to no gear lends itself pretty well to quick paint jobs.

-Jay