Class: Nightmare

One of the players in my just-finished D&D 5e campaign rides a nightmare. In preparation for switching to GLOG, I want to let them play as the nightmare.

from D&D 5e

 

A: Nightmarish, Fiery, Horse That Leaps Over Land And Sea And Sky

B: choose one of Dream Travel or Dimensional Travel

C: Fiery Steed, Trample

D: Fiery Breath and the other Travel ability

Nightmarish

You are a horse, but scary. You cannot speak, but can communicate with those you know well.

You have no hands, but can run really fast (double standard Movement Speed) and count your Strength Might twice for the purposes of Inventory Slots.

Your teeth are razor-sharp and your hooves smoulder - deal d10 damage "unarmed". You can only eat meat.

Fiery

Your mane and tail are on fire. You have fire resistance and shed light as a lantern.

Horse That Leaps Over Land And Sea And Sky

You can walk on water. You can also run on air, but must end each movement action on a solid ground, or fall.

Fiery Steed

You are now immune to fire and may confer fire resistance to one rider.

Trample

You can move through the space of any creature smaller than you and test Might. On success, they are knocked prone and get no attacks of opportunity against you.

You may trample multiple creatures in a single movement, as long as you fail no Might test. On a failed Might test, you lose the rest of your movement.

Fiery Breath

Deal 2d8 fire damage in a 15 feet cone. You can breathe again once you devour a ration's worth of raw flesh.

Dream Travel

Instead of a long rest, you and your rider may dive into the Dreamlands. You can follow the scent of anyone whose blood you have ever tasted and enter their dreaming, if they are currently asleep. Dreamers will remember their interactions with you as strange nightmares.

Sidebar: Willpower (wp) is basically mental hp or sanity, decreased by stress rather than damage. Once you run out of wp, you start freaking out and may gain Vice if you take further stress. I should post the full rules one day.

In a dream, your attacks deal stress rather than damage. If your target is reduced to 0 wp, they wake up covered in cold sweat, their rest forestalled, and gain a Vice of phobia towards you.

Should your dreaming form be reduced to 0 hp or wp, you wake up. This may strand your rider, if they were not riding you at the moment of your return to the waking world.

Dimensional Travel

You can smell dimensional intersections - fey crossings, thin places, inactive portals, etc. Take 1 Fatigue to kick open a rift in such a weak location. It stays open for d6 minutes.

In most of Creation, Twilight is close enough that you can always open a portal there.

Twilight

Just beyond the first veil, where the living heartbeat of Creation fades into stillborn silence, lies Twilight, also known to different people as the Shadow Realm, Darklands, World-Shade, Penumbra, Upside-Down, Abyss, Stíny, or the Other Side. It is a dark and decaying mirror-realm, an uncanny echo that clings to the living world like a black mould. A shadow that hungers.

Indeed, Twilight shadows and mirrors Creation, but imperfectly and slowly, always struggling and failing to catch up to the endless changes of the real world. Twilight cities are hollow, their streets silent and broken. Permanent structures - mountains, temples, great trees - are always present, yet everything ephemeral is fragile, or missing, or found in states of ruin. Shattered cups, torn banners, books whose pages crumble to dust at the lightest touch and whose ink spells only madness-muddled nonsense.

Some say that Twilight lies at the very edge of Creation, where it meets the Dead Dimensions and the endless Void Beyond. That this uncanny mirroring is a universe's defence mechanism, a thin layer of corrupted reality that, just like tarnish, seals and protects the healthy reality beneath it.

Upside Down concept art from Stranger Things

 

There is little light in Twilight. No sun, no stars, nothing but the suffocating blackness of perfect night. Torches sputter and even magical flames grow dim. Only occasionally is the realm's cimmerian firmament punctured by thunderstorms of red lightning, or contaminated by creeping clouds of bioluminescent, carcinogenic spores. Sunlight, if somehow cast into this realm, does not illuminate - it burns and scours away creatures and matter of Twilight, leaving behind only drifting motes of soot.

There is no water in Twilight, at all. While blood will remain in the veins and liquids in their bottles, any spilled drop or free-flowing stream rapidly dissipates into nothingness. Attempts to conjure water end in failure and water elementals perish screaming.

The vegetation of Twilight is sparse and terrible. The only things that truly grow there are black mould and wrixling vines, which feed on warmth and magic, respectively, rather than light. Trees stand as pale ghosts of their counterparts in Creation - dead and petrified, their branches twisted skyward in eternal agony. Leaves or grass collapse into ash when touched.

Yet Twilight's ashen bedrock bears one treasure the living world cannot produce - black iron ore that, once smelted with captured souls, can be forged into spectre-slaying soulsteel weaponry.

And rarely, strange monuments can be found in Twilight that are not a reflection of the mortal realm. Obsidian monoliths, inhuman statues, sprawling complexes of bleak geometry. Necromancers claim that these mark the entrances into the Labyrinth, a vast under-realm of impossible angles and shifting gravity. The Labyrinth is said to touch most worlds - including the Land of the Dead, the Dreamlands, and perhaps realms even older and odder.

Class: Fashion Wizard

No orb-fondling tower-dweller, you are not. Halfway between an artificer and a socialite, you have the correct attire, taste, but most importantly, opinions.

 

by sundae_jck

 

You are Chartered and likely from a good family.

Items:

• lavish clothes of your own design,
• another set of clothes of your own design,
• yet another set of clothes of your own design,
• needles and thread,
• a pre-approved business loan from a local bank, though at a truly draconian interest rate.

Skills: Fashionista and two topics of trivia that you can keep talking for hours about

Perks & Flaws:

While wearing a fancy and expensive clothes, cape or hat, you can destroy it to reduce an incoming attack's damage or spell's [sum] by 2d6.

Moaning and raging about the irreplaceability of the lost piece of apparel is optional, but highly encouraged.

You cannot use magic while dirty or badly clothed.

For example, falling into water will prevent spellcasting until you can dry off, unless you were already wearing a fancy swimming wear.

Cantrips:

• Interesting: With concentration, you can prevent others from leaving a conversation with you. There is no save, but remember that concentration can be broken by punching you in the face.
• Important: Make your clothes billow dramatically or a faint, pleasant music follow you.
• Inspired: Telekinetically control needles and thread within 30 feet, though your control is not forceful enough to cause damage.

 

Spells:

This spell list draws heavily on the elf wizard, handsome wizard and silk wizard traditions.

1. Flying Needles

R: touch; T: [dice] needles; D: concentration

Enchant [dice] needles, connecting them to your fingertips by invisible, ethereal thread. Enchanted needles can be used as throwing knives and they will attach the thread to anything they strike. Save negates, but only if the target could see the thread. You count as touching anything connected to you by a thread.

The thread can be stretched effectively infinitely and can only be severed by effects that can harm ghosts. At will, you can make the thread visible and tangible, but also only as strong and stretchy as a silken rope. It cannot be changed back and disappears when your concentration is broken.

2. Clean

Up to [highest] touched creatures or objects no larger than a child/man/horse/dragon are instantly cleaned, groomed and perfumed.

One may specify the grooming, e.g. shaving, shaping or trimming of the beard; type of perfume, etc. This does not destroy the filth, merely puts it into a neat pile on the side.

3. Mend

R: touch; T: object or construct

Fix a target with [dice] or less Cracks. This does not affect a target with more than [dice] Cracks at all (no "partial fixes") and cannot replace missing pieces. Alternately, instantly remove up to [dice] malfunctions. Complex objects (clockworks, magic contraptions) might require a skill test to be properly mended.

4. Beautify

Touched creature or object no larger than a child/man/horse/dragon is altered into a more beautiful form of the same type (e.g. humanoid, chair). The new form must be considered more beautiful by either the caster or the target.

This also restores [sum] points of damaged Charisma Presence, or grants +[dice] Presence bonus if it was undamaged. No other characteristics or abilities are affected.

The effect lasts for [sum] hours and can be made permanent at 4 [dice], but is always broken when the target is killed or shattered.

5. Feather Fall

R: 30'; T: [dice] creatures or objects; D: until each touches the ground

Rather than falling, the target slowly (possibly alarmingly so) descends, their clothes beauteously billowing around them. Can be cast as a reaction.

6. Choose one of:

Silk to Steel

D: [sum] minutes

Touched silk object becomes as steel. Silk clothes grant armour as leather/chain/plate/plate and shield, silk thread can serve as wire, silk rope works as a steel rod, etc.

Works on other fabrics as well, but only for [sum] rounds. With 4 [dice], you can make the effect permanent.

Steel to Silk

D: [sum] minutes

Touched steel object becomes as silk. This makes weapons fairly useless, steel bars as silk ropes, armour as clothing, etc.

Works on other metals as well, but only for [sum] rounds. With 4 [dice], you can make the effect permanent.

7. Speak with Fabrics

Talk to clothes and cloth for [sum] minutes, or ask [dice] questions they must answer, save negates. Textiles only know about things that touched them, but they can tell a lot from a simple touch.

8. Powerful Presence

T: self; D: [sum] hours

You project an aura of magnificence and poise. Gain +2×[dice] to saves against charm, domination and fear. Easily impressed creatures (peasants, lesser fairies and petty nobles) must test Morale or fawn and grovel.

9. Silken Servant

R: touch; D: [sum] hours

Enchant a set of clothes or a fabric doll no larger than a child/man/horse/dragon to serve you. It can follow complex instructions, but cannot fight and will collapse after a single blow.

10. Mirror Mirror

D: 10 minutes

Reach into a mirror-like surface and pull out [dice] illusory copies of a creature mirrored on the surface. The mirror must be large enough for them to pass through. The mirror clones behave as you wish. They can walk and talk, but cannot pick anything up and burst like a bubble if struck. You can alter their clothing, grooming and styling at will.

If you mirror yourself with 3+ [dice], you can see through your clones' eyes and hear through their ears, cast your spells through them, and switch places with your mirror twin as a half action.

 

Shadows of Arezzo Giulia Ferraro
by Bruce Luan

 

Emblem Spells:

You have access to a powerful crowd control and a single-target save-or-die emblems, but both are tools of art and admiration, not crude and callow murder.

11. I Expect You To Dine

R: 30'; D: concentration

Up to [sum] total HD of creatures find themselves unable to move, no save. If sitting, they will be tied to the chair with ribbons; if standing, their shoes will be sewed to the carpet, etc. As an action, they can attempt to tear themselves free with -[dice] penalty, and any hostile action against a target also breaks the spell.

12. My Lovely Doll

Touched creature of 2×[dice] or less HD is turned into a tiny puppet of themselves, save negates. They are helpless but fully aware. Lasts for a minute/hour/day/eternity, but any damage suffered by the doll reverts the transformation.

by Chelsea Boy

 

Dooms:

1. Your eyes turn into buttons for 10 minutes, leaving you blind.
2. Your skin turns into skin-coloured silk, permanently. Take double fire and slashing damage.
3. You transform into a tiny, beauteous doll. You are helpless but fully aware, forever.

You can prevent (but not revert) all your Dooms by discarding and forswearing all your worldly possessions. Once you take this vow, you may only own and use simple, mundane clothes and tools; and may not own, use, or even carry money and valuables, properties and deeds, or magical and masterwork items of any kind. On the bright side, as a mendicant ascetic you are no longer bound by your Flaw and may keep your magic no matter your appearance and apparel. On the bleak side, this is considered a fate worse than death by many a fashion wizard.

Should you ever break this vow, you immediately suffer your final Doom. Maybe finding a way to animate your doll-body or transmigrate your soul into a more suitable vessel is the better solution.

 

Miniature Ranni from Elden Ring

RadMans

So, deadEarth... Such an incredible marvel of insane game design. Reading this thread, I fell in love with the idea that if you just completely reworked the main resolution mechanic, removed the sexism, reworded most of the rules so that they made a semblance of sense, replaced... Yeah, I started to hack it, because the characters that survive character generation are incredibly amusing and worthy of being played, just not in the deadEarth engine.

I have regained my sanity before getting too far, but I still have this automated character generator with a revised list of skills and no rules to accompany it. If ever a strange mood compels me to refine the nearly two thousand radiation manipulations (i.e. reality-warping mutations) into a format and content I would be happy with, I will let you know. But don't hold your breath.