Apparently I am no longer able to stop making blog posts. All to the good, I'm on holiday.
I have always hated DnD Barbarian classes (Conan was a Fighter/Thief, as everyone knows), so here are two sketches for alternative rage-based classes. Neither can take a subclass.
WHITE APE
Your memories are dim and half formed; endless limestone caverns, black suns out of time, phosphorescence, damp rock, cool and dark. They took you somewhere else, and over the years your eyes adjusted to the brightness and the space, to the touch of the wind. They taught you language and gave you clothes, cooked food, wine, but you will always be separate from them, and this understanding is imprinted on your deepest soul.
Starting proficiencies: none.
Starting tools: none.
A +5 HP, +2 STR, +2 CON, White Ape, Fury, Deep Time
B Bonding
C Black Stars
D +3 HP, + 1 STR, +1 CON, The Gifts of the Earth
White Ape: You were stolen as a baby, and brought up from the caverns beneath the earth. You are visibly monstrous - you frighten people, and can intimidate them easily with displays of anger. You understand common, but cannot speak it. Any armour and gear that you wear will need to be custom made a high expense. You can climb anything climbable, and can grasp things in your feet as though they were hands. You have sharp, ripping claws and jaws, natural weapons that deal d6 damage. Only very educated or kind people have any chance of treating you with warmth or humanity.
Fury: You enter a state of animalistic fury when threatened. You may invoke this at any time in combat, and once you have done so you will make two attacks instead of one each turn. While the fury is active you must move towards the nearest enemy and attack it until it is dead, before moving on to the next. Intelligent foes will exploit this, especially if they have had time to plan. The fury ends when the combat ends. It can also end early if you are subjected to mental effects such as charm, sleep, domination, etc., or if your morale breaks, and if it is broken this way cannot be used again that day.
Deep Time: You cannot be aged magically, all spells of this nature will fail. You are biologically immortal (you don't know this, and it is vanishingly rare information), though you can still be slain by violence, and are immune to disease. Any attempt to read your mind fails.
Bonding: You have become protective of the members of your new family (up to 6 characters of your choosing; if you are a PC this will always be your party). Once per turn you may take damage for any member of this group, if you could plausibly leap between them and the source. Your Fury ability now allows you to move to the aid of a downed family member as an alternative to attacking the nearest threat.
Black Stars: You remember the nighted world below; you see it in your dreams, where you walk again in its iridescent halls. You gain practical knowledge of the Underworld (much as a woodsman might have practical knowledge of a forest), and know the direction to its nearest opening on the surface. In your dreams you can speak the pattern language of the black stars, and if you leave offerings for them (dumped into wells, thrown into black pits in the earth) they will aid you in various ways. The stars know much of what happens below, but little of the surface.
The Gifts of the Earth: You are no longer a child, and quickly double in size. You can drink petroleum, and when you do so it counts as a full day's ration, and invokes a special version of your Fury ability, which grants you a second attack for 24 hours without any drawbacks. When you dream, the stars sings promises to you, of tranquility, peace, and immortality for the ones you love. You now understand that you will never die. You also know that if you bring the people you are bonded with down into the Underworld (not simply underground, you need to go in so deep that you can never expect to return), and feed them on the black blood of the earth, they too will be reborn into perfect bodies, as infant White Apes.
It might have been the best Conan story?
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FOLK HERO
You are not an adventurer. You are a labourer, perhaps an artisan; a member of your community, who in some way exemplifies its morality and ideals. You are only human, but humans are capable of much when they dedicate their souls, and the strength of their bodies, to the people that they love.
Starting proficiencies: choose one from farmer, woodcutter, miner, blacksmith.
Starting gear: A simple knife and the tools of your trade, which will include one main tool that you use as a weapon.
A +5HP, Tool Mastery, Trance of Labour
B Feat of Strength, Tall Tales
C The Next Generation
D Inheritance
Tool Mastery: You master one tool (an axe if a woodsman, a hammer if a blacksmith, etc.), with which you can perform the labour of three people. It is also a fearsome weapons in your hands; it must be used in both hands, and hits for d10 damage.
Trance of Labour: You may enter a fugue state for a day and a night, wherein you can do the work of 10 people. On exiting the trance you will take d3+3 fatigue. You may also enter this trance during combat; for the duration, your attacks do +1 damage, you take -2 damage from non-magical attacks. If your community (this is not the party, it's most likely where you grew up or where your family lives. Clarify with the DM) is under direct threat, these bonuses are +2 and -3 respectively. At the end of combat, you take d3 fatigue.
Feat of Strength: You are renowned far and wide for an impossible feat of strength, which you can perform once per day. This could be something like wrestling a bear or an ox, felling a tree with a single blow of your axe, bending iron bars, or lifting a boulder above your head. This feat can be used situationally - someone who can lift a boulder might instead lift a portcullis to allow their friends to escape a locked room, someone who can fell a tree might breach the wall of a manor, etc. It should allow you to make a STR roll that would normally be impossible, or succeed on a check that would normally require a roll. DMs are encouraged to be generous here.
Tall Tales: You are known to be unkillable, and also to possess a fair and incorruptible heart. These stories are known in most towns, and will usually arrive before you do. If a group of people are drunk, they become extremely susceptible to your suggestions.
The Next Generation: A young tough from the village joins you on your adventure - perhaps a wayward niece or nephew in need of straightening out. They are a level 0 commoner, but may take templates in fighter or specialist. They are devoted to you, and have unbreakable morale until the first time they see you roll on the Death and Dismemberment table or fail a morale check (when this happen they gain +1 WIS). When they join you in combat, your community always counts as under threat for the purposes of your Trance of Labour.
Inheritance: You always roll twice on the Death and Dismemberment table and take the result that you prefer. If you die or peacefully retire, your legend lives on to inspire others. If your next character is a Folk Hero, they will be from the same community (and probably related to you), and will start their career with A and B templates. They will benefit from your original feat of strength, and a new one of their own. This effect stacks over generations.
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