GLoG: Professional Revolutionary

 

In this age of yearning and contempt, when the yoke is heavy and the cudgel falls hard, someone has to do something. The salvation of society lurks in the coffeehouses and salons, dreaming, arguing, and smoking. No, you aren’t simply unemployed, you’re a… 

PROFESSIONAL REVOLUTIONARY

Each template, +1 HP, -10 years to your natural lifespan 

Starting Equipment: Pocket Manifesto, revolver, flask of liquor, 2 packs of cigarettes, 20 silver coins

A: Irrepressible, Rebel’s Baptism, Polar Personality

B: Polemics, Anti-Reactionary

C: Agitate, Professional Talent

D: Coup

Irrepressible : There’s only two ways this ends for you: in a martyr’s grave or with the reins of power in your hands. +2 to saves against mental and physical restraints.

Rebel’s Baptism: All true revolutionaries have spent time in prison and run from the cops more times than they can count. But there was one thing you did that really proved your credentials (d6).

1	You underwent enhanced interrogation at the hand of the secret police, but you demonstrated an incredible pain tolerance and never gave up your comrades. You are immune to the harmful effects of pain
2	You were deported to a wretched land and left to fend for yourself amongst the exiled. It turned out to be a pretty good networking opportunity! With 1d4 days effort you can find a familiar face from your fellow deportees, and gain +1 to reaction rolls with them.
3	You got lucky and killed someone important. Twice more, you’ll get lucky again, after seeing the result you may declare a roll actually succeeded or failed.
4	You brazenly vandalized an icon of the regime right under their noses. You may move totally silently and gain the skill Climbing.
5	You robbed a bank and gave the proceeds to the cause. Mostly. Start with 300 extra gold.
6	You discovered a police informant and caught them before they could rat. You may detect lies and half-truths for one minute every day.

Polar Personality: Your charisma is like a magnet: attractive and repulsive in equal measure. For reaction rolls with civilized folks, roll 1d12 instead of 2d6.

A typical year for the Professional Revolutionary

Polemics: You have a new stat, Purity, which starts at 1. Your comrades will use your Purity to determine how much they should respect you. If you ever make a strategic alliance with the forces of reaction or ask the people to pay the price for the greater good, reduce your Purity. If you win a debate with another Professional Revolutionary, either in front of an audience or in print, gain 1 purity and they lose 1. You may choose to be caustic and arrogant in victory. If so, triple the purity gain and loss and gain 15 xp.

Anti-reactionary : At the moment of decision, you are ready. +2 initiative.

Agitate : With 10 minutes of gesticulating, shouting, pandering, and denouncing, you can whip a crowd into a fury. All who listen must save or adopt the judgment, risk aversion, and impulse control they would have if they were drunk. This lasts for six hours, but they may reroll their save when bullets start flying. After using this ability, you cannot use it again until you do three of the following: get three nights sleep, stay awake for 24 hours straight, chain smoke a pack of cigarettes, drink as much alcohol as is in a flask of vodka, rant and rave about the inevitability of the revolution for an hour, shout your fury at a friend (spending 1 Purity in the process), get physically hurt by someone you see as reactionary, witness an unarmed comrade die, or breathlessly achieve a long awaited goal of the revolution. In the heady days of past revolutions, revolutionaries have kept each other going in this state for days, repealing ancient injustices and getting wasted.

Professional Talent: You’ve picked up a useful skill (d6).

1	Bomb-making. With 10 gold and a day of effort, make an anti-personnel petard. With 50 gold and a week of effort, make a building-shattering Big Bomba.
2	Marxmanship. +2 to hit with ranged weapons.
3	To be in the right place at the right time. After being damaged by an attack, once per day you may choose to take no damage instead. Turns out it just barely missed!
4	Smuggling. Short of being strip searched, you can conceal one slot items on your personal perfectly. Containers you spend an hour preparing contain half their volume in secret compartments.
5	Etiquette. You walk among the powerful and know how to speak their language. Other Revolutionaries would be expelled from high society, but you have a way of seeming like you belong. You have an innate understanding of how far you can go before crossing this line.
6	Organizing. You’ve actually gone out amongst the people the revolution will ostensibly be for, learned their concerns and actually made a few friends. Common folk treat you like an old friend instead of an outsider intellectual trying to rule their lives. With a month of effort you can reliably whip up a supportive interest group.

Coup: Your infectious enthusiasm gives +1 to hit and damage to allies within 30 feet. If you seize the reins of power, gain +4 charisma for as long as you hold them. If you are brazenly seizing power, you may spend 5 Purity to delay the response of a rival revolutionary faction by 1 day due to their incredulity. 

Pictured: Kronos protecting the Titanic Revolution from would-be counter-revolutionaries

GLoG Realm Magic

 To expand on my last post, here are some additional rules for casting “realm spells”, spells greater in scope than what a magic user might cast while on an adventure. The assumptions are based on Phlox’s The Realm, but dive back into it’s DNA to find inspiration from TSR’s Birthright setting.

Esoteric Holdings

Esoteric holdings are those locations where mana, the fuel for a wizard’s wildest delights, is accessible in plenty. Esoteric holdings draw their energy from a source, an out of the way corner of the untamed world. Civilization repulses and destroys mana. So the Dark Forest may create mana that leaks out into nearby provinces. Wizards who all build esoteric holdings around the same source risk being in competition for the same power. 

In addition to their other benefits, Esoteric holdings give +1 Dominion Die per level. DD can only be used by those with MD. DD return to your pool on the summer and winter solstices.

Law and Trade holdings cannot exceed the level of the province they are in. The opposite is true for esoteric holdings, they thrive in unpopulated places. 

• In plains and other lands well suited to civilization, the maximum esoteric holding level is 4 - province level. DD return when they roll a 1.

• In hills and other rugged terrain, maximum level is 5 - province level. DD return on a 1 or a 2.

• In mountains, deep woods, and other uncultivateable lands, maximum level is 6 - province level. DD return on a 1-3

• DD return on a +1 in 6 if you find a way to commune directly with the heart of the source and form a bond with it. Only one person may be in communion with the heart of the source at any given time.

You cast realm spells from provinces where you have an esoteric holding. Usually, you may only use DD from that holding, but if you build a ley line connecting 2 or more esoteric holdings you control, you may access all connected DD.

Dooms are triggered by DD in exactly the same way as MD. For mishaps, use this table:

1. DD do not return to your pool at the next solstice.

2. Lose 1d4 weeks (4s explode) to dissociated ranting megalomania, paranoia, and recriminations.

3. Random mutation for 1d6 months, then save. Permanent if you fail.

4. Lose 1 DD for 1 year.

5. Mana Leak. Reduce [sum] by realm spells cast at this source holding by 2 for one year.

6. Mana Burn. For one year, take [dice] damage whenever you cast spells, and any damage you take from magic is not reduced by your will.

Realm Spell List

For inspiration, I went to the Birthright spell list. Although there is a lot of good material there, it is too focused on what you are targeting with the realm spell, and not focused enough on what is happening in fiction. The Raze spell devastates fortifications, but it can’t do anything else. If it’s causing a massive fire, shouldn’t you be able to use it against enemy armies and so forth? Eh? I’ve tried to remedy that in this spell list. 

30 Realm Spells

1. Alchemy: Turn base metals into gold. Requires a 50 gold alchemy lab, but ongoing costs are trivial. Gain [sum] x 10 gold.

2. Dispel Realm Magic: Suppress effect of realm magic in a province by [dice] and [sum]. You may reduce your [dice] by 1 to affect an additional province, and your sum by 1/province distant (so -0 in your own province, -2 sum in a province 2 spaces away, etc). Duration [dice] seasons.

3. Scry: for the next [sum] weeks, covertly observe anywhere from the open sky within a range of [dice] provinces. If you have a piece of a target, like a lock of hair or a flagstone, you may scry them at any range and at a more intimate vantage point

4. Weather Control: For the next [dice] months, control the weather in the province, potentially slowing armies to a crawl with horrific storms or causing crop failure with blizzards out of season.

5. Conflagration: for [dice] minutes, [sum] balls of fire rain down from the sky within a 200 ft radius from a point you can see. Fortifications are reduced by [dice] levels. Military units take 6 damage from each fireball that falls on them and likely must check morale and flee. Individuals take d6 damage from each fireball, save for half. This is mundane fire, so anything that is ignitable ignites as normal.

6. Pestilence: Reduce the level of this province by 1. The plague spreads to up to [dice]-1 additional provinces over time. A province cannot be effected by Pestilence again for [lowest] seasons. Dispel Realm Magic and Bless Land can spare provinces from the plague.

7. Bless Land: Good fortune settles on the people. The next tax roll of a province within [dice] provinces is multiplied by 225 instead of 200. Unrest in the province decreases by [highest-lowest] for the next year. Cancels Blight.

8. Blight: Woe settles on the people. The next tax roll of a province within [dice] provinces is multiplied by 175 instead of 200. Unrest in the province increases by [highest-lowest] for the next year. Cancels Bless Land.

9. Royal Facade: Change the appearance of up to [sum] buildings or [dice] settlements within the province for [sum] seasons, or for one building permanently if cast with 4 MD. If changing how stately and appealing they seem (the traditional use of this spell), increase or decrease the level of councils and events here by [dice] steps. (So a meager event would become an elegant one with a 2 MD Royal Facade). It’s not possible to make something disappear with this spell, or to greatly alter the apparent size, so a sprawling palace couldn’t disappear, but it could be disguised as a hill.

10. Instill Ardor: An army is filled with confidence and valor. [dice] units increase their morale by [sum] for the length of a battle. They gain +1 to hit and -1 AC.

11. Stronghold: Create a level [sum] stronghold that appears over the course of 10 seconds and lasts for [dice] seasons. The architecture and layout reflects the mind of the caster. You do not know the precise floor plan, but it is intuitive for you to navigate. You may make the strongholds permanent by increasing your age by 10 years and placing 50 gold of pearls around the perimeter before casting the spell.

12. Warding: Create a wall of force starting in this province preventing travel for creatures of [sum] HD or less along [dice] connected borders lasting for [sum] months.

13. Legion of the Dead: Can only be cast at the sites of great battles and other gathering places of the dead. Summon [sum] x20 zombie and animate skeleton soldiers to serve your banner. Mostly mindless, they maintain the habits and prejudices they had in life. About 10% wander off each season.

14. Sunder Ley Line: The owner of a ley line within [dice] provinces must save or it is destroyed and they take [highest] damage.

15. Ley Trap: For the next [dice] seasons, anyone else who attempts to access the mana source this province takes its power from takes [sum] damage, save for half.

16. Fly: Invest a dominion die into an object (broomstick, shoes). For as long as it is invested, it flies where you command with enough force to quickly carry you and a typical load with grace and precision.

17. Traveling: Invest a dominion die into two specially prepared portals costing at least 100 gold each. No matter how far apart they are, one may pass between them.

18. Fasten Sephirah: Requires a ritual henge set up at the heart of a source. Invest any number of DD into the Henge. You gain that many MD that do not return to your pool when used. For as long as any of these extra MD remain, you count as being in communion with the heart of the source.

19. Earthquake: cause the ground to shake with a 5+[dice] magnitude earthquake, momentarily shaking nearby armies, and damaging structures. Magnitude 7 earthquakes damage holdings, magnitude 8 earthquakes also damage provinces through mass casualties. Magnitude 10 is perhaps larger than the largest true earthquake earth has ever had.  The asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs caused several Magnitude 11 earthquakes.

20. Summon Shayin: summon [dice]x20 units of Shayin warriors from their home dimension. For every 50 soldiers, they are lead by a Template B Warlord captain. They serve for 6 months and demand to be paid up front with 7 gold’s worth of lead each. They are equipped with large spears, lamellar armor, and round shields. They are disciplined and accustomed to serving under maniacal wizards. 

21. Nightmare: crush a ritual horn costing 50 gold into dust to cause a nightmarish labyrinth to rise up from the ground anywhere you can see, perfectly square with an area of up to 500’ x [dice]. On average, it takes [sum]x10 minutes for people to find their way out, and they will have taken [highest] damage. Inside is filled with an oppressive darkness, dire bats, creeps who demand to eat you if you can’t answer their riddles, that kind of thing.

22. Eye of the Tyrant: Fix a sigil of an eye in a high place and invest a dominion die. You can see through it and notice anything that visually occurs within [sum] x 100’ ft. For each die beyond the first, add one bonus: increase the range x10, see invisible, you may talk telepathically with any your Eye can see, they may speak telepathically with you, see through terrain and structures within range. The first die is invested, but any further dice are spent as normal.

23. Mage’s Disjunction: destabilize magic in the province for [dice] seasons. At 1 DD, MD only return on a 1-2. At 2, roll twice for mishaps and take the worse result. At 3, MD only return on a 1. At 4, DD are 1-in-6 less likely to return. At 5 and higher, spellcasters take [dice] damage when they cast a spell. (These effects accumulate).

24. Perfect Courier: summon [highest] pairs of Perfect Couriers to carry messages back and forth, allowing you to speak privately with [highest] other rulers for 6 months. Perfect Couriers have a build half human and half avian, and they glide across the ground as if it were made of ice. They move as fast as a galloping horse, but never tire. They are difficult to distract from their duty, but they have a noted love of building up speed sliding down hill, hitting a jump, and gliding for as far as they can. 

25. Weave Bricks: Combine base clay with strands of arcane power. Produce [sum] x 1000 slots of Woven Bricks at the cost of [sum] x 25 gold. 1000 slots of Woven Bricks makes one level of holding indestructible to mundane means, and the bricks resist [dice] magical attempts to destroy the building.

26. Form Elements: Pour the power of your mana into personified natural forms. Temporarily reduce your esoteric holding by up to [dice] (holding level can not be reduced below 0) to create [sum]x5 HD 2 elementals loyal to your command. These elementals take an an appropriate form for the terrain of your source holding, rock elementals for a mountain redoubt, etc. If they are all destroyed, or if you command them to return to the source, your esoteric holding level returns to normal at the start of the next solstice.

27. Celestial Intercession: (With thanks to Loch) Requires an object that belonged to an otherworldly creature, like an angel’s sword, or a fairy’s ballet shoes. Summon a creature of that kind to parley with, with a +[dice]-2 modifier to the reaction roll. Offerings can increase the roll as well. It will negotiate with those in its domain to do you a favor in exchange for appropriate favors and promises.

28. Become Storm: (Thanks to Loch) For [dice] weeks turn into a swirling storm for as long as you are outside. You may travel [highest]/2, minimum 1, provinces/week in that time.

29. Turn Peasants: (Thanks to Primeumaton) For the rest of the season, peasants must save to approach you. Anyone not born to a title, or with real capital less than [sum]x5 gold counts as a “peasant”. This works on most clergy, talking animals, barbarians outside of a feudal system, hedge knights, and hedge witches in addition to typical commoners.

30. Viska’s Byway: Cover a cobblestone with ash from a sacrifice of 20 gold of oxen. Any group that carries this cobblestone at its head forms a fully fledged highway over all terrain for [dice] provinces, as wide as [sum] men marching abreast.

Conclusion

There is an obvious challenge inherent in adding a second scale of magic. If realm spells are bigger and better than typical spells, they risk making the normal spell lists of magic-users feel trite and useless. But if they are not sufficiently grand, they end up being an expensive let down. For this reason, realm spells should solve different problems than typical spells. They should run on a different economy, requiring time and other resources too scarce to be useful in a dungeoncrawl setting, but part and parcel to domain play. 

Wizards have a serious funding issue. All the best esoteric holdings will be in places that cannot generate much revenue. As a result, they’ll either have to split their time between infrastructure and arcana, make a patronage agreement with other rulers, or else resort to some adventure or ploy.

Let me know if you post any of your own domain spells and I'll link it here so there can be a consolidated resource.

(GLoG) Two Domain Wizards

 In my last post, I said I would try to create a more wizardly caster for domain play. Here is the fruit of that attempt.

They ended up relatively similar to most other wizards. I started with the ethic that a class for a domain game should point to and reward how a certain kind of character should act in the longer, larger framework of domain play. It should point to and reward fighters for raising armies and accumulating holdings, etc. Well, it turns out much that a wizard should be doing is already in the foreground of a more typical D&D adventure, because Wizard Kings should be making magic items, communing with otherworldly beasts and spirits, and so forth, aka a pretty typical spell list. 

As a result, I think plopping down most GLoG wizards into a setting will work just fine. But to pursue specialization to its furthest practical extent, here are two classes that emphasize two particular modes of wizard play. The Tower Wizard is an old curmudgeon living in a weird house all alone, while the Court Magician occupies the space of mentor and advisor or twisted vizier, depending on your approach. Assume typical GLoG magic, mishaps and dooms.

As with my last post, I stole from the best work I could find within this niche. The Tower Wizard’s tower is 75% copy-pasted from Phlox, Reverse Spell is copy pasted from Loch’s magus, the best abilities of the Court Wizard are stolen from Squig’s famous Sage, Skerples and Arnold are imitated with reckless abandon, to name a few.

THE TOWER WIZARD

They say the land has a power of its own, and they are right. It flows in invisible rivers called leylines, burbling towards and through the ancient solitary places, repulsed from the teeming boundary-making of civilization. It’s only natural that any wizard interested in true power set up shop out in the middle of the wilderness where the leylines are strongest. Beware! All the best spots already have a mage or twelve camped out there, or else magical beasts drawn by the smell of the mana.

Each template, +1 Wizard Tower template and +1 Will

Starting assets: dagger, spellbook with 3 spells, monochromatic robes, eccentric hat, hobgoblin-sized net

A: +1 MD, Eye of Alienation, Book Casting

B: +1 MD, Reverse Spell

C: +1 MD, Chimmerical Oneiromancy

D: +1 MD, Signature Spell

Wizard Tower (start with 1d4+1 stories)

• A: +1 story in height. Reroll 1 MD in each spell cast in the tower.

• B: +1 story in height. Mishaps and dooms incurred in your tower are also critically successful.

• C: +1 story in height. Change the face of one MD by 1 in each spell cast in the tower (Turning a 4 into a 3, for example)

• D: +1 story in height. The tower now fires beams that can damage anything large, but less than the tower’s height.

At your option, each story of your tower can have some funky magical effect passively ongoing. Something like “reverse gravity” or “totally silent”.

Eye of Alienation: One of your eyes changes to a random color. It can now see invisibility, and detect magic. If you lock eyes with another person you can tell how many MD they have. In your quest for power you have lost sight of how normal people behave. -[2xTemplates] to will checks related to social tasks with humans 

Book Casting: If you are casting directly from a spellbook or scroll, you may take a turn (or, say, 10 minutes) to cast the spell with an effective [dice] of 1 and a [sum] of 1, sacrificing power for the certainty of your MD returning.

Reverse Spell: When you cast a spell you know, you now have the skill to do so backwards, resulting in the opposite effect, such as a darkness spell creating light, or a spell which heals wounds causing them.

Chimerical Oneiromancy: You may perform a ritual in the space between the waking and dreaming worlds where you combine multiple creatures into one. Create a large ritual circle with sand, with yourself in the center and your subjects within the circle. Secure a golden knife to your hand and a keep a stone or cherry pit in your mouth. DO NOT SWALLOW THE STONE. Once everyone has fallen asleep, you will all be as one in the space near dreaming. Cut yourself free from the joined flesh with the golden knife, then mold and scrape it to shape. When you awaken, your subjects will have combined into a chimera. You may create any number of chimerae this way, but you may only control a cumulative total of 3 HD worth (increasing to 6 at C template, then 10 at D), with any additional chimerae acting on their own agenda. Chimerae typically have a stat bonuses adding up to their HD and the special abilities of the parts that make them up. When a chimera you created dies, take 1 damage.

Signature Spell: Pick one spell you know, one you’ve cast a lot. Slap your name to the front and give it a special quality (Ashurtan’s Bouncing Haste, Vizzidrix’s Terrifying Baleful Polymorph, etc). Whenever you cast that spell, you may choose to add 1 MD for free.

THE COURT MAGICIAN

Sometimes called “Eunuch Mages” by Tower Wizards for their associations with intrigues and lacking towers, Court Magicians are typically attached to a throne or community, specializing in providing counsel on the strange and unearthly. More sociable than their Babellian cousins, they are sought out by the ambitious and the credulous. From this position of trust, we see characters occupying the spectrum from wise mentor to twisted vizier. 

Each template, +1 Advisee, and +1 Will

Starting assets: Liveried robes, signet ring, dagger, spellbook with 3 spells

A: +1 MD, Eye of Madness, Unanswered Questions, Advice

B: +1 MD, Grant Deep Insight, Diagnose and Ward

C: +1 MD, Hooks, Magic Illusions

D: +1 MD, Raiment of Many Colors

Eye of Madness: One of your eyes changes to a random color. It can now see invisibility, and detect magic. If you lock eyes with another person you can tell how many MD they have. In your quest for power you have lost sight of the basic limits of sanity. -[2xTemplates] to will saves.

Unanswered Questions: You have a stat called Unanswered that starts at 0. Whenever you find really strange mysteries, note them down and add 1 to your Unanswered stat. When in the presence of a source of great knowledge, roll 1d6. If it is less than or equal to your Unanswered, learn the answer to one of your questions and reduce your Unanswered by the amount rolled. More details and guidance with the OG Sage here.

Advice: You are esteemed as wise and knowledgeable, and many seek your council. Name 3 monsters, 2 nations, and one school of magic. If you advise someone before they depart on a journey, they gain +1 to hit against those monsters, +2 save against that school of magic, and know any pertinent folkways of those nations on their journey. Each template, add one kind of monster, nation, school of magic, or other similar topic. You can advise [Template] Advisees each season. If an Advisee uses your advice to achieve a great goal (like clearing a dungeon or being elected mayor), gain 10 xp. If they recount their journey to you, you may gain 1 Unanswered Question from their tale (if there’s a good one), and they gain 10 xp.

Grant Deep Insight: If you spend a minute or so watching someone, you can roll 3 Will checks to learn what their next immediate course of action is, why they’re taking that particular course of action, and how you could best change their mind. Once you’ve done this, you can’t do it again until tomorrow, and you can’t do it to the same person two days in a row. Your Advisees may use this power once per journey.

Diagnose and Ward: You have completed your study of the physical arts, gain the Apothecary skill. With an hour’s examination you can determine how to cure a patient of a magical affliction. This could be something like “bathe a moon root in milk under their bed for three days” for minor ailments, or “swallow 3 Angel tears” for major troubles. If you spend at least two hours a day looking after someone’s health, you may give them advantage or disadvantage on saves against poison and either +/-2 to saves against magic.

Hooks: If you have unambiguously been the one to save someone’s life, if you have given them a magic treasure you have personally forged, or if you have answered an Unanswered Question they’ve brought you as their Advisor, they trust you implicitly and must save to doubt your fidelity and knowledge.

Magic Illusions: Pick 3: 

-Teleport up to 30 ft in the same room if you are even momentarily out of sight.

-At will, switch which of your hands is holding something

-Can pull coins from behind ears, delighting everyone. Up to 10 gold in passive income each season.

-Scry within 10 ft.

-Animals smaller than you do not take up inventory slots

-Damage your spells deal to allies is always reduced to minimum.

Raiment of Many Colors: So great is your connection to magic that power clings to you like a robe. Whenever you wish, you may reveal it’s true form , bathing your clothing in shimmering rainbow light, granting a bonus to your AC and saves equal to the number of unexpended MD you have. It also gives off light like a torch and grants +1 to reaction rolls from any with equal or less HD than you.

Reflections
-In the system I have in mind, the +1 will each template that these classes gain gives them a bonus on crafting magic treasures, an important thing for wizards to accumulate. 

-It’s important for the Tower Wizard to gather otherworldly servants. I chose to give them the Chimmerical Oneiromancy feature just because I haven’t seen much done with chimeras, personally. But it could be equally profitable to give them an avenue to a different form of magic lackeys. For example:

Summon Outsider: Perform a 10 minute ritual, incant exhortations, talk backwards, burn candles, draw gateways to other realms, and call forth an entity whose true name you know (start with 1 at random) by expending an MD. It will serve you faithfully for [sum] hours. (Here’s 99 good entities to summon,). Or…

Necromancy: Perform a 1 hour ritual focused on a corpse. For each HD the corpse had in life, stuff it with 10 gold worth of unholy unguents, or else it will rise in a weaker form outside of your control. 

-Regarding spell lists, I think the Tower Wizard works well with very classic wizard spells, but I’m sure there’s plenty of mileage out there for anyone who wants to make them weirder as a group. The Hedge Mage and Orthodox spell lists from Loch’s Heartless class are great examples of classic spells with some oomph (and even a few dealing with making magic buildings stranger). Illusion and charms are more the Court Magician’s milleau, so I might suggest the Enchanter spell list from the Heartless or Skerples’ Illusionist spell list.