Barbarian
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| Source: DDF 20 by FabianMonk |
Like monks, barbarians tap into a primal force of the universe. But where monks seek enlightenment and careful control, barbarians prefer terrific explosions of vitality and noise. Is it fair to call one more impressive than the other? Does raw power require any less skill to master? Doesn't quantity have a quality all its own?
All barbarians have a pool of Rage points, 2 at first level and +1 every level after that. You may spend a point when rolling a strength-related check to take a nat 20, or when combat initiates to enter a rage for the duration. While raging, you take half damage from all weapons and must attack each round if able (if your only option is to attack an ally, you may save to end the rage early).
When you eat a rich feast, drink deep, and get a good night's rest, regain a point of Rage. When you go hungry, stay up all night and brood on your many enemies, regain a point. If disrespected while your Rage pool is full, save vs. flying right off the handle.
Unless otherwise mentioned you may wear light armor only, may use shields, and are proficient with hatchets, knives, clubs, shortbows and any weapon you start with.
Ancestral Guardians
For you, rage is a family heirloom passed down through generations, like a pocket-watch or a cake recipe. Its embrace is as comfortable as a pair of well-worn boots. When you scream your battle cry, a hundred ghostly voices sing in harmony.
Skills: 1. Taming frightening animals 2. Combat-as-sport 3. Calligraphy. You may wear medium armor and are proficient with longbows and bladed polearms.
Starting Equipment: sharp katana (medium, adds initiative bonus to first attack in combat) in an unadorned sheath, abs you could zest a lemon on, glow-in-the-dark-tattoos depicting slightly-embellished family legends, silk breechcloth.
- A Ancestral Protectors,
- B Spirit Shield, extra attack
- C Consult the Spirits,
- D Vengeful Ancestors
Ancestral Protectors
In the morning, burn a pinch of incense as you face back the way you came. Old ghosts will mutter in your ears for the rest of the day. Most of their opinions are about racial politics or horse breeding, and anyone attuned to the spirit world will notice and be slightly offended. But if you point to a city, cool sword or person older than one-hundred-years they have a [level]-in-6 chance of knowing/remembering its name and feeling like telling you.
When you enter a rage the spectral forms of your ancestors appear in an icy blast, eager to wheeze incredibly racist remarks and make fun of your horse. Their presence on the battlefield is a hindrance to your enemies as well; the last person you hit has disadvantage on any attack (and deals half-damage even if they connect) against anyone besides you.
Spirit Shield
The press of the ghostly bodies makes it hard for others to do any fighting. While raging, choose an attack or other source of damage once per round. 1d6 points of its damage are blocked. If this reduces it to 0 or less then loud ghostly voices laugh mockingly.
Consult the Spirits
Now you're big and mean enough to demand straight answers from the clamoring ghosts. You may ask for an augury from your ancestors (the DM will tell you if a plan is well or ill depending on its 30-minute consequence window), or ask them one specific question about a person, place or thing one could plausibly have encountered. It costs a point of Rage each time you do this past the first each day.
Vengeful Ancestors
You may spend a point of Rage to grant an ancestor a corporeal form, which resembles their body in life but has your statline (the ancestor will complain). They are a 4th level barbarian of some sort, under no particular obligation to do as you say (though they like you and are always eager for a fight), and disappear in a wisp of smoke upon reaching 0HP or being splashed with holy water.
Beast
For you, rage is a curse you did nothing to deserve. It is payment for rights and privileges enjoyed by an ancestor but never enjoyed by you; it is hostile; it is repulsive; it is as unwelcome as looking down and seeing a body not your own.
Skills: 1. Haute cuisine 2. Library science 3. Field medicine. You are proficient with rapiers and pistols.
Starting Equipment: Baggy expensive clothing, a signet-ring (your choice), rusty steel cuffs, strongly-scented fake rose.
- A Form of the Beast
- B Infectious Fury
- C Bestial Soul
- D Call the Hunt
Form of the Beast
There's something wrong with you. Some ancestor sold their soul to Hircine, or promised a descendant to Artemis, and now you're footing the bill. Dogs, cats, small birds and other creatures with strong senses of smell or morality will avoid you. NPCs treat you with nervous and superstitious respect, but may be easily convinced to run you out of town at pitchfork-point
When you enter a rage, choose one of the following horrible transformations your body suffers for the duration.
- Jaw: Knife-like carnivore teeth or insectoid mandibles sprout from your mouth in a shower of blood. Your bite is a heavy weapon, and heals you for 1HP when you bite someone edible.
- Claw: Each hand twists into a scythe-blade of meat and bone. They ache with the desire to harm others, and grant you an extra attack on your turn.
- Stinger Tail: Segmented, armored, and extending from the base of your spine. Serves as a heavy weapon and a shield at the same time, with the reach of a whip.
Infectious Fury
Your Rage can be borne by others, like a disease. While in a rage, those harmed by you must pass a save against poison or be filled with bestial fury themselves, and either attack the nearest person or take 1d10 damage (their choice).
Bestial Soul
What's inside you is growing stronger. Your teeth, nails, and tail (if you have one) are magical weapons which can damage werewolves and demons and things of that nature. Every morning, choose one thing you're able to do in plain defiance of physics:
- Dive: You can swim as fast as you can run, and breathe water without gills.
- Scale: You can climb walls and ceilings as if crawling across flat ground.
- Leap: When you jump, make a movement check: distance is increased by your result in feet.
Serve the Hunt
The beast within grows so powerful that it deforms and distorts the world around you. Whenever you enter a rage, the closest [level] creatures besides yourself gain a Form of the Beast for the duration. You gain 2 temporary HP for each creature that does this.
Berserker
For you, rage is a means to an end. That end is violence. Bloodslick omophagy, wide-eyed wide-mouthed soundless screams, brutality inflicted on whole crowds of idiots who thought they had a chance; that's what rage is for.
Skills: 1. Causing revolts 2. Horse combat 3. Foreign literature
Starting Equipment: Double-headed axe (heavy), leather straps for attaching double-headed axe to your back, one sock.
- A Battlefrenzy, +2 HP
- B Mindless Abandon, +2 HP
- C Horrible Eyes, +2 HP
- D Retribution, +2 HP
Battlefrenzy
Greet the dawning sun with an insane stream of invective, slurs and death threats. Tell the sun you're going to sodomize its grandmother with a mangonel. Call it a chicken, bawk bawk bawk. Claw your bare chest until the blood flows freely. NPCs who hear you rightfully conclude you're out of your mind. For the rest of the day, your teeth and nails are light weapons, and you may make a free attack with them against anyone in grappling range.
When you enter a rage, you may choose to spend two points instead of one to enter a frantic rage. While frantically raging, you have an extra attack on your turn and your attacks cleave. If you do not attack and are not attacked during a combat round you drop to normal rage.
Mindless Abandon
Gibber and drool. Lose yourself in savagery. Roll your eyes back until it hurts. When you enter a rage, immediately gain 2 temporary HP per [level] (which are lost when the rage ends). While raging, you are immune to mind-altering effects, and those who attempt to read your mind receive a concussion.
Retribution
Once they have you completely surrounded there's nowhere left for them to run. When someone within melee range attacks you, immediately make an attack in return, as many times per round as is necessary.
Horrible Eyes
Broken blood vessels and split pupils cloud your vision at all times, and mortals will not meet your gaze if they can avoid it. You can require a morale check from anyone you can see by spending a rage point, and creatures who don't have more HD than you automatically fail. Causing an enemy champion to flee usually provokes morale checks from the rabble.
Totem Warrior
For you, rage is a connection to the natural world. Merely the first step on a spiritual journey of a thousand conceptual miles. Let the monks in their cells shiver and quake and pray silently; for the fire of Heaven is on the dusty ways, and the wayside blossoms open to the blaze.
Skills: 1. Psychoactive brewing 2. Wilderness tracking 3. Astrology
Starting Equipment: Buckskin jacket (as unarmored, grants advantage on stealth in underbrush), atlatl, quiver of 3 javelins, flensing knife (light), earthen pot of kohl (3 doses).
- A First Totem, +2 movement
- B Second Totem
- C Communion, +2 save
- D Third Totem
First Totem
When you start down this path, you choose a totem spirit and gain its feature. You must make or acquire a physical totem object—an amulet or similar adornment—that incorporates fur or feathers, claws, teeth, or bones of the totem animal. You may also gain minor physical attributes that are reminiscent of your totem spirit. For example, if you have a bear totem spirit, you might be unusually hairy and thick-skinned, or if your totem is the eagle, your eyes turn bright yellow. This is highly religiously significant, probably.
- Mole Totem - No penalty when fighting blind. Walk through walls while raging.
- Owl Totem - Spot movement at any distance, regardless of light conditions. Totally silent while raging.
- Porcupine Totem - NPCs feel inexplicably inclined to be quiet and respectful in your presence. Everyone within 10' takes medium weapon damage from a spray of shrapnel when you enter rage.
- Snake Totem - Immune to poison, identify poison by taste. All melee attacks reach like a pike while raging.
- Squid Totem - Your blood comes out in a thick, sticky black fog that conceals a 10' sphere for several minutes. Extra pair of arms per level while raging.
Second Totem
Choose another totem animal, and create another physical totem object. The animal doesn't need to be the same one you picked for your First Totem.
- Mole - 30' of tremorsense (see through walls).
- Owl - Head can rotate full circle, can't be surprised.
- Porcupine - Roll into a ball with 20AC. You cannot act, but if you roll into somebody they take 1d6 damage.
- Snake - Those who meet your gaze may not break it on their own.
- Squid - Once per day, throw yourself 100' in a blind panic.
Communion
You know a ten-minute ritual which causes one of your totems to appear before you as a effulgent spirit animal and offer you guidance. It tells you about the following things as they relate to the landscape around you for about three miles as the crow flies:
- shape of terrain and bodies of water
- prevalent plants, minerals, animals, or peoples
- presence of powerful celestials, fey, fiends, elementals, or undead
- influence from other planes of existence
- position of major buildings or collections of buildings
Third Totem
Choose your last totem animal, and create another physical totem object. The animal doesn't need to be the same as your First or Second Totem. For most Totem Warriors, this is the last connection of this sort you will make with the world. Only a few particularly ancient and wise shamans could tell you the secret of bearing more than three totems.
- Mole - While raging, your nails grow into six-foot superlativeswords, but you can't hold anything.
- Owl - While raging, you can glide down silently from any height.
- Porcupine - While raging, huge spikes grow from your skin. They can be chucked as light javelins, and prevent anyone from grappling you.
- Snake - While raging, burst out of your skin at any point and leave it behind. You lose your equipment when you do this. You can pass through the bars of a cell if you can stick your hand between them, jump out of your own mouth to escape a guillotine, or do this a few times in quick succession to confuse the Hell out of a stupid opponent.
- Squid - While raging, you can grapple with one limb. Automatically deal medium weapon damage to grappled enemies every turn.
Vampire
For you, rage is a creative passion, not a destructive one. It drives you to ever-greater heights of bureaucracy, poetry and calligraphy. The squirming licentious crowd does not understand that there are infinite subtle pleasures to the repetitive and identical, infinite variations on patterns of black and white. When you grow old, the simple pleasures of rage will be all that you need.Skills: 1. Calligraphy 2. Poetry 3. Stultifying paperwork
Starting equipment: Rich silk robes (as unarmored), incense sticks (3 doses), ritual suicide shortsword (light), scroll of Command Peasantry.
- A Jaded Mandarin, +2 INIT
- B Hate-Reading
- C Breach of Etiquette, +2 INIT
- D Straightforward Application of Force
Jaded Mandarin
Uncounted grains of rice strewn on the ground, thresholds you have not been invited over and fords or bridges you haven't paid to traverse are impassable barriers to you. If you cross them, your skin turns pale and waxy, your joints creak, your hair goes brittle, and your body produces an awful smell of preserved meat. These indignities continue until you swallow at least 6HP of fresh human blood. Unless you have recently crossed a barrier you are invisible in mirrors, cannot be detected by magic, and appear to everyone as a dignified and respectable older gentleman in old-fashioned clothes.
While raging you take no damage from natural weapons (teeth, claws, hands and feet, &c). People who know about you may outfit their wardogs with steel chompers and distribute sap-gloves to their Monks, but people from Around Here are probably unfamiliar with this behavior.
Hate-Reading
Spend a point of Rage and ten minutes of careful study to understand a book or scroll or tapestry or carving, even if you don't understand the language or visual style. If you already understand and have read the text (or already understand and have examined the picture), you gain insight into some subtle meta-textual bullshit the author subconsciously included, along with a really strong opinion on these things
Breach of Etiquette
If someone insults you to your face, you may immediately challenge them to a battle of will. Both of you roll a save. If they fail, they take 1 point of damage for every word in the insulting sentence as if inflicted by a cloud of tiny blades. If you fail, they may lay a geas on you. It is possible for both of you to fail your saves.
Straightforward Application of Force
When entering a rage, you may choose to take the form of an albino tiger (remarkable stealth, lethal sneak-attacks) or a black dragon (flight, armored hide). They are both 6HD creatures. When they are reduced to 0HP you drop out of rage and return to your normal form at 0HP (you may reenter rage as normal).
Zealot
For you, rage is a gift from your deity. Your connection to this primal force, facilitated by your god, allows you to work His ends in the material world. Other clerics, those who are not Zealots, are almost definitionally corrupt, and misuse divine power to make themselves fat and wealthy. Other Zealots, those who are not you, are probably insane, and they should be put down like dogs. Only you can be trusted to avenge the good against the world.Skills: 1. Acting like a "real" priest 2. Architecture 3. Classical lore
Starting Equipment: Holy symbol (your choice), book of scripture, heavy but nondescript traveling clothes (as leather), concealable knife (light weapon), leather sling.
- A Ablution, Dog of Heaven, +2 stealth
- B Divine Protection
- C Neumos, +2 stealth
- D Beyond Death
Ablution
At dawn, noon and dusk, wash your hands and feet in potable water. If you miss one of these ritual washings you are unclean, and cannot again be clean until you have completely immersed yourself in "live" water (a spring or a river). While you are clean your touch burns immaterial undead, you may add your [level] to the damage and to-hit of any attack, and your fingernails glow in the presence of evil.
Dog of Heaven
It is impossible to kill you before your god allows it. If reduced to 0HP and "death", magical healing works on you as if you were alive. You might need to be sewn back together if sliced into proper collops, and if you've been burnt to ash or crushed to a paste your body might need mending, but you're still not dead until your god calls you home. Allegations that certain temples have whole rooms full of the canopic remains of dozens of Zealots, "just in case", may or may not be true. No promises about what happens when someone casts a Banishment spell on you.
Divine Protection
Once per rage you may reroll any save. If you don't like the new result, you can spend another point of Rage and reroll it again.
Neumos
While raging you may chant a religious hymn. Any who hear you and chant along with you may add your [level] to the damage and to-hit of their attacks. Yes; if your enemies join in the chant they can add your bonus to their attacks against you. Your god isn't picky.
Beyond Death
While raging, you cannot drop below 1HP. Roll injuries as normal.
