Ruined City Flunkies

8 microclasses for characters that tried to multiclass and failed. Relationships to the original cath classes are left as an exercise to the reader.

 

Unraveled
You can transform into blue smoke for a round, with the following effects:

• You are intangible. You drop everything in your hands, with the exception of spectral weapons.
• You can fly, at the speed of a rolling fog. A strong gust will send you flying.
• You lose one year of memories, oldest first.

 

Cinder
Your burns mark you as one who plays with fire; you are barred from holy places.

Choose any number greater than 0 to represent the severity of your burns. You lose that much maximum HP and take that much less damage from fire, lightning, acid, poison, and cold.

Hollow
You have made a hole somewhere in your body — lined with clay and stone — in the pursuit of sorcerous power. Instead, something took up residence within. (d8)

1. Ghost. Appears as a cold spot. Eats heat from your fingertips.
2. Dray. Easily bribed with nuts. An agile-albeit-disloyal messenger.
3. Asp. Venomous. Catlike indifference.
4. Crab. Gluttonous. Eats ghosts as easily as carrion.
5. Bees. Industrious. Large enough hives can be considered intelligent.
6. Fairy. Cherubic sparrow wings. Childish carnivore. #mytwig
7. Salamander. Tempestuous. Multichromatic. Fond of cigarettes.
8. Stone cylinder. Slots in almost perfectly. While it's in, you remember how to read a dead language.

Prisoner
For your crimes, you were trapped in a confining metal helm. You are immune to damage above the neck. Also, you don't need to eat or drink, which is good because you can't take off the helmet, ever.

 

Cursed / Scapegrace
You have been cursed by a saint. (d8)

1. Hounded. Add 1d6 wild dogs to an entry on every encounter table.
2. Gold and sunlight are both blindingly bright to your eyes.
3. Taboo. Other players choose six words. Whenever you say one of them, take 1 damage. Then, if you’ve said all of them, explode (3d6! damage).
4. Replace one of your hands with a thumbless mantid claw (d6).
5. A storm follows you, waiting to pounce. The next time you see the open sky, lightning will strike you (6d6).
6. Structures you build collapse in a day.
7. You weigh as much as a feather. Strong winds or blows send you flying.
8. When frightened, save versus your whole skeleton popping out. It takes ten minutes to put your skin back on. (Skeletons can’t talk.)

You also start with a +1 magic tool. (d8)

1. Cowbell
2. Billhook
3. Kagura suzu
4. Yew rod
5. Blue feathered dart
6. Snakeskin veil
7. Brass chime
8. Red-soled sandal

Rambler / Idiot
You can get lost at will. Spend an exploration turn to transport yourself and all traveling companions somewhere you've never been before at random, ignoring plausibility. For example, you can overland travel three hexes in the time it would take to travel one, or stumble into a room that was locked from the inside.

You can't do this again until you produce a map of the new area to the gm's satisfaction.

 

Deserter
You deal +2 damage. Additionally, you take 2 damage whenever you attack. If this reduces you to 0 HP, you are instantly beheaded.

 

Bard
You know two songs. (Brief rituals that make others think of you as a potential friend. You can use them in response to bad reaction rolls, before a fight breaks out. Some require instrumentation to perform.)

1. Singer describes filling a wound with alcohol; alluding to an apocalyptic flood. Resonates with former warriors and wizards.
2. Singer laments the howling stone songs of their forebears, which are no longer well known. Resonates with the elderly and with trolls.
3. Singer describes a departed kinsman's misadventures as a rancorous spirit warrior. Resonates with reckless teenagers and frogs.
4. Singer describes no-strings-attached sex with a series of vagabonds. Resonates with big ol' sluts.
5. Singer describes a kinsman growing bloody horns. Resonates with those who are ashamed of a brother or sister.
6. Singer compares themselves to the Elysian fields of Qua We; lamenting a lover lost. Resonates with the abandoned and nostalgic.
7. Singer compares a great passion to being lit on fire. People love chanting the BURN, BURN, BURN part. Resonates with artists and solar atavists.
8. Singer describes falling in love with a beautiful cowherd. Singer is obviously very superficial. Resonates with young, foolish men.

it's all about the fucking cat

!!!content warning!!!
!!!scary!!! 

Full spoilers for Obsession (2026) you have been WARNED now let me get this off my chest

In Favor Of Repetition

It bears repeating.

In Cath Celdaenn, there are two kinds of dungeons: forts and temples. The former belongs to a warlord (or headless army; or upstart band of celds) and throbs with activity; the latter belongs to a saint and is still as permafrost. In the former, fight, steal, destroy, sing; in the latter, move silently and be perfectly polite.

In Wheel of Horses, there are two kinds of dungeons: vaults and ships. The former contain ancient and valuable things, long buried, suddenly unsealed. The latter fall from the sky and break into thousands of pieces. Both are swarmed by scavengers, who are in turn devoured by devils.

In HELLUVA STARSTUCK RAILBOSS, there are two kinds of dungeons: lobbies and hives (basically a demon's house). The former are corporate liminalia with giant monsters walking around for no good reason; you go here to conduct business, like to get a passport or smth. The latter are severely inhabited by demons and full of kitschy crap; you go here to steal said kitschy crap.

In Girls Like Us, there are two kinds of dungeons: clubs and trespassing.

In the time zones, there are exactly 24 dungeons.

In the Doggerlands, there is one dungeon: the basement (which bleeds into the attic and the closet).

The 5e Conversion Nobody Asked For

Below is a (conspicuously incomplete) 5e conversion of my frankenstein glog class, in a sort of inverted deusian mode.

I'm not sure what I'll use it for; sometimes my projects serve no one, not even myself.

 

[LAYOUT CREATED WITH HOMEBREWERY] Design discussion below. 

 

The first and most obvious hurdle when converting to 5e is the class length. GLOG classes have, for the most part, four abilities. The 5e barbarian has 16, 20 if you count the subclasses separately. Filling 20 levels takes a lot of text! (you can see I'm still four abilities short of a full set) 

I knew I wanted the frankenstein to be some kind of tank, so I used the barbarian as a base. Setting aside subclasses, the 5e martials mostly follow this pattern:

• important mechanic at level 1 and 2 (rage! reckless attack!)
• level 3 subclass ability
• level 5 extra attack
• level <11 third fun mechanic (brutal critical!)
• some late game upgrades to previous abilities 
• bunch o cruft to smooth out the combat math

sidebar: I rarely write "balanced" classes, but I know it's important to 5e play culture to pursue balanced combat, so I did a bit of research on the current homebrew scene and their expectations. I'm asking if I should take my shoes off before I enter your home. This is arguably my most culturally sensitive post.

The takeaway is that you don't really need 20 good ideas to write a 5e class: you need three, and a willingness to crib a bunch of sauceless ones from the rest of the players handbook.

Placing abilities in the level 5-15 range was especially tricky. Martials start needing more tools to counter save-or-suck effects around level 9, but abilities like mad science and speak with head can't come too late or they won't see play. When writing glog I like to introduce all the central mechanics by template B, and just start fucking around for C and D; but if i come up with a funny idea for a D template, I find myself trying to fit it into B so it's more likely to see play. A similar concept applies in this format

Here I strayed from the path: I didn't fully embrace the relentless rages and slippery minds of dnd design, in part because without playtesting I didn't have a good sense of what holes needed filling (you don't end up at an ability like diamond soul without rigorous combat-sim-ing)

jason chan

The subclasses were really easy to write: as deus has observed, 5e subclasses and glog classes have the same "four fun ideas" structure. I suspect this is why fifthdragon's 5e subclass conversions work so seamlessly: the core class chassis is the really wonky part of 5e design, needing to be conceptually stripped down AND stuffed full of extra mechanics.

My favorite is the undead (ofc, it hews closest to my concept for the original frankenstein): its charge mechanic was on the base chassis for a while before i realized it wasn't one of the three central mechanics.

My second favorite is the construct, which i fell in love with aesthetically but couldnt quite crack mechanically. They're a stalker assassin(????) puppet murder doll goddammit i forgot to rename their abililties w/e fuck it post that shit

goals for a more complete writeup:

• a lifepath or background table (i like player aids that are a little game-y and aren't massive blocks of text)
• +1/2 subclass abilities? (they're more fun to write than the base class, and it would be cool if the murder doll had a "cracked face" ability of some kind)
• table of interesting starting limbs (5e equipment tables are pretty open ended but a toolbox class deserves smth more specific, with like lockpick hands and pogo feet)

Your Only Move Is (GLOG Class: Hustler)

 

HUSTLER
Start with: Two weapons (see below)
+2 Techniques per template
A - Combo
B - Like a Book
C - Yomi
D - Hustle

A: Combo
Whenever you roll to deal damage, you may reroll the damage to begin a combo.

• If the new amount exceeds your last damage roll, it becomes the damage dealt. You may repeat this process to extend the combo.
• If the new amount is equal to the current damage, you drop the combo and can't reroll again.
• If the new amount is below the current damage, you drop the combo AND get punished: your target gets a free hit on you.

Example: You hit for 3 with a sword (d8). You extend and this time roll a 5. You've now landed a 2-hit combo and dealt 5 damage total.

You can freely swap items between your hands, pockets, stowed inventory, and immediate surroundings in the middle of your combo.

Keep track of your longest combo, for bragging rights if nothing else.

 

B: Like a Book
If you know someone well enough, you can read them.

First, declare three nontrivial facts you know about them. Next, declare an action. You learn how your target would immediately react to your action. (Basically ask "If I do X, what will they do in response?")

You can read someone in response to dropping your combo on them, negating your last roll; or to reduce their incoming damage to you by d12.

If you are mistaken in one of your nontrivial facts, the information you get from your read will also be mistaken. (Noble gm, lie thru your teeth!)

You can't do this again until you meditate for an hour, learn three new things about them, or crit them.

 

C: Yomi
You can read mysterious levers, magic items, empty hallways, dead bodies, and other non-living things.

You still need to declare three nontrivial facts. ("The sword is made of gold" is trivial, because you can observe it without prior context. "The sword belonged to Juan Guerrera" is better. "This room is an altar to Hel." You get the idea.)

When reading hallways, levers, and other dungeon features, you may choose to read the dungeon itself.

When reading a corpse, you learn how they would have reacted if they were still alive. ("If I did X, what would they have done in response?")

 

D: Hustle
You deal additional damage equal to the length of your current combo. (i.e. if you are rolling to extend a two-hit combo, you add +2 damage to the result.) (Yes, you can now deal theoretically infinite damage.)

You also get a free read against lower level fighters.

Weapons
If your gm is cool they'll let you use these for other classes too.

1. Ninja pot pourri (d4) — 20 shuriken/kunai/caltrops/noisemakers/bladed fans/etc. hidden all over your person. You can throw up to 1 + [templates] of them at a time.
2. Unarmed strikes (d6) — Your bare hands, feet, elbows, knees, and forehead. Intense training has made them resistant to heat, cold, electricity, and gentleness.
3. Katana (d10) — The sharpest of all swords (which deal a mere d8). With each strike, you can teleport behind your target.
4. Lunar Arc (d6) — Silvery bow. Pins clothes to walls. Deals d8 when bathed in moonlight.
5. Flames (d6 per template) — From your own mouth. Reload by eating spicy food.
6. Tome (d6) — On your third hit in a combo, cast a spell at +1MD for free:
1. Frost — [sum] damage, doubled against fire types.
2. Skull — Conjure [sum] floating spectral skulls. Opportunistically bite those who get too close for 1 damage and then vanish (basically a "pool" of damage you can add to your attacks).
3. Boost — Send yourself flying [sum] x 10' in any direction.
4. Trance — Until combat ends, [sum] targets have +1 to hit and damage and hear a battle rhythm that allows them to communicate wordlessly and instinctually at any distance.
7. Bone Claws (d6/d6) — Schlorp out of your wrists, dealing d6 damage to you.
8. Orb (d4) — Floating telekinetic runed stone sphere. Obeys your thoughts. Can exert as much force as one of your arms.
9. Pistolfoot (d6) — 10' VERTICAL LEAP KICK BIRDS (& birdlike beafts wink nudge) OUT THE AIR
10. Lasso (d6) — Can crack as a whip or wrangle a varmint from afar.
11. Bioelectricity (up to d6) — Zaps out of your palm. The target becomes charged, taking or dealing +d6 damage from or with a metal weapon, once.
12. Phantom limb (d6) — Replaces your dominant hand. Deals damage by aging its victims that many years.
13. Princess (d4/d4) — A willful and fearless animal. Spend your attack to command her. Deals d6s against creatures her size, like gnomes and squirrels.
14. Slab of iron (d12) — A piece of metal too huge and unwieldy to be called a sword. -4 to hit.
15. Orcaxe (d8) — d12 against orcoid body plans. 
16. Boulder (varies) — Torn out of the ground or wall, as available. Deals d4/d6/d8/d10/d12, depending on how many slots heavy it is. A brick is a 1-slot boulder.
17. Revolver (2d6) — Six-shooter. Figure out how to reload it.
18. Mist clone jutsu (varies) — Roll damage twice and take the higher. Clone dies in a single hit, can't dodge, and is created with no equipment. Fleeting sentience.
19. Fender (d12) — You turn into a car and hit people with yourself. Take all the damage you deal.
20. Everything else (d4) — Anything you can get your hands on counts as an improvised weapon.