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)