Chaos In Completion (GLoG: Wizard Chassis)

Working Old-School, Bear With Me
Image From Tumblr

The more time that's passed with this blog, the more I've become enthralled in exploring the GLoG design space. This is all very new to me, and I'm not quite sure how it works, but I'm going to try anyhow. Maybe I'll make a GLoG Hack of my own!

This post is gonna suck, so don't take it super seriously. I'll make something actually original Soon.

Inspired, like everyone else, by The Legend Himself. Also, a shoutout to The Nothic's Eye for catching my attention so well that I wanted to rip them off.

THE CLASSICAL WIZARD

+1 Magic Dice per template (Including Deltas)

Starting Skill: 1) Runecrafting 2) Alchemy 3) Mathematics 4) Astronomy 5) Literary Studies 6) Divination

Starting Items: Per Wizard School, otherwise, Pointy Hat, Extravagant Clothing, Magic Wand or Staff or Orb, two pieces of Wizardly Ephemera (see table at post's end).
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A – Wizard School, Signature Appearance, Arcane Foci

B – Book O' Lore

C – Counterspell

D – Prepared For All

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Δ - Apprentice

Δ - Familiar

Δ - Tower

Spellbook
You begin play with a Spellbook, which fills an Inventory Slot. It looks however you wish.

A Spellbook has enough space to hold 5 Spells (+1 per Template). While in possession of your Spellbook, you can spend an hour of grubwork to replace any number of spells you have memorized with those in your spellbook or vice versa. You can also copy spells found in scrolls directly to your Spellbook in this way.

If a Spellbook is lost, so are all the spells stored in it.
Replacing a Spellbook, or buying a new one, costs 50 Gold.
You can upgrade your Spellbook with embellishments, magical inks or pages, and additional spell space. 

Wizard School
A Wizard's Spell List, Perk, Drawback, Mishaps, and Dooms are all decided by their School.
Should hopefully work with any GLoG Wizard School.

Signature Appearance
You eat, sleep, speak and fuck like a Wizard. You also dress like one. Whether in flowing robes or a gown of glistening patterns, others will immediately identify you as a practitioner of the arcane. Consequently, you've learned to spot others much the same, allowing you to identify magic users and their tools with a gaze, even if others find it difficult to ascertain.

While not as important as your Arcane Foci, being caught outside your classic appearance would be embarrassing. It's also not very helpful, and MD are returned on a roll of 1 while improperly dressed. You keep a lot of important things in those pockets!

Also, just kidding about that first part. Wizards don't have sex.

Arcane Foci
Your arcane foci are the most important part of your wizardly repertoire because it's through them that you can cast your spells. Wizards can only be attuned to one at a time, but carrying a spare wand or staff with you never hurts, especially in a pinch. 

While attuned to your arcane foci, which takes the equivalent of an hour's rest, you gain +1 MD and a 1/day charge for a single spell you've learned.  You can expend the charge to cast that spell without using Magic Dice, instead using a number of free [dice] equal to your Wizard templates. If applicable, you take the average [sum] of those dice rounded up. You can change the applied spell when you reattune to an arcane focus.

Book O' Lore
Your Spellbook serves not only as storage for your spells, but also as a repository of information. Whenever you make a knowledge Skill check, you can burn 1 MD to subtract [sum] from the roll. 

Counterspell
You can lessen or undo the effects of a spell cast at you or your allies, by declaring you would like to Counterspell, then choosing a spell with an opposed effect - Wall of Water vs. Fireball, Alarm vs. Sleep, or Incite Anger vs. Charm Person, that sort of thing. 

If you have a Spell in your repertoire that is an effective Counterspell, then subtract your [dice]/[sum] from the [dice]/[sum] of the attacking Spell.

Prepared For All
You are always ready for the trials at hand. You can cast spells straight from your Spellbook, or from a Scroll without burning it. You declare this at the start of a given round, and cast it at the end of the round—it fizzles if you take any damage in that round.

Additionally, for the first round of combat, you cannot roll Mishaps or Dooms.

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Δ - Apprentice
Spend up to a year training a commoner in the art of magic — then send them on a quest

Upon your Apprentice's return (2-in-6 with half year, 4-in-6 with full year), they become a level 1 Wizard with a template of your choice (preferably your own, spells rolled randomly). Your Apprentice may follow you on your quests, or be sent along their own journey, becoming a powerful Wizard in their own right.

So long as you have at least one living student (including the Apprentice of your Apprentice), your wizened body glows. You grow a magnificent beard of silvery hair, and choose two spells in your mind or Spellbook: whenever you cast these spells, you may choose to do so with +1 MD, for free.

Δ - Familiar
Convince an animal, small outsider, or other spirit creature to make a pact with you.

You become that familiar's patron — you can swap senses with them, grant it your spells and MD to cast from a distance, and communicate telepathically. If you give your familiar a Spell or MD, you don't have them until your familiar uses it.

Once a familiar has cast a given spell, it is lost until the next morning. MD expended are always burned. Your familiar may serve as a decent mount if large enough and willing.

Δ - Tower
Take possession of a comfortable defensive position. This could be a house, tower, or any other amenable locale. Then, stock it with 500 Gold Pieces worth of treasure and equipment.

You can now perform research in your private sanctum, and are reasonably protected from the elements and living dangers. You are always aware of creatures nearby or within your private sanctum, and can always find your way back no matter how lost you are.

you can also build a scrying room, crystal ball and all, which you can use to observe distant locales. (1 MD, 2 MD if you've never seen the location before).

Spellcasting
Spellcasting follows the MD rules.
You gain two Spells from your Spell List whenever you level up, representing research and grappling with the deeper mysteries of arcana.

If you roll a duplicate spell, move up or down the list until you get a spell you haven't got yet.

Roll the following Dice:
Level 1 – The first spell on your list, and roll 1d6 for the other.
Level 2 – 2d8
Level 3 – 2d10
Level 4 - Choose three spells from your list. 

Wizardly Ephemera (Once Again, Thanks Boss)
1. A Spare Hat, which is slightly less impressive than your primary one.

2. Monogrammed Handkerchief. Filthy, but classy.

3. Folding Sanctum, an overly classy name for a tent with lead-lined fabric. Keeps out most prying eyes.

4. A Handful of Planar Dirt. Gotta be useful for something, right? Choose or randomly determine the plane of origin.

5. Spellbook Case, which keeps it nice and dry in inclement conditions.

6. Calligraphy Set. For inscribing scrolls and sending letters.

7. Tarot Cards, featuring such standouts as The Lady, The City, The Spire and The Wheel. Can be used for minor divinations - roll 1d6. The closer to one the result, the worse the cards think it’ll go.

8. Telescoping Tea Set. Fills a single slot, contains tea, cups and self-heating-kettle for eight.

9. Magnifying Glass. Don’t look into portals with it!

10. Portal-Finder’s Pamphlet. Contains the locations of portals to three random planes. There’s a 2-in-6 chance that the portals are now gone, or were never there in the first place.

11. Flintlock Pistol. A light gun, for when you’re all out of spells. Comes with 20 bullets and a tiny powder-horn, for a total of two slots.

12. Address Book, which contains the stated addresses (probably decoys) of three Wizard Pen Pals, who you could write to in a pinch (or just to check in).

13. A Case of Dispaterian Cigars, which stink of hellfire for everyone but the smoker, who feels pleasant megalomania while smoking them.

14. Statuette of a Horse. Was, at one point, a Figurine of Power, but one of the legs broke off. It would be immoral to actually activate the poor thing.

15. Bastard Cat. Not all cats are bastards, that’s a mean stereotype. This one, however, very much is. Takes up two slots if you have to carry it.

16. Three Part Folding Wand. Newfangled! Contains 1MD and a random spell, but if you roll 6 when using it, the wand fucking explodes.

17. Chunk of Spirestone. A slot of chalky grey stone. Can’t be affected by magic. Good for chucking at other wizards’ heads, or as a paperweight.

18. 3d6 Coins from Various Planes. A mix of Hellmarks, Sigillite Crowns, Gehennan Stingers, Heavenly Merts, and a bunch of random Prime-World garbage. Only worth 3d6 in Sigil, probably worth 1d6 anywhere else.

19. Notebook of Observations. Can store a single spell, as per a tiny spellbook. Contains observations surrounding a wizardly obsession, useless to anyone else.

20. A Curio!
        1. Gold Chain, covered in Terran runes. The bearer of this chain is entitled to be rescued by Earth Elementals, for free, from any one cave-in or unwilling burial.

        2. Declaration of Angelum, the legal status of being an Angel. Works great with the Heavenly Bureaucracy, who, if presented with this document, will be forced to acknowledge you as a minor Deva.

        3. Half-Bottle of Burning Rye, boiled up by Night Hags in the farthest edge of Krangath. Makes you immune to the effects of cold, very drunk, and also flammable, until you sleep it off.

        4. A Gold Crown, specifically, the crown of a tiny Prime-Material kingdom. That was a wild night.

        5. Rilmanic Dagger, perfectly balanced light weapon, to the extent that the principle carries over to the wielder - they can’t be knocked over or otherwise lose their footing.

        6. Empty Soul Jar, perhaps previously occupied by a Lich. You’ve got no damn clue how to get a soul into it, but it could definitely hold one…  

Making Cultures, Not Races

What Becomes Of Forgotten Knowledge?
'All Seeing' by Hector Mansilla

Culture is weird. 

I find it very hard to quantify cultural beliefs. That may be because it is flat-out impossible to boil down a complex system such as this to its foundational elements, which I don't necessarily believe, but it definitely proves challenging to imitate. The general sectioning of ideas that we call "culture" is so incredibly complex, so full of hypervariation, that even an amateur artist can handle what is effectively a bottomless chest of creativity. That difficulty seems to lie not in the department of numbers but in words. How does one form a culture? How does it come about in a way that is believable and not born from the seams of mockery?

If you do not intend to humiliate a group, 8 times out of 10, it will not be portrayed as such. I think that (far more often than some may believe) it is possible to tell whether a person is genuinely portraying a group as "bad" or "lesser" or if they are merely representing it. I also believe that you can describe a culture unfavourably even if it was not your intention, so definitely something to be aware of.

However, especially in fiction, sometimes the issue coalesces not in the portrayal of already-existent negativity but in the portrayal of culture as more than what it is. Culture is many things; it is representative of an individual's ideals, codifies a multitude of traits or features into identifiable groups, and can even serve as a microscope into more extraordinary truths. Through culture, we can identify ourselves within a community and, in turn, recognize what constitutes ourselves. 

If there is one thing that culture is not, it is race.

A Misunderstanding?

It should be stated that by no means is this a rampant issue. As more and more media has been published in film and literature, this odd contextualization of cultures as one big blob has begun to die down. Nevertheless, its presence is still felt, and some of the greatest works of our time have proven guilty of adjudicating its existence. From time to time, fantasy fiction predicates an idea that species persist off of mono-cultures—the elves and dwarves of Lord of The Rings, the Daleks of Doctor Who, and the many races of The Sword Coast in D&D—which inform their behaviour. All dwarves are trudging midgets with large beards who live deep within the earth, and all elves are ethereally beautiful aristocrats, deeply "attuned" with nature (wood elves) or snobbish of its creations (high elves), who wander the woodlands with longbows. 

This is in and of itself not a bad thing. The problem is when these ideas become assumptions of the norm rather than the individual. What comes to mind when you think of an elf? An orc? A human in fantasy fiction? A walking tree? Once these monoliths of culture become synonymous with the thing they symbolize, it becomes challenging to separate them again. Arnold Kemp over at Goblin Punch has a fantastic analysis of this problem here.  

So what can be done? If this issue holds the key to worse problems, how can we solve it? I don't know, not just because I think it still has some value but because I am looking for another solution. In designing cultures, not races, I wish to develop groups which stand against the grain of preconception. 

Of course, I'm bound to stumble and fall on the way down, and there is undoubtedly a fine line where culture and race intersect, but I see value in developing one separately from the other. Like faith, lore, and ideals, these totems can be set independently of one another, serving complimentary as a result.

Let's run through an example or two.

Art by Jessie Wu

Same Beginning, Same End

Unless you were grown in a vat or removed through cesarean (salutations, my fellow tumour babies), we were all born the same way. All human beings pop out of a womb after a couple of months, and in much the same way, we all eventually return to the earth. In this sense, we are all the same, but it is beyond this beginning and end that our differences arise. Everything from our genetic makeup to our surroundings to our cultural background differentiates us. 

In a group of a hundred people, the chance that two people share a birthday is nearly 100% (some argue that you can get >50% with as few as 23!). Imagine the fact that you share a birthday with somebody may just be the only similarity you have with them? 

Humanity as a species is ridiculously diverse. Ever since our ancestors scattered across the African continent and spread upon the rest of the world like lice, we've changed in nearly every way imaginable. Think of how many kinds of people there are, and not just in the visual sense? We have conquered entire landscapes—volcanos, canyons and island chains—for no reason other than a desire to live there. How much of your life do you think has been manipulated as a result of your living environment? Ever moved to a place that's nothing like where you grew up? Weird, huh? All aspects of our living experience—immigration examples notwithstanding—serve to teach us how to survive in that environment. Our customs, routines, and social norms act as how-to, informing us exactly how anybody stays in this place, especially the dominant majority. 

What would life be like if we all stuck around? What if humanity managed to construct a babel-esque structure, a leaning tower of pisa for communes, and we just evolved there instead? The issue with mono-cultures is that, in and of itself, the problem of settling, you cannot quell dissidents unless you first dispel free thought. An entire species living in a particular, interconnected location is bound to be made of dozens, if not hundreds, of different interacting groups of people. Sure, you can argue that it's unlikely you'll explore many of these groups in a story (or the author will simply focus only on the dominant majority), but there is absolutely value in depth. 

Ignoring questions of interracial and purely racist consequences, although intriguing and potentially significant, think of how a group can evolve only through their environment? In a tower-city surrounded by desert, how do you come about water? Is emphasis placed on the construction of aqueducts or mines? How does the every-man treat it? Is water a resource (at least somewhat) openly shared, for it is considered a necessity to all, or is it tightly regulated and/or hoarded? How do groups get around the tower, and is such transportation common? Are levels segregated?

Some of these questions may seem purely anecdotal, but they fulfill two objectives: to serve and to inform. What may be seen as "normal" to one faction may be reprehensible to another and openly preached by a third. Culture is not some magical background force that symbolizes the penultimate person; it is an evergreen, constantly changing power, which not only evolves with the group who created it but with the individual it seeds.

There's Lots More To Explore. I'll Be Back.
Art by Pieter Bruegel The Elder

 

DRUID: Circle of Steel

         

Telthona

    “Quiet...The Earth is Feeding...”

          ~Morrigan, Bearer of Tal’Drenaris

In times of war and desperation, where there is blood to be spilt and allies to be heeded, a most unlikely ally may arise from the woods. Druids of the Circle of Steel are powerful Ferromancers; primal sages of the earth itself and its metals, shaping mortal inventions to their whim in lieu of nature. Some Steel Druids become this way by losing everything, hatred in their hearts as the lasts of their forests burn. Others join armies or warbands, arguing in favour of the fauna they'll inevitably destroy. Corpses run dry and rot, weapons rust and return to the earth. War is inevitable, but nature prevails.

Circle of Steel

Your unique relationship with metals and your anachronism for war has benefited you, granting you access to certain spells. At 2nd level, you learn the mending cantrip. At 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th level you gain access to the spells listed for that level in the Circle of Steel Spells table.

Once you gain access to one of these spells, you always have it prepared, and it doesn't count against the number of spells you can prepare each day. If you gain access to a spell that doesn't appear on the druid spell list, the spell is nonetheless a druid spell for you.

Circle Spells

Druid Level	Circle Spells
3rd	Cloud of Daggers, Heat Metal
5th	Glyph of Warding, Spirit Guardians
7th	Fabricate, Find Greater Steed
9th	Animate Objects, Dominate Person

Warhound

You gain proficiency with martial weapons. Additionally, you no longer suffer any restrictions in regards to using equipment made of metal.

Archon’s Shape

Starting when you pick this circle at 2nd level, you may forge armour fit for a true guardian of the grove. As an action, you may expend a use of your Wild Shape to surround your body in magical plate metal, rather than transforming into a beast, which looks as you please. While this feature is active, you gain the following benefits:

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•Your AC becomes 17 + half your proficiency modifier (rounded down) if it were lower. You cannot benefit from a shield while in this form. If your AC is permanently reduced below 17 by an effect, your wild shape immediately ends.

•Whenever you cast a Druid spell of 1st level or higher that deals damage, you may change the damage type dealt with magical bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. 

•Whenever you deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, you may use your reaction to gain a number of temporary hit points equal to half the damage dealt. Once you have used this feature, you cannot do so again until you Wild Shape again. Leaving Wild Shape for any reason removes these hit points.

These benefits last for 10 minutes, or until you revert to your normal form as a bonus action.

Metallurgist

Starting at 6th level, whenever you or an allied creature you can see within 30 feet is targeted by a spell or weapon attack, you can transfer portions of the armour from your Archon's Shape to protect them. As a reaction, you may grant the target the benefits of the Shield spell against the triggering attack. Your AC while in your Archon's Shape is then reduced by 1, and you cannot use this feature again if it would reduce your AC below 17. Your AC returns to normal after you finish a long rest.

Forge the Blood Will

Starting at 10th level, whenever you cast a Druid spell of 1st level or higher that deals damage and hits, you may choose one of the following effects:

•Sculpt: One target of your choosing must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw or receive a culminative -1 detriment to AC for 1 minute. You then gain a +1 bonus to AC for the duration.

•Carve: One target of your choosing must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or begin bleeding profusely for 1 minute. Constructs and creatures that don't have blood automatically succeed on this saving throw. On a failure, the target has disadvantage on checks to maintain concentration and loses 2d4 hit points at the start of each turn. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of its turn, ending the effect on a success. If a creature is targeted by this feature again while under its effects, on a failure, the damage increases by 2d4.

You may use this feature a number of times equal to your Wisdom modifier (minimum 1), and you regain all uses after you finish a Long Rest.

Iron Warden

Starting at 14th level, you may perform a rite in order to guarantee your domain's control. You commit to a 1-day ritual in which you expend 500 gp worth of materials, attune to a mundane object (such as a necklace), and expend a spell slot of 5th level or higher. A Shield Guardian then rises from the materials used.

The Shield Guardian follows your verbal commands (no action required) and rolls for initiative independently of you. If you do not give the Shield Guardian a command, it defends itself from harm but otherwise performs no other actions. Additionally, When you expend the spell slot of 5th level or higher, pick a spell you know with a level equal to or less than the spell slot used from the Druid spell list. Your Shield Guardian may cast that spell once per day as its stored spell, using your spellcasting modifier in place of its own.

You may once have one Shield Guardian under your control at a time, and may command it so long as you have the object used to bind it on your person. Additionally, You cannot use the spell slot used to charge the Shield Guardian so long as it is active. You regain your expended spell slot whenever the guardian is reduced to 0 hit points, or you perform another 1-day ritual to replace it.