GLoG Class: The Trampled

-

The Road

A vaguely Middle East + Central Asia inspired setting, evoking the historical Silk Road in themes and setup for adventure. When a traveler speaks of the entire region, they call it The Road of Dead Buddhas. Upon its breadth not a soul can forget the wisdom of the sages: "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him."

geometric design of three rabbits entwined on a beautiful blue mosaic of white vines, the sun peeking in from the top left. The white rabbits are arranged in a triangular pattern, creating the illusion that one rabbit's ear flows into the other

As people travel these lands for gold and glory, certainty and conviction are as picked-over by vultures as the many corpses that litter its trails.


There Are Barbarians at the Gate

black and white photo of a statue from Han era China; the statue depicts a large stone horse crushing a man from the "barbarian" Xiongnu peoples asserting dominance over Han conquest of the Her Shee corridor
Han era Chinese statue depicting a Xiongnu man being trampled

So-called civilization has declared you Other, and the hooves of war have stamped out your way of life. Being marked as a wretched thing by imperial agents from faraway cities, you have embraced the lifestyle they inflict upon you. You have been trampled, but not defeated. You will become the wretched thing they make you out to be, for the honor and memory of those who couldn't get back up.

Special prerequisite: To take a template of Trampled you must literally survive being trampled beneath a horse. It is both metaphorical and literal: surviving a scourge of Sankhati knights, throwing yourself under a horse drawn carriage, a stampede of buffalo or a big enough Dire Hog, etc.


TRAMPLED

Starting equipment: broken shield or a broken breastplate, shoulder pain or hip pain, spear

Starting skill: stealth, trapmaking OR tactics

A: Bent, Not Broken, Go For the Knees

B: Anti-Cavalry Action

C: Wretched of the Earth

D: The Wheel is Broken Upon my Back


Bent, Not Broken: It’s easier for you to scuttle on all four limbs than it is to walk upright. While all four of your limbs are touching the ground, you can scuttle upright surfaces at half your usual pace. You can test Strength or Dexterity to scuttle upside-down across surfaces.

Go For the Knees: When you crit or bloody a target (bringing them ≥ half health) they can’t move until you’ve acted again. You can smell unarmored knees at fifteen paces.


Anti-Cavalry Action: You deal double damage to mounts and mounted combatants. When initiative is rolled and you’re in close proximity to a mounted combatant, you go first.


Wretched of the Earth: While moving horizontally on the ground, you cannot be killed.


The Wheel is Broken Upon my Back: Enemies roll Morale checks with disadvantage when you are moving horizontally (roll 3D6 and take the lowest two). Animals and wild beings will treat with you as kin, and horses will rebel against their riders at the sight of you. Can equines be class-traitors?

Once, you can designate a hex on the map to be Bent. Settled agriculture becomes impossible there, becoming a wild place supportive to life but inhospitable to the trappings of so-called “civilization”.
Roads sink into mud, crops wither while wild food blooms, and the land becomes a haven for all whom have been Trampled. You can always find safe groves, glades or caves to rest there.

You can always test CHA to try and recruit a unit of Trampled soldiers while resting in this hex. 


large stone statue of a man being crushed by a at the ancient Surya Hindu Temple at Konark, Orissa, India horse,


More on the Silk Road GLoG

Comments

  1. Chris M-SAugust 7, 2024 at 5:37 PM

    the Bent hex is such a brilliant class feature: no save, no recourse, fuck you, get Bent

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Asher WinnieAugust 9, 2024 at 7:13 PM

      I always love arming players with weapons to dramatically change the setting somehow, glad you like it too. Get BENT 👊🤠

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rat Divinity

-
Image
In the play of my urban megacity game, I think my players may have accidentally played God. They took a tribe of feral, zombie-esque rat people and have been nurturing them. It's a city game. There are rat people - naturally - but I made them weirder. I like non-standard, weird alien means of reproduction for non-humans. (My dwarves are made/born as stone statues, for example).  The ratlings are not born , but rather spontaneously emerge from concentrations of trash deep in the megacity's sewers. The more trash left unsorted, the greater chance of Ratlings. Their life cycle is more akin to medieval alchemical conceptions of flies: there's no eggs or wombs involved, just leave a pile of food scraps long enough and a humanoid rat will shamble out of the mass.  Abiogenesis - spontaneous creation of organic compounds from nonliving matter. They have two legs, two arms, a rat face and a coat of fur, but get too close and you'll see it's a facsimile. The hair are thin str
Read more

Identity, Mythology, and the Megadungeon

-
Image
Here's another #dungeon23 update for y'all, courtesy of some real "how the sausage is made" historiography on my part. This is for my megadungeon called MYR REGATH, the City of Sortilege. This update honestly has more to do with me as a person and a creative, even more so than the dungeon itself. It has to do with the evolution of doing a project like this over such a long time, going back to my roots, and finally having a mythological framework to tie all these disparate levels together more so than simply "because I like all this crap". Myr Regath began, as an idea I had in 2019, to do a megadungeon of a Tiefling city . Inspired by the 4E supplement Vor Rukoth (which was a sandbox of plot hooks, treasure and locales of a ruined Tiefling city) I thought it would be cool to have a civilizational center of D&D's most iconic ancestry. Infamously my friend cautioned me that our play group "would love it, as long as all the roleplaying, exploration
Read more

Tome of Refractive Planets | GLOGtober Grimoire Post

-
Image
Vast and trunkless legs of stone  found here  (GLOGtober 23') CHALLENGE #3 [Semiurge] Come up with a grimoire with some unique spells, a story behind it, perhaps some trap or riddle to figuring it out, etc The Road of Dead Buddhas A vaguely Middle East + Central Asia inspired setting, evoking the historical Silk Road in themes and setup for adventure. Few walk it in its entirety; yet spices, silk and expensive goods span its whole breadth. When a traveler speaks of the long road, they call it  The Road of Dead Buddhas . Since the ascension of  Annuvaran Monasteries  over those of  The Burning Heart , not a soul can forget the wisdom of the sages: " If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him ." As people travel these lands for gold, certainty and conviction are as picked-over by vultures as the many corpses that litter its trails. Reader Be Warned By the Grace of G-d the Most High, The Merciful, stay away from that book. Rumor says that it come to or corner of the world
Read more