DC20

I was going to throw this in a random Discord channel. Then I remembered I have a dedicated place for screaming into the void.

This is an ugly post. If you respect me as a creative, maybe skip this one.

THERE ARE NO NEW IDEAS IN THIS POST

Below are 8 styles for Loch's Duelist.

BE WARNED! All of them are remixes of styles found in the original post or here or here. I refuse to do any more work than I have to!!! I want to play with stolen content!! I am a lazy lazy man!!!!

Each style can be learned for free if you belong to the right House. (i have left the styles unlabeled as a fun little puzzle, and certainly not out of laziness.)

Ψ - Hellenitsu
The “ultimate combat style for gentle folk”, invented by Lady Hadford Hellen after three years abroad in the far Western colony of Badasqua. Eventually perfected by beating the shit out of Eldon street toughs until she was satisfied; she was arrested twelve times in the process.
You may have learned it from a Hellenist at a party, or from one of her self-defense manuals.

1. Stance: Sovereign Style – You parry attacks from other fighters with a d8. Fighters can’t save against your techniques.
2. Technique: Umbrella – When you land an attack, you may yoink whatever they’re holding out of their hands. Fighters get a save.
3. Technique: Overcoat – When you parry an attack, you may ensnare their weapon in a cloak or other piece of clothing, disarming them. Fighters get a save.
4. Technique: Roundhouse Kick – You may forgo both of your attacks to aim a big ol’ kick at their big ol’ head. If it hits, you deal exactly 8 damage and knock your opponent away or prone. Fighters and massive foes may save to keep their footing.

Ψ - Catholic
The palace style of Catlan. Adheres to their strict moral code of self-preservation (you belong to your father, mother, and God before yourself, so it is your responsibility to protect their investment). Defensive, sometimes overly so, but capable of great cruelty. Requires a small dagger in the offhand.
You may have learned it from a sword-chaplain, or from a small sky-blue book.

1. Technique: Quick Step – You may dodge a single attack flawlessly.
2. Stance: Control – You parry with a d8 and can’t be disarmed.
3. Stance: Punishment – You deal +2 damage to anyone who has tried to harm you or someone you are sworn to protect.
4. Stance: See Guilt – Shame, guilt and embarrassment appear to you as blue-black smoke.

Ψ - Bear Standard
A dramatic two-handed style. Originally developed for killing bears, later stigmatized by its association with executioners in the post-Glorian eras.
You may have learned it from an executioner, or from a standing stone in rural West-of-Spine.

1. Technique: Ambush – When attacking a target that can’t see you, you have advantage and deal double damage.
2. Stance: Walk Lightly – You are invisible in foliage and leave no footprints.
3. Stance: Eat Well – You deal +2 damage to animals and wild beasts. When you kill an animal, the meat will be tender and delicious.
4. Technique: Mercy – When you hear someone say the words “please kill me now”, you may instantly kill them, no save.

Ψ - Low Brasilian
The infamous sword-style of the McIlleigh Company, intercontinental mercenaries who quashed uprisings in all of the Doggerlands’ colonies. Sometimes called “Killy-killy” by those with black senses of humour.
You might have learned it from a McIlleigh, or from a bloodstained confessional.

1. Technique: Rose – If you miss an attack, you may flourish and immediately move 15’ in any direction.
2. Technique: Carnation – Before you attack, your sword blooms with harsh red weirdlight – an enemy must save or be blinded.
3. Stance: Careful Analysis – You can See HD and See AC.
4. Stance: Manhunter – You deal +2 damage to humans. The scars of your weapons ache – the pain intensifies when you can see your victim, alerting them to your presence.

Ψ - The Method
Invented in the Shaylese wars by an anatomist-slash-evolutionist-slash-cannibal-expat named Shago. He was tasked with developing the perfect killing arts; allegedly, he learned how to turn a pile of meat into a living person, then performed the procedure in reverse.
You may have learned it from a veteran of the Southern Offense, or from a roan-bound journal.

1. Stance: Efficiency – When you hit two successful attacks on the same target, you can make another for free.
2. Technique: Humerus – When making an attack, you can lash out violently – target must save or have one of their arms (your choice) disabled for 1d6 days. You can fix that arm with a firm handshake.
3. Technique: Sudden Cut – You draw your sheathed sword and immediately make one attack. You can do this before initiative rolls.
4. Technique: Obliterate Dead – Obliterate a dead body; it cannot be identified by any means. Everyone who sees this happen must save or cower in fear. You can do this right as you land a killing blow.

Ψ - Lament
Discrete cloak-fighting style popularized by Irma of West Ordea, who attributed its invention to a fallen angel (she was, like her countrymen, a Paradisiac zealot). Practitioners of the style are employed by heads of House to quietly neutralize assassins at high society events. Nobles who study this style are thought paranoid. Requires a cloak or cape of fine quality.
You may have learned it from a very fancy bodyguard, or from a tome that fell from the sky.

1. Technique: Clean the Blade – If you parry or avoid an attack with a weapon, you can wipe the weapon clean on your cloak to remove poison, oil, rust, and so on. If the weapon was magic, its magical properties transfer to your cloak.
2. Technique: Charcuterie – You can sacrifice food or drink in your hand or on a nearby table to parry with d12. If someone gets food or drink on them from this, it will be the attacker.
3. Technique: Waltz – Before you attack, you may trade places with someone in arm’s reach.
4. Stance: Guardian – You may parry attacks directed at anything within arm’s reach.

Ψ - Volpe
An elegant, showy style, favored by criminals and rakes. The name belongs to a legendary thief from Algodoré, who has evaded capture, old age, and even death for several centuries.
You might have learned it from a retired footpad in a smoky room, or from a loose sheaf of papers.

1. Technique: Daylight Robbery – When you could riposte, you can instead take an item from an enemy’s inventory.
2. Technique: The Goad – When you make a successful attack, you can embarrass the target (such as by cutting your monogram into their clothes) - enraged, they will attack you next round if able. Fighters may save against this.
3. Stance: Defense in Motion – While moving, you have +2 AC and can parry arrows and bullets.
4. Technique: Call & Response – You may use another fighter’s technique immediately (at most one round) after they do.

Ψ - Flying Crocodile Kung Fu
A traditionally barehanded style from the Royce, the origins of which remain shrouded in mystery.
You may have learned it from a enthusiastic Royalist, or from a half-dozen half-translated scrolls.

1. Stance: Always Armed – Your unarmed strikes deal double damage.
2. Stance: Stolen Flight – You weigh as much as an eagle so long as you hold your breath.
3. Technique: From Above – You may make a free attack with advantage against a target whose head is below you.
4. Technique: Death Roll – You may forgo an attack to deal d10 damage to anything you’re holding with both hands. Massive foes may save for half damage.
   

flying crocodile kung fu

 

Last True Mouthpiece (GLOG Class: Ichabod)

When a person is put to death, after the verdict is read and the headsman’s sword falls, the body may stand again, full of the howling voice of God. This phenomenon is called the Mercy, and it is how the Church collects ichabods.

Ichabods bear none of the responsibility for their crimes prior to decapitation. This is because, during the Mercy, all the sin in their body rushes to their head (or perhaps sin always lived in the head, hiding between the teeth and above the soft palate. The Church is divided, as always.) They often go on to become high-ranking Church members.

The Mercy is the last of God’s miracles that the Rationalists consistently fail to explain. (No one buys the Mouveing Humours hypothesis.) It is irrefutable proof that God still has his eye on the Doggerlands.

* * *

This is the fourth class for the Victorian setting collab I'm working on with Noblesse Goblige, the same setting as last week's Sleuth. It's mostly stolen from Skerples’ Paladin of the Word.

It's all a big WIP, I just gotta get it offa my brain for now ya dig

* * *

ICHABOD
Start with: cult symbol; little red journal; equally headless horse
+1 MD per template
A - Beloved, Beheaded, The Voice
B - Speak with Dead
C - Speak with Everything
D - Ten Commandments

A: Beloved
Pious Doggerlanders respect and trust you, so long as you don’t (openly) harm people who don’t seem to deserve it. Everyone assumes you are good unless you give them a reason to believe otherwise.

A: Beheaded
You’ve been beheaded, and yet live. You are undead and mute. You are not blind or deaf.

For a princely sum you can be fitted with an array of brass horns, thru which you can “speak” in mournful honks.

Your head is out there, also undead, full of hate and sin and criminal intent. If you’re on good terms with the Church, they may let you keep it. Otherwise, it's in a Decapitorium somewhere. If your head is destroyed, you die.

A: The Voice
By His will, you walk; with His voice, you speak.

You can command others.

Command – You shout a [dice]-word command. Another person that can hear and understand you must Save or obey.

If you know their true, full name, they get -4 on their Save.

If you have gone at least a full day without using command, they get -2 on their Save. A full week, month, year, and decade each give an additional -2 to Save, up to -10.

A poorly phrased command can have unexpected effects. Commanding a dying man to LIVE!!! might cause more problems than it solves.

B: Speak with Dead
You can command corpses, briefly animating them with the same voice that moves your lungs.

C: Speak with Everything
You can command all things, even inanimate objects. You could command a tree to give you its fruit or a grave to exhume a corpse.

D: Ten Commandments
Your commands last forever, or until you lift them, with no additional Saves after the first. You may have up to ten commands active simultaneously. 

 

Names of God
Divided between and jealously guarded by the Houses as cultic secrets (the Church has tried, and failed, to unify the Cults of Man, to disastrous results).

You learn a cult’s name by being initiated in all of their mysteries. Learning more is politically awkward, but it can be done.

[these are extremely WIP]

1. The Cult of Eldon operates within the City of Eldon and worships the god Eldon. They’re city planners following convoluted infrastructural rituals. As the oldest cult, they jealously guard The First Name; if you know it, your commands are two words longer, and cannot be shorter than three words.
   Their Decapitorium is in Eldon.
2. The River Cults are dedicated to individual members of an interconnected pantheon. Educated persons are familiar with their myths in the forms of famous oratorios, which the cults begrudgingly accept. As the largest cult(s), they jealously guard The Family Name; if you know them, you can command crowds.
   Their Decapitorium is in Cândyf.
3. The Cult of the Armistice was born from the teachings of the wandering prophet Panin, who many believe to have been God in disguise. They preach peace and internationality. As a foreign cult, they jealously guard The Strange Name; if you know it, you can command creatures that don’t share a language with you.
   Their Decapitorium is in Basqoté.
4. The Red Cult worships the god Aber. They gather on thunderstorm nights. Lady Erin Sookholme is a member; she often arrives at functions painted in animal blood (the Lady considers herself a tastemaker). As a storm cult, they jealously guard The Shout; if you know it, you can command the wind. When you do, your MD always return.
   Their Decapitorium is somewhere in the Nirbarber Wood.
5. [wip] 

wikipedia says headless saints are called cephalophores; i didn't like the name because it sounded too much like some kind of octopus wizard

how do i sneak carved pumpkins into this class? scrolls? magic totems? stylish accessories?

a fashionable ichabod

Eliminate the Impossible (GLOG Class: Sleuth)

jim steranko

Lord John Martin-Evos. The Duchess, Issandra Mything. Tellurus Oath. Mary fucking Majors.

 

Great minds actually have very little in common. 

 

* * *

 

This is the third class for the Victorian setting collab I'm working on with Noblesse Goblige, the same setting as last month's Psychopaladin. It was made in collaboration with Noblesse Goblige and Nothic's Eye, and also stolen from Numbers Aren't Real in large, jagged chunks.

 

This isn't just a detective class, although the influences are front and center. It's a catch-all for thinkers, inventors, scientists, renaissance men, egomaniacal intellectuals, soon-to-be-eaten-by-an-eldritch-horror professors, and so on.

 

The mysteries are a bit of a cheat - instead of introducing setting details organically, they're stashed in a player-facing document. Is this better? worse? I'm honestly not sure. its a draft anyway

* * *

 

SLEUTH
Start with: photographic memory; flawless timepiece worth 33g; incorruptible yet bumbling goon.
+1 Brains and +1 Language per template
A - Intellectual Authority, Deduction
B - Great Mysteries
C - Immune to illusions, disguises, and booby traps
D - Mentor, Immune to ego death
 

A: Intellectual Authority
You can walk around laboratories, college campuses and crime scenes unimpeded. No one will stop you from fucking around with dangerous and/or delicate artifacts and/or equipment; they assume you know what you’re doing.

 

Everyone has to call you your choice of doctor, inspector, professor, or some other appropriate honorific. Yes, even people who don’t know you. Yes, even the old gods. Yes, even your mum.
 

A: Deduction
If you consider two clues for a minute, you have a revelation about how they are (or aren't) connected. Every time you do this, Save with Brains or suffer a splitting migraine, preventing you from thinking clearly until you rest or self-medicate.

B: Great Mysteries
Each Season, choose one of the Great Mysteries to pursue (see below). You spend sleepless nights turning it over in your mind. You can only pursue one Great Mystery at a time, in your obsessive way.

 

As long as you are pursuing a Great Mystery, you have its cantrip. If you solve it, gain the cantrip permanently.

 

The list of Great Mysteries is not exhaustive.

 

D: Mentor
Those who can’t do, teach. You are the exception that proves the rule.

 

If you spend a season tutoring someone else, they gain 200XP OR begin pursuing a Great Mystery (your choice). If you choose the Mystery, they gain its cantrip for as long as they like.

 

When one of your students solves a Great Mystery, gain its cantrip permanently.

 

8 Great Mysteries

1. What separates men from beasts?
Evolution! Hah! That John, what funny ideas he has! But men are not mere beasts, no matter what the radical phylogenists say – and the proof is inside of you! Nurse, scalpel!
Cantrip: You can learn someone’s name by tasting their blood. This works on more than just people – for example, you can learn the make and model of an automobile by tasting its brake fluid.

2. Who discovered the Doggerlands?
Each House claims the whole of the Doggerlands as their ancestral home. Of course, your House was first to set foot on its salt-caked shores – but how do you prove it?
Cantrip: You can tell the exact time since an object was made or broken by smelling it.

3. Who stole the Philosopher’s Stone?
Ever since the Night of Tarnished Truth – the greatest heist in recorded history – the Catlani have been slowly draining this country of all its gold reserves. Your ancestors figured out alchemy a long time ago, so why are you still in debt?
Cantrip: You can smell gold through walls and inside locked chests and shallow graves. You can smell especially ludicrous quantities three miles upwind.

4. Where did the dragons go?
The Ayt speak of dragons on the docks. You didn’t believe them, until you saw today’s paper: dragon bones discovered, half-buried on Mither’s Finger. Imagine the headlines if you found one – a dragon, that is – and put it in Eldon Zoo where it belongs.
Cantrip: Your pipe is ALWAYS lit.

5. Where does color come from?
Once, the world was monochrome, as seen in old photographs and ancient stone reliefs. Now there are nauseating greens and pinks and robins-eggs and chartreuses and and a
Cantrip: You see in silversight, which illuminates fingerprints, footprints, other peoples’ line-of-sight, and thieves with less templates than you.

6. Who puts the stars in the sky?
Every few months, a new star appears in the sky, to astrologer’s delight... and sailor’s chagrin.
Cantrip: Your eyes are both magnifying glasses and telescopes. They switch every hour.

7. Who is Fate (and Why does she hate you)?
The colonies have fallen. The sea is receding. The Houses are crumbling to ruin. You keep losing your socks, and that dancer from Shakies isn’t returning your missives.
Cantrip: You can learn if someone is your enemy by kissing them.

8. How does one sail backwards?
There are five winds – the four Cardinals, and Time. The former have been stalwart allies of the Doggerlands, except the lazy and sluttish West wind. The latter has not.
Cantrip: You can see exactly eleven minutes and six seconds into the past by covering all but one of your eyes.

Six Layers Deep (GLOG Class: Psychopaladin)

liviu mihai

The mind is a house party, so said Dr. Anne⚿Helfurther⚿. Hundreds of guests are in attendance, the legions of daemons which guide personality and action, but the chaos is constrained by the prescripts of the event itself. Those on the guest list are bound by etiquette, but others can act freely. Herein lies the source of madness- an uninvited guest.

 * * *

On the streets of Pardon, fashionable ladies buy foreign corpses for their parlor rooms. Certain preservation techniques and careful attention to humidity keeps them from rotting on the table; thick perfume keeps the room from filling with death-stink. It's all perfectly sanitary.

When a fashionable lady hosts a party, the corpse in the parlor room is unwrapped and inspected. The fashionable ladies in their fashionable gloves poke and prod at it. They ooo and aaa at its many piercings: those Ouralian women are mad, they titter, how do they even eat with holes in their stomachs?

(on 6th and Freytors, a savvy corpsevendor carves intricate scars into a boring cadaver)

Then the fashionable ladies call a psychonaut, who helps them step into the corpse's dreams. They see the reedboats on the River of Seven Venoms. They walk like tourists on antimony shores. They break for tea in the shadow of the second largest moon ziggurat. They have a grand old time.

Sometimes, a fashionable lady dies in a corpse-dream. It's slightly less common than an alligator attack. It's tragic, yes, but people still keep pet alligators.

 * * *

Psychotherapy is as much a martial art as it is a science. Rogue daemons are rarely keen to vacate their hosts, and never fight a straightforward brawl, so a paladin must be ready for anything.

(This is the second class for the Victorian setting collab I'm working on with Nobless Goblige, the same setting as last month's Vampire. There are eight noble Houses, with eight different bloods. It's a whole thing.)

PSYCHOPALADIN
Start with: any weapon; copper-lined vest (as chain); 6 vials of laudanum (3/slot); practitioner’s license; a thick skull; totem, pocket-sized.
+1 to Hit and +1 Save per template
A - Group Psychonautics, Light Sleeper
B - See Spirits, +1 Daemon
C - Self-Assessment
D - Smite

If you aren’t high, drunk, dreaming, or otherwise in an altered state of mind, you lose access to all of your Psychopaladin features except Group Psychonautics.

A: Group Psychonautics
With fifteen minutes and enough drugs to share, you can transport any number of willing people and objects into the dreams of another willing person or corpse.

People are always somewhere inside their own dreams.

If you die in a dream, you die in real life. Likewise for injury, mutations, treasures, and so on. Dreams are dungeons, basically.

A: Light Sleeper
You can keep track of your surroundings even when your consciousness is altered or elsewhere. You can surface from a dream at will, so long as you have your totem.

You sleep with your eyes open. 

B: See Spirits
You can see spirits of all stripes, which are usually invisible. You can see a wizard’s prepared spells, perched on their shoulder like overgrown crows.

This is how you notice the daemon on your shoulder. (see below)

C: Self-Assessment
You can transport yourself and others into your own dreams via psychonautics. This is one way to recruit more daemons.

D: Smite
With precise application of sudden blunt force trauma, you can dislodge daemons, spirits, ghosts, curses, spells, and humors from their containers, and forcibly manifest them in the waking world. The target must be willing, or fully immobilized, or you must roll 20+ to hit.

If you hit them with your head, you can force them into your dreams instead. This is another way to recruit more daemons.

d20 Daemons
Daemons start with 2HD, are ostensibly friendly, and whisper lots of (mostly bad) advice in your ear. They inform your personality, or are informed by it: philosophers are still debating this point. Other Psychopaladins can see and hear them, as well as certain sensitive types.

If you're on good terms with a daemon, it will let you cast it like a spell. If you do, roll their HD instead of MD.

1. Dolores – An orb of scarred flesh with five simian limbs. Melodramatic, romantic. Isn’t satisfied unless you’re constantly berating her. When cast, reduce the next damage you take by [sum].
2. Cambion – A black hare with human hands. Anxious, pleasure-seeking. Other daemons want nothing to do with her. When cast, establish a psychic link between yourself and up to [sum] targets, to share emotional states, sensations, and damage.
3. Evil Jack – An eight-fingered fist with a mouth in the palm. Tells you to kill everyone. Isn’t satisfied unless you hurt at least one person every day. When cast, make [highest] attacks. They can’t be nonlethal.
4. Frontalis – A wolf’s head with the eyes stitched shut. Political, smug, dumber than sand. Needs to be the smartest person thing in the room. When cast, witness what happened here exactly six (choose [dice]) seconds, minutes, hours, days, and/or years ago. Be warned: observing the past can change the present.
5. Titivillus – A wretched, puggish little man with blue skin and horns. Insufferable nerd. Openly resents you for having a social life. When cast, exchange the contents of two texts. If cast with two or more dice, one of those texts can be a painting, engraving, or similarly major work.
6. Vainglory – A kingly greatsword, constellated with rubies and emeralds, blunt as a brick. Prolix, gossipy, jealous, superlatively evil. Demands dramatic monologues. When cast, sharpen a blunt object; it loses its edge after dealing [sum] damage. He’s invisible to anyone who can’t see spirits, but that doesn’t mean he’s weightless.
7. Leviathan – A dead, stinking angler fish, chopped up like sashimi. Foul-mouthed, delusional. Demands you treat him like a KING, DAMMIT!!!! When cast, [sum] peasants, guards, soldiers, goons, or dumb animals follow your next order without question.
8. Hugo – A hanged policeman’s corpse. Has a black sense of humor. Fascists are attracted to him like flies to a… well, to a carcass. When cast, become immune to the law until you blink [sum] times.
9. Subclavius – An eagle with abs, biceps, and a cock. Commanding, paternal. Has deeply sexist and racist views which they expect you to share. When cast, perform a feat of strength as if you were [sum] strong men.
10. Yeqon – A chorus, in the Greek theater sense, of rats. Musical, critical, professionally distant. Reports on your imminent (imaginary) demise in the third person. When cast, give [sum] animals the ability to sing with Yeqon’s voice.
11. New World Order – A humming pyramid of black glass. Personable, poetic, utterly insane. Babbles incessantly about conspiracy theories, and makes your dreams weirder. When cast, fire a [sum] damage beam from each open eye; you’re blind in that eye for the rest of the day.
12. Agares – A crocodile-hawk with terribly human eyes. Merciful, thoughtful, pacifistic. Randomly trades places with her sister/alternate personality Agreas, who is her complete opposite and only speaks Daemonic (French). When cast, learn [sum] words in another language for a fleeting moment.
13. Monkey – A monkey-shaped hole in the world full of static and bad ideas. Wants all the things a monkey wants. Makes your body hair grow thicker and darker, just by existing. When cast, force any machine that can hear you to obey a [sum] word command.
14. Kosmos – A broken marble bust of a handsome woman, draped in multicolored silk. Educated in the social rituals of other, inferior cultures. Disdains all displays of genuine emotion. When cast, turn [dice] of your body parts into immobile stone until you laugh.
15. Zelos – A ticking apocalypse clock. Fatalistic, raving, but not unintelligible. The only thing that cheers her up is the cold eventuality of complete anthropogenic catastrophe. When cast, rewind an object’s position and state to where it was [sum] seconds ago.
16. Beatrix – A skeletal amber finger. Replaces your trigger finger on your dominant hand. Only speaks in the presence of royalty, whom she hates. When cast, automatically reload a weapon the next [sum] times it is fired.
17. Paracelsus – An undulating fungal mass, constantly changing its shape and color. Fidgety, easily bored. Will point at things and demand you lick them to find out what they taste like. When cast, create an illusion which affects [dice] senses.
18. Indicis – A bone-and-skin dreamcatcher. Feral, reactive, barely sapient. Hates moving at “dungeon speed”. When cast, emit an ear-splitting scream that reveals shapes and movement up to [dice] rooms away.
19. Ladyfingers – A sourceless shadow puppet cast by clawed hands. Hates when you spend money, unless you’re doing it to make money. Full of get-rich-quick schemes. When cast, teleport [sum] slots of things your shadow is touching into your hands.
20. Xiomara – A disembodied stork’s wing. Understands you, gives actual good advice. Will never give up on you. When cast, nothing happens.

fuck it, tag yourself