Paizo Iconics - Lirianne

Her backstory is, again, not what I'd expect from a 1st level character. Did Paizo decide that the iconics weren't really meant to be used by players as example pregens, and just make them Mary Sue characters in the meta fiction of the setting? Yes, I think, obviously so. Anyway, the gunslinger was kind of an interesting class for a variety of reasons; flintlock firearms being something that Golarion didn't have right up until suddenly it did. Mechanically, it's a bit fiddly for my taste, with points to spend to do special tricks and stuff like that. That's the kind of thing that I never loved about Pathfinder 1e, and Paizo's approach to game design in general, but of course, firearms are also just weapons, and having used sources like Freeport and Iron Kingdoms for years before this, the idea of having flintlock pistols and muskets that any class could use was hardly a new idea to me. Darkest Dungeon did so as well, with a Musketeer class, and the Highwayman who used a flintlock pistol as his main signature weapon. I like the inclusion of guns more than a class that specializes in using them.

Lirianne is this kind of wild-eyed adventuresome person who feels, as most adventuring female characters do, more like a man in a woman's body than a woman. I expect that all of today's crop of four girlbosses will feel that way, although I don't remember the backstory (yet) of those to come. Anyway, she was from Alkenstar, but got magically teleported to Avistan in a crazy case of deus ex machina and now adventures there, I guess. 

Because she's kind of an esoteric character concept, there aren't a ton of illustrations of her. More than the samurai and ninja and the psionic classes, but less than the truly iconic iconics. Her get-up is obviously steampunk too, and I have to think that that was a design goal for her; to appeal to that aesthetic crowd. 

Of course, making her a steampunk pirate with some samurai armor who's from fantasy Africa is... really weird. She's yet another iconic who doesn't feel very iconic because the choices made to build her are simply too esoteric. I think the people writing these iconics got bored doing the predictable and... y'know, iconic things with these characters after a while, and had to go off the reservation more and more with them after a time.