End-of-Year Slushpost

I wrote it, and now you're stuck reading it.

Sewer Rats Epithets

Every two years I seem to doodle with another pick-up game to never use. Gateway this year, Orbiters Local 519 in 2022, and Sewer Rats back in 2020. While digging through my drafts from back when I used GMBinder, a HTML editor for making "things that kind of look like 5e trade dress if you squint", I found these four levelless non-classes for Tim B.'s Squires Errant. They're... four? years old, if I had to guess.

(S) is a spell that can only be used once, (E) is an item you can lose, anything else is just a skill. 2024-Archon's notes in italics.

Veteran - Survivor of the newest of the City’s expansionist wars, now haunted by their violence.

Paranoia: when you enter a room, you suspect three objects within are traps. If there is a trap, it will be one of those three. (Can you imagine playing a game with this? It'd take forever!)     

Surplus Arquebus (E): a heavy rifle (2d8 damage, 1d6 ammunition, two-handed, loud).    

Your Friend's Ghost (S): cut down in the war, now whispering constantly of better times. It can be sent to attempt to haunt a target - they must Save, taking 1d12 damage on a failure and being possessed on a success. (The effect-on-passed-save is a nice trick, I think.)

Vermin Druid - Even in the core of the City, there is still life: fleas, spiders, and rats.

Rat Form (S): become a rat for 1d6 Exploration Turns.    

Swarming Insects (S): a room fills with flying, stinging insects for 1d4 Combat Rounds. Everyone except for you is either blinded or takes 1d4 damage per Combat Round.    

Polluted Blood: you are immune to poison, and your blood burns things who come in contact with it. Melee attackers take 1d4 damage after they hit you.

Urchin - Abandoned by the world, you march into the sewers out of desperation.

Pickpocket: if someone isn't paying attention to you, you can steal anything they aren't holding without a roll.    

Escape Artist: you can fit through any space larger than your head at normal speed, and escape grapples or being tied up in one Combat Round without a roll.    

Inconspicuous: even if a fight has broken out, you won't be attacked as long as you hide, cringe, and otherwise appear to be harmless. (Should be "are attacked last", probably.)

Gutter Alchemist - description not found.

Waxy Green Brick (E): when consumed, sends the afflicted into a nerve-deadened frenzy. For 2d6 Combat Rounds they can act twice per Round, and damage done to them is ignored until the effect ends. After the effect ends, they are disoriented (check penalty placeholder thanks, past archon) for the same duration.     

Neon Blue Vial (E): when consumed, the drinker becomes invisible for 1d4 Exploration Turns. After the effect ends, they are blinded for the same duration. 

Pink Bottle (E): when poured on to a person or object, it becomes weightless for 1d6 Exploration Turns. At the end of the duration, it becomes twice as heavy for the same duration. This will, generally, immobilize people.

Purifier Novitiate - your creed is to protect the City from sin: monsters, strong drink, foreigners, and so on.       

Smite (S): As part of a melee attack, your crown of fire flares, and you add 1d12 to your damage. This can also be used to destroy anything not bigger than a car and not stronger than steel. 

Imperious Visage: you may reroll Reaction Rolls, but positive results on Reaction Rolls are terrified instead of friendly. If given a chance, they will run or betray you. (I'm stealing this later.)

The third Purifier Novitiate ability is missing, and the sixth class just has the words "bear trap" on an empty page.

GLOG Class: Psychopomp

A: Never Spoke in Prose, Smoke Cloud
B: Pennies for Charon, Prophetic
C: Empty Eye Sockets
D: Undying

Never Spoke in Prose
The Flame (different from a flame, though you wouldn't expect others to understand) instructs you - there are those who have escaped their destined fate. The Flame is meant to seek only the undead, but it is tired, and the divine laws are long. For each person you kill that it asked you to, you get enough goodwill to make up an excuse for why someone you want dead has cheated the wheel.

The Flame knows where your target lives. It grants you Advantage on your first to-hit and damage rolls against them.

Smoke Cloud
Turn into a black mist to zoop through vents and other narrow openings. You, importantly, can't fly - the smoke is too heavy to just hover into the air.

Pennies for Charon
Whenever you kill someone, you find a pair of coins behind their eyes. You can give these to the Flame, and for each 3 pairs it hands you a gun, 1d4x10 rounds of ammunition, or a grenade.

Prophetic
The Flame gives you 1 piece of information about your target when you begin seeking them - perhaps it tells you that they tend to leave their back door unlocked, or that they keep an antique machine gun in their basement.

Empty Eye Sockets
You can see without issue in the dark.

Undying
You do not need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe. Spend your free time watching grass grow, or listen to a calming symphony.

GLOG Class (Fragment): Antipaladin

Sometimes you want "deep worldbuilding", "complex sociology", "multifaceted problems", and other things of that ilk. Other times you just want to stick your players in front of a guy in armor with spikes on it.

A: Asymptomatic Carrier, +1 Attack

B: Contact Outsider

C: Shrike Ideology, Smite

D: Scatter the Chaff

i forgot what these abilities were. such is life.

Five Dungeon Concepts for Gateway

1. Out in the frozen desert sulks a ruin built by the Elfs and their armies of the living dead in past ages. Seek souls bound in iron, wands (a forgotten Elfish invention) of Bones to Dust, and sealed great evils of past ages, but beware refracted laser-traps, prismatic spirits, and sealed great evils of past ages.
2. As a show of force, the Imperial army burned a district of the city to the ground, then wandered off (much to the chagrin of the city's governor). If you wait, on moonless nights, you can still see part of it - a single tenement spun from gleaming silver. Seek liquid memories, items that can touch dreams, and the treasured possessions of the missing, but beware Imperial traps, false floors, and the dawn.
   
3. An abandoned Imperial cathedral has pride of place in the richest quarter of Gateway, untouched for fear of divine or legal reprisal. Seek its bell (rumored to be a casting-bell keyed to Earthquake), armor of imperial paladins, and huge piles of sanctified platinum, but beware anchorites in the walls, bell-armed gargoyles, and direct contact with the Imperial god.
   
4. Optimists and fools say Imbril:Grove:Acosta:Aelrue, a Gestalt of four, retreated into his buried sanctum to plan a terrible revenge on Imperial governance. You don't care, you just want to root through his wine cellar. Seek the aforementioned wine, abundant spell scrolls, and the thrice-real-size golden statue of himself I:G:A:A conjured as a joke, and beware the 8 MD wizard who stuffed so much spiritual mass into a single body he leaves afterimages whenever he moves, the thrice-real-size golden statue of himself, and more than a few of those abundant spell scrolls.
5. The governor's family lives in a many-roomed mansion out on the edge of town. Now, the mansion itself is impregnable - but in the basement (sealed to the guards and almost always unoccupied) one could seek occult blackmail, daemonic heirlooms, and the family tutelary spirit (one of the few to survive the executions) - but beware geases, curses, and the unexpected appearance of the rich and powerful.

GLOG Class: Demonologist
A: Familiar, +1 MD
B: Advisor, +1 MD
C: Talents, +1 MD
D: Multitasking, +1 MD

a hideous abomination

Familiar: after six years of study in the demonological arts, and weeks of blood, sweat and tears (mostly blood, and not all of it yours) you have summoned it - a horrible creature, a wide-eyed round head with sticklike limbs. It peeps and wheedles, pulling on your sleeve to beg for crumbs of magic. It is intangible, and imperceptible to all but you.

It cannot be separated from you - if you are ever more than ten feet away, the familiar is dragged to you by an irresistible force.

It is, to put it nicely, "charmingly incapable" - apt to become distracted, sleepy, confused, or bored unless watched over.

MD can be fed to the creature to:
- make one of its limbs twist into the real world, letting it pull levers, push buttons, or start poking people. 4 MD thus means four limbs, providing the familiar the ability to interact with the world as a human does.
- make the familiar perceptible to others with one sense (sight, sound, et cetera) - more MD move it up the scale from "weird little guy" to "baron of Hell".
- allow the creature to move 10 [meters/tens of meters/hundreds of meters/kilometers] away from you

Advisor
The familiar can, with MD payment, answer questions on matters of natural philosophy, botany, and rhetoric. The more MD expended, the more useful the answer.

Talents
The familiar gains a skill, as a PC would have. In matters related to this skill it is reliable, focused, and capable.

Multitasking
You wake up one day to find *two* of these things. You definitely didn't summon that second one. Hm.