Fighter: Student of Many Styles

It's a fighter that develops in random directions, steered by the player.
This is not polished, it is minimum viable product. Only the barest thoughts have been given to balance. This might be overtuned. On the other hand, fighters should be good at fighting.
I think that you could take Parry, good with shields, the parry-improving technique, and wear heavy armour and you'll be REALLY hard to kill. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Or if you got extra reach, cleave, and finished with Kill The Mooks you'd be able to mow down weaklings like anything.

I can see some anti-synergies between some things: if you punish misses by attacking more, and attach a maneuver to each of your attacks, so the enemy tries to hit you and misses EVEN MORE,for more attacks... then is it good or bad for you to improve your maneuver so that it doesn't provoke enemy attacks? Same thing with a crit build vs Kill The Mooks.

I also note that it's quite possible to create a fighter that only ever gets one attack per round. That sorta feels wrong. But maybe that's OK.

 In short: if something in this feels wrong for you, it probably is wrong, and should be adjusted.

Chassis

A: 2 Fundamentals, 1 Technique, Attack +1
B: 1 Technique, Attack +1, Extra skill
C: 1 Fundamental, 1 Technique, Students
D: 1 Secret Art, 1 Swappable Technique

You begin with an interesting scar, two weapons OR a weapon and shield, medium armour, and a tome of esoteric fighting techniques.
You are proficient with all normal weapons and armour.
Starting Skill: 1. Mercenary 2. Foreign Parts 3. Monsters

Fundamentals

Each time you get a Fundamental, pick an item on this list.

• Weapon Notches: Weapons get better at 3, 10, 30, and 100 kills. You can take the same thing more than once.
  
• +1 attack
• +1 damage
• Extra thing
• Keen edge
• Parry: Or you can call it Stance. You have [2, 3, 4, 5] hp of overshields each round.
• Tactic master: When you hit an enemy, you can also make a maneuver against them (does not remove the normal chance of being hit)
  
• Cleave: When you kill an enemy or crit, you can make an extra attack.
• Good with Shields: Extra +1 Armour from shields, can always sunder for maximum
• The Good Power Attack: When you power attack, the penalty is only -2 rather than -4.
  

Technique

Each time you get a new Technique, roll TWICE on the list, and pick ONE to gain. If you get an entry you already have, reroll that one. I kinda want to be able to increase this chart to a D66, so I need 3 more ideas.

1. Head of John: Your head becomes indestructible. It's a good weapon.
2. Pattram Sword Hand: Your unarmed strikes are just like swords. Work out the specifics.
3. Horse Stance: You no longer get tired from walking or running any distance as long as you are not overencumbered.
4. Chan Style: No item you use as a weapon does less than 1d8 hp and you don't take penalties just for trying to use it (though it may only be good for one use if fragile). If you have a strength penalty to attack/damage, that's also ignored.
5. Swat Missiles: You can smack incoming missiles out of the air if you make a successful attack roll.
6. Protecc but also Attacc: If an ally is attacked by an enemy, both within your reach, you may make an attack against that enemy first.
7. First strike: When an enemy moves within your reach, you may make an attack against them immediately.
8. Infinite Tumble: Move past enemies or disengage without provoking attacks
9. Discliple of Guts: You learn how to carry and effectively use ridiculously oversized weaponry.
10. Punish Incompetence: When an enemy misses you, you may make an attack against them.
11. Keen. Your critical range expands by one.
12. Spellsword: Roll a random spell and gain one MD. You're good with spells now.
13. Bloodlust: Gain HP when you kill an enemy, equal to how many HD they had. No "angry turtles in a bag" strategy, please.
14. Ignore Injury: Mere pain, shock, bruising, bleeding, cold, burns and the like no longer hampers your ability to act - only extensive damage like shattered bones or loss of limb.
15. Follow Through: When you kill a creature, damage exceeding their remaining hitpoints gets applied to other targets you could also conceivably attack with the same action.
16. Size up: Can tell most important enemy stats at a glance: hitpoints, armour, and their strategy.
17. Air Blade: Can make ranged attacks with melee weapons.
18. Implacable: You are immune to fear and get a +4 to saves against other mental effects. Allies near you get a +4 to saves against fear.
19. Extreme Parry: Double your parry.
20. Dash Master: Get a 10' Dash as the Skirmisher (that is, a 10' horizontal dash, 1/round, usable at any time including when an enemy is about to attack you)
    
21. Extra Quickdraw Slots: You get another 3, like a Thief
22. Lightfoot: Your footsteps are so light you can tread on water or snow without falling. +2 stealth.
23. Elemental Affinity: Pick an element. You can use it to perform 1d6 attacks and achieve other small-scale effects.
    
24. Elemental Resistance: Pick an element. You gain resistance to that element equal to your HD.
25. Danger Sense: You cannot be surprised.
    
26. Situational Extra Attack: Come up with some particular circumstance that gives you an extra attack.
    
27. Effective medicine: Gain the Medicine skill. Rolls to prevent someone dying from their injuries succeed on a 3 in 6.
28. Equipment trick: You can make better use of a kind of equipment, especially in combat. E.g. drinking things like potions can be done for free. Or you're good at using ropes are weapons.
29. Zoom Punch: Space seems to warp around you, your reach is much longer than usual.
    
30. Petition DM: Ask for a certain item on the list, or a feature you can find from another class, or something custom, of appropriate power. Try improving a technique you already have, or some set of circumstances that gives you an extra attack?

Other ideas: Extra HP. Reduce impact of Death Dice (make them d4s). Not being able to see doesn't negatively affect your ability to fight.

Attack +1

This is a +1 to your ATTACK ROLLS, not an extra attack.

Extra Skill

Gain an appropriate skill.
[To do: suggest some skills]

Students

A travelling student finds you, wishing to learn from your example. Treat them as a level 1 Student of Many Styles. After a week of learning from you, treat them as a level 2 Student of Many Styles; the technique they gain must be one you have. After a month, they will move on (and are soon replaced by a new student) unless they are furnished with a good reason to stay.
They are willing to EITHER pay you, work for you, or fight for you in exchange for teaching.

Swappable Technique

Pick a technique on the list, gain it immediately. You find this technique difficult; it runs against your deeply ingrained habits, and requires regular practice/meditation for it to remain usable.
You may swap this technique out for another in a week of downtime.

Secret Art

You gain one secret art: some ability of significant power, known to very few.  You might be the only living practicioner. You get a secret art that is most appropriate for your character - according to your needs or historical approach to solving problems. You and your DM can work out the specifics. Some examples are given.

• Ability to cut things that should not be cuttable, such as very hard materials, or space, or truth (pick ONE)
• Perfect Tactical Foresight: declare that the combat round that just happened was only "what you saw might happen". Everything gets put back as it was a round ago and we get a do-over. Nobody will be able to remember the exact hitpoint totals that anything had - close enough is good enough.
• Hadouken. A big one.
• Za Warudo. Two full rounds of action. Once a day.
• Kill the Mooks. Attacks against nameless mooks (2HD or less that the DM hasn't named) always hit and always kill.

Hybrid levelling system: XP for Treasures

What you award XP for has a massive effect. It's one of the best controls you have to change what goes on in your game; players will naturally seek out whatever action awards it, and you can switch out that thing (or selection of things) without having to think too hard about what else will be impacted by that change.

If you award XP mainly for killing monsters, players will begin to prefer plans that include doing that. If you award XP just for getting the gold out of the dungeon, then you're free to design in a space where all methods of getting past any obstacles between the PCs and the gold are equally valid. I've seen discussions about awarding XP for investing gold into settlements; the overall progress of a campaign is then inextricably reflected in the growth of their home base. You can award increasing XP for exploring a sequence of dungeon rooms without rest. And so on and so forth.

Of course, milestone levelling, i.e. just levelling up players when it feels right, is an option. However, that doesn't work so well for games where PCs may have different levels (as mine does), and I want to take advantage of having an obvious universal carrot for my players to chase after.

XP-for-gold is good, but I'm increasingly finding that I want to be free of the burden of math in my games (related: migrate to usage dice or any other method to avoid tracking exact counts of things), as my players are rarely as happy to whip out an excel spreadsheet and keep strict notes as I am - and I certainly have too much to do to want to do that for them. I also have an interesting conflict where I want mundane purchasing decisions to remain a part of the game beyond level 2-3, and for the first big chest of gold to NOT rocket a single PC to level 10.

I think I now have a way out of this problem. I was already familiar with the large treasures of Ultraviolet Grasslands, and this week I read Arnold's post on Popcorn Levelling, which are both very interesting to me. It is these two things that I have blended together into a new system, which works as follows.

• You need Treasures (that's a keyword) to level up
• Treasures are big, fancy, named things
• They usually have history and artistic value; being magical and having a function is more optional
  
• Treasures are immediately recognisable as such! These are an obvious carrot, remember!
  
• A Treasure takes up one* inventory slot, is worth 1XP, and is worth 500 silver* for every WORD in the name
• When you carry a Treasure out of the dungeon (or can be said to have "gotten away with it") you can have the XP
• Keeping a record of all the names of the things you've thus stolen as your XP tracker is highly recommended
• Levelling is a Fibonacci progression: 2XP for level 2, an additional 3XP for 3, an additional 5XP for four, 8XP for five, and so on
• Selling the Treasure, or keeping it, or throwing it into a lake, is up to you. You get the XP either way.
  

Currently, the XP for a single treasure cannot be subdivided, and there is no guidance for how treasures should be assigned to PCs when obtaining them is usually a team effort. At the moment I'm letting my players sort it out amongst themselves, and if that starts giving bad results I'll implement an extra rule or two. I mainly just want to discourage putting all the treasures onto one PC.

It might not be reasonable to know the "true" name of a Treasure when it's first encountered; in that case a purely descriptive name (of the same number of words) might be temporarily assigned, but identifying it properly will improve things somehow. It might be able to be sold for more (or it cannot be sold for the normal amount while unidentified), gain new/improved functions, become a plot hook, be usable as a plot token elsewhere, etc.

For example, you might obtain the AERIAL PHOTOPLATE ATLAS, TURBO ENCABULATOR, and ARTICULATED MODEL DRAGON; carrying all of them at once will take up eight inventory slots, they are worth a respectable 4000 silver, a single level-1 PC that managed to make off with the lot would jump to level 3, and only need to steal two additional WORDS of Treasure to hit level 4.

This whole thing conceptually echoes the GLoG principle that you should gain abilities that reflect your adventures; now your XP tracker will reflect what you've stolen and be a nice little summary history of your successes and a reminder of where you've been. The character sheet is a living document, steeped in adventuring history.

I've now deployed this in my game and I'll get my first set of results next session. Tell me if you try it for yourself, or just say what your preferred XP system is (and why)!

* To help you set expectations with the above numbers: a warhorse, suit of plate armour, or Fireball spell would all be worth about 1000 silver, and a skilled mason can comfortably save 4 silver each week (actual income and cost-of-living are more than that). Conceptualise a silver as being worth $10 in modern money and you won't be far wrong. PCs have their strength score in inventory slots. I'm also working with the Goblin Laws of Gaming, where you stop getting class features at level 4, which is about your life expectancy anyway.

Thieves' Guild: Greaser

This is a Thief Guild following the format invented by Velexiraptor, as follows:

Level 1: Gain 2 abilities at rank 1
Level 2: Rank up an ability you have, then gain a new ability at rank 1
Level 3: Rank up 2 abilities you have
Level 4: Rank up 2 abilities you have, then gain all abilities you don't have yet at rank 1

Hit Die: d6 (if you use those)

If you use weapon proficiencies, you are proficient with greaser weapons - that is, practical urbanite stuff.

 Starting Equipment: Comb, Jumbo tub of thick grease, hand mirror, spring-loaded knife, stylish outfit, a narrative-and-setting-appropriate mode of transportation (horse, motorbike, T-Bird) that only performs properly for you.

Skills (2, d6): 1. Dance, 2. Smooth-talk, 3. Vehicle/driving/riding skill appropriate to your original mode of transportation, 4. Streetwise, 5. Gambler, 6. Bravado

1. Dance-Fighting

    ✧: You may dance-fight. You must not be encumbered or have anything else hampering your movement, and be able to hear some kind of appropriate and familiar music to quicken your soul. A group of people clicking fingers in unison works in a pinch, as does hallucinatory music. You get +2 to your AC and Attack against foes that cannot match your smooth moves.

    ✧✧: You may add your dex bonus to damage rolls (instead of strength) while dance-fighting. If you are hampered or the music stops while you are dance-fighting, you retain the benefits for two more rounds.

    ✧✧✧: You can lead a small group of people to dance-fight, though they are subject to the same restrictions and must be able to see and hear you. You can always hear your theme song if you concentrate.

2. Home Turf

    ✧: Declare a Home Turf no larger than a small town. You always know the fastest route through your Home Turf and can always find a place to lay low there.

    ✧✧: Once per week you can declare you Know A Guy from your Home Turf who could conceivably assist with the current situation. The GM rolls that person's Reaction when they are next encountered - they may require appeasement or refuse entirely.

    ✧✧✧: Gain a Reputation in your Home Turf as befits what is known of your actions. Everyone has heard of you (though you are not always recognised on sight). Discuss with your GM what this reputation is and what effects it will have. This reputation can be changed over time through great effort.

3. Percussive Maintenance

    ✧: Precisely strike an object that is entirely mechanical and entirely comprehensible to you, with a body part, after studying it for at least one round; this makes it immediately perform as you would like, within the realms of physical possibility. You can ignore one of these underlined clauses but if you do, you only succeed on 2-in-6. You may not retry unless you meet all clauses.

    ✧✧: You can now ignore two underlined clauses, but if you do your success rate is only 1-in-6. If you fail, you may retry once without having to meet all clauses.

    ✧✧✧: Ignoring one clause succeeds on 5-in-6. Ignoring two succeeds on 3-in-6.

4. Fast Hands

    ✧: You can draw and make use of the item in your very first inventory slot even if surprised.

    ✧✧: Gain an extra two quick draw slots. Get the ✧ benefit for your second inventory slot also.

    ✧✧✧: You can declare that an item in a quickdraw slot is already in your hand, once per hand per round, as long as you could have reached it.

5. Pompadour

    ✧: With 10 minutes of work and the correct tools, you may style your hair beyond the ken of mortal man. Hats/helmets/etc will ruin it. You may sunder your hairstyle to reduce damage from an incoming attack by 1d6, similar to a shield; you gain advantage on attack rolls against whatever ruined your hair until you hit them.

    ✧✧: When you sunder your hairstyle it reduces incoming damage by 1d6+2 points. You gain advantage on the attacker until you have hit them twice.

    ✧✧✧: When you sunder your hairstyle it reduces incoming damage by 1d6+4 points.You roll damage twice and take the higher result the next two times you hit the attacker.

6.  Magnetic Personality

    ✧: When Reactions are rolled you can adjust the result to be one point more favourable if you are prominently visible and groomed properly. (Not all creatures have variable Reactions.)

    ✧✧: While you are in a location where you are regarded well, you can draw a room of people to come to your aid if you succeed on a Charisma check. They are not much more willing to endanger themselves than usual. Misusing this ability may cause people to dislike you.

    ✧✧✧: All else being equal, anyone will take your side of the story.

Mental Inventory and Mindsets

I said that the spell mutator was next, I was wrong, I want to rewrite it first and I need to figure out the code to make a non-flat random table work right.

Without further ado: Mental Inventory. Jellied Rat uses Mental Inventory.

Just as you have a physical slotted inventory, you can have a mental slotted inventory. You have a number of slots: 7 + Wis Mod.

Mental slots can hold:
    - Your persistent sense of self
    - Homes for memorised spells
    - Permanently fused "passive" spells
    - Mindsets
    - Mental stowaways: mnemonomorphs, parasites/parasitoids, spies, etc.
    - Mental Baggage (Trauma)
    -     Trauma may be gained by experiencing or seeing a friend sustain terrible injury.
    -     Trauma may not manifest immediately. Maybe a day later?
    - Negative status effects: Fear, Hunger, Stress are big ones.
        Drunkenness doesn't go in there. That's separate.
        Hangovers do.
        Bards might give you Earworms.

Skills do not go inside separate mental slots.
The act of gaining a skill is hard work but they don't really take up space - the existence of a skill is encoded within the intersection of the Animal Soul (instinct, which is retrainable) and the Purple Soul (memory).

In addition to your normal Mental Inventory slots, you have 5 Suppressed slots. If you would exceed your mental inventory, Souls, Mindsets, and Fused Spells (the things are are most deeply linked to who you truly ARE) can be relocated to Suppressed slots - they're not really gone but they're also not usable. Spells and negative effects cannot be willingly moved to suppressed slots in this manner; spell homes are simply lost and the spell falls out. If you lose a spell home, you can usually recreate it more easily than you did the first time, but the spell might be pissed at you.

Things suppressed in this manner can be restored to their rightful place once space exists for them again and a proper rest is taken (a meal and a rest in a safe place).


== Souls ==
Starting with Arnold's stuff, he envisions that a person is a *gestalt* of multiple distinct souls. Three lower souls and four upper souls. All can be modified. All can be removed and moved around.
Upper souls depart the body quickly after death and are USUALLY eventually drawn to the River of Souls and then sorted into some kind of afterlife.
Lower souls - earthly souls - stick around for varying amounts of time (Mineral much longer than the others) and then evetually are reincarnated.
If the upper souls are prevented from going where they should, they will reincarnate too.
Be aware that they are still wilful and may deliberately evade capture.
An "escaped" soul will eventually grow - all things strive - so it no longer lacks the other parts.
= Lower =
Mineral: Raw material interactions. Can remember a few basic facts.
Vegetable: Knits together fleshy form. Makes zombies go.
    Lack: cellular functions cease. Immunity to poison. Death in 1d6 hours.
Animal: The desires of the flesh.
    Lack: Dwarves don't have this.
= Upper =
Purple: Memory
Red: Personality
    Lack: No style or individuality. Dwarves don't have this.
White: Goals
Blue: Spirit
    Lack: No casting, no religion. +4 to Save vs Magic.

If you're paying attention, you'll realise that you could have 3 wisdom and have to store 4 souls. In practice this means that you will either have no Personality or no Goals.

However, barring extereme circumstances, those first four slots are going to be filled up with your YOU.

== Mindsets ==
Players can adopt or discard a mindset if they can supply a good enough reason to do so, such as some critical and life-changing event that they recently went through. Anything traumatic or stressful, or a pyrrhic victory, or an interaction with a cherished acquaintance. Replacing a mindset in the middle of a desperate battle is fine. Replacing a mindset multiple times in one turn is less fine.

You can put a mindset into more than one slot for a greater effect. Combine Desperate and Seeker of Destruction! I'm sure nothing bad will happen.

`Prideful` If you fail a check relating to your pride, once-per-session you get a do-over with advantage.
`Angry` Reroll failed initiative check if you immediately charge
`Goblinism` Compulsory for goblins. This is what makes a goblin a goblin.
`Confidence` +2 to do the first thing you suggest, instead of dallying/planning
`Cowardly` +2 Defense while avoiding danger
`Cruel` When you use unnecessary force on a vulnerable enemy, you can force a Morale check. Results may vary.
`Inquisitive` 1/session, you find something hidden
`Desperate` +1 to everything while at 0 HP
`Oathbound` +1 to everything opposing your oath
`Magnetic Personality` +3 retainers (normally 2 or 6 + Cha mod)
`Greedy` Can accurately compare the relative worth of things
`Stoic` You can ignore minor mental penalties (up to -2) and never complain about them
`Stalwart` You can ignore minor physical penalties (up to -2) and never complain about them
`Happy` NPCs don't automatically treat you as an "adventurer"
`Inspiring` Followers are on their best behaviour (if there is any chance you'll hear of what they do)
`Helpful` 1/session, after a friend has rolled a d20, allow them to reroll it and take the higher result
`Iron Stomach` +4 to save against anything you ate
`Innocent` Anything will hesitate to kill you, at least for a moment
`Joker` An in-character quip that the DM deems sufficiently witty heals 1HP, up to 3/session
`Knowledgeable` 1/session learn a new rumour if in town. If not, DM's choice of something potentially useful.
`Mysterious` Conceal your backstory. When you reveal it, exchange this Mindset for a different one.
`Observant` INT check to ask detailed questions after you've left a scene (flashback style)
`Paranoid` GM will suggest lots of ways that things could go wrong.
`Grandiose` Enemies that fail a morale check and would flee/rout (not retreat) instead grovel
`Immaculate` +1 damage at full HP
`Zealous` Your voice counts as a holy symbol
`Seeker of Destruction` Do +1 damage always, have +1 Death Die always
`Brave` +2 vs fear
`Hasty` +1 to Move
`Steadfast` +2 to save when holding breath or for feats of endurance
`Lithe` +2 to AC when unarmored
`Alcohol Dependence` Alcoholic drinks heals you for 1 hp.  You still get drunk, though.
`Pew pew` +1 to hit with ranged attacks, but -1 to hit with melee attacks.
`Beatstick` +1 to hit with melee attacks, but -1 to hit with ranged attacks.
`Hatred of X` +1 to hit against a certain type of creature (if you start with this, determine randomly)
`Sir Robin` Can disengage from combat without penalty, attacks of opportunity, or whatever
`Superstitious` +2 to save against curses
`Leadership` Associates must use your save against emotional effects
`Suave` If you make an effort to present yourself well, you get a +2 to positive social interactions
`Expressive` You have a gift for art - visual, music, dance, whatever. This is more about bold artistic vision and baring your soul rather than actual technical skill.
`Low Standards` Things that would be soul-crushing for most people are just a Regular Tuesday for you.
Pious: ?
Inconspicuous: ?
Showboat: ?
Ugly: ?
Competitive: ?
Servile: ?
Thinky: ?
Faithful: ?
`Contemplative` Increases the power of cleric miracles. Somehow. Others who share your faith and who are also being contemplative may assist.

= Quasi-Mindsets =
`Crammed X` You are treated as knowing a particular skill (at a small penalty) but you must Save every night or lose this. Requires a teacher and quite possibly some special ability to obtain (that either you or they have)

Spell Generator for GLOG

 

 I want spells to be interesting. I want encountering them to be truly memorable. I want them to have personality. I want them to be alien. I want a practical and interesting social combat structure, or minigame, to represent the sheer amount of work it takes to catch one. I came up with a procedure for this, but I found that it was so unwieldy that I immediately realised that I needed a computer to do it for me. 

Prep procedure:

1. Get a copy of this grid in whatever format is most convenient for you. You want to be able to scribble on it. That (unmarked) grid is player-facing information for anyone that knows anything about spells.

2. Click this button. [This sentence will become a link to my next post which will be a spell mutation generator]

3. Eyeball the results. Modify as you like. Maybe reroll it if you don't like it. If it tells you to look at a particular wizard school, open up this page, find that wizard, and - assuming that a school has got 12 spells with the rarest ones at the highest numbers - take the LOWER of the two numbers in parentheses and look at THAT spell.

 4. Decide on the intelligence level of the spell. If you decide that this spell is as smart as a normal person (which I think should be rare), you can break away from this process immediately and play out any negotiations with them as you would any NPC. Do you want to see the fighter get into an argument with a talking rope while the wizard tries to break it up? I do.

 5. Mark the the Needs you rolled on the table, and the point value of each one. See how these Wants are grouped into three base categories? Decide now on the personality and the appearance - these should flow naturally out of what spell it is and those Needs. Making a guess at what a spell might do from its appearance and behaviour is a part of this game.

A spell might look like anything; it might look like an animal, vegetable, mineral, person, astral body, hairball, something a cat coughed up, an ordinary tool, something that a neural net created, a creature from Spore...

OK, your prep is done.

When encountered, it works like this.

To be able to interact with a spell properly you almost always have to be able to usefully perceive its actual form. Some are plainly visible, some are not. ALL wizards have got some ability to sense them sufficiently. This ability can be developed with proper training or by doing irresponsible things to your eyes. Non-wizard spell-hunters carry a range of Doodads; each Doodad has a 1-in-6 chance of rendering a given spell visible (salt, a cat, and a layer of alchemical crystals stuck to a sheet of paper are the most common and cheapest types). Almost all spells become visible for a short period each day, but that exact time varies.

One attempt = 1 Turn (10 minutes). The wizard (that's how I'm just going to refer to the person trying to tame the spell) incurs a Stress just to try, as they begin the intense mental work of trying to utterly comprehend the being before them while simultaneously constructing a new space for them to live in and actually navigating the negotiations.

One Attempt == the wizard gets their Wis score in actions. An action may be used to try to meet a single Want on the chart (the Wizard is provided with an unmarked chart) or to ask a general question about what courses of action are more likely to be productive.

The wizard knows whether an action was successful or not. If they were successful but this did NOT yield any points, they are informed of that too.

The threshold that must be met or exceeded to win is usually the total number of available points -6.

If you FAIL, you can immediately retry by incurring an additional Stress. You can also lock any Wants that you previously achieved by taking yet another Stress (note that some Wants will stay locked for free).

If you SUCCEED the spell moves in immediately, taking the first slot that you put the Stress into. The rest of the Stress, you need to get rid of the hard way.

Paper Golem, a spell for menial tasks

 [ Paper Golem]     D: until next dawn     R: 10'

Target paper-doll enlarges to size of caster, adopts their attributes, and accepts instructions of [sum] nouns and verbs. Paper Golems have one hitpoint, weigh almost nothing, are blown by wind, and will wear off their fingers in an hour of hard work if they have them. They approach problems in the most obvious way that their caster would (as if in a dream, drunk, or half-asleep), have no self-preservation, and have miniscule problem-solving ability. While concentrating, caster knows approximate direction to golem and if golem is destroyed. When destroyed, material reverts to original size. Valid materials follow.

1 MD: Materials that are instantly destroyed by fire and quickly degraded by water (paper, dry leaves, reeds)

2 MD: Materials that are resistant to either water or fire (flake of wax, squashed cotton candy)

3+ MD: Any mundane material.

??? MD: A shadow (ask your GM)

 

Rethinking Trap Procedures

Traps: they should logically exist in at least some places in our games. Kobolds are very popular at the moment, and kobolds love traps, so you almost can't get away from them. However, too often they're simply not fun.

Common potential problems:

• GMs slapping their players with damage they couldn't be reasonably expected to avoid
  
• Players neurotically searching and re-searching areas "just in case"
  
• Metagaming responses to low rolls or the GM's unfortunately-worded descriptions resulting in the PCs completely disassembling harmless bits of dungeon dressing step by step
  
• GMs slipping in false positives or intentionally suspicious language in an attempt to dissuade metagaming resulting in a lot of time pointlessly wasted
•  An absolutely huge number of perception/search rolls that don't mean anything
• Attempts to spend real time only on interesting content inherently telling the players that a particular spot is interesting, mysteriously making the heroes psychically aware that a hazard is likely near

 Existing trap procedures, each fixing some of these pitfalls, form an even longer list - which I'm not bothering to describe.

The goal, as always, is to have them exist in the game in a form that they actually make the game more fun, not less fun. This is my own attempt to design the trap process in games to mesh elegantly with existing structures. It is a modification of the process described in Many Rats On Sticks: it makes some assumptions about what you are already doing to run the game. It is also completely untested!

1. If the party proceeds cautiously, they are assumed to be trying to not set off traps accidentally, and get some indication of all traps.
   
2. If the party suspects something is a trap, they should be encouraged to investigate it without permanently expending resources (for reasons that will become clear).
   
3. Resolve their actions according to reasonable expectations, as normal
   
4. If the party begins to regularly employ techniques that DO consume resources when they poke anything suspicious, those resources should be added to the depletion process of normal exploration to indicate that they use it frequently (just like torches, and food)
   

Example: Poking every exposed surface with a long pole will not deplete the pole as a part of normal progress. If there is a trap that will grab/destroy the pole, resolve it at that point when they actually poke it. Same thing for driving livestock in front of the party; they keep the livestock until they actually run into something that would deprive them continued usage of said animal.

Example: Sprinkling dust should not deplete, or deplete extremely slowly, because you can just collect it back up and reuse it. Again, special circumstances that would make the dust irretrievable would reduce your inventory.

Example: Pouring water to look for seams, bubbles, or low patches should definitely be added to normal expenditure of consumable items unless the party has some explanation of how they are getting all the water back. 

I suggest just keeping a section of notepaper where you list their common approaches to strange things - a new technique gets written down, and a checkmark for each repetition. Outliers get added to the depletion list. Of course, it's up to you to decide about how fast each thing should be used up.

This procedure can also be combined with the Click Rule for extra excitement whether or not anyone is in actual danger when they set off a trap (say, by poking the trigger intentionally). I think I'll be using it.

GLOG Class: Really Mischievous Goose

Explanation: I ran a quick oneshot adventure for some newbies in GLOG (Many Rats on Sticks) with included some pregenerated characters. I made sure to provide some of the classic Wizards and Knights but also the weirder ones such as a Really Good Dog and Really Angry Goose.

It happens that in the time between the original Angry Goose blogpost and the time of my game, Untitled Goose Game had been released and was still very much in everyone's minds which I think was the reason that the pregen Goose got picked for play (and in fact was almost fought over). However, these two geese are actually quite different in methodology and abilities. So, I felt inclined to (mainly as an exercise) write a new Goose class that would be better at the kind of shenanigans that the Untitled Goose Game antagonist gets up to.

And here it is.

Really Mischievous Goose

Starting Items: none, but you have a SERRATED BEAK AND TONGUE, a MAJESTIC WINGSPAN, and a TERRIBLE HONK.

You are a goose.
You cannot climb ropes or ladders. You cannot love.
You cannot speak Common. You speak Goose fluently. You can understand the approximate meaning of other PCs and anyone they are talking to.
You have a prehensile neck and your head can fit into tiny spaces. You can fly if you have enough space. You can float on water.
You can discern North. Instead of Intelligence, you get Goose Intelligence, which is mainly worse at anything Social or Nerdy.
Your Movement is 8 (Human Movement is 12) but if you have 50' to take off you can fly at Movement 20. Your bite attack deals 1d6+STR damage. Your feathers give you +2 defense as though you had armor, but take up no Inventory slots. You have half as many Inventory Slots as usual.

Starting skill (1d3):
1. Horrible Goose
2. Cunning Goose
3. Asshole Goose

You get +1 Stealth for every Template you have in this class.

A: Fearsome Honk, Clean Appearance
B: Cruel and Unusual, Bad from Beak to Bottom
C: Vicious Grip, In Plain Sight
D: Greedy Goose

Fearsome Honk: All non-ally creatures whose HD does not exceed your level within 20' who hear your Terrible Honk must Save vs Fear or be frightened for one round. If your level exceeds their HD by 2 or more, they continue being frightened until they pass a Save vs Fear (once at the end of each of their turns).

Clean Appearance: You always look neat and clean, no matter what mischief you've been up to.

Cruel and Unusual: If you gain victory over and humiliate an adversary, recover 1HP. You can recover this health only once per adversary each day.

Bad from Beak to Bottom: You gain the Pickpocket skill. If you already have that, instead gain a different criminal skill of your choice.

Vicious Grip: You can now attempt to Grab with every bite attack.

In Plain Sight: As long as a creature has something pressing to attend to, you can try to escape their attention as long as you're not being actively mischievous or threatening at that moment (using normal stealth rules). Loitering or even staring with your soulless, calculating goose eyes doesn't count.

Greedy Goose: If able to calmly collect your thoughts (not suffering from a major status effect or in combat) you may treat your strength and dexterity as being four points higher when attempting to gain possession of a desirable object.