Practice of the Elusive Hound

    Casters who practice of the elusive hound come from a mono-theistic kingdom to the west of the archipelago, and act as the priestly sect of that kingdom. They journey out beyond their kingdom to proselytize to those they view as worshipping djinn, an "evil" long ago eradicated from their lands. Their efforts are, however earnest, fruitless as their river god's influence only reaches as far as the sea before it is swallowed.

    The spirits they control tend to take the form of dogs, they are called forth with a whistle or a wave of the hand before darting out from down low to their target. These spirits come from the souls of their dead across the sea, but are much easier to come by among the isles of the archipelago.

    Smokewater is considered sacred to them, it is a drug that is used to tame spirits, and they can quickly grow impudent if not sourced with it. In appearance, it looks like dark inky water, and holds most of the same properties as regular water, but does not wet that which it touches and leaves the throat dry and wanting.

Observances:

1. Cannot cast without carrying smokewater on your person.
2. Astral projection is performed by staring into water which obscures its bottom.
3. Wear foreign clothes of rich blue, supplemented by gold jewelry.
4. Must not eat of any creature of the water.

You can remold your spirits into the hound form upon tethering them. Doing so causes them to be immediately hostile towards you, however.

You can negate a Disobedience from one of your casts by expending 1/3 of your smokewater. If the spirit has the houndform, this uses none.

 

Starting Equipment: A gourd filled with smokewater, Incense, Censer.

Spells:

1. Weakness - Pick [Dice] of the following effects: Target cannot stand, Target cannot raise arms to strike, target can not heal through any means, target must test under their Build to briefly open their eyes. Lasts until the caster ends it or loses sight of the target.
2. Darkness -An area of a 5 meter radius centered on any target within sight of the caster is treated as [dice] steps darker than previously. Any fires in the radius are snuffed in a breath of air.
3. Fetch - Retrieves an item that can be held in hand  from up to [sum]x5 feet in front of you, anybody already holding the item gets a save to resist letting it go.
4. Animate Object: You imbue [dice] equipment slots worth of inanimate objects with a spirit of sentience, and can give them a command of up to [sum] words long. Lasts until the command is finished or the caster ends it. If you choose to, you can remove the spell from your character sheet and imbue the object with complete sentience.
5. Relay Scent - Your spirit can pick up on any scents within [dice] miles or dungeon rooms of you. If at least two dice are invested, you can pick a particular direction.
6. Forget Me, Not - Target will assume that all events from the last [dice] minutes, were simply part of a dream. As long as nothing shatters that belief, it stays that way.
7. Necrography - Target corpse answers [dice] questions you ask it. These answers come from the flesh and  relate to experiences such as food, pain, or adrenaline responses.
8. Black Hand - Pick [dice] of the following options, you can select an option twice: One arm becomes invisible, along with any small handheld object, one large handheld object becomes invisible.
   These invisible limbs and objects are replaced with a regular arm doing any action you choose for it to do.

Pinnacles:

Started thinking about how I want to do pinnacles and decided I'd rather have them be a list shared by the entire casting class.
Before this class gets posted, there'll be an updated version of the Soulcaster that includes them.

GLoG Class: Struggler

The following is an adaptation of the Avenger class made by another user over in the GLoG server on discord. Check it out if you haven't and maybe say hi if you do.

Starting Equipment: 

[A]: Target, Background, Collateral

[B]: Grit, Commit

[C]: Spirit of Vengeance

[D]: Mastery of Determination

Target

Choose someone who unjustly wronged you; they should be powerful enough that it may take years to achieve revenge. You may choose multiple targets, if you so desire.

Background

Choose or roll to see how you were wronged, and gain the selected skill:

Imprisonment: Stealth - You can vanish from the scene at any time, only to appear as if 

from nowhere at an opportune moment.

Murder: Scrutiny - You can always tell when someone harbors ill-will towards you.

Slander: Rumor-sniffing - while gathering rumours, either through corroboration

 and communication, you can remove 1d3 false rumours at random.

Marooning: Navigation - No matter where you are, you always know your bearing to 

one specific location.

Exploitation: Scrounging - If you dig around for 10 minutes, you can always find a

substitute, makeshift, or jury-rigged basic tool that’ll last one use.

Abuse: Deception - As long as you speak around the truth, nobody will ever

suspect you may have misled them.

Collateral

Record the names of those you unjustly harm in the course of your vengeance, and how.

Once your vengeance is complete, lose all your Struggler templates (except your [D] template), as you no longer need them, and roll 1d20. If the result is greater than the number of collateral casualties you have recorded, nothing happens. Otherwise, the corresponding Collateral casualty is now a Struggler, targeting you, with half your XP. If this is implausible, choose another such. If they are dead, then they in fact miraculously survived.

Grit

You  can go without sleep or food for a number of days equal to your Build score before collapsing from exhaustion.

Commit

Before making an attack roll, you can call a result on the Hit Location Table, if you roll the called result, you can make a second attack for free against the same target.

Spirit of Vengeance

You attract the attention of a random Angel, they may occasionally help you achieve your vengeance free of charge, but more often they’ll ask a price. They will be inherently manipulative and deceptive with their goals. If you wish, you may add them to your Targets, and they will be none the wiser.

Mastery of Determination

Over the course of a downtime, you achieve a breakthrough in some field. Perhaps you achieved mastery as a duelist, or learned powerful magic. Choose any template from another available class or come up with one of your own, and gain its benefits.

Pacts and Spirits: Giving Up Your Self for Power

 I'd been thinking about how I wanted to go about adding warlocks to Destination:Nowhere for a little while, because I wanted to base it on the kinds of pacts made in ChainsawMan, which doesn't lend itself to a four template class format very well.

And so, in favour of flavour, I've decided to go about it in a different way. Every game needs a way to get neat powers outside classes anyways, right?

First we need to reestablish some things about the world, and how spirits operate.

Spirits

Souls are the most common kinds of spirits, they drift around, doing whatever souls do, mostly invisible to humans. They are the spark that sets a forest ablaze, or the mote of wind whistling through the crags. By inhabiting a flesh sack, a soul can grant it sentience, it's own will and determination. It is through a common ritual imbuing that gibbering babies learn to form words. Humans, of course, are not the only species able to gain this sentience, but they most commonly possess it. It is also possible to lose your soul, and in turn lose what makes you unique, this is how men are driven to become like wild beasts, relinquishing their self.

In contrast, it is also possible to tether additional souls to your own, by doing this, you can send out these other souls to perform feats of magic. However, if you're not careful, you may allow another soul to domineer it's will over your body, altering your self along with it.

Artist

Guardians are the more rare spirits. They're more powerful, and choose to inhabit parts of the world, such as mountains, forest groves, or rivers. They manifest themselves from the land they inhabit, and gain followers from nearby souls. The will of a guardian spirit can manifest through the wills of their followers; thus, by garnering a large enough following, guardians can increase their power, influence, and domain, sometimes even putting themselves over other guardian spirits.

By choosing to imprint a larger part of a guardian spirit's will on your self, you can manifest aspects of that spirit. This is known as a pact. Any person may choose to accept a pact, though it is just as easy to be coerced or forced into taking one. If any person goes against the will established in a pact however, the consequences are often quite severe, often result in death or the loss of your soul.

Artist

There's one more class of spirits, known as angels. Angels inhabit celestial bodies, and thus rarely affect the goings on of those on Maamilla, both the name of the planet as well as the common name of it's angel. Angels imprint their will on entire celestial bodies, and thus it can be said that anything which comes from the earth, or rather all life, is a part of Maamilla. The natural instincts of this life are how Maamilla's will expresses itself, in order to keep its dwelling alive.

Pacts

A pact can be made with a guardian spirit or, more rarely, an angel. By letting the more powerful entity in on your Self, it influences aspects of your outward and inward appearance. Those imprinted by a spirit often show some physical trait of the spirit that controls them, and have parts of their personality affected by that spirits Will.

It is not uncommon to see entire villages which are under the influence of a guardian spirit, who may help protect them from attacks, as well as helping their livelihoods.

Cencayohtli

Domains: Cultivation, Burials, Vines.

Mark: shows as a hole peering into a hollow cavity in the forehead, looking inside it will show a weirdly distant rattling skull.

Gift: You don't require water to survive however, the longer you go without it, the more dried up you appear.
If you go a month without drinking water, you gain a permanently dried up appearance, and look not unalike to a hollow dried gourd in the shape of a man.

Imprint: You hate animals and they hate you. They'll either be violent towards you or give you a wide berth. If interrogated they will state that you smell like oppression, this is true and you are at least a little more tyrannical than you were before making this deal.

Atoyaatl-Cihuapille

Domains: Flowing Water, Smooth Stones, Farewells.

Mark: bright blue eyes which glow mildly in darkness.

Gift: You are incapable of drowning in water so long as it isn't stagnant.

Imprint: You forgo your name and Important belongings, no bond is permanent, and you can stay in no land forever.

Temazatl

Domains: Obsidian, Slumber, Dying Flames

Mark: Forearms that appear blackened and charred beginning from about halfway down the arm.

Gift: You are not harmed by reaching your arms into fire. The rest of your body and possessions are more than capable of burning up.

Imprint: After a significant achievement or victory, you must surrender an object of value to the fire. Apathy and inactivity is against your nature now.

Regurgitative alchemist (GLoG Class)

Starting Gear: mortar and pestle, chalk, jar of snake venom, Prepared components for 1 potion.

[A]: Extra Stomachs, Esophigeal Reaction

[B]: The Path to the Heart is the Stomach

[C]: Smoke Tricks, Eureka

Extra Stomachs - You have three extra stomachs, each of which can hold two negligable items. As you swallow, you can choose which stomach(s) the swallowed items go to. Items can only leave a stomach by choosing to regurgitate the full contents of a given stomach. Nothing that is left in your stomachs will affect you in any way unless left in overnight; in which case they will be digested, with all that entails.

Esophigeal Reaction - By regurgitating certain components at the same time, you can belch out a cloud, which effects a 3m diameter circle, with you at the back of it. The effect lasts 1d6 rounds.

The Path to the Heart is the Stomach - Whenever you would gain any number of fatal wounds. You can instead choose to permanently lose 1 stomach and immediately stabilize.

Smoke Tricks - You can now change the shape of your belch, choosing what areas it affects, as long as the cloud stays within a 3m radius of your person.

Eureka: - You have a stroke of genius, and can, as a player, create your own Reaction.

 Reactions

1. Breath of Life

    Components - bone-dry twig, aged feces

Sprouts up bushes and local flora in the area, as well as boosting growth in existing flora dramatically. If there is already local plant life in the area, it becomes impassible until cleared out.

2. Aspect of the serpent

    Components - A snake fang, psychedelic mushroom

Intelligent creatures within the cloud must save or begin mindlessly wriggling along the ground while sticking their tongues out.

3. Rising Sun

    Components - a salt rock, wet earth, bird eye

A wave of intense heat is felt a moment before the affected area is ungulfed in an explosion. Anyone in the area immediately rolls wounds.

4. Transposition

    Components - brimstone , pine resin, nightshade

A cloud of ash envelopes the area, switch places with anybody in the cloud.

5. Irritation

     Components - burnt wood, poison ivy, oil

Dramatically increases the amount of irritants in the surrounding air, causing coughing, choking, and a burning sensation in those who inhale it.

6. Sucking Sands

    Components - driftwood, fish eye, baked clay

The area becomes malleable and wet. Creatures and objects touching surfaces in the area begin to fold into the surface, making it difficult to get out. Eventually a creature left inside the area will be pulled in fully and suffocate.

Reverse-Oddomatic Combats

    This post will be detailing a combat system I will be dubbing: "reverse oddomatic"; which isn't technically accurate, butbit almost makes sense.

    Combat in this system has two phases: the attack roll, and the injury roll. The attack roll actually ends up being a standard stat roll, which will be detailed in an upcoming post on character generation, if it is succeeded, or if the player fails their dodge roll, they either deal or are dealt a hit.

    For each hit they receive, they gain an injury. the severity and location of that injury is determined by rolling on the following tables:

Location (1d6)

1.     Arm

2.     Leg

3-4. Torso

5-6. Head

Severity (1d6)        Modifier        Recovery

1. Cosmetic                +0              Overnight

2-4. Minor                  +1               1 week

5-7. Serious                +2             1 month + medical attention.

8. Fatal                        -                You're dead :(

    The severity roll is modified  by two things: armor, which reduces the severity by 3; and active wounds, which increase it as according to the severity table. An active wound is any wound which has not yet healed, and they stack.

    Yes, it's deadly, that is one way in which I draw the similarity to oddomatic combats, in that combat ends rather quickly. But it keeps a few things I like, namely, the ability to put a dodge roll in my games.

    Additionally, combat has lasting consequences. It can put out a character for anywhere from a week to a month in game. If a character goes into a fight without armor, their first hit could leave them out for some time. This puts it in a much less desirable position than other forms of resolving conflicts.

    As usual for my posts about homebrew rules and whatnot, I will end with my disclaimer about it being pure theorycraft that should only be implemented with utmost personal discretion.