Tuesday, 14 January 2025

Prestige Class: Actor

I love Buster Keaton



The actors are an ancient organisation that long predate the Barony. There are records of their performances dating from before the Old Kingdom, and for many centuries their school was located there. When the Kingdom was destroyed, the actors came to the Baronial Capital and reestablished themselves in a building gifted to them by the academies.

They are instantly recognisable in their pale makeup and dark clothing. People love actors, and many people are afraid of them. Their plays are famously recursive; each of the standards is written such that it neatly frames the next, and new plays are always written in this format. In this way the performance never ends, and all stories, all comedy and pathos, all deaths and births, all tragedies and triumphs; all of them are merely the pre-conditional framing for what is still to come. 

There aren't many graduates, and the school is notoriously demanding of its students. Some die in the training, and the people who emerge are not the same people that enter. Trained actors tend to serve as advisors for various powerful interests, and there are several in the employ of the Baroness. Their unique skills in mimicry and mockery, and their odd, flexible minds make them excellent analysts, spies, information gatherers, and interrogators.






ACTOR


Requirements: Specialist AB, Artist AB, CHAR 16.

In order to train as an Actor, you must present yourself to the school in the Baronial Capital and submit yourself to the exam. This will cost 2000s (not refunded if you are refused) - make a difficult Performance check derived from CHAR. If you succeed, you may train at the school after paying the tuition: 6000s. If you fail you are refused. If you fail badly, you lose 1 CHAR permanently as you are laughed out by the judges. If you crit, you are accepted and the staff enthusiastically waive your tuition fee.

After one year of intensive training, you emerge from the school with your new class. You lose all of your old templates, which, since you were an Artist, means that you killed or otherwise destroyed your bonded entity. Other Artists will hate you, and most entities will be scared of you. You cannot gain new templates once you become an Actor. 

In return, you gain the following:

Skills: performance, sleight of hand, acrobatics, comic timing. 

Gear: prop sword, prop dagger, greasepaint. 

A: An Actor Prepares.

An Actor Prepares: If you have access to greasepaint, you may spend time getting in character. When getting in character, you choose templates from other people that you have had at least one day to observe closely. Once you are in character, you have those templates until you choose to get out of character by removing your greasepaint. You cannot take Artist or Academic templates, but all others are available for you to mimic.

You may take a maximum of four templates, and you must have at least one A template before taking a B template, one B before a C, and once C before a D. You may take multiple A templates if you wish. Getting in characer takes: 

  • 10 seconds per A template.
  • 30 seconds per B template.
  • 1 minute per C template.
  • 10 minutes per D template.

You receive all bonuses from templates that you take on this way, including HP bonuses, but you lose these when you come out of character. The templates that you receive are identical to the originals, with the following exceptions:

  • You can only ever use prop swords and prop daggers. Prop swords count as d4 clubs, and prop daggers do d2 damage. You may never wear armour or use a shield. 
  • White Ape: you don't receive natural weapons as part of your A Template.
  • Folk Hero: you don't need 14 STR to access these templates. You don't get a hireling as part of your C template, but you have permanent access to the associated benefits for your Trance of Labour
  • Elf-Friend: you don't attract motes as usual. Instead you always have one mote per template in this class, which are not spent when you use them. These motes are invisible, do not give off light, and do not heal fear damage for your party.
While you are in character you are immune to mental effects (magical and mundane), do not need to sleep, cannot be magically aged, have natural armour equivalent to chain, and roll twice on the death and dismemberment table (+1 for each class feature that lets you roll twice), choosing the result that you apply. 





Design Notes: I have no idea how strong these are - I suspect very, because of the flexibility, but also they are limited to shitty weapons and chain without a shield. They will be relying on their death and dismemberment ability for survival I think. It's also ok for a prestige class to be strong relative to the others, and the requirements are a pain in the ass. They are also just a base adventurer if they can't get in character in time. 

The flavour is somewhere between horror clown and mime/silent actor. I was also just thinking about how insane it is that Buster did his stunts 100 percent for real. In my head all magic-type effects (and other weird stuff like drinking petrol for food) that Actors get from their borrowed templates can be not-very-convincingly (as in not convincing in-universe) explained as elaborate sleight of hand and commitment to the bit. The obvious subtext that there is something really fucking weird about Actors is the perpetual elephant in the room. What happened to their entities?!

Thanks to Josie for getting me thinking about prestige classes in the first place. 


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