“Who maketh his angels spirits;
his ministers a flaming fire...”
The kindling is your campaign setting.
The following is a GLOG class for prophet-like characters. One, a prophet for that which is known and the other for that which is unknown.
Advancement is as:
Level 1: Gain 2 Signs/Symbols, rank 1.
Level 2: Gain 1 Sign/Symbol, rank 1.
Level 3: Gain 1 Sign/Symbol, rank 1.
Level 4: Gain 1 Sign/Symbol, rank 1.
A Voice Cries Out in the Wilderness
Clerics and paladins and priests. Those aligned with good and God and on a holy mission on the behalf of the Deity and in accordance with the Highest Ideals. Those willing volunteers. These are mere gate keepers of the House of God.
Then there are those who have seen God. In a dream, or a bush, or glimpse as He just walks away. These are vessels that have been changed and are no longer fit for common use. You’re one of those.
You didn’t accidentally see the form of God. You were chosen for a purpose and given Stigmata and Signs to help you fulfill it. Signs have no limit to their use, as the power is not yours. If you abuse this power you will be given up to 3 warnings depending on the severity of the misuse of the Signs. Typically, a nearby animal will stare blankly at you as a reminder that the gifts of God are not your plaything. The final warning comes verbally from the closest animal. If you hear this tread carefully, you are mere moments from death.
Upon reaching level 4, set a real-world timer for 45-60 minutes. When it goes off you disappear in a whirlwind.
You are God’s chosen messenger, selected to lift up and strengthen the oppressed and speak God’s judgment on the oppressors. Make way for the Lord.
When you saw the true form of God, you gained a Stigmata:
A blistered and burning tongue and lips (-2 Cha)
Nails in hands (-2 Str)
Nails in feet (-2 Dex)
An immovable crown of thorns (-2 Int)
A large bleeding wound which does not clot (-2 Con)
Perpetually weeping eyes (-2 Wis)
You are given Signs to aid you in your purpose. Signs begin at rank 1. Each time you draw a crowd denouncing an oppressive authority, increase the rank of one of your Signs. Each day you could have done this but didn't, lose a rank and increase the penalty from your Stigmata by 1. It is ok to go adventuring, but this obligation remains when you return. If you permanently alleviate an instance of oppression, one of your Signs may stay at its current rank.
If, in your adventuring, you encounter active oppression you must immediately chastise and rebuke the oppressor and call them to repentance. If not, reduce the rank of a Sign by 1 and increase the penalty from your Stigmata by 1. Also, if you leave town while your chosen oppressor is unrepentant, reset all Signs to rank 1.
1. Every Valley will be Lifted Up; Every Mountain and Hill Made Low
🜱 Command stones and earth to move, slowly. A volume the size of your body can be emptied or filled with rock in d6 minutes.
🜱🜱 A small hillside can be flattened or erected in 10*d6 minutes.
🜱🜱🜱 Walk a circle around a structure 7 times, loudly pronouncing judgment and proclaiming that it will fall. Afterward, the structure collapses.
2. Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
🜱 You are immune to Fear, Charm, Sleep.
🜱🜱 Remove a Fear, Charm, or Sleep effect from one person. In an hour, consecrate an area against lesser evil.
🜱🜱🜱 You glow. No one friendly to you is affected by Fear, Charm, or Sleep while in your immediate presence. You may cast out a demon with a save, and destroy lesser undead with a touch.
3. Blessed are the Merciful
🜱 Heal one person of an ongoing physical condition. Must be performed in public.
🜱🜱 Bring someone back from the dead after the burial ceremony is completed.
🜱🜱🜱 Bring someone back from the dead, they take d6 damage to all stats until they eat and sleep.
4. Withering Gaze
🜱 Lock eyes to wither and paralyze a limb of someone you are able to communicate with. Indefinite, only one paralyzed limb at a time.
🜱🜱 Effect is permanent, save to negate. Permanent effects don’t count toward limit.
🜱🜱🜱 Affect up to 4 total limbs at one time.
5. The Winds Obey
🜱 Direct the wind to assume a direction and increase or decrease its intensity gradually up to an uncomfortably strong gale. This takes 10*d6 minutes if it is currently still.
🜱🜱 You may direct the wind to bring up a storm or calm an existing storm. This takes 10*d6 minutes if it is currently still. Less time if there is more “weather” currently.
🜱🜱🜱 The wind rushes to obey. Call up or calm a storm in 10*d6 seconds. Direct 1 lightning strike to a location of your choice.
6. The Heavens Declare
🜱 Declare a sign in the sky such as stars aligning, a comet at a particular place. It happens tonight. If it is night time, it may happen now.
🜱🜱 You may accelerate the movement of the Sun. It will rise or set in 10*d6 minutes. Your choice.
🜱🜱🜱 Clap your hands, the Sun winks off, or appears directly overhead. Lasts as long as you keep both arms raised overhead.
A note for the GM. Authorities do not like prophets. Telling the truth is always a threat to power. Even if the prophet is not denouncing a given authority, they will likely feel as though their time will soon come. They are correct. If you (GM) have an idea about how the authority might react, do that. If not, create a short list of increasing sanctions or action they may take against the prophet. Each time the prophet appears in public and denounces them they perform one action and cross it off the list. Soon they will be asking for their head on a silver platter.
Example:
Become aware of Prophet
Send low ranking acolytes to laugh at and mock the Prophet and return with information.
Send higher rank officials to accuse the Prophet of wrongdoing and turn the crowd on the Prophet. Try to get the crowd to stone them.
Higher cult assassins for a large sum of silver pieces to remove the Prophet.
Knower of the Oak Tree
Something exists just behind the thin veneer of perception. Most are blinded by their eyes, and lulled to complacency by their reason. But listen carefully to your deepest intuitions, watch your dreams, lick a frog and you may catch a glimpse of the true chaotic nature of reality.
This nature is there in the beginning, with God. Chaos, Void, Water, Serpent. All symbols of Nature and the Unknowable. Having been so touched, you exist as a remainder. You do not add up. You remind polite society that for all their walls and rules and traditions they only just keep afloat on the surface of the Chaotic Waters of reality.
The Symbols you possess are powerful. Even having one foot beyond the veil doesn’t make you immune to their tug. Abusing them will cause you to lose yourself. This takes the form of brief out-of-body experiences as you watch yourself cackle like a madman, or snort around like an animal. The last sign is your body telling you it is almost free.
When the Unknowable entered your mind, you gained a Mark:
A forked tongue and scaly mouth (-2 Cha)
Feathered hands (-2 Str)
Hooves (-2 Dex)
An intractable fungal infection (-2 Int)
Constant profuse sweat (-2 Con)
Snake-like Infrared eyes (-2 Wis)
You are given Symbols to aid you in your purpose. Symbols begin at rank 1. Each time you draw a crowd with a disruptive, confusing, or disturbing performative act to remind civilization that they are a hair’s breadth from utter uncertainty, increase the rank of a Symbol by 1.
Each day you could have done this but didn't, lose a rank and increase the penalty from your Mark by 1. It is ok to go adventuring, but this obligation remains when you return. If you permanently remove an organizing principle from a settlement, one of your Symbols may stay at its current rank.
In your adventuring, you must not rely on the so-called creature comforts of civilized folk. Wear no clothes except where necessary to survive. Do not wield forged weapons. Regularly dissolve your rational self and give in to intuition and feeling (via drugs). For each violation, reduce the rank of a Symbol by 1 and increase the penalty from your Mark by 1. Also, if you leave town for good without leaving a lasting unsettling or disorganizing influence, reset all Symbols to rank 1.
I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.
1. Natural
🝆 Detect smells as a dog and see as an Eagle.
🝆🝆 Take the form of a small animal if no one can see you.
🝆🝆🝆 Take the form of any animal you’ve seen if no one can see you.
2. Geas
🝆 One person must obey a non-harmful direction as long as you lock eyes.
🝆🝆 A willing participant may enter a Geas with you. Agree upon terms, if either party willingly breaks the terms, they die.
🝆🝆🝆 An unwilling participant may be forced into a Geas with you. State what the unwilling party must do and what you must do. The tasks must be comparable in risk and difficulty or the spell won’t work. Enter the Geas by stating the full terms of the Geas in their hearing and sacrificing an animal. If either party breaks the terms, they die.
3. One with the Mist
🝆 Call up a mist or fog. Takes d6 minutes. This impedes vision and provides advantages for stealth.
🝆🝆 In a mist, your identity is unknowable except at your will.
🝆🝆🝆 In a mist you may declare that you are absent and may reappear in a mist in a later scene at any time.
4. Intuitive Medicine
🝆 At a glance, know if a creature is diseased, poisoned, or cursed and the nature of the ailment. You are immune to these conditions.
🝆🝆 Remove any naturally caused ailment.
🝆🝆🝆 Remove any magically caused ailment. Requires mushrooms and a brief jaunt into the spirit realm.
5. Medium
🝆 Touch a warm body to speak with their spirit.
🝆🝆 At a word, if a location is inhabited by a spirit, they will make themselves known to you.
🝆🝆🝆 With mushrooms and an all night ritual, speak with any dead willing to hear you.
6. I Shall be a Serpent in the Way, a Horned Snake in the Path.
🝆 Speak with snakes and the like. You are generally on friendly terms. Your spit is venomous
🝆🝆 Turn a staff into a snake and back. It is stronger than other comparable snakes.
🝆🝆🝆 Summon briefly, once a dragon. It doesn’t know you or like you.
Design Notes on the Knower of the Oak Tree: Not a ton is known about druids that I could find. It is difficult to remove the DnDisms we all know, but understanding the original druids through the lens of Roman and Christian writers is beyond my hobby scope. This class contains DnDisms because that’s what I had left in spite of higher aspirations. That said, prophet of the unknown is a fun idea and I like it.
On being a prophet of the unknown. The point is not to act silly, although you may end up doing that. The point of the class is to incentivise the player to think about the structures of your setting and interact with them and undermine them. If there is a cult in town and this druidic player helps cast them out via typical DnD violence, then that organizing principle for that significant portion of townsfolk is gone. Druid mission accomplished. The same is true if the town elder gets so annoyed and flustered at your behavior he disgraces himself in front of the townsfolk and loses their respect. Remove order.
Needless to say order does not like to be disrupted. The powers that be may respond similarly to the Druid as the Prophet, but the authorities annoyed with be much broader.
General Design Notes: The first class was a fun exercise in squeezing in biblical reference into as small a space as possible. I also went for an overtly Christian class. This is usually avoided in holy-person classes to my knowledge. I’ve never seen it done to this degree.
The design bits I’m excited about are that the spell-like abilities have only diegetic limitations. It’s a near diceless, mechanic-less system for spells effects.
The second is that it is effectively a delta class, but one that should play out in interesting ways. First, the player is incentivised to interact with the setting in a way which matches the class fantasy. Also, doing so is possible and not needlessly time consuming, as is the delta trap. It is also the first delta class with a single course of action tied to each ability.
Format (for lack of a better word) inspired by the Thieves Guilds here and discussion on the Discord server.
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