Monday, August 10, 2020

The Survivalist (GLOG Class)

Here's my take on the ranger/wilderness-person class, drawing inspiration from Arnold KVelexiraptor, and zoeology's Ranger classes, and probably some others I'm forgetting.


You've spent a long time living in the wilderness past the edges of the City, beyond the borders of any town. With skill and stealth, you meet the untamed frontier. 

Starting Equipment: Light armor, sword, bow, quiver of 20 arrows;
Starting Skills (1d4): Athletics, Botany, Cartography, First aid;

A: Wildspeak, Favoured Terrain
B: Trophies
C: Second Wind
D: Enhanced Awareness, Fighting Style

Wildspeak — You're skilled at communicating with and instructing animals, getting +1 to any roll to do so. You may take on one mundane animal with HD less than your <templates> at a time as a companion, which you may give commands to as an action. It can't attack, has hearts equal to your level, and you may communicate with it fluently.

Favoured Terrain — When you gain this feature, choose a terrain type. You get advantage on all rolls to hide, hunt, or forage while in that terrain.

Trophies — You can take trophies from freshly slain corpses. Each occupies one inventory slot, and, provided you wear them prominently, gives +1 to your Defence and grants advantage on rolls to avoid the abilities of creatures of that type.

Second Wind — Living in the wilds and through the course of your adventuring, your stamina has improved. Once each rest, you may draw on your reserves to restore hearts to yourself equal to your CON bonus.

Enhanced Awareness — You can no longer be surprised, and now get +1 to initiative rolls.

Fighting Style — You've become even more accustomed to using a weapon of your choice in combat. Increase the damage die you use for that weapon by one size. (This stacks with other similar features.)

Critique and feedback appreciated!

2 comments:

  1. Anne at DIY & Dragons recently had a post about exploration that made an observation about the Ranger's traditional weakness: that you have to select terrain before you know where you are. One workaround looks a lot like trophies. A traditional Ranger selects favored enemy: goblins, and then ends up fighting undead all the time. With trophies, the class adapts seamlessly to any type of campaign. I wonder if a similar system could be added for terrain here.

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    1. You make an interesting point! I wonder how one might implement it — perhaps use a d% system for hunting/foraging and increase your chances in a certain terrain each time you perform one of those actions there?

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