Rock, No Water, and the Sandy Road (GLOG Classes: 5e Ranger Conversion)

    Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such space. If it be knowable.

    I do not like the design philosophy of 5e rangers. I do not like it. All the problems I have with fighters I have twice over with rangers. In plain words: what is a ranger, conceptually? This is not a rhetorical question, I have asked rhetorical questions about them before, but this one is a real question that I want you to think about the answer to. 

    Meanwhile, I hate 5e and I hate 5e designers and I hate the 5e Ranger and I hate everything they have written and I hate how they fear good ideas, how they hunt them down, how when they accidentally write something good (and how could they not sometimes, by pure chance, write something good? With all the shit they put out) they run in fear, and I hate how everything they do is tinged with high-effort bullshit. It's like: they know what "good" looks like, but they are convinced that that's what "evil" looks like, so they go to great lengths to destroy it. Imagine someone who truly loathes the Mona Lisa and so steals it from the museum and painstakingly cuts it into very very very fine shreds to use to line the nest of a Hampter (here take it) because they believe that that's where beauty and art are best utilized. Imagine someone who is convinced that what the world needs most is a tabletop roleplaying game about Corn (the Cereal Crop) and so spends 20 years of their life writing a 1600-page tabletop roleplaying game about Corn. That's what 5e is, I think. It's impossible to hate someone without also pitying them. I pity the 5e designers. They aren't the ones sobbing into a fistful of money, that's whoever owns Hasbro. That guy's got all the money. 5e designers are basically Luciferists or hardcore pro-Laissez Faire free market vegan restaurateurs. They're just cripplingly misled and stupid, and they'd be better off if someone beat them very badly with a piece of pipe, but it's not because they deserve punishment and pain, it's because they write shit like the 5e ranger and genuinely think (unless they know they're lying to themselves?) that it's good work. They're more in need of a hearty spanking than they are of a day in the stocks, if you're picking up what I'm laying down. If you're digging... what I'm burying...




    And now I will explain what a Ranger is to me, and convert all these 5e guys.

Ranger

    A Ranger is, in a single sentence, one who protects civilization from the wilderness. There are many similarities between Rangers and Druids, but in this regard at least the two are in perfect opposition. Rangers are guides, guardians and shepherds for their parties in the wild and dangerous parts of the world. They are the ones who recognize the worm-sign, see the storm brewing, and know how to soothe the restless velociraptor with an oustretched Jedi Force Trick Hand.

    A Ranger is also a fighting-man, with all that that entails. In many ways, at least in the D&D-adjacent design-space, Rangers really step on the Fighter's toes. I'll try to keep that in mind while writing this post, but since I'm converting 5e there's not a lot of wiggle room here. Primarily we're just going to avoid giving them a 2nd attack, and hope for the best.

    Rather than a different style for every biome, all rangers are wide-ranging. At your first template, choose two of the following adjectives: barren, populous, abandoned, forested, frigid, windswept, arid, damp, craggy, dark, coastal, spooky. While in an area described by that adjective, you can build a concealed camp, find enough food for one person, predict weather a day out, follow tracks a day old, and may protect one person from the effects of exposure and rough terrain while traveling. Every time you gain another ranger template you may select another adjective. Effects stack. Adjectives may be selected multiple times.

    Rangers can wield any conventional weapon, and can use shields and may wear any armor. At first level they choose a fighting style from the list at the bottom of this post. 

    Furthermore, every ranger has left the safety of hearth and home. Did you choose this? Why?

Hunter

    In a coat of rainproofed canvas, on soft leather boots, nocking a black-fletched arrow, goes the Hunter. Whether seeking a challenge (or just a reliable income) you have left the city behind to become civilization's agent in the wilderness. Hunters go from town to town, destroying the feral boar, the maneating tiger, the poisonous wyvern, because someone has to. It's difficult work, but if you do it well you can achieve a measure of real glory —and a bag of real coins.

Skills: 1. Poisons and antidotes 2. Mechanical engineering 3. Legendarium
Starting Equipment: Enormous 200' warbow (massive, 90' range increment, requires 15 strength) or oversized hunting bow (large, 60' range increment), quiver with 20' arrows (1 slot), hunting knife (light), grapnel (1 slot) and 100' of rope (1 slot), three steel carabiners, folding saw (light), flask of brandy, three torches (⅓rd slot each, burn for an hour), outdoorsman clothing (as leather) with a ghillie cape (as a cloak of invisibility, but only while lying motionless in a natural environment)

• A Hunter's Prey, +1 to-hit
  
• B Defensive Tactics, +1 HP
  
• C Claw/Claw/Bite, +1 AC
  
• D Scout's Honor, +1 HP
  

Hunter's Prey
    The Hunters have three traditions, which call themselves Colossus Slayers, the Giant Killers, and the Horde Breakers. These are the main schools of thought among Hunters, and every Hunter you will meet has a strong opinion on which is best (it's Colossus Slayer, Colossus Slayer is the best). Choose one of the following neat tricks:

• Your weapons seem to always seek out the bruises and cuts in the flesh, the chips and cracks in the armor. When you strike a target which is already below its maximum HP, your attack deals an extra 1d6 damage.
• You are always prepared to punish the grasping fingers, talons and tentacles of lumbering predators. Once per round, when a creature larger than a man attacks you, you may make an immediate counterattack on its own turn.
• Your wheeling blows and ripostes keep the swarm at bay. Once per round, when you strike a target, you may make another attack against a second target if it is adjacent to the first.

Defensive Tactics
    Your study of monster-slaying has made you far more difficult to kill. Choose one of the following neat tricks:

• Every wild swing from an enraged predator or whirling dervish only serves to discover their vulnerable points. For each attack a creature makes against you in combat, you gain a +4 bonus to-hit against them specifically. This bonus resets when you land a hit. 
• Your will is steel. You have advantage on saves against fear and pain.
• Facing a crowd, you excel at bobbing and weaving between their attacks, causing your opponents to foul each other. For each attack made against you in a round, you gain a +4 bonus to AC for the rest of the round.

Claw/Claw/Bite
    Your study of monster-slaying has given you a set of advantages to overwhelm the most dangerous targets. Choose one of the following neat tricks:

• You can seize every opportunity for a critical hit, kind-of. When you make a weapon attack against a creature, you may choose to ignore lesser opportunities and only take the perfect shot. Roll your attack with disadvantage. If you hit, it's a critical.
• You can shoot a whole quiver of arrows at once, poorly. Choose a circular area of radius 10' within 200'. Spend a full turn aiming a fully-loaded string of 12 arrows, then on the second turn, shoot. Roll an attack against all creatures in the area. Roll two attacks against creatures larger than a man.
• You can fend off an army, frantically. Instead of your normal attack, you may spin in a circle and strike at all creatures within reach of your melee weapon. Roll a separate attack for each.

Scout's Honor
    Your study of the traditions of monster-slaying have reached their zenith, at least among the existing traditions of Hunters. Perhaps you will develop new techniques, and pass them on to your disciples? In the meantime, choose one of the following neat tricks:

• When a save would allow you to take half damage from some spell or explosion or the like, you instead take half damage on a failed save and no damage on a successful one.
• Once per combat round, you may choose to take half damage from an attack.
• Once per combat round, when an enemy misses you with an attack, you may force them to make an attack against some other target within their reach.

Beastmaster

    Many rangers are more at home in the wild than in civilization, and consider animals more their kin than man. Some take this so far as to make pact with the wilderness, and by use of ancient druidic rites permanently ally themselves with the Green. Is this a conflict of interest? Are the Beastmasters sometimes tempted to lay down their humanity and walk, animals once more, in the shade of the trees, in the cool of the evening? Wouldn't you be?

Skills: 1. Veterinary medicine 2. Psychedelic drugs 3. Revenge
Starting Equipment: Longbow (medium), quiver with 20 arrows (1 slot), saber (medium), salt lick, three bouquets (of your choice), outdoorsman clothing (as leather) with a ghillie cape (as a cloak of invisibility, but only while lying motionless in a natural environment) 

• A The Green, Primal Companion, +1 MD
• B Exceptional Animal, +2 HRTS
  
• C Bestial Fury +1 MD
• D Share Spells, +2 HRTS
  

The Green
    You have a sympathy with the earth and the things that grow from it and crawl across it. This sympathy allows you to use a few simple spells with a handful of MD. These spells are druidic; they are not recorded in "books" with disgusting "letters", but contained in totems. For you, they occupy bouquets of dried herbs and flowers, at 3 bouquets to a slot. Casting the spell consumes the bouquet, and they are very vulnerable to fire and water.
    You can easily prepare a bouquet over a day of travel, and thrice that if you spend a full day gathering plants, but each spell you know requires an additional specific flower (referenced in the spell's name) which may not be available wild in all areas. Consider visiting apothecaries when possible.
Primal Companion
    You may summon a spirit of nature, which assumes the form of a common animal appropriate to your local, either land-bound or flying. The land creatures have the same HD and HP that you do; the flying creatures have 1 HD and [level] HP. On a Plain this is a Cat (30' horizontal leap) or an Eagle (powerful eyesight), on an Island this is a serpent (swimming, crawling) or a Parrot (human speech), in a Swamp this is a Great Toad (poison bite) or a Bat (nightvision), on a Mountain this is a Goat (powerful shove) or a Pterosaur (fireproof), and in a Forest this is a Wolf (skilled hunter) or Dragonfly (inconspicuous).
    If the creature dies (or if you want a new one), you may resummon it at dawn. It defends itself in combat, and on your turn you may direct it to prioritize a certain target. The creature can understand your language and is intelligent enough to comprehend ambushes, stealth, simple requests to fetch an item, &c.

Exceptional Animal
    The embodied spirit you summon now deals magical damage with its fangs/claws/&c, and has basic first-aid training and the ability to sprint (???).

Bestial Fury
    The embodied spirit gets an extra attack.

Share Spells
    When you cast one of your spells, your primal companion counts as you — spells that target yourself may target it, spells with a range can originate from the primal companion, &c.

Green Spells:

1. Rose's Sleep
   R: self, T: self, D: [sum] hours.
   You appear to be dead. If you invest one [die], you are cool to the touch and won't fog a mirror. If you invest two, you smell terrible and have any wounds you wish. If you manage to invest three, you are in as many pieces as you wish over a five-foot square.
2. Yarrow's Pollen
   R: [dice] miles, T: a spherical area 50 feet in diameter, D: n/a.
   You restore [sum]/2 HP to all plants, animals and people within the target that you choose.
3. Aconite's Whispers
   R: self, T: self, D: [sum] hours.
   You hear the howling of wolves when someone with hostile intentions is within [dice] miles. You hear as many wolves as there are hostile people. Using it near an army might be deafening, assuming the army is marching for you.
4. Buttercup's Lies
   R: eye contact, T: a human, D: [sum] minutes.
   The target is becomes intensely naive and distractable. They will believe anything told to them on a [dice]-in-six chance, or else loudly reject it and accuse you of pulling their leg. Targets will ignore input from leg-pullers for the duration of the spell. After the spell ends, they will not fully understand that they have been ensorceled unless someone points it out to them. Creatures immune to Charm are immune to this spell.
5. Iris' Chance
   R: touch, T: a person, D: [dice] minutes.
   All damage taken by the target is deferred until the end of this spell, when they take all of it at once. If the damage taken would be less than [sum], they take no damage at all.
6. Eremurus' Armor
   R: self, T: self, D: [dice] minutes.
   For the duration, you take half damage from all sources except fire and iron. Most weapons are made out of iron.
7. Sunflower's Gilding
   R: touch, T: any solid object D: [dice] days
   The object you lay this glamor on seems to be worth [sum] gold more than it really should. This is not an illusion, but a powerful enchantment; people will invent whatever justifications they need in order to believe that the object is worth what they think it's worth. They will be angry when the spell ends.
8. Sloe's Venom
   R: touch, T: one person, D: [dice] years.
   In addition to all normal checks, the target has a 1-in-6 chance of failure at everything. This applies to attack rolls and to saves, but also to projects on their farm, merchant ventures, marriage proposals — everything. The effect ends early if you die, deliberately end it, or upon being exorcised by a cleric with at least [dice] HD.

Drakewarden

    It's hard to raise a young dragon on the mean streets of the big city, and that's what drove you out into the countryside. As a Drakewarden, you are part of a loose-knit group who, for a variety of reasons, have been chosen to serve and be served by a draconic spirit. If you'd like, you can roll on the table for what exactly led to this:

1. You studied a dragon's scale or claw, or a trinket from a dragon's hoard, creating your bond through that token's lingering draconic magic.
2. A secret order of rangers who collect and guard draconic lore taught you their ways.
3. A dragon gave you a geode or gemstone to care for. To your surprise, the drake hatched from that stone.
4. You ingested a few drops of dragon blood, forever infusing your nature magic with draconic power.
5. An ancient Draconic inscription on a standing stone empowered you when you read it aloud.
6. You had a vivid dream of a mysterious figure accompanied by seven yellow canaries, who warned you of impending doom. When you awoke, your drake was there, watching you.

Skills: 1. Positive Parenting Techniques 2. Theater 3. Coastal raiding
Starting Equipment: Greatsword (heavy), brass lantern (1 slot), flask with 24 hours of kerosene (1 slot), 10x magnifying monocle, forge-blackened scale armor (medium)

• A Draconic Gift, +2 MOVE
  
• B Bond of Fang and Scale, +1 HP
  
• C Dragon's Breath, +2 MOVE
• D Perfect Bond, +1 HP

Draconic Gift
    Your association with a draconic spirit gives you the ability to light small fires with your mind within 30', fluency in the Draconic language, and the ability to summon a baby dragon ghost which is loyal to your commands. Choose a color of dragon now, if you're in a setting with colored dragons.
    This ghost appears within 10' of you in a space large enough for a big dog to occupy. It has 14+[template] AC, [templates]*5 + 5 HP, [templates] HD, +3 to STR rolls, +1 to DEX, +2 to CON, -1 to INT, +2 to WIS and -1 to XHA, 40' of movement on its turn in combat, 60' of darkvision, immunity to a damage type determined by its scale color, and the ability to speak the Draconic language. No I will not say psych. If you ever forget any of these numbers or say "uhhh, what's my dragon's strength bonus?" the DM is allowed to shoot you in the head. You better write all that down.
    If your dragon dies or you dismiss it (which you can do with a thought), you cannot resummon it until the next dawn. It can bite as a medium weapon, but unless you verbally command it to fight then it spends its turn in combat attempting to hide or protect itself.

Bond of Fang and Scale
    Your companion grows to become a juvenile dragon the size of a horse. It can fly, and you can ride it, but not both at the same time. Its bite deals an additional 1d6 of acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage, depending on its scale color. You gain resistance to the damage associated with your dragon.

Dragon's Breath
    Once per dawn, either you or (at your command) your dragon gets a fuckoff massive breath attack. It deals 4d6 damage in a 30' cone, save for half, of the appropriate damage type.

Perfect Bond
    Your dragon ghost is an adult now, and you can ride around on it while it flies. Hell Yes. Heeeellll Yes. It is very good at fighting now; double all its stat bonuses and invert its maluses. Its bite is a massive weapon and its armor is as plate.

Fey Wanderer

    Were you born a changeling, or blessed by a blue fairy? Did you steal an apple from an enchanted tree, or a kiss from a fairy-prince? Whatever happened, it made you a Fey Wanderer. Your responsibility now is to the mortal and to the fey realms. As you wander, your laughter will brighten the hearts of the downtrodden, just as your martial prowess strikes terror in your foes, for great is the mirth of the fey, and dreadful is their fury.

Skills: 1. Exotic dance 2.  Circus performance 3. Folk tales
Starting Equipment: Two swords (any type), flapping black cloak with feathers (mostly useless), musical instrument of your choice, bundle of dynamite (1 slot, deals 3d6 damage within 30', save for half), outrageous outfit (-1 to reaction with squares, +2 with freaks)

• A Dreadful Touch, Glamor, +2 SAVE
  
• B Beguiling Twist, +2 INIT
  
• C Fey Reinforcements, +2 SAVE
  
• D Misty Wanderer, +2 INIT

Dreadful Touch
    Once per turn, you may infuse an attack with the misery and gloom of the farther, darker regions of Fairyland. This causes it to deal an extra 1d6 damage directly to the mind of the one struck by the attack. Such damage bypasses conventional resistances, though obviously is ineffective against mindless foes.
Glamor
    You're very good at lying, cajoling and pretending. When you tell someone a reasonable lie (i.e. not "the sky is blurple" or "you didn't see me stab your friend just now"), they must save to disbelieve you. If no one's around to snap them out of it, they'll take at least 5 minutes to reconsider your words; that's more than enough time for almost any scheme if you're quick.

Beguiling Twist
    You have advantage against being charmed or frightened. Once per turn, when you see someone succeed on a save against such an effect, you can force another creature you can see to make a save. If they fail, they are charmed by or frightened of you for one minute.

Fey Reinforcements.
    The royal courts of the Feywild have blessed you with the assistance of fey beings. You can summon a fairy from your patron's court. This fairy is the size of a child, supernaturally lovable by dimwitted NPCs, makes two attacks a turn with its magical shortsword, and can teleport 30' instead of walking. It sticks around for one minute. The fairy is friendly to you, but is neither loyal nor cooperative, and will likely choose whichever path of action causes the most trouble rather than what would be actually helpful.

Misty Wanderer
    With a xharisma check, you and anyone holding your hands can step briefly into and out of Fairyland. If you succeed, you silently reappear in some visible, unoccupied space within 60' of your departure point. If you fail, you still get to where you wanted to go, but you cannot use this ability again until the next dawn and at the DM's whim you may have brought along a passenger or suffered some fey mischief.

Example Fey Mischief:

1. Left and right hands swapped. Visit Fairyland again to get them put back on correctly.
2. Hair dyed bright blue.
3. 1d4 teeth replaced with those of a large dog.
   
4. You reappear with uproarious bigband fanfare. 
5. All the iron components or parts of your equipment have been mysteriously transmuted into silver.
6. You glow in the dark for 24 hours.
   

Gloom Stalker

    In the darkest places — deep under the earth, in narrow alleyways, in primeval forests, wherever the light dims — evil conspires against the world. There it labors. There it plans its cruelties. There it is least-prepared for the whirlwind you will sow. Where others fear to tread, there the Gloom Stalker is most needed.

Skills: 1. The Great Generals 2. Alcoholism 3. Extreme sports
Starting Equipment: Sawed-off blunderbuss (2d8 damage, 10' range increment, takes 10 rounds to reload, 2 slots), two hatchets (light), bottle of thallium tablets (10 doses, odorless and tasteless, victims make a CON check every 8 hours or take 1d6 stat damage to DEX, CON and WIS, symptoms include vomiting, ataxia and hair loss), vial of thallium antidote (1 dose), bad case of cyanochromhidrosis, dark nondescript clothing (as unarmored)

• A Dread Ambusher, Umbral Stalker, +2 INIT
  
• B Iron Mind, +1 to-hit
  
• C Stalker's Flurry, +2 INIT
  
• D Shadowy Dodge, +1 AC
  

Dread Ambusher
     The best defense is a crushing assault. If you win initiative, take two turns in the first round of combat.
Umbral Stalker
    Your enemies expect to be masters of the darkness; they are weakest when they believe they are strong. You have 60' of black-and-white darkvision. While in strong shadows, you are invisible.

Iron Mind
    Your thoughts are full of the clashing of shield and sword. You have advantage on saves against mind-altering effects, and when rolling initiative.

Stalker's Flurry
    Press every advantage! Once per round, after you miss an attack, immediately make another.

Shadowy Dodge
    The wicked think darkness is their ally, but they are interlopers in your domain. Impose disadvantage on the first attack against you every round.

Mage Slayer

    Civilization tames its magicians, and makes them weak and toothless. Only on the fringes can you find the most dangerous game. No, not humans, you dingbat. Humans are some of the least dangerous game available. I mean evil wizards.

Skills: 1. Arcana 2. History 3. Finance
Starting Equipment: Magic wand with a silencer attached, enemies in every major city, a mask of Barack Obama's face (+1 to reaction with members of the Clown's Guild), somber clothing (as unarmored)

• A Slaying Sense, +1 to-hit
  
• B Superb Defense, +1 HP
  
• C Magician's Nemesis, +1 AC
  
• D Slaying Counter, +1 HP

Slaying Sense
    The sorcerers you hunt have all manner of magical servants, machines and enchantments, and you need to be able to work around them if you want to destroy their master. You can identify a creature's immunities, resistances and vulnerabilities with a minute of observation, unless they are sufficiently reinforced against scrying. Once per day, you can also supernaturally mark a creature you can see. When you strike any marked creature, you deal an extra 1d6 damage. Marks reset when you sleep.

Superb Defense
    Constant training has made you superhumanly difficult to hinder. You have +4 to all saves, and to rolls to resist being grappled.

Magician's Nemesis
    A touch of sorcery makes you the lord of sorcerers Once per dawn, counter a spell or supernatural effect with a warcry.

Slaying Counter

    If some damn fool makes you roll a save, immediately attack them twice.

Swarmkeeper

    Rangers with a deeper spiritual side may become both the master of, and a home for, lesser spirits of nature, those responsible for painting autumn leaves, crafting snowflakes, and ushering the souls of mice and beetles to their final resting places. Most such Swarmkeepers are outcasts or hermits. They generally prefer to keep to the company of their attendant swarms. Still, their duties often bring them into contact with the world again.

Skills: 1. Shrine architecture 2. Weaving 3. Theology
Starting Equipment: Silver scimitar (medium), set of ten tiny black candles (1 slot), black powder pistol (2d6, 10' range increment, takes 10 rounds to reload in combat, 1 slot), powder horn decorated with dryads (1 slot), wicker mask with deer antlers (-1 reaction with mortals, +2 with the fay), ultraviolet robes (as unarmored, soothes insects)

• A Gathering, +2 HRTS
  
• B Mighty Swarm, +1 HP
• C Writhing Tide, +2 MOVE
• D Dispersal, +1 HP

Gathering

    Your body contains a magical swarm of tiny creatures, such as bees or pigeons or pixies. Once per turn, you can direct them to perform one of the following actions:

• Swarm a creature within 30'. The target saves or takes 1d6 magical damage
• Swarm a creature within 30'. The target makes a MOVE check or is shoved 15'
• Swarm you, to triple your jump distance and height, or allow you to move twice as far on your turn.

Mighty Swarm

    You can have your swarm carry you or another person slowly through the air 10' per turn in any direction. Unwilling targets may make a move check to resist. If the swarm is hit by anything (AC as chain), they drop what they're carrying.

Writhing Tide

    Your swarm gets thicker and meaner. Their damage option is increased to 1d12, their grappling option also knocks the target prone, and when they assist your movement they also impose disadvantage on attacks against you.

Dispersal

    The swarm is more your body than your own arms and legs. Once per turn, you can disappear into your swarm, and reappear from a cloud of it somewhere else within 60'.

Fighting Styles:

1. Archery.
   You gain +2 to-hit with ranged weapons.
2. Blind Fighting.
   You have 10' of blindsight. Within that range, you can effectively see anything that isn't behind total cover, even if you're blinded or in darkness. Moreover, you can see invisible creatures within that range, unless the creature is fully concealed from you.
3. Defense.
   You gain a +2 bonus to AC.
4. Dueling.
   When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand with an empty offhand, you gain a +2 bonus to damage.
5. Massive Weapon Fighting.
   When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll that damage die.
6. Interception.
   You can parry like a sword-shepherd.
   
7. Mariner.
   While wearing medium armor or less and while not carrying a shield, you can swim and climb as fast as you can run, and you gain a +1 bonus to AC.
8. Simple Sorcery
   You know how to do two of the following hedge-mage tricks with a few seconds of mumbling and finger-waggling:
   
   1. Light a flammable object at a touch,
   2. Bless a fist-sized stone, that it can be thrown with the range of an arrow for 1d6 damage.
      
   3. Bless a club or staff, that its base damage dice bump up one size.
      
   4. Produce a terrifying thunderclap with a snap of your fingers.
   5. Produce a fistful of maddened, stinging, biting insects.
      
   6. Freeze up to a liter of water.
   7. Project your voice through a fire that you can see.
   8. Bind a subdued or non-resisting person with tight vines.
      
9. Superior Technique.
   You learn one maneuver of your choice from among those available to the Wizard archetype of Fighter.
10. Thrown Weapon Fighting.
    You can draw and throw a light weapon, even if it is concealed, with one motion. You gain a +2 bonus to damage with thrown weapons.
11. Two-Weapon Fighting.
    When holding two weapons, you gain a +1 bonus to melee damage and +1 to AC.
12. Unarmed Fighting.
    Your hands are light weapons.
    You can automatically bite, strangle and tear a creature you have grappled for 1d6 damage once per turn without using an attack.

Picture Pong with Phlox 1

    It was my idea to do this picture pong thing, just so you know — as with all brilliancies the source can be found in me. But I had to let the ideas lie fallow for a little while. Phlox wrote his months ago.

I don't really know what this picture is, but it made me think of a bunch of wizards accidentally destroying their library, and all of them holding their spellbooks up, you know?

Adventure Location: The Name Written in Water

     Part of every ominous intuition is the strange sense that we're powerless to heed it. "No good can come of this" means "no good can come of this" and nothing more; it never means "turn around and walk away".

    On the far western border of the country of Granc (rhymes with "bronze") is the town of Darval's Ford (rhymes with "marvel's bored"), population ~2500, spread out over a few square miles of riverside and piedmont. Like all small towns, they have some big problems.

    Fifty years ago, the mad wizards of the Order of the Blue Star finally succeeded in opening a portal to the Dungeon Dimension, after generations of careful preparation and enormous expenditure of time, gold and expertise. They were promptly devoured by thousands of carrion crawlers, and the effects of this rent in the veil have rippled out for hundreds of leagues in every direction. Their great tower, which once rose half a mile from the surrounding hills buoyed by charms of levitation and weightlessness, has mostly collapsed and sunk into the mire of Star Lake (B2). The caves and passes of the Witch Mountains (B1, A1, A2) are infested with the great velvety worms to this day.

    Ten years ago, harpies from the Witch Peak (A1) began flying down to harass the peasants of Darval's Ford (C2 and B3). They steal piglets, chickens, and handsome youths. The young local ruler, the Baron Edmond Saint-Berkeley, promises a bounty of 20gp per head. Unfortunately, the remoteness of the area and the lack of prestige to harpy-hunting meant the issue has largely been ignored. The harpies' predation of travelers on the road further separates Darval's Ford from the rest of Granc, and earns the area a reputation for harboring devil-worshipers, bandits and worse things still.

    One year ago, a warrior-lich sent out an invitation to all the cowards and thieves of Granc; pledge fealty to him, and he would reward their loyal service with riches, protection and perhaps even the gift of eternal life. The Corpse with No Name, as he is called, seeks to become the Shadow-Lord of Granc' seamy underbelly, presiding over a court of misery with influence over every black-market and assassin's brotherhood in the country. Paladins have been appearing in the area, and disappearing.

    All of the above is what we might call "player facing information". Below, you'll find some hex descriptions and some monster statblocks to run a one- or two-session miniature hexcrawl.

A1, The Witch Peak

    Tallest mountain in all of Granc. Home to the harpy queen Canisus and her court. If you displease the harpies, they will attack you as you navigate the Peak's winding trails, and drag you off of cliffs and into deep ravines, where your shattered body will be eaten by the carrion crawlers. The court is hidden in the ruins of an old hunting lodge, and is filled with birdshit-stained finery and doped-up lotharios. One of the queen's lovers is the wizard Meliprocles, brother of Maura, sheriff of the town of Darval's Ford (B3, A2).

Harpy
2HD (7HP), AC as leather, 7 morale
Feathery humanoids with wings instead of arms and long grasping talons in place of feet. What they can't steal, they ruin with a thick and spongy layer of vomit. Sometimes lure travelers to their deaths with ethereal song.
Movement: Awkward hopping on the ground, fast as a seagull in the air.
Morality: Brutal thieving rapist with a cringing attitude (Chaotic Evil)
Intelligence: Capable of outsmarting many, but not all, parrots
Attacks: +2 to-hit, bite (1d8+2) or two kicks (two 1d6), or one projectile vomit (10' cone, 1d8 poison, check Constitution for half)
Magic: 2ND, Charm Person and Sleep.

Queen Canisus
6HD (24HP), AC as chain, 10 morale
A rotund harpy the size of a Bili Ape, with carefully-groomed white wings and a crown of chewed gold. Maintains a harem of handsome young adventurers with Charm Person, applied through her genuinely beautiful singing voice.
Movement: Awkward hobbling on the ground, fast as an eagle in the air.
Morality: Brutal thieving rapist with a monarch's opinion of peasantry (Chaotic Evil)
Intelligence: A wicked, gullible child of 8
Attacks: +4 to-hit, bite and two kicks (1d8+4 save vs. leprosy and two 1d6+4), or one projectile vomit (30' cone, 2d8 poison, check Constitution for half) 
Magic: 4ND (Naturalmagic Dice, deplete and replenish like MD but can't roll mishaps or dooms), spells Charm Person and Sleep.

Meliprocles
3HD (9HP), AC as unarmored, 7 morale
This wizard has seen better days. His clothing is stained and tattered, and his spellbook is hidden in a pile of Canisus' treasures underneath a collection of scrimshawed skulls. If you helped him escape, he would be very grateful, as soon as you break the Charm he's under.
Movement: As unathletic college student
Morality: Loves his sister, dreams of a magitechnocratic world order (Lawful Neutral)
Intelligence: Higher than yours
Attacks: Ineffectual punch (1 damage)
Magic: 3MD (Orthodox mishaps and dooms), has the spell Mandregor's Clutched Fist prepared (see bottom of this post for all spells referenced). His spellbook contains 10 random orthodox spells.

A2, Eastern Witch Mountains

    A forbidding and near-impassable ridge. The tunnels of a fallen Dwarven civilization are occasionally accessible through cracks and sinkholes. A few decades ago, low-level adventurers would come here to scuffle with goburins and neanderthals for shards of dwarrow-metal and nuggets of gold. The ecosystem has been totally disrupted by the carrion crawler population explosion. Now the only thing a young adventurer will find here is death — death, and carrion crawlers.

Carrion Crawler
3HD (12HP), AC as leather, 5 morale
Squamous onychophoric vermin which eat anything and everything. Despite often being in excess of 10' long and 100kg in weight, they move in complete silence over level ground (over extremely rough terrain they engage their claws for traction, which produces a characteristic click-click-click). Carrion crawlers are ambush predators who use darkness and streams of glue from glands near their fanged mouth to sneak up on and disable their prey. Their eyesight is poor, but their sense of hearing is more sensitive than a cat's.
Movement: Never faster than a speedwalk
Morality: Animalistic predator (True Neutral)
Intelligence: Unusually high for a big bug. Form complex social structures in large nests, where mothers protect and raise their live-born young. Capable of understanding traps.
Attacks: +2 to-hit. Vicious crushing jaws (2d6), or a spray of goo (applies a -4 penalty to AC and all physical checks, can be applied multiple times. Removable with alcohol. 3 uses per day)
Soft Body — Can't survive long-term in an arid environment. Loses 1 HP an hour in sunlit areas. Takes 1d6 damage from exposure to salt water, and won't deliberately step across salt spilled on the ground.
Tremorsense — Landbound creatures can't approach within 20' of a carrion crawler without alerting it to their presence.

B1, Southern Witch Mountains

    A forbidding and near-impassable ridge. One of the only routes through the mountains and west into the exotic and foreign Golden Dunes is overlooked by a crumbling watchtower of an ancient empire. There, the Corpse with No Name abides with his many followers. They plot a series of coups which will result in the takeover of Granc' criminal underworld. There's a 1000gp bounty on the Corpse's head; becoming a lieutenant of the Nameless League may be even more profitable, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty working for a lich. At any given time, the watchtower contains 6d6 bandits, 2d6 Nameless Rogues, 2d6 Nameless Fighters, 1d6 Nameless Wizards with an equal number of drudges, and the Corpse with No Name.

Bandit
1HD (4HP), AC as leather, 7 morale
Rough sorts who prefer a high-risk lifestyle to one of consistent labor. Usually drunk.
Movement: as human
Morality: self-interest (Neutral Evil)
Intelligence: limited
Attacks: +1 to-hit, slingstone (1d6) or cutlass (medium)

Nameless Rogue
2HD (6HP), AC as leather, 7 morale
These rogues (as Assassins AB) dress in uniforms of slate-colored silk and carry two random thieves tools. They are typically equipped with slings and a pair of scimitars (medium weapons). Each fancies himself the next Nine-Fingers Gellman, and loves to brag about their past exploits, especially if they don't expect you to survive your encounter with them.
Movement: swift and silent
Morality: none apparent (Chaotic Neutral)
Intelligence: highly specialized in infiltration and murder
Attacks: +2 to-hit, with weapon.
Cipher — Has a +2 to INIT. Have a 2-in-6 chance to succeed with any thief skill in addition to their normal checks. Attacks against creatures who go after them in initiative have advantage.

Nameless Fighter
2HD (8HP), AC as plate, 9 morale
These warriors (as Bannerets AB with the Archery fighting style) dress in uniforms of off-white silk and carry a +1 sword, axe or lance. Besides this, they are also equipped with longbows (60' range, 1d8 damage). All are martial cultists who worship the Corpse with No Name and hope to one day be elevated to undeath alongside him.
Movement: hobnailed and lead-footed
Morality: bloodthirsty but honorable (Lawful Evil)
Intelligence: dim
Attacks: two at +2 to-hit with weapon (which might be a +1 sword, so that's +3 to-hit, or a longbow, which is a total of +4 to-hit)
Name of the Nameless — Has a +2 to INIT if they enter battle screaming "For the Corpse with No Name!".
Honorbound — Any oath they swear on "the Corpse with No Name" is absolutely binding.

Nameless Wizard
3HD (9HP), AC as unarmored, 7 morale
These sorcerers (as Necromancers ABC) dress in robes of black and white silk and carry silver-capped walking sticks which can project elemental rays. Their spellbooks are all very old, dating back to the empire that built the Nameless League's tower. The Nameless Wizards know a great deal of history, collectively, though most of it is colored with legend and self-aggrandizing nonsense.
Movement: as doddering old man
Morality: devoted to an ancient necromantic cult (Neutral Evil)
Intelligence: very high
Attacks: a ray from their walking stick (1d12 of either poison, fire or lightning, depending on if the staff is topped with an emerald, a garnet or a diamond), or just hitting you with the stick (a medium weapon with a silver spike)
Magic: 3MD, the spells Cone of Clattering, Clinging Blast, Bony Evil and Raise Drudge (from the link).
Undead Servant — Accompanied by a drudge, a simple undead servant that follows their orders.

The Corpse with No Name
6HD (30HP), AC as chain, 13 morale
Centuries ago this body belonged to an imperial officer, who was disgraced, stripped of his office, beheaded, and buried in an unmarked riverside grave. A brother of the Order of the Blue Star reunited the body with the spirit of a nearby vengeful ghost; whether the spirit actually belonged to the body is something even the Corpse with No Name doesn't know.  This nameless corpse is a powerful wight now, and it has no interest in its own past, despite the devotion of its cult.
Movement: as human
Morality: undead authoritarian (Lawful Evil)
Intelligence: keeper of ancient wisdom and horrible secrets
Attacks: three total, any combination of a +6 to-hit blow from its sword HOW MANY HUNDREDS (a heavy greatsword +2, constantly drips diesel fuel) or a +4 to-hit gouge with its claws (deals 1d6+4 damage and drains 200 XP on hit)
Barrow-Wight — Immune to non-silvered weapons and most mind-altering effects (Sleep and Charm &c), along with poison and disease and so forth. It's an undead, obviously.

B2, Blue Star Meadow

    This moist, flowery meadow sprawls over miles of foothills. The Sickle River, from the north, and the Avon River, from the west, flow into the Star Lake, and the Darval River flows out from there.
    On (or rather, in) the northeast side of Star Lake lie the ruins of the Blue Star Tower, allegedly full of wizard ghosts and carrion crawlers. If you visit, there's probably a little dungeon in there, maybe some treasure, I don't know, this post is already getting out of control — more importantly, you can find the bones of Brother-Librarian Egret. His ghost has been observing the carrion crawlers for five decades, and he has some absolutely fascinating insights into their mating habits. Unfortunately, he can't get more than about half a mile from his skeleton. Would you be so kind as to bring him to some city where he can find a scholar to record his observations?
    On the southern shore of Star Lake you can find the Well of Past and Future amid five standing stones. Those who drink from the well receive a blessing and a curse. The curse is that every person in the world, barring the drinker themselves and those in their immediate presence, forget everything about them. The blessing is that they receive a true prophecy about their personal future. The prophecy is always "You will suffer a life-threatening case of Legionnaires' from drinking tainted well-water".

B3, Darval's Ford

    This hex contains the northern half of the town of Darval's Ford. It contains all the services a small adventuring party would want — a blacksmith, a general store, a fletcher, a tanner, a tavern, a small apothecary, a temple to the Sun where a low-level cleric can heal, remove curses and undo level- and stat-drain, &c.
    The sheriff of the town is a woman named Maura, a Champion AB and the sister of Meliprocles. She has a stash of gold which she will dole out for the heads of harpies and carrion crawlers; 20gp each. She will also offer a reward of 200gp for the head of Queen Canisus, and can be convinced to offer the support of the town's watch (five youths in leather armor carrying massive billhooks) either to assist with her brother's rescue or for assistance on another adventure if the party has already rescued her brother and she owes them a solid.

C1, Darval's Deep

    The Darval River eventually empties into a deep pool in the heart of a vast overgrown crab-apple orchard. An old hydra named Makt Myrkranna dwells in the pool, and if propitiated with 50gp of jewelry, ornate armor, beer or fresh mutton he can become the patron of an adventurer. The hydra offers a selection of favors:

• Berserk rage for the duration of a fight, doubling melee damage and halving incoming damage
• The naming of a sword, granting it a +1 bonus, a three word name, and +1d6 elemental damage of your choosing
  
• Healing all fatal wounds of you or a companion

    Each of these favors must be paid for with a period of service lasting at least one full session. During this time the PC is unavailable to be played. Until the previous favor is paid for, Makt Myrkranna will not perform another.

Makt Myrkranna
8HD (40HP), AC as chain, 9 morale
This aurochs-sized serpent has five heads, one "primary" and the rest "secondary". Only the primary head does the talking. He is callous and unsympathetic, like all reptiles, and has a dark sense of humor. Really loves getting drunk. At least one head is always awake. Makt Myrkranna has inhabited Darval's Deep for hundreds of years, and he knows many stories about the past. Maintains a semi-friendly rivalry with the witch Sadoc Saga, over in C2.
Movement: like a charging bull
Morality: a drunk reptile, but still a fun guy (Neutral Evil)
Intelligence: smart enough to see through obvious lies
Attacks: +4 to-hit, one bite with each head (1d10+4 damage)
Magic: 4ND, Lightning Breath (which is just Lightning Bolt but he vomits the lightning, it's quite unpleasant)
Hydra's Heads — For each 10 damage Makt Myrkranna takes, one of his heads is severed or destroyed. If he doesn't take fire damage before the beginning of the next round, Makt Myrkranna regenerates 10HP and grows two more heads.

C2, Darval's Mill

    This hex contains the southern half of the town of Darval's Ford. It's home to the mill, and the wealthy miller Ifan who dabbles in a little alchemy from time to time, and the crone Sadoc Saga.
    Saga is a real old-school country witch. She's a hedge mage who sometimes lays curses on her neighbors, if personally offended or if the price is right. She also knows everything there is to know about local herbs, local beasts and local gossip. She sells a potent healing brew (2d4HP regained, removing fatal wounds at 2HP/per) for 10gp if the party is willing to gather the ingredients for her.
    Saga can share the following rumors, if plied with liquor:

1. Following the river west takes you to an ancient lake where a powerful water-spirit dwells (true; this is Makt Myrkranna and Saga knows a lot more about him than she's willing to let on to the honest Sun-fearing townspeople).
2. Carrion crawlers won't cross a line of salt (true; a bottle of saltwater also burns them for 1d6 damage and requires a morale check)
3. Harpies can be pacified by a talented musician (dangerously false; they hate non-vocal performance and are driven into a murderous rage by the sound of instruments)
4. The Corpse with No Name was once a member of the Order of the Blue Star (true)
5. Maura is an agent of the Nameless League who's been selling out the paladins coming from the capital (false; many townsfolk believe this, but the Nameless League is actually just much more dangerous than the low-ranking paladins anticipate)
6. There are still great caches of treasure waiting to be recovered in the Eastern Witch Mountains (A2) (true; also essentially irrelevant because they're literally crawling with giant predatory bugs)
7. Maura's brother, Meliprocles, was a pervert whose unsavory interests in feathered women got him killed, Sun rest his soul (false; Meliprocles is alive and mostly-well in the court of Queen Canisus in B1)
8. There's a ghost in the Star Lake who can tell you your future (false; Egret is almost totally useless, though he can direct you to the Well of Past and Future where you can actually learn your future)
   

Random Encounters:

1. 1d6 carrion crawlers pouncing on a (1d4: 1. lost cow 2. lost peasant 3. unlucky paladin 4. dumbass harpy).
   
2. 1d6 harpies harassing a (1d4: 1. peasant on his way to market 2. sexy but brainless bard 3. unlucky paladin (the same one, if applicable) 4. injured carrion crawler).
3. 1d6 peasants who will offer a paltry sum to escort them safely to town.
4. 1d6 bandits pretending to be scared peasants.
5. Sadoc Saga, gathering herbs.
6. A wandering paladin .
7. An escaped cow.
8. 2d6 bandits, lying in ambush. 
   
9. 2d6 carrion crawlers, stalking the party.
   
10. A Bony Horror, hunting (1d4: 1. you 2. also you 3. unlucky paladin (same one, if still alive) 4. you).

Spells:

Mandregor's Clutched Fist
R: 60' T: creature or object D: instant
The caster holds out their hand, clenches it tight, then swings it through the air. If targeting a creature, that takes [sum] damage and is thrown [dice]*10', saving to take half damage and not be thrown. If targeting an object, that object suffers the effect of being smashed by an invisible battering ram carried by [sum] angry orcs over the course of [dice] rounds (one die will probably knock down a locked door, two a wooden gate, three a carriage or weak wall, four a brick wall).

Cone of Clattering
R: n/a T: [dice]*20' cone, originating from caster D: instant
Caster points a finger and utters a word of power, and a cone of ossuarian tarantism bursts forth. Skeletons in the target cone begin to dance madly for [sum] rounds. Humans, animals and other creatures with endoskeletons must save to do anything on their turn other than dance in a random direction; if they fail, they may choose to take [dice] damage and act anyway. Insects, crustaceans and other creatures with exoskeletons get only one save to avoid this, and are otherwise rendered helpless for the duration. Animated skeletons may save every round to end the effect, if they wish.

Clinging Blast
R: 100' T: 20' sphere D: instant
All creatures in target volume experience [dice] attempts to grapple them, as if made by an invisible creature with [sum] Strength. If a target fails a single grappling check they are grappled for one round, if they fail two they are pinned for [dice] rounds, if they fail three they are subdued for [sum] rounds, and if they fail four or more their legs are broken. Flying creatures remain airborne, unless pinned.

Bony Evil
R: immediate vicinity T: unoccupied space D: [sum] periods of sleep for the world
A Bony Evil is summoned from the farther regions of darkness to appear in the target space. It obeys the caster's direct commands, resentfully, for the term of its service; after this it saves with a [dice] penalty or returns whence it came. The MD invested in the summoning do not return until the Evil is vanquished or returns home. When it is reduced below 0HP its body catches a strange green fire and dwindles to nothing.

Bony Evil
4HD (20HP), AC as chain, 13 morale
Movement: as enormous spider
Morality: petty cruelty, unnerving and then terrifying intelligent prey before striking (Chaotic Evil)
Intelligence: diabolically gullible
Attacks: either two attacks with held weapons at +4 to-hit, two swipes with its claws (+4, 1d6 damage, grappling those struck), or a bite against a grappled target (target checks strength or takes 2d6 damage, healing the Evil for [highest])
Magic: 4ND, spells Clinging Blast, Hairy Web (as Web but grosser), Cone of Clattering.
Gangleweaver — The Bony Evil can climb ceilings and walls.
Arachne's Child — The Evil may grapple eight targets, hold eight objects, or a mix of both. It shies away from sunlight, and attacks creatures carrying a lightsource with disadvantage.
Indescribable — the Evil can flow through any opening or passage that a skull could roll through. Every time it is struck by a melee weapon, one of its limbs is severed. This reduces its to-hit bonus and its carrying capacity by 1.

Minor update to the ol' houserules

    Good evening, good evening. This is a small post just to say I finally got around to updating the houserules on the sidebar of this blog. My opinions on The True & Only Way to Play have changed in the 4 years I've been running the GLOG (wow, that's a long time, I'm old...) and this document reflects those changes.

Click the sheep to access the new G24 rules (not the economic council)

    I learned that some of you were unironically using G20 (the old ruleset) (not the economic council) in your games, which made me feel bad. That's more of a reference document of assumptions about how games worth than a full ruleset. So this new document explains things like "you can't set someone on fire by hitting them with a candle lantern", and "if your character dies they can't be played anymore, usually" and such, which might make the DM's job a little easier. At least now you know what rules to throw out.

    That's everything. Happy trails.

Worlds of the System

    There are dozens of intelligent species in the System, but only a handful have a significant presence in interplanetary space. Producing spaceships requires the kind of highly-developed orbital heavy industry that few planets possess. 

    (Most) spaceships are moved by chemical rockets which operate by destabilizing metastable metallic hydrogen. This metallic hydrogen is harvested from suspended clouds of particulate in the atmospheres of Eos and Phaethon, two of the System's gas giants. The "mining" procedure is very safe, in modern times, and can be performed almost entirely by unmanned aerostats. Collecting the fuel is what's dangerous — piracy abounds, and an oxygen leak in the fuel-rich atmospheres of the gas giants will result in terrifying firestorms visible from orbit.

    Control over fuel production is control over the System. This has been conclusively demonstrated in the fifteen years since the end of the Second Battery War. At the beginning of the hostilities, Lith and her allies — the Sylvans of Satanazes, the mercenary armies of Koss, the theocrats of Pure and an engineering corps of callow Avian idealists — were opposed by fleets of pirates, rebels, adventurers, mafias, industrial magnates, technological adepts, factions in their own parliament, and the obscure influence of Phobos. The suggestion that fuel production might be entirely annexed and nationalized by one planet inspired strange alliances. Civil conflict erupted even on planets not officially engaged in the Battery War; Lith's brutality in seizing or destroying all foreign stores of fuel, even those in civilian hands, was matched only by their enemies' determination to recover it first. For a time, interplanetary trade was disrupted by the fact that no cargo could be as valuable as the engine that moved it. The capital of Lith was blockaded for two years and its space elevators were sabotaged. Holy sites across Pure were destroyed, some by orbital strikes, others by suicide attacks. Hundreds of stations throughout the System were bombarded by either or both sides. Millions were killed.
    But the Second Battery War could only ever have one outcome. Early supply issues led inexorably to later military catastrophes, and when Lith succeeded in monopolizing production, those who had opposed them found the gates of heaven closed and barred. Fuel is monitored now, and its disbursement tracked. Of course, some slips are still made, despite all of Lith's precautions — piracy abounds, after all, and a small-time operator may grow desperate enough to sell her scrip to a friend with dire need and deep pockets. But the era of the Free System is over. There are no fleets left to check Lith's ambitions. Opposition to the hegemony, where it exists, now takes subtler forms.

Sizes are illustrative; the planets are depicted ~two orders of magnitude larger as a visual aid.

Ava

    Ava is a gas dwarf with a rocky surface. Its atmosphere is dense, foggy and cold, but full of volatiles the Avians synthesized into the first rocket fuels. In prehistoric times the members of the Avian species fought for access to higher nests farther up the rocky mesas and pillars which make up the landscape, where their eggs would be protected from shuffling ground-based predators. It's a common evo-psych Just So Story that this behavior is what drove them ever higher, building homes and towers, and eventually ships to take them as high as anyone can go; interplanetary space.
    Avians follow a strict caste system. All Avians are hexapods; those whose third pair of appendages are feathered wings are Scholars, those with bat-like wings are Soldiers, and those with monstrous oversized hands are Servitors (nowadays called Workers due to a social-justice fad sweeping Ava). These traits don't breed true; Scholars have an equal chance of having children who are soldiers or workers. Because of this, Avians do not form biological family units. All Avians are raised by the state.
    Scholar-caste Avians are the largest and (according to the majority opinion of Avian scientists) the smartest. They occupy choice spots in the bureaucracy of Avian governments, and are the most visible caste off of their homeworld. They like to say they have the temperaments of "ambassadors" and "architects", but more accurately they are "meddlers" and "enablers"
    Soldier-caste Avians are the smallest, and since Avians are the smallest space-faring species this makes the soldiers very small indeed. They often serve as pilots of small craft and are by far the most numerous caste off of their homeworld.
    Worker-caste Avians are the strongest, though not as gifted at war or politics as the others. There are just as many workers as any other caste (or more, considering the mortality rates of fighter pilots) but since they rarely leave Ava you wouldn't guess.

Engineers

    On the topic of "meddlers" and "enablers": when Avians first invented interplanetary travel, they visited every world with a species that could talk and made a simple offer: give them half of the money on the planet, and they will build a space elevator. This led to the First Battery War almost immediately.
    But still, almost every captain in the System has at least one Avian officer. Their intuitive understanding of the dynamics of space travel and the mechanics of a ship's engine make them invaluable additions to a crew.

Purity

    Purity is a young and volcanically active terrestrial planet controlled by a theocratic world-government. There's a stark divide between the city-dwellers who submit to the theocracy (and by extension Lith), the wastelanders who are one step from being completely feral, and the space pirates who acknowledge no authority except their god and their guns. The Pure are a little insectile and a little reptilian, with high population variance in types-and-placement-of-limbs. Some have spider legs, some have additional arms, some have bat wings, some have clawed pedipalps.
    Their god, Pure, is the six-armed guardian of the Gates of Death and judge of mortal souls. In one hand he holds a toothy spear and in another a barbed lash, in a third the keys to Hell, in a fourth a lantern whose light reveals honest men, in a fifth the great and heavy book where your sins are recorded, and with a sixth he turns its pages of smoking brass. Fond of fighter-pilots and infantry. Hates snipers and landlords. Pilots of all species wear his symbols as lucky charms.

Lucky Charms

    Lith's state religion is the Communion of Measure, or the Compassers, depending on your translation. They have accepted and absorbed the gods of other worlds, though they renamed them after their planets in the process. The gods obviously favor Lith over their own people, and a wise businessman never misses an opportunity to capitalize on a positive relationship.
    Non-Lithians are not as eager to adopt the mores and tenets of other cultures. The one general exception to this rule is the god Pure. All spacers are afraid of "dying cold" — to run out of food, out of air, to be pinned under rubble or impaled on flotsam and die of thirst, to bleed out slowly, or (the unnameable terror) to float off into the dark with no tether, no radio, no jets, in a suit topped up with oxygen, and nothing at hand sharp enough to cut your tubes, or sturdy enough to break your faceplate. Superstitious spacers wear Pure's octagram and hope it guarantees them a hot death.

Satanazes

    Satanazes is an unmapped and untamed world. Woses, the males of the dominant species, are obligate carnivores, in that they are obligated to eat animals: when they see an animal, they eat it, even if that animal says "wait please I'm an ambassador I just want to talk please aah". The only creatures that Woses don't immediately reflexively attack are the Sylvans, the females of their species. When circumstances demand that they communicate with others, they do so through the intermediary of their many wives. When circumstances demand that they communicate in person, they show up wearing Scary Attack Dog gear with sturdy chains their wives hold like zeppelin anchors (picture a conversation with a bus-sized tiger that tries to jump on you every few words, held back by half a dozen catgirls). Lithians occasionally try to Weyland-Yutani an adolescent for scientific study, an endeavor with a 100% catastrophe rate.
    As for the Sylvans, at birth there are roughly three of them for every Wose, but as the males grow to adulthood, establish territories, and fight each other for status that ratio increases to more than 10:1. The Woses simply can't keep up with the demand, and so many Sylvans seek both employment and romance off-planet. Many Lithians have problematic attitudes about them.

Painted Tongue

    The Sylvans have a complex tradition of body modification and decoration, which in these days of interplanetary travel has both spread to and been influenced by the other worlds of the System. Piercings, especially facial piercings, are unsuited for spacesuits and breathing tubes, so many Sylvans have brightly-colored but meaningless tattoos splitting their lips or brows, or across the alars of their nose. They think little of clipping their own ears to better fit their helmets — Sylvans heal rapidly, even from serious disfigurements.
    Those who wish to be genuinely outre (which is most Sylvans) must go to more drastic lengths: false teeth of gold or surgical steel or black ceramic, auxiliary lenses, needles of magnetized neodyme in the fingertips, carbon filament knitting sheathing the ribs. A symbolically important modification, rarely imitated by other species, is what Sylvans call umineko: to gnaw off the tip of one's own trigger finger, declawing it, and making it possible for them to handle guns designed for other species.

Koss

    The Koss homeworld is a freezing ocean planet. They were a happy, peaceful people once; tubby walrus-frogs well-suited for their place in the ecosystem, content to swim and sing and live off of kelp and anchovies for a million years more. When the Lithians noticed how big and brawny they were, and beamed them up, and taught them how to make war, the Koss discovered that they were good at fighting. They enjoy it so much that the majority of Koss adults off-world are employed as shock troopers and policewomen to this day.

Contracts

    One half of a Koss contract slightly resembles a vacuum tube, though the low-density nacreous boron ceramic (LNB) shell is much more durable than glass or wire. Mated, the two halves reveal fine-detail legalisms, which typically begin with the religious formula "It appears that she who bears the one part of me owes five years" (or whatever length) "of armed service to whosoever bears my other part, howsoever it be obtained". The Koss regard these trinkets with fatal seriousness. Treasure-troves of legend often include the "rash boon", a contract of indefinite length promising the bearer arbitrary service from a hero, though this practice is not historically attested. 

Lith

    Lith is a desert planet very close to a powerful star. The biosphere is limited, and irritable. Lithians themselves are horned and bat-faced humanoids with long gangly arms and stubby powerful legs. Their skin is slightly-luminescent lavender in the visual range, and mirror-bright in higher EM bands. None of this is important information; what matters is that they won the Second Battery War, and the System is theirs.

Megastructures

    Lith's enormous industrial capacity is sometimes tapped to support grand Parliamentary hazards. Some are moderately successful, though rarely to the degree promised, and never enough to justify the enormous cost in blood, treasure, and the time of engineers.

• Emitter Bloc
      A swarm of power-collecting nodes orbits the sun closely; each of these sends a beam of directed energy up to the swarm of control nodes which orbit the sun at a distance; these in turn direct powerful masers and lasers towards innumerable reflectors, retransmitters, beam expanders, radio arrays, and both manned and unmanned deepwater installations. The Lithians use the Bloc to secure and obscure communication. Recently (or not so recently — secret projects are hard for outsiders to keep track of) they have even begun using it as a form of propulsion for stealth probes, which can be precisely maneuvered by limited bursts of energy caught in retractable sails. If you had the correct access codes, and a compatible sail, you could use this system to travel anywhere in the System you wanted, at impossible speeds, using no fuel, while remaining no more conspicuous than any piece of lifeless space-junk.
      The notion that the Bloc could be used to destroy a planet is, of course, absurd. The energy requirements, the wear and tear on components, the fact that the planet-destroying beam would have to be bounced off of a series of large mirrors — impossible. But you should still try to avoid driving your ship into one of those emissions.
  
• Mechanical Intelligence
      Sailors tell tall-tales of machine-minds going insane and turning against their masters. The engineers who build the devices know this is a fundamental misunderstanding. A "mechanical brain" is nothing like a brain; it has no volition and no agency. It is a clockwork device to calculate orbital trajectories, intersection ranges, and other matters which would be slow and imprecise for a (non-Avian) pilot to calculate by hand. It can only turn against its masters in the way of all machines: by failing, like a jammed gun or a leaking oxygen tube.
      Still, Parliament dreams of a machine-mind that can not only calculate but decide what must be calculated. Then the grim-faced Avian engineers would be made obsolete. Perhaps Lith would be able to exploit Ava's greatest secret: the Sewing Drive, which allowed Avian freedom-fighters of the Second Battery War to cross the System faster than the radio waves that warned of their approach.
      The engineers, for their part, have never provided such a machine.
• Company Loyalty
      The B.S.L. Hand That Feeds is a research vessel in orbit around one of Satanazes' dead moons. Two years ago they began experimenting with a new non-invasive transcranial magnetic procedure on their stock of Woses. Their first few attempts led only to aneurysms, partial lobotomies and fatal grand mals, but yesterday they had a breakthrough: if a certain portion of the amygdala can be targeted and electronically destroyed, the Wose loses its hostility to non-Sylvan life. There appear to be no other side-effects of the procedure.
      The lab crew are now split, evenly, on the question of what they should do with this knowledge. But how can there be an argument against applying it to the entire male population of Satanazes? The primary cause of mortality among Woses is death at the hands of another Wose. Surely, say one half of the team, this treatment is as ethically straightforward as a cure for cancer — or for suicidal impulses, if you prefer. There's no moral value to being brutally murdered by an apex predator, no matter how romanticized or "natural" your life might have been.
  

Phobos

    Phobans [or Phoebans, my notes disagree] come from Phobos [or Phoebe, ditto], a debris field orbiting the dead twin of the System's sun at an extraordinarily far distance. Their homeworld's star was stillborn, deprived of essential stellar material at birth and ripped apart in the formation of the System
    The Phobans are used to darkness, crushing gravity-shocks, and the near-silence of trace atmosphere. When they visit other worlds they wear protective, concealing garments, and speak very little through the medium of crackling radio.
    They have hated the Lithians since they met them. Phobos is the sole polity of the System which never officially agreed to the armistice which ended the First Battery War, though hostilities ended generations ago. It takes months or years to reach Phobos by rocket, and dozens of hours to contact it by radio.

Graffiti

    A spaceman who visits enough far-flung stations will see symbols repeated in unlikely places. Even in the high, high wilderness, out past Phaethon, you'll see the tags, badges and seals of the same distant gangs, regiments and academies painted on the walls or chipped into the paint.
    One motif is the "midnight sun", a yellow disc on a black field. For those who can put aside the victories and defeats, the profit and the loss, it symbolizes the freedom Lith promises: freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom of self-expression — nothing like the freedom of the Free System. It might appear in a rewinding station to mark the speakeasies of the counter-revolutionaries, or on a mining base to show the way to a supply cache, or it might be found on a distant asteroid, a hundred million miles from Lith, over a mass grave.
    For their part, the Phobans hate the symbol (and for this reason it's sometimes used as nothing more than an expression of anti-Phobos sentiments). They have no fondness for the Sun. It's no brighter than any other stellar object in their homeworld's sky, certainly not bright enough to dispel the permanent gloom, or disperse the clouds of carbon dust which shield the surface from the hateful stars.

Kissing Death's Mouth (Class: Contender)

Better off shedding your own blood on the ground
Than shedding your self-respect on a court's floor.
Better off worshiping foul idols than a man.
That is my teaching. Heed it and endure.
        - Gorgani

    This is a hack of Locheil's excellent Duelist. At the end of the post I was challenged to come up with five new styles. Well, by the time I got around to it everyone had already invented all the good styles already. So we'll take things in a different direction: kungfu. I like the model of "monk" I used in the 5e Monk conversion. Let's take elements of that class and create something new.

I was looking thru DeviantArt to find a good picture for this post, but it's all AI slop nowadays. Crazy times we're living in. Anyway, I got to thinking, "I don't need someone's poorly-generated image of a judo woman foot pic, I need some cool kungfu movie shit," so here it is. Badass.

    Campaign premise: There are 6,524 spaces available in Heaven. Once a generation, there is a brutal competition to determine the greatest living kungfu master. The winner contests with each master already in Heaven, starting from the bottom, working his way up. Some of your teachers are up there, or your teachers' teachers.

    Those who train to win the right to challenge Heaven are called the contenders. In the years leading up to the competition, contenders wander the whole world, seeking adventure, friends, experience, lost scrolls of forbidden techniques, and all the other things that make life worth living.

Here's my "grappling procedure". We're operating under the assumption that when you are "grappling" with somebody, you don't have them in a headlock on the ground (if you did the fight would already be over), but rather, you're all up in their business, standing in their 5' square, generally being a nuisance.

Class: Contender

    You're a student of kungfu, who wanders the earth seeking to becoming the greatest martial artist of your generation. If you are successful you will be given the chance to earn immortality and immortal glory. Even if you're unsuccessful, you're sure to go down as a legend, or at least a cautionary tale.

    As a contender, you may wear light or medium armor, and use kungfu weapons such as staves, nunchuks, cool katanas &c.

Skills: 1. Police investigation 2. International diplomacy 3. Humble farmwork
Starting Equipment: Gi, headband (color of your choice), fingerless gloves, footwraps, unfortunate haircut, and 2 goofy kungfu weapons (see list at the bottom of this post)

• A Vigor, Chi, Style, +1 to-hit
  
• B Like a Monkey, +1 to-hit
• C Channing, +1 to-hit
• D Like a Dragon, +1 to-hit

Vigor
    While not wearing armor, you add [level]+2 to your AC, representing your dashing charm, fancy footwork, and cool kungfu stance. If you're hobbled, sunk in mud or tied up, you don't get this bonus.
    When you reduce someone to 0 hitpoints, you can choose to non-lethally embarrass them — for example:

• Clap a paper-mache dragon head over their entire upper torso
• Trip them so they fall through drywall 
• Kick a spinning broom into their legs 
• Smack 'em with a ladder
• Throw them down a staircase
• Kick 'em in the balls so they stand stiff with wide eyes and fall down
• &c and so forth
  

    This removes them from combat in a kind of "Chan Ka Kui bowled that guy offscreen and he's no longer a problem" way, and onlookers and guards like it a lot more than you maiming people.

Chi
    All contenders have a pool of chi which they use to fuel their kungfu. This chi takes up slots in your inventory like exhaustion; just like exhaustion, you take a point of damage if something would occupy the same slot. When you take an hour to calmly and silently meditate (nigh impossible to do in a city), you may fill as many inventory slots with chi as you wish.
    You may spend a point of chi to: leap 20' horizontally, reduce incoming weapon damage by 1d6, treat a fall as if it was 10' shorter, upgrade an unarmed attack to deal 1d6 plus your highest modifier damage (it's your job to explain why intelligence makes you punch better but it shouldn't be hard. You're a smart kid), make a pair of unarmed attacks immediately after making any other attack, or whatever cool shit you can get your DM to permit. You may only spend as much chi in a round as you have [templates] as a contender.

Style
    Pick one of the Styles from the end of this post. You know two of its techniques, stances or lessons; your choice in whatever combination you like. Each time you gain a level of contender or spend a season training, you learn two new techniques, stances or lessons from any Style you know. Learning a new Style requires a season of tutelage and study, usually under a master, but perhaps from an ancient scroll or a talking waterfall or something.
    Techniques are active moves that replace or improve an attack. Using a technique against intelligent enemies costs a point of chi for each time you've done so in the current fight, since it takes more skill and power as they grow wise to your tricks.
    Stances are passive and have constant effects. You can only be in one stance at a time, but you may change your stance at the beginning of each round in combat.  
    Some styles might have lessons, which are permanent changes to your character that may be useful in combat or outside of it.

Like a Monkey
    You are very physically fit. You can keep your balance perfectly while running, jump your own height from standing, slide down banisters without falling over, pull yourself up by your fingertips, climb anything it’s possible for a human to climb free-handed, and do sick backflips.

Channing
    If someone uses all of their attacks against you and does no damage, they are stunned for a round.

Like a Dragon
    Your damage is doubled versus enemies with fewer HD than you.

Parable of the Tiger and the Heron

    Many years ago two brothers, the Tiger and the Heron, argued over who was the better hunter.
    The Heron said: "My technique is perfect. I stand in the sun, motionless, until prey approaches; then I strike. I wait until victory is certain and so I am always successful. That makes me the better hunter".
    The Tiger said: "Nothing escapes me except what I allow. When I see something I want to kill, I kill; when I see something I want to eat, I eat. I walk in the dark forests freely, because nothing in the darkness is more terrible than a tiger. That makes me the better hunter".
    Because they couldn't decide who was correct, the Tiger and the Heron agreed to use the other's tactics for a year, to see for themselves which was better. This was a dangerous time to be alive.

Ψ - Bronze Tiger

    Students of this school train for both control and power. They perch on pillars like the statues their school is named after for days on end to practice stillness, and strike hard objects — first trees, later stones — to thicken their knuckles and increase their strength. Devoted study so damages the hands of Bronze Tigers that their fingers no longer close; this is called "gaining your bronze paws" and none are considered masters of the style until this happens. They rarely use weapons.

1. Stance: Pillar-Form Body
   Your skin shines like metal. When an enemy attacks you, each of their damage dice come up as 1.
   
2. Technique: Steady Hands
   You may meditate for up to [level] rounds before using this technique. For each round spent meditating, your next blow rolls damage an additional time and adds it to the total (e.g. if you spent one round meditating, and hit someone for 1d6+2, you hit them for 2d6+4 instead)
3. Stance: One-Legged Silhouette
   A creeping dread fills the hearts of those who wish you ill. The first time someone attacks you in this stance, you drop out of it and immediately attack them first. 
   
4. Lesson: Growing Lethargy
   You may fall asleep instantly in any position, and you wake already leaping to strike. Your fists damage doors, chains and other obstructions as if they were sledgehammers.

Ψ - Umbra Heron

    Students of this school wear dark clothing over their entire body. Mottled patterns and silhouette-disrupting ribbons and feathers make them hard to see until they are near. Their school teaches indirect methods of attack and defense; it is said that the Umbra Herons would be more famous if they were less effective, because their enemies often die before realizing whose path they have crossed. Their favored weapons are the garotte, the blowgun, and the concealed blade.

1. Technique: Reaching Shadow
   Weapons in your hands are longer than they first seem. When you miss an attack, you may immediately reroll it.
2. Technique: Striped Shadow
   While in darkness, you may declare that you have disappeared. At will, you may step out of the darkness, or you may come leaping out of it to attack a target who isn't holding a light source.
   
3. Stance: Flock of Friends
   Everyone within one kilometer sees fluttering shadows moving rapidly on the edge of their vision. Mooks (NPCs without names or class levels) and animals check morale to approach you. 
4. Technique: Stalking the Midnight Forest
   When a creature you see takes damage from a physical object, you may declare that at some point you had secretly applied a dangerous contact poison to that object. They take an additional 1d8 damage.
   

Parable of the Strong and the Weak

    Many years ago an army of bandits threatened a town in the mountains. Facing engines of war and bristling armaments, the villagers gave themselves up as lost. Then the greatest contender of that generation, Agafya the Inert, appeared. She sublimated the chief with one blow, then tore through the rest, opening up flesh and crushing bones until not one was left alive.
    Before she left a young man approached her to ask how he could become as strong. Agafya tore a heavy iron wheel off an engine and gave it to him, saying "Strike this until your hands break, let them heal, and continue striking. Repeat this until you're strong enough to rip the wheel in half". But she was only joking, because she didn't believe he had the moral strength to become a contender.

Ψ - Iron Wheel

    A common-blooded school, developed by a rice farmer at the behest of the Bronze Tiger who saved his village. It lacks the storied histories of other schools, but nevertheless its students have a reputation for incredible physical feats and a willingness to endanger themselves. They wield iron-capped staves or snatched-up farming implements.

1. Stance: Trembling Strength
   You are never visibly weakened or exhausted in this stance, no matter your condition. Add your [level] to your AC and to-hit.
2. Stance: Machined Blows
   Your movements are regular like clockwork, each more perfect as the last. For every successful attack you've made this combat, you deal 1 point of extra damage.
3. Technique: Kinetic Capacitator
   For one round, you have 30 strength.
4. Technique: Superior Spring
   When you strike a target, throw them 20' backwards.
   

Ψ - Cruel Animal from Hell

    This style was developed by the Kings of the Unfinished World. Kings are great, but their enemies are many. You don't need a martial art to defeat someone half your size; Cruel Animal from Hell is a martial art for defeating four or five someones half your size. How best to use your advantage to subvert and overcome theirs?

1. Technique: Sharp Reply
   Take a full turn immediately, ignoring initiative order and the preparation of your enemy.
2. Stance: Mirror Plate
   When you have someone grappled, and you are struck by an attack, you may make a MOVE check against that attack's to-hit. If you beat it, the grappled character receives the attack instead of you.
   
3. Technique: Strong Fingers
   If you land a critical, tear out your targets eyes. They roll off-screen screaming and bleeding, and their friends check morale.
   
4. Technique: Head Cracker
   If you have someone grappled, you may throw them up to 10' as an attack. If the attack is successful, the grappled creature and the target both take 1d6 damage and fall to the ground in a tangle. If you miss, the grappled creature falls to the ground anyway.
   

Ψ - Lizard Silat

    A simple style which deemphasizes striking and the use of weapons, and instead turns its entire focus to locking, holding, clinching, tearing and twisting and crushing. A common form of training for the students of Lizard Silat is to float face-down in water like a corpse, which in theory trains their brain to require less oxygen. If a fight comes down to two contenders throttling one another, as it often does when this style is involved, the winner will be the one who doesn't need to breathe.

1. Technique: Clipped Tendons
   When you beat someone in a grappling check, they take the difference in your two rolls as damage as you brutally yank and twist their joints out of socket. 
2. Stance: Boiling Oil Ujian
   The great king of Lizard Silat, the crocodile, demonstrates that you do not need functioning hands to master grappling — and pain is merely pain. While in this stance, you may escape or take control of a grapple by taking 1d6 points of strength damage, and you may escape or take control of a pin by breaking one of your arms. 
3. Lesson: Great King of the Riverbank
   The little birds trust you, and will fly down and land on your head and share gossip about the goings-on of the world. If you ever hurt a little bird, for any reason, you lose this lesson forever.
   
4. Technique: Sacred Jaws
   While in this stance, your teeth are an unarmed, massive weapon.
   

1d6 Goofy Kungfu Weapons:

1. Pair of Nunchuks. Light weapons, but you may add your dexterity bonus to to-hit and damage. If you roll a nat 1 you bonk yourself on the head and the perineum simultaneously, dealing normal weapon damage.
   
2. Pair of Sais. Light weapons. If a melee attack roll hits your AC exactly, you catch the weapon, and may make an opposed MOVE check to tear it out of your opponent's hand.
   
3. Katana. A medium weapon that uses wisdom bonus in place of strength.
   
4. Meteor Hammer. A heavy weapon with 15' of reach, but deals medium damage to targets at 10' and light damage at 5'.
   
5. Set of ten Throwing Stars. Can be thrown 20' for 2 damage. Stack 10 to a slot.
   
6. Horse-Killing Spear. Massive, and very very long.