The Bazaar of the Memorable (Obol Desert)

    This is a post for the Obol Desert, a setting I've been working on with friend-of-the-blog Eos of Nobless Goblige. This one mostly focuses on caravans and caravan management. Stay tuned for posts on all sorts of exciting topics, like weather, and what exactly an "oasis" is.

Coinage

    The standard coin in day-to-day life is the copper obol, or co. It's a fat little coin, about five grams (the size of a nickel), and each city mints their own. This buys you a hardboiled egg, a broadsheet, a glass of lemonade on a hot day, a lead bullet, a pinch of snuff, or a ticket to a traveling show.
    The most common coin for buying and selling goods is the silver obol, or so. It's the same size as the copper obol, but ten times more valuable. This buys you a good meal, a day of unskilled labor from the urban poor, a bed at a caravanserai, a skin full of wine, a bucket of oats for your horse, or a pouch of gunpowder.

    For large transactions, there are silver doubles, silver trebles, silver tetrobles, and the silver drachm (six oboloi make one drachm). The rarely-used gold obol is the equivalent of 1 silver stater, 2 silver drachma or 12 silver obols; a gold drachm would be worth twelve silver drachma, seventy-two silver obols, or a jingling sack of seven-hundred-and-twenty copper obols. One gold obol buys you a high-quality backpack, a pair of leather boots, a big knife, a hunting dog, or a musical instrument. Note that an unskilled laborer needs to work two weeks (with Sundays off) to afford a pair of leather boots, assuming that he doesn't need to eat and when the workday is over he falls asleep standing up at the job site. If he's buying food and lodging during those two weeks then he... never buys a pair of leather shoes. Unskilled laborers weave reeds into shitty sandals. It sucks to be an unskilled laborer.

    Six hundred obols, one hundred drachma or fifty staters (the weights, not the possibly-debased coins) take up one slot in your inventory; this is a mina, about 3000 grams of metal in a convenient-to-carry shape. Ten slots make one sack; the GLOG-standard "inventory capacity". A sack of silver is, conveniently, a talent of silver: one talent is ten minae, one-hundred librae, one-thousand drachma, or six-thousand obols. Don't try to compare these terms to historical usages. None of these align even slightly — well, actually, the talent is close enough, but I've been perusing Wikipedia pages about ancient coins until my eyes hurt and not a single one of those ancient fuckers could ever decide on how many tetradrachm to the sextertius, or how many asses make a shekel, or the relative values of an almost-tenth versus a two-tenth (closer to 3:2 than 1:2, I think), so I don't care any more. This is the system they use in the Obol Desert.

Trade Goods

    These are generic high-value low-bulk trade goods, of the kind it is economical to carry overland on camelback. Food, water, lumber, stone — these are valuable, of course, but not enough to justify the high transport costs. The price listed is the purchase price in cities that produce the goods or import them into the desert; generally, you can sell trade goods for significant premiums depending on how far the product has traveled, about 1% per mile of main roads. Specific cities may pay several times the purchase price for select goods; others may have no interest in a product at all. The wily trader keeps track of shortcuts, seasonal changes, and all the little cultural variances which make Andona pay dear for ghoul vinegar and the bedouin trade gold nuggets for an ounce of green dye.

1. Animal Skins. Leathers and furs harvested in the deep desert can be sold to the wealthy city-dwellers, if you ever make it home alive.. One sack costs anywhere between 1–10 silver minae.
2. Asbestos. A miraculous mineral, more valuable than pearls, which can be woven into fireproof shrouds or used as a perpetual wick. One sack costs 15 silver minae. 
3. Black Dye. Blacker than venom, nearly priceless, imported from far, far, far, far away. One sack costs 20 gold minae. 
4. Chrism. A strongly-scented substance harvested from certain trees and mixed with olive oil to make it liquid. Medicos use it to treat injuries and hasten the healing of surgeries, while cultists use it to fuel demon-propitiating lanterns in underground shrines. One sack costs 15 silver minae.
5. Copper. The price of copper is constant between cities, making it a poor trade good (there's no profit in moving money around in a pre-FinTech world), but a good choice as a stable resource to trade for other things. One sack costs 1 silver mina, and is 1 copper talent. 
6. Cotton. A lightweight and marvelously soft and durable textile imported by Foreigners, whose merchants were surprised to learn could sell the sails of their ships for admirable profits. One sack costs 8 silver mina.
   
7. Foreign Pottery. Faintly translucent, like fine animal bone, but hard and heavy like a bronze vessel. Particularly fine pieces may be worth alone as much as a sack of the normal stuff, which costs 12 silver minae.
   
8. Green Dye. Produced in the southern hills, beloved by the bedouin of the desert. One sack costs 5 silver minae.
   
9. Ghoul Vinegar. Explosive and poisonous. Alchemists require large amounts of this stuff for their work, and wizards use it to pickle the eyeballs of horrible things from beyond the horizon of Xater. One sack costs 20 silver minae.
   
10. Glue. Adhesive, produced from pitch or animal bone in the desert and brought to the cities to make boats and other things. One sack costs 6 silver minae.
    
11. Gold. A stable resource, not a trade good. One sack is 1 gold talent.
12. Lead. Dug up in certain desert mines, and used everywhere to cast bullets, produce reliable trade-weights, sweeten wine, counterfeit coins and assemble bizarre arcane devices. One sack costs 5 copper minae.
13. Machinery. Springs, sprockets, gears and cogs, fine chains and delicate mechanisms. Andona's primary export. One sack is 30 silver minae.
    
14. Red Dye. Cheap and easy to sell. One sack costs 3 silver minae.
    
15. Rubber. Extracted from groves of strange trees in northern cities, useful in making waterproofed clothing and containers. One sack costs 15 silver minae.
    
16. Salt. Used to flavor and preserve food, extremely cheap on the shores of the ocean but increasing in price at double the rate as you travel inland. One sack costs 1 silver mina.
    
17. Sandalwood. Maintains its rich scent for many years. Small chests of this wood are used to store fine clothing, sweet treats, or the jewels of blue-bloods. One sack costs 6 silver minae.
    
18. Silk. A wondrously rich, shining textile imported by Foreigners. Takes dye beautifully. One sack costs 20 silver minae.
    
19. Spices. Grown on far-off islands and always expensive. One sack costs 15 gold minae. 
    
20. Spirit of Wine. The most common alchemical product, created by carefully heating wine and capturing its essence in perfumery stills. Generally too cheap to be worth carrying, but a small amount of the good stuff is a valuable gift to a tribe of desert neanderthals. One sack costs 2 copper minae.
    
21. Steel. The best-quality steel is made in Dimashkus, a city which predates even ancient and mighty Andona. Blades, guns and toolheads of dimashkene have a +1 bonus. Purchased in the city itself, billets of the steel are one sack for 15 silver minae.
    

Camels

    The common pedigrees of camelids perform similarly in similar conditions. Despite this fact there are significant differences of price and availability, partly due to economic realities and partly due to desert superstitions and traditions. Pedigrees are differentiated by four factors: their sturdiness, their stubbornness, their virtues and their vices. Sturdiness determines how long a camel can survive extreme conditions. Camels have great stores of vitality, but not limitless ones, and when those stores are exhausted only food and water and rest at an oasis can replenish them. When a camel's sturdiness is challenged, roll a d6 and compare it to their Sturdiness score; if the number is higher than the score, the camel becomes weak. A camel that would be weakened twice lies down patiently in the sand and waits to die. Stubbornness is the measure of how willing the camel is to put up with its driver's stupidity. When asked to do something it does not wish to do, roll a d6 and compare it to the score; if the result is equal or lower, the camel refuses to participate until the situation meaningfully changes (and please keep in mind that camels are very difficult to deceive). Virtues and vices are unique to each breed and generally only relevant for riders, not camel-drivers.

    A brief aside — stubbornness is already scored assuming that you are doing your utmost to persuade the camel. Hitting the camel with a stick is factored in. Yelling at the camel will do no one any good. Screaming at the camel, begging the camel, threatening the camel, threatening the camel's family, insulting it, beating it over the head with a wrench, WHERE 🔧 IS 🔧 MY 🔧 MONEY, none of these things will shift the stubbornness score. Camels are intelligent enough to be vulnerable to psionic damage, but cannot be swayed by mystical techniques.

    Any normal camel can go 30 miles in a day carrying eight sacks, 20 miles carrying nine or ten, or 10 miles struggling under eleven or twelve. A rider is two sacks, and their inventory is a third. You can bump more heavily-encumbered camels up to a higher speed, but they roll for sturdiness at the end of the day. A camel can be provoked into a dash of forty miles an hour for one minute at a time, checking stubbornness at the end of each minute. Camels who have stubbornly refused to dash will not do so again until the next day, unless their lives are in danger. Camels can go a week without food or water with no issue. If running them like this, at the end of the week they'll want to drink 3 sacks of water in ten minutes and eat a sack of food over the course of a few hours.

    Humans can go 30 miles in a day carrying three slots, 20 miles in a day carrying up to one sack, or 10 miles a day carrying up to two. A three-liter waterskin occupies one slot. In the desert, humans require two liters of water per day, plus one liter per 5 miles walked. At a three-liter water deficit, a human has disadvantage on all checks. At a six-liter water deficit, humans fail all checks automatically and begin to vividly hallucinate. When a human is in debt 10 liters, they die in extreme agony. Humans are not as good as camels.

Important Camel Lineages

Baklo Line-Drawer
    Queen of the desert, charcoal-furred beauty beloved by bedouins, common in every caravan. Their ruby-red eyes are filled with ancient and malign intelligence that looks with scorn on the works of man. They take riders well, but they know what blades are, and muskets, and fear them with a rational self-interest.
Sturdiness 2, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Intense loyalty and startling intelligence. Baklos have been known to drag injured riders to safety over fifty miles of desert; if they like you, they'll even drag you by your collar instead of your hair.
Vice: Hatred of violence. Baklos will never enter a melee, preferring to flee to a safe distance where they can keep an eye on things. Checks stubbornness before carrying a rider with a drawn weapon, or to not dash for cover if fired upon.
Price: 3 silver minae, anywhere.

Oeth Congenial
    Taller than any other camel by a head — and what a large and impressive head it is! Said to have been bred by an ancient, morbidly obese lord who ruled much of the coast of the desert in bygone days. A royal bloodline, then, and one crowned with an oilslick mane like a melanistic lion's.
Sturdiness 3, Stubbornness 4
Virtue: Noble bearing. Checks stubbornness on the first overloaded day, only checking sturdiness that day if its will fails.
Vice: Immense pride. Congenials will not carry anyone who disparages their breed, and will viciously attack any who insults them personally while refusing to carry their baggage (whatever trick you're thinking of trying, they've seen through it before). Only placated by a spa day, in town.
Price: 6 silver minae in the cities, 10 silver minae in the desert.

Midnight Cool
    Resembles its cousin, the Baklo, at a distance. Close inspection reveals the mincing step, milk-white gums, and ingratiating sneer that marks this breed like a fiery brand. The Cools are notoriously pliable — for a camel, obviously.
Sturdiness 1, Stubbornness 1
Virtue: Servile grace. Does not spit, and will not make a sound unless commanded. Some swear that Cools can walk through puddles of water without leaving a ripple.
Vice: Oily meekness. Midnight Cools must check stubbornness if left alone for more than ten minutes; on a failure they have walked off following someone, or something.
Price: 2 silver minae in the cities (or free if you steal it), 6 silver minae in the desert.

Ghoubka Canny
    Its short neck is dwarfed by a pair of tuberous humps. Slablike, sullen brow. Unique odor. No lack of disrespect. Favored by the Foreigners, for obvious reasons.
Sturdiness 2, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Severe addiction to foreign drugs. Cannies will reroll a failed stubbornness check for an ounce of imported tobacco (36 ounces fit in 1 slot, and cost 1 gold obol), as many times as you can stand hearing it chew and seeing its eyes roll back in pleasure.
Vice: Severe addiction to foreign drugs. Requires one ounce of imported tobacco to put in a days work. Cannies carry nothing, not rider, not food, not water, without the daily ration.
Price: 3 silver minae in the coastal cities, 1 silver obol in the desert (typically from someone who has run out of tobacco).

Suus Gradial
    The bedouin war-mount. Gradials only resemble camels from some distance; desert legend says the first of the breed were somehow cross-bred with scorpigans. Anyone coming face to face with a Gradial, and seeing the twin pupils of their eyes, and their wolfish fangs, is forced to admit that old legends sometimes bear a grain of truth.
Sturdiness 3, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Petulcus enthusiasm. Lashes out in combat, striking at +2 to-hit with a bite (1d6) as it goes or a pair of thunderous trotters (1d10) if reined up.
Vice: Plain laziness. Gradials would literally rather die than carry a fourth sack. If somehow surprised (say, by a heavy person landing on them), will front-flip and lie still until the weight is gone.
Price: 20 silver minae in the cities, 15 silver minae in the desert (if you can find a bedouin breeder who likes you)

Mirror-Finished Radical
    Radicals are held in superstitious terror by the Hillmen, who insist that feral herds of the beasts are a sure sign of evil spirits. The bedouin hold them to be sacred agents of the Green, sacrificing their own bodies to protect watering holes from defilement. City-folk believe that coats of their shining hair repel disease. Nobody will sell you one for cheap.
Sturdiness 2, Stubbornness 3
Virtue: Cleanliness that verges on godliness. Radicals produce no waste, and their milk and blood are clear citrus-scented water. They can consume any organic material and many inorganic ones. Radicals produce one liter of drinking water per day, or two on days where they have consumed something particularly dangerous.
Vice: Beacon of sin. Those who ride a Radical suffer a -1 reaction penalty with all civilized folk. You will be assumed to have leprosy, or syphilis, or both. Caravans with large numbers of Radicals will be taken for plague pilgrimages, and may require a fast-talking captain to be allowed rooms in small caravansaries.
Price: 30 silver minae in the cities, 45 silver minae in the desert.

Beasts

    These common animals can be purchased in most large bazaars. Raised in captivity, they are kept for their venom or their pelts, or simply as exotic and inadvisable pets. Met in the wild, some are quite dangerous.

Stockwhip Asp (purchasable for 1 silver drachm)
0.5HD (1HP), AC as unarmored, 5 morale
    Possessed of long wiry tails which they swing in circles to produce an irritating whir like a brewing storm. Not aggressive, but will bite the shit out of you if startled. Tradition holds that assassins know how to delicately trick these snakes into biting fruit, injecting them with deadly venom for wicked harvest.
No. Appearing: 2d6
Movement: faster than walking pace
Code: Desert (2 sins)
Intelligence: animalistic
Attacks: -2 to-hit, two bites (1 damage, HRTS or take 1d8 poison)

Blood-Red Scavenger Worm Long as Your Arm (purchasable for 1 silver stater)
0.5HD (1HP), AC as unarmored, too stupid to check morale
    Foul creatures, the bane of caravans. The color of fresh blood. Any bedouin or hermit will pay a silver drachm for a dead worm; for one thing, destroying scavenger worms is surely worth a bounty, and for another, they are delicious when smoked thoroughly over a low fire.
No. Appearing: 3d6 (a result of 1 on any die indicates an encounter with a 2HD blood-red scavenger worm long as your whole body)
Movement: pathetic hopping and flopping, but can burrow through sand faster than a man can crawl
Code: Monster
Intelligence: deterministic and easily manipulated
Attacks: +1 to-hit, toothy bite (1 damage, anticoagulant venom reduces CON and STR by 1 as the torn flesh bleeds)
Powerful Nose — scavenger worms can smell flesh (living or dead) in contact with sand at a distance of two miles. They preferentially target intelligent creatures, but will chew the feet off of a camel if nothing else presents itself.

Scorpigan, Green (purchasable for 5 silver drachma)
1HD (4HP), AC as chain, 7 morale
    Muscular arachnids as big as wolves. Green scorpigans are known to travel in harems, not fear fire, and to rot in hours when slain.
No. Appearing: 1d6 males and one Alpha Female (6HP)
Movement: quiet creeping, or camel-speed galloping
Code: Desert (1 sin)
Intelligence: pack-hunting predator
Attacks: +1 to-hit, two pinches (1 damage). If both hit, one strike from bewareful stinger-tail (1d6 poison, check HRTS or unable to benefit from food or rest for 24 hours)
Rending Charge — in combat, a scorpigan can charge a target slower than itself and automatically hit with both pinches. Only one scorpigan can charge a target per turn, and they require 30' of runup.
Alpha Female — the larger female scorpigans have larger pinchers, which deal 2 damage, and more venom, which deals 1d10 damage and applies 48 hours of debuffs on a failed HRTS.

Black Moth, Baby (purchasable for a silver stater)
    Winged insects larger than your outspread hands. Suicidally attracted to light-sources. Often believed to herald death. Can be harvested for one dose of flashpowder, if you are patient and have a good comb.
1HD (2HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
No. Appearing: 2d6
Movement: flight as graceful as a fat seagull
Code: Desert (0 sins)
Intelligence: bugge
Attacks: no
Psionics: those who mean black moths harm save vs. charm to approach within melee range. If failed, suffer one minute of disgusting wracking ugly-sobs: drip snot, produce a lot of racket, and apply a -2 to any checks that require un-teary vision.
Black Dust Wings — when a black moth takes fire damage, they detonate in a 10' fireball. Save or take 1d6 fire damage.

Tiny Jumping Lizard (purchasable for a silver drachm, another buys a little woven cage)
0HD (0HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
    Sings at sunrise and sunset. Delicious when eaten raw, but it's good luck to leave him be.
Movement: as tiny jumping lizard
Code: Desert (1 sin)
Intelligence: negligible
Attacks: +0 to-hit, ferocious nip (0 damage)
Psionics: carried in its small cage, kept fat and plump with crumbs of food, the song of this tiny lizard soothes the soul of its owner. Rest heals 1 more hitpoint than normal, or restores 1 extra point of stat damage. Those who have knowingly harmed or eaten tiny jumping lizards cannot benefit from this until they have assuaged their guilt at a shrine to the Lizard Gods out in the deep desert.

Albino Camelroo (adolescents purchasable for 5 silver drachma)
2HD (6HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
    Ghostly-white creatures with long powerful limbs and two large humps of fat protecting the spine. Well-adapted to life in the desert, eating cacti and stomping scorpigans flat. Quality pelts may fetch as much as a gold drachm.
No. Appearing: 2d6 females, 1d6 adolescents (1HD, 3HP), 1 alpha male (10HP, does not check morale when protecting wives)
Movement: bounds and leaps as fast as a horse
Code: Desert (1 sin)
Intelligence: pack animal
Attacks: +2 to-hit, pair of ferocious punches (1d6 damage) or a tremendous double-barreled kick (1d6+2 damage, fly 20' back, take impact damage as if falling)
Psionics: alpha males will challenge large or ostentatiously dressed combatants, filling them with injured pride. Save vs. charm or attacks against any other target have disadvantage.

Coyote-Mouth Cattle (a cow for six silver drachm, a bull for one gold drachm)
3HD (12HP), AC as leather, 7 morale
    Built like stone towers, with steely hooves and sharp fangs for tearing carrion or gnawing trees. Domesticated herds live in symbiosis with the Reaver culture. Wild herds live in oasis-rich regions, along the banks of the Neilos, or on the shores of the ocean, with each population being slightly different in size and hide pattern. Outside of mating season the cows travel in large related clans protected by a single massive Grandmother who may mass as much as 1000kg. Desert folklore holds that coyote-mouth cattle speak a language that they never use in the presence of bipeds, even in extreme need.
No. Appearing: 2d6 bulls (16HP), or 5d6 cows with 5d6 juveniles (1HD, 3HP) and a Grandmother Cow (4HD, 20HP)
Movement: like a bigass cow
Code: Charnel God (1 sin)
Intelligence: cowlike for example
Attacks: +3 to-hit, a charge at a distance (1d6+3, target checks MOVE or falls prone) or a powerful kick from the rear legs when close (2d6+3). Bulls with at least 20' of runup deal maximum damage with their charge.
Psionics: receptive to telepathic communication. In combat, Grandmother Cows may force an intelligent target to check SKLL or become overwhelmed with brainfog and lose their turn.
Grandmother Cow — intelligent as an old woman. directs other cows with powerful telepathic broadcasts.

Treasurer

     A large caravan might consist of a handful of wealthy merchants, two or three servants for each merchant, the same number of retainers and bodyguards, a five-man squad of mercenary guardsmen, a dozen pilgrims, a score of camel-drivers, and three or four score camels — not to mention the wizards, slaves, doctors, captured bandits, mailmen, tourists, and the Foreign cartographers and rubbernecks who inevitably end up trotting behind. Such a group needs its officers.

    One member of the caravan (that is to say, one real-life player) is to be elected treasurer. The treasurer tracks the financial holdings and obligations of the caravan. This includes the denominations and value of all the coinage and bullion and gems, the wages to be paid out to hirelings, the conversion rate between various mints, the distance that various goods have traveled, opportunities for larger profits in specific cities, &c &c &c. In short, one player handles a bit of the paperwork and math so the DM doesn't have to. That player earns an extra 10 XP per session. If the DM checks the financials and discovers a discrepancy, then the caravan was surreptitiously robbed at some point: half the money (by the DM's estimate) has vanished and the treasurer doesn't get the extra XP that session.

The Advantage the Universe Has Over Him (GLOG Class: Mystic)

    You are a mystic, whose psionic techniques circumvent the need for magic and arcane tradition.

    You have a pool of psions used to fuel your powers (fun fact: the term "psion" originally referred to the theoretic basic particle of ESP fields), equal to your HP modified by INT instead of CON. You regenerate one point per hour of undisturbed meditation; you also gain the normal benefits of sleep and rest while meditating.

    You also have a Limit, which is equal to the number of levels you have in all mystic classes. This determines the maximum number of psions which you can spend in a single round under normal conditions.

    Additionally, you have focus, which is your ability to maintain powerful ongoing psionic effects. You can change your focus with a combat round of intense concentration. When you take damage, check INT or lose your focus. Lost focus is regained with [limit] hours of undisturbed meditation—as a mystic attains ever more elevated and esoteric states, the mental effort required to enter them grows as well.

    Your powers are divided into talents and disciplines, and disciplines are divided into generic and class-specific lists. All mystics begin with a single talent and a single discipline from the generic list. They develop a new one, from either their class' list or the generic list, each time they gain a level. Masters of various traditions can also teach you new disciplines; some traditions are more closely-guarded than others.

    I know this sounds like a lot, but you'll get the hang of it. Basically, you use your cool magic powers to do cool magic tricks.

    As a mystic, you are proficient with spears, hunting bows, clubs, knives, and any weapons in your starting equipment. You can wear only light armor, but you know how to use shields. You can ride a camel into combat. Warhorses don't like the looks of you and will attempt to bite. Any mystic may spend six seconds to send a sentence (up to 10 words) telepathically to a creature they can see, and receive a sentence in response if that creature wishes.

Source: 1949 illustration by Callé for the story The Impossible, written by Ray Bradbury

Nomad

    Among the uncommon mystics, the most common breed is the wandering nomad. They travel from oasis to oasis plying their trade for the benefit of the peasants of the Obol Desert. Nomads are rarely seen in the coastal cities, but never unwelcome when they do appear. Most are simple adventurers and philanthropists, with no deeper understanding of the primal force they wield — though a few have developed their abilities to the point of being able to walk across the world, or (it's said) even into others.

Starting Equipment: Durable traveling clothes (as unarmored, appropriate clothing for the desert), engraved shikarsword (medium), sturdy waterskin (holds 3 liters), book of quotations (Desert Code), 100' of boiled manila rope, 10 silver obols
Skills: 1. Camel management 2. Surgery 3. Gardening

• A Wanderer, +1 extra Nomad Discipline
• B Footprints in Sand, +1 to-hit
• C Far-Reaching, +1 HP
• D Effortless Journey, +1 to-hit

Wanderer
    The nomads always seem to be one step ahead, knowing just what they need to know for every situation. Each morning, when you wake, choose two of any skills, languages, or weapon proficiencies. You're an expert until next you sleep.

Footprints
    Space and time are memories, and you remember everywhere you've been. Once per dawn, when you would be hurt, you retroactively hadn't moved from where you last stood six seconds ago. This causes attacks to miss (the attackers must have been confused, and swinging at air) and most environmental hazards to not harm you.

Far-Reaching
    Your study of the Nomad Disciplines is rewarded. When you use a Nomad Discipline to teleport, you teleport twice as far.

Effortless Journey
    Once per round, you may forgo walking to teleport to some position you can see and could have walked to in one round. Among other things, this means that you can travel at a normal pace, ignoring rough terrain, while in full meditation.

Immortal

    The Immortals do not represent a single philosophy, but rather a single goal: survival. They earned their name half in awe, half as a curse. Even when all your friends are dead, you, an immortal, have a good chance of crawling back to civilization. The bedouin tribes of the Obol Desert, devoted to the Green as they are, see you at best as a coward and a quisling, and at worst as a traitor to the Great Work of the human race. There's little they can do about it.

Starting Equipment: Dreary traveling clothes (as unarmored, appropriate clothing for the desert), hunting bow (medium), quiver with sheaf of arrows, waterskin (3 liters), sharp shovel (medium, must be wielded in two hands), 10 silver obols
Skills: 1. Cookery 2. Camel management 3. Alchemy

• A Tough as Leather, +1 extra Immortal Discipline
• B Not Luck, +2 SAVE
• C Shed Skin, +2 HRTS
• D Still Not Luck, +2 INIT

Tough as Leather
    You may add your level to your max hitpoints (this doesn't increase your psion pool, sorry). You may add your DEX bonus to your AC, if positive. In your bare skin, you may add your CON bonus to your AC, if positive. 

Not Luck
    At the beginning of each round, you gain two temporary hitpoints.

Shed Skin
    When you would take damage from any source, you may break your own focus to halve that damage.

Still Not Luck
    When you would be reduced to 0 hitpoints or below for any reason, you may spend 5 psions. You heal to [level + CON mod] hitpoints.

Overlord

    While the primal forces can be applied to material reality, they are more effective when leveraged to influence the minds of others. Overlords take advantage of this to sit atop hierarchies of servants for their own benefit. You can whip up frenzies like cattle, call down sorrows like witch-women call storms, inspire loyalty like beautiful women inspire love-poems, all without lifting a finger of your own. The only thing you need to take care of is this: most communities in the Obol Desert (quite reasonably) see thrallmaking as no different from a slave raid, while others see it as tantamount to murder. The common punishment for captured slavers is to be branded as a slave. You, they'll simply hang.

Starting Equipment: Fine clothing (+1 to reactions), foreign longsword (medium, attractive gilt), shield, high-quality foreign hauberk (medium armor.), a good camel, 50 silver obols. 
Skills: 1. Poetry 2. Household management 3. Andonan history

• A Charm School, +1 extra Overlord Discipline
• B Domination, Extra attack
• C Font of Health
• D Icon of Battle

Charm School
    You received the finest education that money and connections can obtain. You can wear medium armor and ride a warhorse. People of importance have a [level]-in-6 chance of knowing who you are (the rising chance representing your rising value as a possible friend).

Domination
    When you and an NPC are off-screen together for more than an hour, you can declare that they have become your thrall. Thralls behave normally, except they treat your opinions as their opinions, and your suggestions as brilliant ideas. You can maintain up to [limit] HD of thralls; going over your limit frees earlier thralls immediately, which is painful and confusing for both of you. You can free thralls at-will, and they do not recall the experience as being out of the ordinary and will be offended by suggestions otherwise. Your thralls are not released when you die.

Font of Health
    Your soothing touch enhances both natural and supernatural healing. Allies in your presence gain an additional [limit] HP from anything that restores their hitpoints, including rest. 

Icon of Battle
    You're an inspiration to your soldiers, whether they recognize you as their leader or still believe in their independence. Allies in your presence add your [limit] to their INIT rolls at the beginning of combat, and to their attack rolls when targeting creatures who are personally threatening you.

Jeddak

    Called "jedi" by uneducated foreigners, the Jeddak are the oldest traditions of mystic, even predating the so-called Ancients. When the world was young and green and filled with all manner of strange things, brave Jeddak warred against the forces of evil and walked the horizon to guard against intrusion from other planes. Today, the few who remain in the Obol Desert are but a tiny fraction of the old order. Other survivors may exist, out in the stars of other planes...

Starting Equipment: Ragged traveling clothes (as unarmored, appropriate clothing for the desert), your horizon blade fetish (see your A template), begging bowl, 10 copper obols
Skills: 1. Religion 2. Extreme sports 3. Calligraphy

• A Horizon Blade, +1 to-hit
• B Honed Edge, Extra attack
• C Soul Thief, +2 HP
• D Soul Cutter, +1 to-hit

Horizon Blade
    In your possession is a sacred relic of the Jeddak order; the fetishes which allow you to summon your horizon blade. These fetishes are just small pieces of silver, carved with strange runes and set with many symbolically-important gemstones, and their weight is negligible. You may pay one psion to ignite your horizon blade, and can dismiss it with a thought. The "blade" is a portal to the Astral Plane, one inch wide, two feet long (one end touching the fetish), and infinitesimally thin when viewed from the side. The inner and outer edge of the portal cuts like an angle-grinder. This "blade" deals 1d8 damage plus your highest stat modifier (you use it powerfully if you're strong, cunningly if wise, hotly if charismatic, &c). If held in two hands, the damage increases to 1d10. You know how to use it to parry attacks, reducing incoming melee weapon damage by your to-hit modifier.
    Replacing this fetish costs 10 gold obols, and you cannot multiclass as a Jeddak unless you own a fetish. Horizon blades are absolutely terrifying to NPCs, and igniting yours may prompt morale checks from everyone present, even your own hirelings. Sometimes eyes are visible through the portal.

Honed Blade
    When you ignite your blade, you may pay an extra psion to increase its size by a foot, granting you +1 to-hit and damage. If you pay two extra psion its size is increased by two feet, granting you +2 to-hit and damage, and bumping the damage dice up one level. If you pay 4 psions (in total), the horizon blade is eight feet long, and deals 2d6 damage in one hand or 2d8 in two, with +4 to-hit and damage in addition to your stat modifier. At this size, there is a 2-in-6 chance that something escapes the portal.

Soul Thief
    You've learned how to tax a little part of passing souls. When your horizon blade kills a living creature, you regenerate [target's HD] psions.

Soul Cutter
    Your horizon blade can strike at a creature's essence directly, ignoring petty material concerns such as "armor" and "whether they dodged you or not" If you make one attack in a turn instead of two, that attack hits 10 AC.

Ancient

    The supreme power in the world, once. In ancient times, the Ancients drew new coastlines, raised new mountains, laid new roads. They could produce food and water from nothing, send messages instantly across thousands of miles, travel through the air in flying ships, and even create new life from common flora and fauna. That was then. So many millennia have passed that even the foundations of their cities are gone from the earth; the only traces of that mighty civilization are patches of colored sand which can be found here and there in the Obol Desert, where their moldering bones once lay, so long ago, in great stinking heaps. Once upon a time you wandered deep, deep into the desert, to where the mountains rise as sheer and unbroken walls of stone, and looted the ancient holdfasts preserved there. You found forgotten treasure. You learned forbidden knowledge. Perhaps you are like them, now: the ones who killed the world.

Starting Equipment: Somber traveling clothes (as unarmored, appropriate clothing for the desert), augmented limb (see your A template), damask saber (masterwork medium), raygun (deals 1d8 fire damage at 30', requires charge to attack, holds 3 charges, regains 1 a day), waterskin (holds 3 liters), 20 silver obols
Skills: 1. Ancient history 2. Genetics 3. Engineering

• A Augmented Limbs, +1 extra Ancient Discipline
• B Elemental Investigation
• C Dabbler
• D Psionic Specter

Augmented Limbs
    You know some of the secrets of the ancients, allowing you to replace or improve the physical bodies of human beings. An augmented limb requires 10 gold obols of materials to make, though you can save 1 obol if the creature still has a functioning limb to build on top of. Augmented arms grant +1 MOVE (improved strength) or SKLL (improved delicacy), and +1 to-hit either way. Augmented legs grant +1 MOVE (improved strength) or INIT (improved speed), and +1 AC either way. These limbs are so much better than the originals that it almost makes you forget that they require one psion per day to function; if they don't get their psion, they are entirely nonfunctional.

Elemental Investigation
    Your affinity for the past allows you to perceive the world as it was. If you concentrate on an object for ten minutes, you gain a mental impression of its perspective over the previous 24 hours. If you know the exact time you're looking for, you can view that in real time; searching for something takes you 1 minute to scrub through 1 hour of "footage" from the object's memory. Objects only perceived what they could have perceived (e.g. a coin in a pocket doesn't see very much), and you can only receive impressions of sight, sound, and touch (objects don't have noses or tongues).

Dabbler
    When you acquire this template you gain a pair of spell slots in your brain, allowing you to store spells. It may be possible to find these in the wild, or buy them at the bazaar. You can break your own focus to cast a spell with [limit] MD, suffering mishaps as an Orthodox Wizard. You don't need to worry about Dooms. The Ancients have been doomed enough already. 

Psionic Specter
    Once per dawn, you can transmogrify yourself into a translucent, ghostly version of your normal self. In this form you take half damage from all sources, move at at only 10' a round, and can pass through solid objects in your way (so long as they aren't thicker than 10'). This ends after 10 minutes or with a thought.

Source: Illustration by Alexander L. Brown for the French band Barús

Talents

1. Project bright light 20' out of your eyes for one round.
2. Fasten a weapon to your hand such that it cannot be taken from your grip, or release the same.
3. Render a single creature unable to see you for one round. If you use this on the same creature over several consecutive rounds, they notice flickering afterimages and may become alarmed.
4. Cause a creature to experience an auditory or visual hallucination for one minute. Visual hallucinations are only visual (no other sense), do not produce or reflect or block light, occupy a 5' cube at most, and disappear if the creature touches them.
5. Enhance your movement psychokinetically, shoving against gravity sharply to double jump height and length.
   
6. Enhance your movement psychokinetically. pushing against gravity slowly to run 30' along a wall or over a pool of liquid.
   
7. Touch one willing intelligent creature and meld your minds for one minute. you can communicate telepathically, and either of you may spend the minute transmitting a memory (60 second snippet, full sensory recall)
8. Cause creature within 60' to check CON or be brain-tased and fall prone.
9. Beguile a living creature as you speak with them. They react to your words with 3d6, keeping the two highest dice. Hostile results indicate they realize you're pulling a mind-trick.
   
10. Move an object weighing less than 10 pounds and within 30' of you with your mind, as if you were manipulating it with your hands for one round. You can shift it up to 30', if you wish. This lacks the motive force to shove creatures around, or remove objects from their grasp, though perhaps if they weren't expecting it you could joggle the aim of a pistol as it fires or something like that.
11. Pay one psion and throw a bolt of crackling purple energy 60' as an attack, striking for 1d6+[INT mod] psychic damage. 
12. Pay one psion to set a flammable object within 60' on fire with your mind powers. Flammable objects worn by a creature get a save to resist this.
    

Generic Disciplines

Aura Sight

     A basic discipline that allows you to see perceive the qualities and movements of the souls of living things. You can focus to sense hostility from living creatures, and while doing this you can't be surprised by a camouflaged foe. 

• Assess (1 psion): You learn the HP, HD, to-hit and Limit of a creature you can see.
• Read Mood (1 psion): You gain a two-word summary of the emotional state of a creature you can see.
• View Aura (2 psion, focus): For the duration, you gain two-word summaries of the emotional states of any creatures you can see, and a sense of how your words or actions will alter those emotions before you say/do anything.
• See Unseen (3 psion, focus): For the duration, you can see living things within 120' feet clearly, even through walls and concealment, even if they are supernaturally hidden. This functions like the infravision of certain subterranean predators: you do not need a light source to attack living creatures, and if they lack infravision their attacks against you are made with disadvantage.

Mental Citadel

     A basic discipline of psionic combat, this one dedicated to defense. You can focus to gain resistance to psychic damage.

• Total Defense (1 psion, focus): A crackling shield of psionic energy surrounds you. You have a +2 bonus to AC and any roll to avoid damage.
• Psionic Parry (2 psions): You direct your will against a creature in melee as it strikes you, reducing incoming weapon damage by 2d6. If your roll exceeds theirs, excess is dealt to them as psychic damage.
• Psionic Redoubt (3 psions, focus): Until you shift your focus, you and up to six creatures you can see gain the benefits of Total Defense and resistance to psychic damage.

Awe

     A basic discipline for subtly bending the wills of others, and convincing them you are trustworthy and charming. You can focus to gain a +2 bonus to reaction.

• Presence (1–4 psions): Creatures within 30' of you are charmed by you, with no save, considering you a admirable member of their society. This affects 2HD of creatures per psion spent, starting from the lowest-HD. This lasts for 10 minutes, or until you or one of your allies start a fight.
• Center of Attention (2 psions, focus): You charm the heart of one creature you can see. They save. If they fail, all other creatures are invisible to them until you shift your focus.
• Slave Will (4 psions, focus). You cast aside subtlety and directly seize the minds of others. Up to 6HD of creatures you can see save. If they fail, they are charmed to perceive you as their direct superior, and will follow your verbal commands to the best of their abilities. Each time you order them to do something against their nature, they get another save before obeying. Most creatures become murderously angry upon being freed from this effect. 

Precognition

     A basic discipline that allows you to piece together clues and details from your environment. From the outside, it looks like you can see the future. You can focus to gain advantage on INIT rolls.

• Hunch (1 psion, focus): You allow instinct to guide you. Add your [limit] to all checks.
• All-Around Sight (2 psions): After an attack hits you, force the attacker to reroll the attack.
• Danger Sense (3 psions, focus): You construct a mental model of reality, with an offset of a few seconds. You cannot be surprised. You have a +10 bonus to INIT. No circumstances or other rules can give attackers advantage against you.
• Premeditated Victory (4 psions): When INIT is rolled, grant yourself and up to 6 creatures a +10 bonus.

Assault Mind

     A basic discipline of psionic combat, this one dedicated to offense. You can focus to deal 2 extra points of damage any time you deal psychic damage.

• Brain Blast (1–4 psions): A creature you can see takes 1d8 points of psychic damage per psion, or half of that on a successful INT check.
• Superego Whip (2 psions): You inflict crippling self-doubt and fear. A creature you can see takes 1d8 points of psychic damage, and checks INT or loses their turn in combat.
• Id Whip (3 psions): You inflict sudden panic and fury. A creature you can see takes 2d8 points of psychic damage, and checks INT or must attack the nearest creature on their turn.
• Mind Crush (4 psions): Choose a 60' cube that you can see. All creatures whose heads are inside the cube take 4d6 points of psychic damage, or half on a successful INT check.

Haunt Mind

     A basic discipline of psionic combat, this one dedicated to spreading madness and confusion. You can focus to impose a -2 penalty to enemy morale rolls.

• Figment (1 psion): A creature you can see believes it is being hunted by some fearful thing they cannot see. They whirl around in place, trying not to turn their back on imaginary threats. Real threats have advantage on attacks against them. At the end of each of the target's turns, or whenever it takes damage, it check INT to break free from the delusion.
• Invisible Fiend (2 psions, focus): A creature you can see vividly hallucinates a fearful monster, exactly what would most scare them, charging their position. They take 1d6 psychic damage each turn as it tears out their flesh and sucks the juice out of their eyeballs. Real threats have advantage on attacks against them. At the end of each of their turns, the target may check INT to break free from the delusion. If the damage kills them they die with their bodies unmarked yet their faces contorted in masks of extreme agony and wild terror.
• Phantom Traitor (3 psions, focus): A creature you can see is charmed into an episode of delusional paranoia. They believe all other creatures, even their friends and allies, have betrayed them; perceiving themselves to be surrounded by enemies, they marshal all their courage and abilities to escape. They may check INT to break free from this delusion at the end of each of their turns.
• Phantom Riches (4 psions, focus): A creature you can see is charmed into perceiving the thing they desire most hovering just a little out of reach. People who try to prevent them from running off after it are perceived as jealous thieves and dealt with accordingly. The target gets one INT check before doing something really really stupid, otherwise they're along for the ride, and will pursue the mirage anywhere without a thought for their own safety.

Telepathy

     A basic discipline for communicating your will to others. You can focus to include up to 6 other creatures in your telepathic messages; every connected creature hears the sentence and may respond with a sentence of their own.

• Inquire (1 psions): A creature you can see, and which is capable of communicating with you telepathically, checks INT or is charmed to answer one telepathically-posed question truthfully. If they pass the check, they are immune to this ability for 24 hours. Targets will attempt to rationalize their behavior.
• Occlude (1 psions): A creature you can see, and which is capable of communicating with you telepathically, checks INT or is charmed to believe a (ten word) sentence you transmit to them. If they pass the check, they are immune to this ability for 24 hours. Targets will attempt to rationalize their behavior, and will be confused and distressed by proof the sentence was a lie.
• Break (3 psions): A creature you can see, and which is capable of communicating with you telepathically, checks INT or is charmed such that you decide how they move and act for the next 6 seconds. If they pass the check, they are immune to this ability for 24 hours. Targets will attempt to rationalize their behavior.
• Grip (3 psions, focus): A creature you can see, and which is capable of communicating with you telepathically, checks INT or is charmed to hold perfectly still. If they pass the check, &c &c &c. When they receive damage, they are freed.
• Dominate (4 psions, focus): As Break, except it lasts indefinitely. Behavior that is extremely out of character gives the target another opportunity to free themselves. Even if they do so, they will attempt to rationalize their behavior.

Nomad Disciplines

Vagabond Arrow

     This discipline grants projectiles a certain life of their own, allowing them to seek out their own marks. You can focus to double the range of your ranged attacks

• Speeding Dart (1–4 psions). As your attack, a number of bolts of energy, equal to the psi spent on this ability, fly from your hand to strike a creature within 30'. Each dart has +2 to-hit, rolls its attack separately, and deals 1d4 force damage. 
• Seeking Missile (1 psion): When a projectile you can see misses, you can give it another chance. It flies back around for a second attack against the same target.
• Faithful Archer (3 psions, focus): You grant a weapon limited sentience. A bow, held in your offhand, will fire at a target of your choice once per round. An axe or javelin will fly from your hand to strike a target, then return, once per round. You could apply this to a sword, technically, but it would only attack things within melee range of your arm.

Desert Chameleon

     This discipline, developed for survival out in the Obol Deserts, is devoted to methods of layering shadow and haze to conceal and camouflage the mystic who uses it. You can focus to grant yourself advantage on sneak checks to avoid being seen.

• Chameleon (1 psion): Close your eyes and check sneak. If you succeed, you disappear, even if you were standing in the middle of a brightly-lit ballroom. You remain hidden until you open your eyes, move, or are bumped into.
• Step from Sight (2 psions, focus): You cloak yourself from sight, becoming invisible until you shift your focus or attack another creature. If you spend an extra psion (for a total of three), you may grant a friend the same invisibility.
• Enduring Invisibility (4 psions, focus): You become invisible until you shift your focus.

Wandering Mind

     This is one of the nomads' fundamental disciplines, as it allows their minds to journey far through the noosphere in their waking lives. You can focus to grant yourself any single common skill or spoken language.

• Find Creature (1 psions, focus): You cast your mind out along the ancient, dead leylines of the Obol Desert. While you maintain your focus, you know in which direction a specific creature whose name and likeness you know, or who you have personally seen before, can be found.
• Artifact Lore (2 psions, focus): You can carefully study an item for an hour to recall information that others have known about it in the past, allowing you to identify its functions (and its name and great deeds if it's a magic sword or something).
• Psychic Speech (3 psions): You draw in knowledge of languages old and young. For an hour, you understand any spoken, non-coded language you hear, and your spoken words are understood by any creatures who can understand language.
• Errant Eye (3 psions, focus): You detach your vision from your body and attach it to a psionic sensor. The sensor floats in air, invisibly. If you meditate on it intensely, you can cause it to float along at about walking speed. It can't pass through solid objects, but can get into any space an eyeball could roll through. There is no limit to how far the sensor can move. Your body is blind until your focus shifts; if your focus breaks and vision snaps back suddenly, you are disoriented and effectively blind for a minute.
• Alternate Eye (4 psions, focus): As above, except it passes through physical objects.

Nomadic Step

     This is the other fundamental nomad discipline, focused on teleportation of the physical body. You can focus to maintain awareness of your position. You'll immediately notice if you've been teleported, or if you're walking down some deceptive sloped pathway, and you know where north is even underground.

• Ten Paces (1–4 psions): Teleport to a place you can see within 20' per psion.
• Nomadic Anchor (1 psion): You can designate a point in 3d space that you can see and memorize the location precisely. For the next 24 hours, any ability that lets you teleport to a point you can see can instead teleport you to your anchor, so long as it is within range.
• Defensive Step (2 psions): When you would be hit by an attack, you give yourself a +4 bonus to AC. If this causes the attack to miss you can also teleport up to 10' away to a point you can see.
• There and Back Again (2 psions): At the beginning of your turn you can teleport 20' away to a point you can see, then move and act normally. At the end of your turn, you may snap back to the position you started from, so long as it is not occupied.
• Baleful Transposition (3 psions): A creature you can see within 120' of you trades places with you. If they're another mystic, they get to check INT: otherwise it happens automatically.
• Caravan (3 psions): You and up to six other willing creatures teleport to a location you can see within 1 mile. Unwilling creatures may check INT to avoid this.

Third Eye

    This discipline opens your third eye chakra, allowing you to perceive more than most. You can focus to give yourself G24-style gloomvision.

• Tremorsense (1 psion, focus): You have tremorsense in 30', allowing you to precisely locate any movement in contact with the same surface as you
• Piercing Sight (2 psions, focus): You can see through solid surfaces within 30'
• Truesight (3 psions, focus): You gain truesight within 30', allowing you to see as normal regardless of light level or invisibility, and detect illusions.

Immortal Disciplines

Fortitude

     This discipline focuses your psionic energy to warp your body to be more suitable for the punishing and extreme environments of the Obol Desert. You can focus to meet your body's daily requirements of food, water, air and sleep with one psion. While doing this, you cannot heal with rest, nor can you meditate to generate more psions.

• Environmental Adaptation (1 psion): Yourself or a creature you touch ignores the miseries (see G24) associated with extremely hot or cold weather for 8 hours.
• Reactive Adaptive Shield (1 psion): When you would take poison, cold, fire or lightning damage from any source, you can ignore half that damage.
• Total Adaptive Shield (2 psions, focus): Yourself or a creature you touch takes half damage from poison, cold, fire or lightning until you shift your focus.
• Elemental Immunity (3 psions, focus): As Total Adaptive Shield, except you ignore the damage entirely.

Protean

     This discipline focuses your psionic energy to warp your body to imitate the strengths of the wild beasts. You can focus to present as a predator; wild animals check morale when they see you or attempt to flee the situation.

• Evolution (variable): You shed your skin and reemerge in a new and better form. Design this new form with the eidolon rules, spending psions instead of evolution points. For the purposes of buying new traits, you are a biped-shaped creature, with legs, arms, human size, and a head with eyes. This transformation lasts for one hour, after which you shed your skin and return as your "normal" self. The evolved form has its own HP total (6 per your level). It is not a mystic and cannot use any of your disciplines or talents, or maintain focus.

Potence

     This discipline focuses your psionic energy to warp your body and grant you inhuman strength. You may focus for advantage on checks to bend bars and lift gates.

• Brutal Blow (1–4 psions): When you hit something with a melee attack, you may deal an extra 1d6, 1d8, 1d10 or 1d12 damage from the terrible impact.
• Knock Back (1–4 psions): When you hit something with a melee attack, you may launch them 10' backwards for each psion spent. If they collide with something as they fly, they take damage as if they had fallen the remaining distance.
• Impossible Leap (1–4 psions): When you attempt to leap a gap on your turn, you can jump an extra 20' per psion spent.

Celerity

     This discipline focuses your psionic energy to warp your body and grant you inhuman speed. You may focus to significantly increase your walking speed (if playing with a battle map, someone who normally moves 30 feet per round moves 40 now), allowing you to easily escape pursuers on foot, or easily run down those who flee from you.

• Rapid Step (1–4 psions): On your turn, take an extra turn's worth of movement for every psion spent.
• Agility (1 psion): Dodge an incoming attack and force the attacker to roll with disadvantage.
• Blur of Motion (1 psion): For one turn, you move with such spiderlike rapidity that you are effectively invisible while moving. You can slip past watching guards or underneath falling gates leaving nothing more than a vague impression that a shadow has passed this way.
• Surge of Activity (4 psions): Take a turn, now.

Tiny Creature

     This discipline focuses your psionic energy to warp your body, making you small and hard to notice. While focusing, you leave no tracks, and your weight won't break rickety structures or bend slender branches.

• Miniature Form (2 psions, focus): You become the size of a cat until your focus shifts. You maintain all of your physical capabilities (though your armor probably doesn't fit any more), but can squeeze through a 6" gap, or sneak through a house full of people by scurrying under furniture. Shrinking or growing takes a full round.
• Topple (1 psion): You rapidly shrink and then rubber-band back to normal size (or vice-versa, if you're in Miniature Form). This is terrifying, inexplicable, and has enough force to knock over a human unless they pass a strength check.
• Animalculous Form (4 psions, focus): You become the size of mouse until your focus shifts. You gain an effective +5 bonus to your AC (which is good, because your armor definitely doesn't fit you any more), and can squeeze through gaps one inch wide. You are as strong as you normally are, but you have almost no range of motion, so can't use weapons or most tools.

Terrible Monster

     This discipline focuses your psionic energy to warp your body, making you stupendously large and girthy. While focusing, your arms lengthen down past your knees. You have reach like a spear with normal melee weapons.

• Exaggerated Form (2 psions, focus): Your body swells until you are 8' tall. You gain 6 temporary hitpoints at the start of every turn, gain a +[limit] bonus to damage and to-hit with melee weapons, and can wield heavy weapons in one hand or hurl medium weapons like a javelin. You have reach like a spear with normal melee weapons.
• Hyperbolic Form (4 psions, focus): Your body swells until you are 18' tall. You gain 12 temporary hitpoints at the start of every turn, gain a +[limit*2] bonus to damage and to-hit with melee weapons, and can wield massive weapons in one hand or hurl heavy weapons like a javelin. You have reach like a pike with normal melee weapons.

Thaumaturgy

     This discipline infuses bodies with psionic energy, repairing and revitalizing them. While focused on this discipline you never fail rolls to remove fatal wounds in others.

• Mend (1 psions): You or a creature you touch heals [limit] HP. 
• Rejuvenate (2 psions): You or a creature you touch remove [limit] miseries, slots of exhaustion, or points of stat damage.
• Restore (3 psions): You or a creature you touch regrow a missing eye, heal a deafened ear, re-knit a broken spine, or cure a conventional disease.
• Return (4 psions): You touch a creature that has died within the last minute and bring it back to life. This does not grant them extra years if they'd died of old age, replace missing body parts if they'd died of dismemberment, or let them breathe in water if they drowned. It also doesn't work on piles of giblets or ash or glass statues caught in poses of panicked defense; there needs to be most of a functioning body left. 

Source: Locheil

Overlord Disciplines

     The so-called overlords are paranoid, controlling, and never ready to share their secrets for free. Their abilities are not widely understood. Those who have encountered them can tell you that overlords enslave souls, inspire insane passions, warp perceptions, empower armies, and exercise supreme control over the minds of their fellow human beings. A full list of their disciplines is available to someone who plays one in one of my campaigns (for those few of you who might want to run this class on your own, just make some shit up, steal the Avatar disciplines from the 5e Mystic. They're a really boring 4e Leader, and will require a lot of fiddling to be made appropriate for the GLOG).

Ancient Disciplines

     The Ancients are dead. Those who follow in their footsteps, and imitate their legendary abilities, are rare in the Obol Desert and almost unheard-of elsewhere. Those who have encountered them can tell you that Ancients command the very elements of the natural world, reshape earth, drive storms, topple fortresses, and slaughter nations. A full list of their disciplines is available to someone who plays one in one of my campaigns (for those few of you &c &c, steal the Wu Jen disciplines from the 5e Mystic. They're a really boring 4e Controller, and will require &c &c). 

World of Assassination (GLOG Classes: Assassin)

    I'm a big fan of the old Hitman games. I'd count Blood Money among the greatest videogames of all time. I've often idly thought of an all-assassins game, perhaps set in some big high-magic D&D city with lots of thieves' guilds and wealthy merchants and political intrigue, or maybe some kind of near-future cyberpunk hellscape with hunter-killer robots and 8 hour wars — somewhere with very few dungeons. Recently, the GLOG has been writing assassins (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here), and I've had this post sitting in my drafts for some nine months. Perfect timing. I knew I kept it around for a reason.

    Josie was the one who prompted this, and some of the class features here were stolen from her musings in the GLOG server. It's only fair, as she stole some of these features from me (after I in turn stole them from the 5e rogues).

    All assassins have a cipher score equal to their [templates] in any assassin class. Given some unusual tools (1 slot for a case) and a few moments of fiddling, they have a cipher-in-6 chance of succeeding a cipher check, in addition to whatever the normal resolution rules are. The cipher skills of the assassins are, according to tradition, to Climb Sheer Surfaces, Find Or Remove Traps, Hide In Shadows, Move Silently, Pick Locks, Identify Substances and Surprise Target.

    Assassins collect information about their targets before closing in for the kill. For every fact that you know about your target, you have an additional +1 damage and to-hit during surprise rounds, up to a max of +4. These don't have to be major facts, but they cannot be trivial. "Drinks Earl Grey tea", "Commands the fifth cavalry", "Is named Ostruchus Poncelroy" are all good facts. "Is currently inside his tent", "Is a man", "Has two arms" are not. If you could learn it by looking at a snapshot of the current scene, it's trivial (thanks Arnold).

    Unless otherwise mentioned assassins may wear light armor only, may not use shields, and are proficient with hatchets, knives, clubs, slings and any weapon they start with.

Ghost

    When situations call for grace and elegance, you're the one for the job. Some say a perfect assassination leaves no trace of foul play. You know that's not true — a really perfect assassination would leave no trace of death. With each life you take, you get a little closer to that beautiful shining city on the hill.
Starting Equipment: nice suit (+1 to reactions), garotte wire (kills silently in 3 rounds if you beat them in a move check and they didn't know you were there), vial of iocaine powder (odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, deals 1d6+6 poison damage exactly five rounds after consumption. Expensive to replace), lucky coin, case of unusual tools.
Skills: 1. Surgery 2. Modern languages 3. Ornithology.

• A One of Those Faces, +2 SNEK
• B Catburglary, +2 SNEK
• C Tearaway Pants, immunity to iocaine powder
• D Empty Eyes, +2 SNEK

One of Those Faces
    Something about you is oddly familiar. While wearing a uniform, you are assumed to be the sort of person who wears that uniform. This doesn't let you impersonate specific people (say, by stealing the Duke's fancy dinner jacket), only nameless background characters.

Catburglary
    You don't need to roll to Move Silently, or to Hide In Shadow so long as you're standing still.

Tearaway Pants
    While unobserved, you can change outfits and/or reapply makeup in six seconds.

Empty Eyes
    When you lock eyes with someone and project a killing intent, they can't make a noise until you blink, and must save each round to move or act. You're a dab hand at not blinking.

Sicarius

    You, or your teacher, remember a time when men were free and children weren't raised to fear them (whoever they happen to be, in your corner of the world). They imagine that they are safe. They believe that you are conquered, toothless, too scared from too many beatings to ever rise up again. There is a tendency for confidence to kill.
Starting Equipment: nondescript heavy clothing (as leather), 60' rope with grapnel, ordinary blade (light), case of unusual tools.
Skills: 1. Religious instruction 2. Military bureaucracy 3. Law

• A The Cloak, +1 HP
• B Crowd Work, +1 MOVE
• C Extortion, +1 HP
• D The Dagger, +1 MOVE

The Cloak
    Your preferred technique is "walk up and stick a knife in their throat". If someone in melee range wasn't looking at you, and didn't know they were about to be knifed, you may stab them for 6 damage plus your useful facts with no need for rolls.

Crowd Work
    Your preferred technique gets you in hot water sometimes. Upon breaking line of sight with pursuit, you disappear into crowds as perfectly as if you turned invisible.

Extortion
    Sometimes it's best to stab someone after they've given you what you want. If you grab an NPC with [level] or fewer HD and poke a knife into their back, they do whatever you say until an ally with more HD than you appears.

The Dagger
    The perfect technique, "walking up and stabbing them in the throat", has reached its final form. Melee or thrown weapon attacks deal 12 damage (plus useful facts) to targets who weren't looking and didn't know they were about to be knifed.

Metal Man

    When situations call for grace and elegance, other assassins are the better choice. That's all. You're not the talkative sort.
Starting Equipment: nice suit (+1 to reaction), a fucking gun (2d6 at 20', -1 to-hit for each 20' after, 2 slots, takes a minute to reload), three grenadoes (2d6 to uncovered targets within 20', save for half), folding axe (medium, but can be concealed in a sleeve. Expensive to replace), case of unusual tools.
Skills: 1. Dog breeding 2. Mechanical engineering 3. Gambling.

• A Splash Zone, +1 to-hit and damage
• B Lead Foot, Extra attack
• C Evil Aura, +1 to-hit and damage
• D Baba Yaga

Splash Zone
    Your brutality is remarkable, even among murderers. Your damage cleaves.

Lead Foot
    What could be opened by a man with a 16kg hardened steel battering ram, you can open instantly and loudly. You have advantage on saves against booby traps and/or being surprised by ambushes when using this ability.

Evil Aura
    Something is obviously wrong here. Mooks of 1HD check morale to enter combat with you.

Baba Yaga
    Once, ever, you may declare that no one will leave this room alive. Leaving This Room Alive is a cipher skill for you.

Ninja

    As a member of an ancient and storied order, you have a reputation to uphold and superiors to answer to. Each movement you make is judged by unseen eyes. Each decision is weighed on the scales. The rest of these thugs can only lose their lives; you have much more at stake than they know.
Starting Equipment: nondescript clothes, concealed chainmail (+2 to AC, takes up a slot. Expensive to replace), elaborate facemask (unique to you), katana (medium, WIS instead of STR), 60' rope with grapnel, case of unusual tools
Skills: 1. Flower arrangement 2. Cooking 3. Literacy (ninjas who don't have this skill are illiterate).

• A Uncanny Dodge, Kungfu, +1 CD
• B Bounty, +1 CD
• C Red Vision, +1 CD
• D Master Ninja, +1 CD

Uncanny Dodge
    You move like a serpent, or one of those funny little spiders that do the fancy dances. Two empty inventory slots give you a +1 bonus to AC and any saves to avoid damage.
Kungfu
    Kungfu, the ancient physical art taught to mankind by the g_ds. Chi, the primal energy which fuels it. You have a pool of eight-sided Chi Dice which you expend to fuel your Jutsu. Your pool refills with ten minutes of restful and undisturbed meditation. Roll 2d8 on the list below this class to determine your starting Jutsus. If you'd like, you may also roll one CD to deal [sum] damage with a karate chop.

Bounty
    Before allowing you to advance in the art, your brethren need to be confident in your abilities. If you can kill a target they name within a week, they'll teach you an additional Jutsu of your choice. Failing to kill the target is a great shame, but you can try again with a new name next week, if you're still alive.

Red Vision
    Your eyes have begun to reflect red behind your mask. When you stand still and focus for at least a round, you can see HD, CD, illusions, preferred deadly sin, and concealed weapons.

Master Ninja
    The clan has acknowledged your skill, and now you will teach those skills to new ninjas. Other ninjas must refer to you as "master". You may designate an NPC to be killed by a junior ninja; next session, the DM will roll to see if the junior ninja succeeded (the NPC probably has an HD-in-20 chance to survive, +1 if they've got a fortress, +1 if it's a really swell one, +1 if they're personally dangerous, +1 for each cool bodyguard, +1 for being a wizard, +X for other things that the DM might think of which I'm not thinking of right now). If they did, your character is unavailable for a session as they train the junior ninja in a Jutsu. Thanks, Shribe.

Jutsus:

1. Clone. Make [sum] duplicates of yourself for [dice] minutes. Clones die when they would take damage. You all share one mind; coordinated action is easy, multitasking is very very hard.
   
2. Transformation. Turn into an object you've seen, smaller than a cart, for [sum] rounds. If [dice] is 3 or more, you may turn into a living creature.
   
3. Smoke Bomb. Produce a cloud of smoke big enough to cover a crowd of [sum] people. Other than yourself, everyone inside must save or be surprised. You may choose to be somewhere else when the smoke clears next round.
   
4. Scroll Seal. Conceal an object the size of (one [die]) a loaf of bread, (two [dice]) a man, (three [dice]) a horse or (four [dice]) a cart as a written word on a large piece of paper. Living subjects must be either willing or restrained. Your CD are invested until the paper is destroyed, which releases the targets on nearby safe, solid ground.
   
5. Earth Swim. Soil is like saltwater to you for [sum] rounds.
   
6. Summoning. Call up a talking animal of [best] or fewer HD. They are under no obligations; clans of wise animals will expect you to sign a contract before they'll take orders or fight for you.
   
7. Acrobatics. Leap [dice]*10' from standstill, or wallrun [dice]*4'.
   
8. Bullshit. Replace With Logs is a cipher skill for you.

(and thanks Josie for the jutsus)

Essay: Firearms in Dungeon Crawls

    Hello. I have many names, but most of you know me as G. R. Michael. I come before you, the fantasy roleplaying community, with a brief plea. Once again I am begging you to include early firearms in your games. I am feeling very alone in this world... as if I am the only person who has black-powder pistols in their D&D games...

    "But Michael," I hear you croon, venom and phlegm dripping from the thousand-thousand teeth of your thousand mouths, "fantasy games shouldn't have guns in them. After all, it would be unrealistic, and ahistorical". False I name thee; Deceiver I name thee. Dueling pistols are older than dueling rapiers. Europeans had cannons before they had "plate armor". Shields were still in use when the first grenades were thrown from city ramparts upon besieging armies (I've been challenged on this point, and have softened my original claim of "shields were used against grenades" because of a lack of historical sources thereupon. Please see this painting for a depiction of the British Grenadiers fighting Highlanders equipped with targes, though sadly it doesn't depict the Highlanders being grenaded. If anyone has a source for a man with a shield getting blowed up with a grenade, I would be grateful if you left that in a comment). There could be nothing more historical than a Fighting-Man with a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.

    "But Michael," I hear you rasp, tomb-voice emerging from somewhere in your eyeless face, "guns are inappropriate for my fantasy D&D-alike because they are too lethal and overpowered". Counterfeiter! Liar! I know for a fact you aren't doing a Dwarf Fortress-style modeling of nerves and arteries and internal organs. I know you're rolling 1d6 for the damage of a one-handed sword. That a ball from a .70 caliber musket might cause a more terrible wound than a blow from a saber I'll grant you, but I deny that there's such a magnitude of difference that they can't be modeled in the same system. If you've got a troll that swings a 2d6 big-ass club, you can handle a handgonne.

    "But Michael, but Michael..." you hiss, dying, melting in the light of my logic like that little monster dude at the end of that Christmas horror movie from the eighties, "I can't think of another objection. I'm so weak..." That's right. Weak and pitiable. Go back beyond the leaden gates, dissembler.

Source: Historically Accurate Gaston by Wickfield

    The one-handed firearm (a pistol, par exemple) is like a one-handed sword, except it deals double damage. If your one-handed sword deals 1d6, your pistol deals 2d6. A two-handed firearm (a musket, if you'll allow) is like a two-handed sword, except it deals double damage. If your &c deals 1d8, your &c &c 2d8. Muzzle-loaders cannot reasonably be reloaded during the close-quarters skirmishes common in D&D-alikes — for argument's sake, let's say it takes one minute (or ten 6-second rounds) to reload such a gun. A Fighting-Man with multiple attacks will need to wear a brace of pistols (which is a good idea for anyone, really). Most firearm-wielders have a bayonet to stick in their musket for the 2nd round of combat onwards, converting the weapon into a short spear.

    Powder itself is a bit pricy, and not available in huge amounts in rural areas. Cities and markets where one can buy healing potions, lamp oil, mirrors and other high-quality goods are where you go to buy powder. You can also buy lead shot there, or you can buy a little mold and a bar of lead and simply cast your own balls over the campfire each night, which is practical and adventuresome. Don't need any complicated rules for it either. It's lead. You heat it up and it melts, it's not rocket science. "Hey DM, while the cleric is propitiating his god and the wizard is examining that goblin spellbook, I'll tend to my gear and prepare some more bullets."

    A gun will blow open the lock of a chest or door, though this (obviously) makes a loud BANG! and will provoke a roll on the Wandering Monster Table. Firing guns in combat may provoke morale checks from wild animals, or attract intelligent creatures' allies from neighboring rooms, depending on the nature of the current dungeon. Normal people can't reload a gun while at a dead sprint away from 30–300 kobolds.

    Smoothbore muzzle-loaders aren't as accurate as modern rifles, obviously, but they aren't totally hopeless. You can hit a man-sized target at twenty or thirty yards with a little training. Whatever rules you use for the ranges of your "shortbow" or other common, non-insane-specialist ranged weapons (not warbows or arbalests) will be fine.

    And there you have it, my friends. That was every rule you need to add basic firearms to your game. To those of you for whom that satisfies: go with G_d. The post is now over.





    But... what if, like me, you're a pervert? What if you want more rules? I've written down every Gygax-style rule I could think of in a few hours. Feel free to use or ignore as many of these as you want.

Fouling

    Before the advent of modern propellants, guns were a messy business. The residue from early gunpowder (mostly soot and unburned powder) is called "fouling". The thick, chalky layers of this mildly corrosive fouling renders a gun less accurate, and if left on the metal will quickly (as in, over the course of hours in a humid environment, and no longer than a few days in any human-breathable environment) draw water which will permanently damage the barrel.
    It's essential to clean and maintain your firearms. Properly cleaning a muzzle-loader might take as long as an hour, so most adventurers will want to leave that  chore until they make camp at night. Every time a gun is fired between cleanings, it suffers a -1 penalty to further attacks made with it that day.
    Lubrication or grease (this gentleman recommends two part lamb's tallow to one part beeswax, or if you're too cheap or lazy for that one part beeswax to one part olive oil, but absolutely never Crisco) keeps the fouling more "sludge and slime", less "carbonized substance on a grill", so it can more easily be swabbed out. Gunmen who take a little extra time in the loading can thus reduce or ignore the accuracy penalty.

Projectile

    For most of history there wasn't really a distinct category of "shotgun". If you don't want to put one big lead ball in your muzzle-loader, you could put in a couple of smaller ones, or a lot of tiny ones in a little wad of paper, or some goodly rocks. A real, cast lead bullet, which the shooter has filed the lumps off of so it's almost round, is a piece of masterwork ammunition. Most people are assumed to be loading their guns with sand and twigs and bits of birdsnest.
    In modern firearms, silver bullets are entirely the wrong density, and will tumble and keyhole badly. This isn't a concern with a round ball fired out of a smooth bore. Go ham with the silver bullets, I won't stop you. They cost about 2sp each (which is to say, if you melt down two silver coins you'll have one silver musket ball).

Propellant

    Most historical firearms use a "black powder" (not called so at the time, I think, it was just "gunpowder" because it was the only one that was around) made out of six parts saltpeter, one part fine charcoal, and one part sulfur, or thereabouts. But this is a fantasy game, not historical fiction. We can use other propellants if we want. The most common alternative in my games is "red powder", a gritty crystalline alchemical substance which can ignite when wet, produces brilliant red light but no sound or visible smoke, and (being slightly less powerful) imposes a -2 penalty to damage. "How can it fire when wet? The ignition system of the gun is the same, so unless it's a dangerously reactive substance the water is still going to put out the spark or match. And how can an explosive be silent? And if red powder is less powerful, why don't people just load their guns with slightly more of it?" Shut the Hell up. Shut your fucking mouth.

Mechanism

    So far, everything I have described has been assuming guns that use what is called a "flintlock" ignition mechanism. In such a mechanism, a spring-loaded hammer holds a piece of flint over a pan which contains a small amount of powder and has a tiny hole into the back of the barrel where the propellant and projectile sit. The pan has a steel cover, called a "frizzen", which keeps the priming charge from just... blowing away. When the trigger is pulled, the hammer falls, which strikes the flint against the frizzen, which both lifts the frizzen off the pan and strikes sparks, which ignite the small priming charge, which in turn ignites the propellant. Wikipedia has some cool gifs of this.
    An immediate precursor to this is the "matchlock", where instead of all that complicated (and difficult to manufacture with hand-tools in a blacksmith's shop) business with a frizzen and a flint and what-have-you, your ignition system is a piece of slow-burning fuse. When the trigger is pulled, the spring-loaded hammer falls, which touches the "match" to the priming charge, which in turn ignites the propellant. This system is vulnerable to rain, or fog, or wind, or being jostled, or the gun coming into contact with the ground or someone's hand or a wall or something, or bad luck. Slow matches burn about an inch a minute, so you also have to worry about lighting it before the fighting starts, but not so long before the fighting starts that you burn all your fuse without a chance to fire your gun. Also, the ignition of the priming charge will sometimes blow out your match, so you need to keep both ends lit to re-light the business end, which doubles your burn rate... really, if guns weren't so effective, they'd be too much of a pain in the ass to use. The matchlock was more-or-less the default for about five hundred years of firearm development in most of the world. For a simple rule: keeping your matchlock combat-ready has a direct monetary cost. Let's say that an hour of slow match costs as much as an hour of lamp oil, just to have a number. More importantly, slow matches are immediately doused by any amount of water, and go out on a 2-in-6 when in the presence of strong wind, heavy mist, and any sort of magical blast of ghost bullshit. Real pain in the neck. And don't forget that, obviously, you cannot conceal a matchlock underneath your coat or in a boot.
    The immediate successor to the flintlock was the "caplock", in which the touch-hole juts out of the gun and is capped with a little metal hat that contains some fulminant (a material that explodes when jostled), and the spring-loaded hammer strikes the cap, which &c &c &c. This has two enormous advantages: you don't need to worry about your stupid pan (if you've heard of "flash in the pan", that comes from pre-cap firearms when it would be possible for the priming charge to go off but not set the actual propellant off. Big disappointment. Also you're going to die now), and you... actually, every second reason I was going to give basically stems directly from that first one. Pans and ignition systems are so terrible, and caps are so much better. So much more reliable. So much faster to load. You can carry a caplock derringer in your purse, and the powder won't spill everywhere, and the match won't go out, and the stupid flint won't fall out. It's superior in every way. Buy yourself a capgun, my adventuresome friend.

Smoke

    Go watch this video. It's less than seven minutes long, you attentionspanless zoomer fuck. Do you notice that, before a gun goes off, you can see the gun, and then after a gun goes off there's a giant impenetrable cloud of white smoke? Do you notice that by the end of the battle you can't see dogshit because the whole field is covered in a giant impenetrable cloud of white smoke? And all of this is happening in an open field in broad daylight Have you ever set off a firework in a 10' wide, 10' high stone corridor? How's the air circulation on Level 4 of Egregorius' Pit of Despair? "Not excellent," you say. I see. How about the lighting? "I've gone and set a stick on fire and am now holding it around the height of my belly-button in my wavering off-hand as I run," you say. Maybe you shouldn't have brought that firearm to this dungeon crawl.




    Well, that's about all I have to say. Go read the gunman class, and check out G24 in the sidebar, and hit "like" and "subscribe", and wash your vegetables before you cook with them. You don't know where they've been. Goodnight.