Tuesday, August 24, 2021

GLOG Class: The Most Rangerous Ranger

Vayra over at The Mad Queen's Court has posted the following assessment of ranger and ranger-adjacent classes thus far made for the GLOG:

As you will note, none before have met all 16 criteria. This one does, making me the victor: King of the GLOG semiurge, GLOG emperor 1,000,000 years semiurge.

GLOG Class: The Most Rangerous Ranger
Starting Equipment: Two swords, bow, twenty arrows, hiking boots, waterproof cloak, bag of wound-staunching moss
A: Forager, Crazy As A Fox
B: Lay of the Land, Surefooted
C: Wild at Heart, Know Your Prey
D: Virtues of Beast & Bough

A

Forager: You get twice as much food and water when foraging3.

At Template B you can forage for materials to make into stuff instead of or in addition to food. For every inventory slot of rations you would get, you can instead get an item or collection of items that fill as many inventory slots that could conceivably be made of natural materials you've found8.

At Template C you can use this ability to make preternatural arrows with abilities based on the feathers they're fletched with as follows13:
-Songbird: You can ventriloquize a short statement at the arrow's point of impact.
-Owl: Arrow is totally silent.
-Swift: Arrow's range before taking penalties is doubled.
-Shrike: If arrow's target is within 5 feet of an environmental danger (pit, spikes, fire, etc.) they must save or be knocked into it.
-Penguin: Arrow moves through and can be loosed in water as though it were air.
-Hummingbird: Arrow can be made to curve around corners and otherwise not move in normal arc.
-Seagull: Arrow extinguishes fires it's shot through.
-Carrier Pigeon: Arrow has +2 to hit if you know target's name.
-Crow: Arrow deals minimum of 4 damage to undead targets.
-Vulture: Arrow has +1 to hit and damage if target is below half HP.
You can make one arrow per inventory slot you'd get foraging. Bird types must be around in area to make arrows. Other feather/power combos at DM's discretion.

Crazy As A Fox: If you're fighting in an unconventional yet stylish way (two swords16, biting, shooting bow with feet) you reduce any penalties by 2. At Template C you reduce penalties by 41.

B

Lay of the Land: The first time you enter a hex you can learn one of the following:
-What the weather will be for the rest of the day, and the following day11.
-Sense if there's anything unnatural in the hex (natural magic, like a dryad, would not be sensed). Human constructions count as unnatural4.
-What the footprints of creatures on the hex's encounter table look like, and how big those creatures are.

Spending an hour familiarizing yourself with the area allows one of the following, potentially with some preconditions, or getting any of the previous options:
-Change the weather to be a step better or worse for the rest of the day/for the next day, if you've already predicted it. Changes take 1d6 hours to set in.
-The location of any lairs in the hex, if you know of those lairs' owners6.
-Surprise the next wilderness encounter you have2.
-Intuit the particular type of unnatural feature you've learned is present.

Surefooted: Natural obstacles (scree, slopes, bogs, etc.) penalize your movement or climbing one step less than they normally would (e.g. move over plains as paved roads, hills as though they're plains, or however it might work in your game). This also works for travel times while hexcrawling5.

You leave no trace of your passage through natural environments unless you choose to (and can choose to leave misleading traces), and natural features such as a forest floor covered in dry leaves don't penalize your stealth checks10.

C

Wild at Heart: You can effectively talk to wild animals through body language, mimicking vocalizations, and so on. They're still dumb and probably not nearly as pro-social as humans, and so getting them to do what you want or even just getting useful information from them may be difficult9.

If you build a strong bond with an animal you can make it your companion. Your companion animal will be able to anticipate your orders and act according to your will without needing to be explicitly ordered to. It will also be well-behaved unless extremely stressed, so you don't need to worry about your hippo companion rampaging through the market, for example. You can only have one true companion animal at a time, and can't take a new one until your old one dies and you've appropriately mourned it7.

Know Your Prey: Once per day when attacking a creature you can list substantial and distinct facts about it (e.g. one fact about its appearance, one fact about its behaviour, one fact about its history, etc.). Each fact adds +1 damage, up to +3 if the facts are generic to the type of creature, and up to +6 if the facts are specific to the creature as an individual. Facts that have been used for a particular creature or type of creature can't be used again15.

D

Virtues of Beast & Bough: Once per day while foraging you can find a magic herb. The herb has an effect as a random spell when imbibed in a random manner, as per the tables below. Spells are cast with [sum] and [dice] of 1. Herbs last 1d6 days before they wilt to uselessness14:

This herb casts (D20):
1. Clarity
2. Reform
3. Detect Metals
4. Forget
5. Alter Self
6. Powerful Presence
7. Wizard Vision
8. Hold Person
9. Shrivel
10. Sleep
11. Fear
12. Rot
13. Grease
14. Cure Wounds
15. Vigour
16. Light
17. Olfactory Revelation
18. Protection from [Element]
19. Raise Spirit
20. Feather Fall
All spells per Skerples' Many Rats on a Stick GLOG. Thank you Skerples, great job! Add/remove spells at your discretion.

When (D6):
1. Its smoke is inhaled
2. Chewed
3. Brewed into tea
4. Ground and snorted
5. Crushed and rubbed on something
6. Jabbed with its thorns

In addition to the herb, you can also take a trophy from a dead magical monster that casts a spell related to its magical abilities (e.g. Blink for a blink dog's ear). Same rules as herbs wrt power and how long they last12.

1 First criterion


2 Second criterion


3 Third criterion


4 Fourth criterion


5 Fifth criterion


6 Sixth criterion


7 Seventh criterion


8 Eighth criterion


9 Ninth criterion


10 Tenth criterion


11 Eleventh criterion


12 Twelfth criterion


13 Thirteenth criterion


14 Fourteenth criterion


15 Fifteenth criterion


16 Sixteenth criterion

2 comments:

  1. O, King of the GLOG semiurge, GLOG emperor 1,000,000 years semiurge, where was that spreadsheet posted? I'd like to peruse the other rangers (not that I'd have reason to use any but the rangeriest ranger)

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    Replies
    1. Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P4vVibmet_QzJH9IrmIRQaM-9QD5uv5dPbKLad21Ibo/edit#gid=1108767799

      If it doesn't take you right to the rangers tab there's a tab labelled 'rangers' with the spreadsheet on it

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