Gold doesn't weigh anything

Gold doesn't weigh anything. Well, it does: when you hold a coin in your hand, it feels heavy. But still, you can hoist a backpack bursting at the seams, without straining your muscles or tearing the fabric.

Could it be that gold wants to be taken?

There is power in gold. Realness. Out of all materials, it maintains the most realness between timelines. You can travel the eons in a ship plated of gold. Iron can't be mined and quarried and brought back from a next door dimension, but gold can. The magnetic fields of iron make it especially 'sticky' to reality, which is why faeries shun it. But something about the heaviness of gold makes it light. Like an eyelid drooping with too much sleep, like a koi in a still dark pond, it can move between realities.

by Yoann Lossel

Lead is like this too, but no one covets the sullen stubbornness of lead. In its unimaginative state, it cannot fathom other realities, and so it persists through all of them, a sulky stain.

This is why both gold and lead are proof against scrying, and other magics that peer across dimensions.

Druids hate gold: it's dirty, polluted, you don't know where it's been. They wear bands of silver; pure and singing songs of unabashed Realness, and copper, which calls out to the heavens and thrums with the thunderbolts. Gold, although immutable, picks up imprints of it's owners, like a fingerprint in the soft metal. Hatred. Passion. Desire.

It sings to the dragons of desire. They hear it from eons away, from across the stars. They hone in on it, though they don't always know where it is. A wanderer chasing the echoes of singing through a cave. Dragons, who have no words for 'past' or 'future,' but only 'probability.' An event in the past that is almost unknown is assigned as much contingency and doubt as a speculative event in the future. Some parts of the future are very certain. But gold is Known, it is here. The Draconic word for 100% probability is the same as the word for gold.

by Justin Gerard

And gold in a dragon's clutches gains some of their power. It gains a charge, like the build up of static electricity, from every hand it passes through, every life it touches with it's burning brand of the Real. But in a dragon's smoldering hoard it gains the most of all. And when it passes to a mortal, after theft or murder, that smoldering passes too. Gold soaked in bloodshed begets more bloodshed still.

Miscellaneous Magic Items 1d40

To be included in the 'miscellaneous items of variable but not enormous power' section of your random loot table. A section which every loot table should have, naturally.

One of the nice things about 5e is that having magic items as 'totally unnecessary, added-on elements' (that obviously everyone is going to use, cuz they're cool) means that you don't REALLY have 'balance' them at all! Consequently, you can design 'em to be equally useful in a 5e or an OSR game, with basically no conversion work between them. You can do that to some extent with lots of stuff, but with magic items you don't even need to file off the serial numbers. So if you're looking to inject a little OSR into your 5e game, magic items might be the place to start. Hopefully this will function like beautiful propaganda, and soon everything will be OSR-ified.


Miscellaneous Magic Items
(Roll a 1d4-1 (for the tens) and 1d10 for the ones.)

1- Legionaire Helm. Gives reverse telepathy-people can transmit their thoughts to you. Works over 100 ft, or ten times that if the sender takes full round to concentrate (or if they have corresponding Centurion Helm)
2- Brain Wire. Like headphones you plug into someone's ear and listen to to hear their thoughts.
3- Scissors of Precision. Can separate impossible things without damaging them. A persons skin, leaves off a tree, all the grey hairs on someone's head, turn a tapestry into its individual threads, cut all of someones clothes off- even cut someone off mid sentence??
4- Arrow of Dimension Door: when this arrow hits a target, whether creature or object, the shooter teleports to that location. Maybe they kinda ride the arrow like a surf board, or maybe the arrow pokes a hole in space-time and you hop through
5- portable door. This item can be worn as a shield, granting the ability to 'swallow' one missile or ray attack per round (as a reaction). It can also be placed against a wall to create a temporary doorway, large enough to walk thru while crouching. The shield can bridge up to five ft of stone or wood, one inch of metal, but is blocked by gold or lead. The item can be retrieved from either side of the door (there's a knob like thing that also serves as the boss of the shield), and the portal takes one round to close once removed.
6- moss arrow. Can muffle footsteps, help bypass caltrops, oil, grease spell, etc, can temporarily choke/blind a target (1d4-1 rounds, min 1, no save, disadvantage to hit cuz you have to target only the head, only deals 1 damage) (yes I stole this from Thief but I know you wanted it on a random table
7: Blue crystal lens. Like a miniature telescope, you can use it to see through smoke and fog, but only for about 30 ft in front of the telescope's point of focus. So to see further you might have to zoom in more, but that gets increasingly unwieldy to use during combat
8: Shell of the Zondervoze. Like a snail-shell-clam thing you wear on your ear (it has wire loops for this purpose). It lets you have a kind of weird, echo-y telepathy that transmits through the group unconsciousness. Make the players play 'telephone' to pass messages to each other to pass the message- the characters in between don't really hear the message, but their brains kinda shove the contents through, and maybe they catch little snippets, so don't enforce player-vs-character knowledge super hard for this one. Of course, the DM *can* also be included in this chain, but can the characters really trust the subconscious of the miscellaneous monsters hanging around? Characters can pass messages over any distance using this, but that's the basic area of monsters included if the DM gets looped in. In a cute little town this might be relatively safe, but in a dungeon probably just go the other way around the circle.
9: Bishop's Mantle. Provides a mystical ward that abstracts geometry around you. So long as you move diagonally (on a grid) you don't provoke attacks of opportunity. You can also move between objects if the diagonal dimension between them is free, without squeezing, weirdly phasing between them if necessary. While you wear this mantle, you cannot run or charge in a 'straight' line, and you have disadvantage on Acrobatics checks to avoid terrain difficulties when you're moving in a 'straight' line.
10: Knight's Mantle. You can teleport 15 feet at will (two squares forward, one to the side) so long as your movement takes you through a space occupied by a hostile creature.
11: Pawn's Mantle. On the first round of combat, you can take an extra move action. You can also hit people who moved past you in the last round of combat as if they were still adjacent. Unfortunately, you can only move 'forward' (towards your enemies) and you cab only attack the two squares to the left and right in front of you (you know, like a pawn)
12: Pouch of Sleep. You can use this pouch to 'store up' sleep and save it for later. You can store up to 1d6 nights worth (roll every day, excess leaks out and puts random targets to sleep). You can release sleep from the bag to cast sleep as the spell (one charge per night's worth)
13: Bag of Night. When opened, makes it the middle of the night. When used indoors, instead makes the room magically dark, and leaks into 1d6 adjacent rooms
14: Bag of Stars. You can open this bag to shoot stars at people.You can recharge it by climbing a tree or something and waving the bag around on a clear night to catch stars. Roll for each star: 1-2- faerie fire; 3-4- dancing lights; 5- scorching ray; 6 - moonbeam, 7- fireball, 8- sunbeam.
15: Sentient Arrow. Can fire itself at targets, about as smart as a bird of prey. If it hits it gets embedded in target, probably has to be rescued
16: Belt of Tails. Can magically grow different kinds of tails (lizard, feline, monkey, etc). Can be used like a whip, and can grow a whole bunch of tails and kind of helicopter them to prevent the first 1d8x10 fall damage. Can also hold small objects.
17: Abacus of Fate. Lets you count anything you can see. A giant pile of rice, all the stars in the sky, etc etc.
18: Spiral Bomb. Causes a spatial rupture, similar to a bag of holding/portable hole scenario. Sucks everything within a 10ft radius (DC 18 STR save to resist) through a very small gate, reinforced with adamantium. The target takes 8d6+20 force damage. If this damage reduces the target to 0 Hit Points, it is pulped and ejected into the astral plane.
19: Colour Bomb. Like a large hand grenade filled with scientifically admixtured chaos. Deals 6d6+1d8+1d10 damage. The d8 determines the damage type (1-poison, 2-lightning, 3-acid, 4-thunder, 5-cold, 6-fire, 7- radiant, 8- necrotic), and the d10 determines a random condition (1-damage is ongoing (half of original), 2- stunned, 3-blinded, 4-paralyzed, 5- deafened, 6- entangled, 7-sleep, 8-mutation, 9- madness point, 10-1d4 drunk points.)
20: Circlet of Rage. Allows you to spend a HD to get an extra d20 on an attack roll, you take the better one. You can spend multiple hd at once (so 3d20, 4d20,etc). You also take those hd in psychic damage (con bonus doesn't apply)
21: Cloak of Shrouding. Your face and identity are completely blurred out when you have the hood up. You can't be detected by long-range divinations, and short range divinations must pass a DC 15 save to effect you. No one can learn a secret about you by magic, unless NO ONE but you knows the secret
22: Eye-painted pebble. A blue eye painted on a stone, and a corresponding very small mirror. Looking into the mirror is like looking out of the eye.
23: Iron Shoes. Cursed so you can't take them off. If you jump on someone shoes-first, you can have them take up to 10d6 of fall damage you would normally take- if you hit. If you miss, you take damage as normal. Attacks beyond 20 ft have disadvantage if they know you're there, 40 ft if they're not paying attention. The shoes are super heavy, but you can run in them normally, etc. Disadvantage on swimming and stealth, though.
24: Feather Token. 1- Cloud of Butterflies (as fog cloud for 1d6 turns); 2- Beautiful Pipes (music enthralls); 3- Raven Messenger (like animal messanger, obvs); 4- Icy Shores (Freezes the surface of a body of water, thick enough to walk on, 1d6x100 ft radius, lasts 1d6 minutes); 6- Jaguar (turns you into a jaguar for 1d10 hours).
25: Dream Pipe. Magical pipe and special tobacco/drugs mixture. Enough in pouch for 1d6 uses, an alchemist could make more (with proper magic ingredients). Smoking for a minute puts you into a trance, you can appear in other people's dreams. Gives 1d4 points of 'drunk' for the next 1d4+1 hours.
26: Red Goop. Made of extremely potent healing herbs. Almost too potent. Heals 4d8+4 damage, will knit (but not set) bones. Give advantage on Str saves and checks for an hour or so, +20 ft to speed. Addictive, but successive applications can give a mutation point (con save avoids, DC 10+2 for each dose you've had today). Gives 1 point of drunk.
27: Black Lotus Extract. Smoked, gives magic users spell slots back depending on how high they get. One spell level worth for every 'drunk' point. You can split these up however, so three drunk points could be three 1st level slots, or one 2nd, one 1st. You also hallucinate vividly for about a minute, which is fine if you just sit there and chill, but if you try'n do anything, act as confused every turn unless you make a Intelligence save. Technically gives non-magic users spell slots too, but they can't usually do anything with them. When found as a magic item, has 1d10 doses. Highly addictive.
28: Magic Barrel. You can hop inside it and roll around, without getting TOO dizzy. About as fast as a horse. Only works when you're drunk (at least 3 points). Has trouble going up steep hills and stairs. 1d6 damage when you smash into people, can trample.
29: Ugly Stick. The stick itself is very ugly. Counts as magic against beautiful creatures. 1d8 damage, as a club, but can strike for 0 damage if so choose. Anyone hit must make a Charisma save (DC 16) or become very ugly- they loose 1d6 Charisma each time they're hit. Characters with Charisma 6 or less, or who are already quite ugly, may be immune.
30: Breathing Goggles. Let you breath underwater, in a vacuum, etc. 50% chance of screening out poison gas, advantage on saves vs. gas if it doesn't.
31: Drinking Goggles. Ignore the first 5 points of Drunk. If you take the goggles off, all the drunkeness comes back.
32: Belt of Immovability. When activated, the wearer cannot be moved by any means. The wearer can still move their arms, etc, but they can't move from their position unless they deactivate the belt. Supernatural forces may be able to shift the wearer on a successful DC 20 Str check. Charge and ram type attacks still deal damage, but they deal half that amount of damage to the attacker as well.
33: Postage Stamp of Sending- send a letter by magic! Give the players a piece of paper to write the letter. You need an address, but it doesn't have to be a street address ('Awesome John Smith, the Gnarled Hollow Tree Stump, South End of the Svalich Woods, Barovia') If the person is at 'home' it appears close by them in an obvious location, otherwise it appears somewhere near the door (ideally in a mailbox, obvs)
34: Net of Ghost-Catching. Can entangle ghosts, will-o'wisps, etc. While entangled they can't shift their shape or use possession-type powers. DC 15 to evade, 20 to escape.
35: Magic String. Spool appears to have perhaps 50 ft, but actually up to a kilometer. Not unbreakable, but magically good at not being cut or tripped over by accident. Golden gleam in dim light makes it easy to spot. Easily rolls back onto the spool as you retrace your steps, easily untangled/unknotted if the owner wants it to be. Pieces cut off can be added back into the spool and repaired.
36: Immovable Nail. Immovable rod, but in nail form. Doesn't have a button to release, but if you have a magic hammer or crowbar you can pry it out (75% chance it's undamaged enough to use again)
37: Magic Crowbar +1. It's a crowbar that's magic! Deals 1d4 damage if used as an improvised weapon, +1 to hit and damage. +5 to any Strength checks to pry open objects, etc, using the crowbar. Almost unbreakable.
38: Immovable Shield. Button toggles immovable - ness. When locked in place, protects against attacks from a specific direction, and frees up your hands to do other things. Savvy enemies may also use the shield as cover if they're right next to it
39: Spoon of Deliciousness. Makes anything it stirs taste great. It still tastes like whatever it is tho, which could lead to some weird sensations. Could be used to mask bitter-tasting poisons.
40: Needle of Reality. If you stab an illusion with this needle, it dispels it, popping it like a balloon. Also stops real things from becoming illusions, if stabbed through them. Can such a thing happen?

Bard Spells

Do bards really know what they're doing? Do they even 100% know they're 'doing magic?' I mean, being around them is magical, so...

Bards don't really 'cast' spells or 'use' magic. Magic is just something that happens around them- sometimes in response to their art, sometimes because the whims of fate smiles upon them.

FIRST-LEVEL BARD SPELLS

Animal Friendship: Self-explanatory: The animal is just friends with you now!
Bane - works as written, some reality-warping plus demoralizing
Charm Person - being around a bard is kinda like this anyway. Might accidentally cast this on someone you're just trying to talk to.
Comprehend Languages through gestures, expressions, etc, you are able to communicate pretty well with any creature.
Cure Wounds - Awww, see? Just a scratch! You'll live to fight another day old chap!
Detect Magic - 'I got a feeling something weird is going on' - plus instead of school of magic, they'll know genre of story- horror, fairy, religious, epic, etc etc
Disguise Self - poorly-improvised disguise works unrealistically well.
Faerie Fire - I dunno, actual faeries show up? Maybe scrap it.
Feather Fall: You fall at normal speed, but something miraculously breaks your fall- water, a pile of hay, etc. Somehow, you take NO damage, even if the thing breaking your fall should only, at best, cushion it. On falls over a hundred feet, make a Con save to avoid being knocked unconscious. Maybe you land on a ledge?
Healing Word - 'you got this!'
Heroism - you describe to someone how cool they are, and they believe you
Hideous Laughter - you tell a particularly hilarious joke
Identify - probably a lucky guess, plus remembering something you read in a book one time
Illusory Script - You're just super good at writing in code and innuendo
Longstrider - probably scrap this just 'cuz it's so boring
Silent Image - ugh. I WANT bards to have illusion magic. Maybe they just know a little bit of actual, intentional magic? Or maybe it works by people misinterpreting things that are already there- a bundle of sticks in the corner becomes a horrifying monster, etc. Maybe the bard makes a supernaturally realistic painting out of improvised materials.
Sleep -  Can't be cast in, but basically works retroactively- for example, guards have a better-than-average chance of being asleep ALREADY when you try to sneak by.
Speak with Animals - He says he likes me better :)
Thunderwave - You shred a riff SO AGGRO it sends opponents staggering backwards clutching their ears
Unseen Servant - also kinda boring


To be clear, this IS all magic- it can be dispelled, countered, etc. It's not even that hard to notice necessarily, especially if it KEEPS HAPPENING. It just doesn't really originate from the bard, like a wizard storing spells in their skull, it more like originates AROUND the bard- like a big puppy following them around. At higher levels, the magic becomes more overtly... magic. And the cross-class spells the Lore bard gets (in 5e) are just that- wizard spells, sorcerer spells, etc, and are cast as such.

Mystic: GLOG class

I've been sitting on this post for awhile, but Goblin Punch's recent post has me spooked since he mentioned publishing a cleric class, and I don't want this to be TOTALLY redundant when posted. So I'm posting it now, even though some of the spells aren't written up yet- I;ll fix it up later ;)

Religion comes up a lot in my games. There are small gods running around in everyone's business, there's the far-reaching power of the Church. My players love shouting 'praise Zulin' (even the tree-worshipper, I guess he does it ironically?)

But if I'm going to eventually trick them into playing the GLOG, I'll have to have a good 'cleric' type ruleset. Plus, it seems like one of the major projects for that design space that's not a solved game. Hopefully it will prove to eventually be as useful and adaptable as Skerples' wizard rework
As well as the abovementioned and linked blogs, this owes inspiration to Last Gasp Grimoires mystic, although my version is a little more... restrained.


Mystic Class

Starting skills and equipment vary by the mystic's Religion

Starting Equipment: chainmail, shield, mace, holy symbol
Starting Skill: [d3]: 1. History, 2. Scripture, 3. Commerce
A: +1 Faith, Miracles, Religion
B: +1 Faith, -1 Doubt
C: +1 Faith, -1 Doubt
D:  -1 Doubt, Divine Inspiration

You also gain a +1 to Save vs Unholy and +1 HP for every two Cleric templates you possess.

Your faith is represented by d8s, similar to a wizards spellcasting dice. Faith dice do not deplete on rolls of 1 or 2. Your Doubt is represented by d6s. There are four of these at first level, with one being removed for each additional template gained, as shown on the above table. When you make a spellcasting roll to invoke a miracle, you roll as many Faith dice as you would like to invest, and all of your Doubt together. Doubt does not contribute to the result of the spell, it only exists to trigger doubles and triples. On a double, the spell fails, and the mystic gains an additional point of doubt. On a triple, the mystic has been Forsaken.

Excess Doubt can be removed with prayer, fasting, and other rituals, which takes at least an hour for each point of doubt to be removed.

Design note: This is the basic mechanic, which I'm most proud of. I'm awful at estimating probability curves, but if FEELS like it shouldn't be too much less/more powerful than the wizard's spellcasting method, and it should be different enough that it won't be a strictly better/worse situation even if it's a little off. 

Miracles
When you pray, your god sends you miracles in the form of spells to help you over the next day. You get one miracle per mystic template you have. Your god picks them, not you, so roll for what you get randomly, unless it's extremely obvious what you'll need (water walk if you're planning on crossing a river). You can petition for specific miracles by making a meditation check, offering a sacrifice, etc. You can always choose to take one of your religion's domain spells, instead of one of the spells you roll. 

You can also use scrolls, wands, etc, the same as a wizard. Arcane and divine magic are effectively interchangeable, once they're in item form. Mystics tend to have prayer beads and other more religiously-themed tools, but they work the same.

Design notes: I'm not 100% on the rando thing, but I *do* like the idea of preventing players taking 20 minutes deciding on their spells. Probably at the table, I'd let them pick whatever they wanted to a certain extent, as long as they had it off the top of their head- as soon as they start reading, I start rolling

Forsaken: When a mystic pushes their god too far, demands too much, they may be abandoned by their god. When this happens, they cannot cast mystic spells until they have won or wormed their way back into their god's good graces (or found another religion). The method of regaining favour varies by religion, but it should be no small task, and in some rare cases may be impossible if the god is really fed up. In addition, every time a mystic is Forsaken, they gain a point of Madness.


Design note: I like the idea of cleric's occasionally getting fed up and switching gods. I think some religions will have slightly more 'attractive' rites, or maybe signing bonuses, to encourage conversion. 
also, I want to facilitate moments where priests are falling on their knees screaming at the heavens 'why hast thou forsaken me' and this seems a step in the right direction

Religions: As a mystic, you belong to a religion or tradition. One is detailed here, the Priest of the Authority. More to follow.

If you switch religions, you gain a permanent point of doubt. This doesn't stack, so once you've bailed on one religion, you can just keep doing it! Probably don't tell anyone though, it'll make you seem less trustworthy

This makes conversion LESS attractive. I guess I like the idea of players having to weigh these sorts of choices

Your religion determines what miracles you are granted, what your crisis of faith might look like, and so on. They also come with a set of boons, taboos, and orisons (minor prayers that produce more consistent spell effects)

Divine Inspiration: Once per game session, the mystic can replace a miracle they know with another one of their choice. At the DM's discretion, this may include miracles from other spell lists.


Note on Spellcasting Mechanics: In addition to the [sum] and [dice] mechanics in the core GLOG spellcasting, I'm introducing the [best] mechanic. In this, you take the best result (or the result of your choice) out of any single die you invested in the spell.

Volcano Cultist

Boons: Once per day, you can sacrifice a living creature or a work of art to the flame to ignore your Doubt for one spellcasting roll.
Taboos: You must have a living flame (at least a red-hot coal) in order to cast spells.

Orisons: 1. Spend 1 hp to create flame. Lights a flammable object on fire, or deals 1d10 damage to a creature on a successful attack roll.2. You can sift ashes to tell what they originally were, even reading text from burned books. 3. You can meditate to ignore fire damage from passive/terrain effects (iron bathhouses, red hot coals, etc)

SPELLS

1. Scorching Rays. You create 1 ray for each die you invest in this spell. Roll to attack with each ray, they each deal [best]+[dice] damage. You can split the attacks among targets, or aim them all at one target, as you see fit.

2. Ash Cloud. Cloud [dice]x10 ft across, deals [dice] fire damage a turn and anyone in the cloud except caster is blinded and must save or spend turn coughing (no action, can still move as normal)

3. Enfeeblement. Range: Touch. 
Target looses [sum] points of Strength. If you invest 3 or more dice, the loss is permanent until the curse is broken- Dispel magic means the strength drain returns at a rate of 1 point per hour, Remove Curse restores it all back immediately.

4. Speak to the Blaze

5. Darkvision 
You or a creature you touch

6. 

7. 

8. 

9. 

10. 

11. 

12. 

13. 

14. Light

Written up here

15. 

16. Speak with Dead

Written up here

17. Burning Hands

Range: [dice]x10‘ cone  Duration: Instantaneous

Does [best] damage to anything in the cone. Save for half damage. Very flammable things are set on fire. 

22. 

Priest of the Authority

Boons: You don't get dirty, grimy, bloodstained, unless you want to. Blood and mud still splashes on you, it just doesn't stay for very long. You are legally (and magically) allowed to act as a judge, if no other authority is present.Taboos: You cannot break a promise you willingly make. 
Orisons:1. You can separate things that have been mixed together (grain and sand, milk and wine, etc). This takes a full round for each cubic foot of material being effected.2. When you speak the truth, you can pay 1 hp to have a listener KNOW that you're speaking the truth3. Once per day, for a minute, you can act as if you could see, regardless of darkness, blindness, etc. You can't actually see, but the hand of the Authority guides your steps.

SPELLS

1. Purify
R: 50 ft. T: creature or creatures D: instantaneous
You flush all toxins, poisons, and diseases from up to [best] number of creatures.

2. Sticks to Snakes. 
A bundle of sticks transform into snakes.The snakes attack and take damage as a group. The snakes deal [best] damage and they have [sum] HP. They occupy a [dice]x10 ft square which they share with other creatures, though they count as difficult terrain for any creature that might trip over or get bitten by them, and they can attack up to [dice]x2 number of creatures within that area. They will not attack the caster or very pious churchgoing characters, but otherwise do no differentiate between friend and foe.

3. Abominate
Written up here

4. Command
Written up here

5. Heal
Written up here

6. Sleep
Written up here

7. Gust of Wind

R: 50’ T: a gust of wind D: concentration 
At one [die], use wind to (a) clear away fog or gas, (b) extinguish a fire no larger than a torch, (c) blow all the papers off a desk, (d) with concentration, provide enough of a breeze to power a tiny sailboat. At two [dice], creatures in the area must Save or be pushed in the direction of the wind, up to [best]x5 feet.

8. Zone of Truth

9. Circle of Protection

10. Detect Evil

11. Binding

12. Banishment
Written up here

13. Sending

14. Light

15. Water Walk
Written up here

16. Speak with Dead
Written up here

21. Light
Written up here

22. Hold Person. 
R: 50' T: creature D: concentration, up to [sum] rounds
Target creature or object is locked in place by divine force. You must maintain concentration for this spell to work. Target can breathe and move their eyes, but cannot swim, fly, or perform any other action. If the creature is particularly willful, blasphemous, or a spellcaster, it may Save each round to break free, with a penalty equal to the [dice] you invested.

Faerie and the Long Earth

There are nigh-infinite iterations of the world, spread out across the multiverse like pearls sewn into lace. Not all of them are real, though.

Reality and Unreality
'Realness' is a property of the universe, like time or matter. Some things are real (like dragons), some are unreal (like illusions or gremlins), and most things fall somewhere in the middle (humans are about 80% real).

Unreal things can have all the other properties, such as mass, inertia, shape, although frequently they are lacking one or more of those things (Real things must have ALL the properties of Realness, while Unreal things are less fettered). But they are unstable, they flicker, warp, and dissolve. Few unreal things last more than a day, more often they pop as soon as they would undergo a change, since there is nothing to anchor their existence through such an experience.

Every time you flip a coin, turn left instead of right, you create another iteration of the universe where the other outcome occurred. But none of those are real. There is only finite energy, finite information to 'render' and maintain all of the unused versions of a path. All around the central causality, the world we all experience, there are soap-bubble like fragments of probability; jam-packed and nearly solid near the centre, and then spreading out into misty shards as you get into less plausible 'what-ifs'. The Material Worlds hurtle through non-existence, pulling the possible into being, dragging the improbable in their wake like smoke, before discarding the impossible back into the void.

But all those little scraps of unreality have to go somewhere.

Overmorrow & Ereyester
You can walk out into the shoals and sandbars of realness, wander through the might-bes and might-have-beens. Soothsaying techniques use this to a limited extent, looking out across this archipelago by flattening out a map sketched in guts or bones or runes or cards. But with the right twist of magic, you can step out of This Place, and into one of the side corridors. You can even go there physically, unlike the purely psychological landscape of the Dreaming. You might not even notice when you step over the border.

The near places are very similar to your own. You can see what might have happened if you'd made a different choice. You can peek into the room ahead of you, to see what lurks there. You can bring a little bit of that timeline back with you, with the right magic, for a little. As you get further away, specific iterations get harder to find. The bubble-realities further out start to warp and get weird, merge into each other and dissolve.

If you go far enough, by the right roads, you might step off the islands and into another kingdom. The land of Overmorrow lies in the future, east of the sun. Ereyester lies in the past, west of the moon. These are lands apart, gathered up from the fragments of cast off timelines, like the shell of a caddisfly nymph

Over the eons, peoples have settled these timelost realms, fleeing into unreality when their own worlds fell into shadow. These are the Elves, Gnomes, and other Fey folk- as well as the Raksha, the true fae, who are children of Unreality itself, and the destroyed world they fled the nonexistent one.

Not all realms have peoples wise enough to know the Ways, hidden behind mirrors and across streams, and not all who can find the Ways survive their wanderings. But of those who do, many make the journey across the Long Earth, and find their way to the realms of Annwn.

The Abyss
Throughout the eons, the legions of demons, voracious monsters who gnaw on the fabric of reality, have boiled out of their dimensions and destroyed world after world. Scholars believe there were once thousands, perhaps millions, but now there are only five- and of those, two are unreality-scoured wastelands. Perhaps there are more, but they are lost in the mists.

The Abyss, once crafted as a prison, constantly grows by the hunger of these monsters, pushing ever outward, chipping at the roof of hell.



The Long Earth
Between the five known Material worlds lies a path. A twisting and changing chain, but one that can
be walked by those with the right skill. Called the Green by some, for all of these mayfly worlds have never seen the axe or the sickle. While the worlds come and go, the trees seem to have a wisdom and a Reality all of their own, persisting between iterations, growing strong alongside the path the runs through the Great Forest between worlds. It is along these ways that the elves first walked, when they made their way to Annwn.

the Dreaming
There is only one Dreaming. All the little realities connect to it. There might be a million, a billion iterations of you, but you only ever have one dream. Why do you think it sometimes seems like, when you dream, your memories of your waking life seem to belong to somebody else?

Alignment Languages Redux

I like alignment languages.

There, I said it. At least, I like the idea of them. The concept of a fundamental, cosmic language, writ on the souls of mortals and into the very fabric of the universe? Sign me up!

One of my favourite elements I noticed in a recent watch-through of Fellowship of the Ring is how they dont translate the black speech. They just kinda intone sinister sounding things and leave it at that. Now, being the huge nerd that I am, I sometimes have an idea of the gist of what they are saying, but it's still mysterious as fuck.






I wrote in this post about using the idea of a 'Common' language as a kind of magic tongue. But let's expand on this.

Abati is 'Neutral' with a capital 'N'- that is, it's a 'natural' language, in the sense of natural philosophy. It springs up everywhere, like norse runes, just lying around in the patterns of sticks on the ground, in the flight of birds, in the way the river carves the landscape. It's inscribed on every atom of the universe, like the ten commandments on a slab of stone. There are many different varieties, based on the biology and culture of the interpreter (because that's what speakers essentially are- they're speaking a language that already existed). The 'elemental languages' Terran, Ignan, Aquan, and Auran are non-human forms of this language.
                          How to describe it spoken: to non-speakers, it sounds familiar, like maybe you've heard it every day of your life and just can't quite remember. It feels like if you just concentrated hard enough, you could figure it out- and in fact, sufficiently 'mystically attuned' characters might be able to make a concentration or meditation-type check to grasp a few key words or the gist of a sentence. However, it takes a lifetime to unravel the full language, and there's always more to learn.
                        Because of this, and because of the language's universal nature, many speakers develop inflections, vocabularies, and whole dialects of the language, which reflect their own nature and being. Most of the time, this is just an accent, but in it's extreme form this gives rise to Alignment Languages.

   
Cosmic good and evil: imagine if the question of whether you were a good person wasn't simply a measure of ethics. If the nature of a person was stamped indelibly on a person's soul, for anyone with wise enough eyes to read. Where, in extreme cases, not only the persons past actions, but their future ones, figure into this universal evaluation.

This is kind of like the anti lovecraft ...but only kinda. At a certain point, whatever is making this decision is so far removed from human experience, you have to wonder if it's version of evil really meaningfully relates to any human priority or understanding at all. It's not optimizing for 'good' or 'justice' it's optimizing for something humans aren't capable of understanding. Unlike lovecraft, where the universe fundamentally doesn't care about humans, where we're just too small, in this formulation the universe cares hugely - but not necessarily in a way humans would find 'meaningful' because 'meaning' is a human hobby

SMBC 

But, humans being humans, I'm sure such a force would still massively influence culture, religion, and understanding of morality. After all, it might not be meaningful, but it's testable.

The Way of Nine Swords: the Church absolutely believes in alignment, but there's is a more old-school view. There are but three alignments: Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. The 'heresy of the Nine Swords' is a grave slip into sin in the eyes of the church. The nine swords philosophers contend that there are nine alignments, each as perilous to mortals as a sword. Like a sword, a person's alignment can be studied and mastered, but such a path is a burden, like the burden of a warrior, and not to be taken up or turned aside from lightly. The Church condemns this as obfuscating acts of iniquity: what the Nine Swords monks call 'Chaotic Good' is simply someone slipping away from the true path of morality, their soul tainted by chaos (but perhaps not permanently- the Church is very adept at conversions)

What do the Elves think? Non-humans don't have much truck for all of this. Elves see themselves as above all this rigmarole, although they ALSO see themselves as intrinsically Good (in whatever manner is most fashionable these days in the courts of the Fey). Dwarves insist there are five alignments, although they refuse to elaborate more on what that means. Elves care more about Beauty vs Ugliness (and elf characters should have an alignment based on such), and Dwarves care about things like Work, Honour, and Tradition. Other beings have likewise varying preoccupations. Most human-like beings do mostly understand what humans are going on about when it comes to morals, ethics, good and evil, etc, they just think we're a little obsessed with it, in the same way Elves are kind of overly preoccupied with Beauty. And just as there are humans who don't 'get' art (a failing no elf has ever suffered from), there are elves who don't 'get' morality.


There should be a lot of Alignment Languages
More than there are alignments, by a long shot. Make room for culturally specific variations. It always bugged me that vanilla D&D has Sylvan and Druidic and Elven all as separate languages. Not anymore!

Druidic is a language that is attempting to get rid of language. Based on Shalk, a language that sings in the blood of those born with it, it uses Abati loan words to convey as much meaning in as few words as possible, especially avoiding nouns, and avoiding names almost completely. Part of the language is one of signs, both gestural, in the lynx-like shrug of the shoulders, and physical, in the acorn tucked in the crook of a pine tree, left as a sign to another speaker of the nonlanguage. Much of the language is comprised of periods of silence.

Sylvan is the alignment language of the Fey. When the elves were exiled and fled into the Long Earth, they found many similar exiles there: gnomes, sprites, and nature spirits such as dryads, who call the Green Lands their home. Tuathan is the non-alignment language spoken by Eladrin today, Elvish is for Elves, Bolgish is for Firbolg (the cousins of the Eladrin), etc.

And then there should be other languages: one for Paladins, Thieves Cant for those CN types. Sounds like there's some material here for another post

Training Rules for Downtime

Credits go to goblin punch, ten foot polemic, necropraxis, and many others, for providing the basis for these rules

Players kept asking about training so I had to bang something out really quick so we'd ask have something to reference

Ok so here goes, training rules - draft 1

These all require a ‘Haven Turn.’

Training Score: Sometimes, the training rules will tell you to ‘roll training.’ When you do this, gain one training point, then roll a d20. If you roll equal or under your training score, you succeed! Take the thing. If you roll over, too bad, but you keep the training points.
If you have a trainer, you can add their stat (usually Wisdom or Intelligence) to your training score, before you roll. The trainer bonus isn’t cumulative, and it doesn’t stick around if the trainer isn’t available next time you roll.
Training points are flexible. If you start training at punching goats, but then realize before you’re done that punching ninjas is better, that’s fine. If you switch from training at punching to training at magicking, tho, you’ll have to start over from scratch. Also, you can only have one pool of training points going at a time.

Ability testing: Sometimes, the training rules will tell you to ‘roll dex’ or ‘roll intelligence’ or some other ability score. When you do this, roll a d20, and if the result is equal to or lower than that ability score, you succeed! Take the thing. If not, too bad, you get nothing.


Here are some basic applications of the training action:

Get a Rando ability: For if you just want a cool thing, but you’re not fussed which thing. All the random advancement tables can be found here, there’s a lot of them and you don’t get to read through them first. Roll the primary ability for the class you’re trying to gain an ability for. You can only have one of these per HD that you have. Please keep track of this.

Get a feat: 5e feats are too powerful, but luckily they’re broken up into little pieces, so you can get them one at a time. Roll training. You can still get feats at the regular level increments.

Increase an ability score: Roll training and roll OVER the ability you’re trying to level (the better you get, the harder it is to progress further). I might change this if it seems too strong, or make them temporary boosts, but I’m also planning on including more stat-drain type effects, so it might balance out <3

Gain a skill/tool: Roll training.

Saving throws: For each of these, you have to roll training, plus a specific ability score assigned to each save.

• Death – roll wisdom
• Doom – roll charisma
• Destruction – roll strength
• Poison – roll constitution
• Law – roll wisdom
• Chaos – roll charisma

Weapon Mastery: To do this you need to have a certain number of kills with the weapon. At 10, 30, and 100 kills, you can train to get another special ability. Roll the stat for that weapon. Example special abilities can be found here.

Spellcraft: Creating a new spell requires that you first write out the spell, then roll (your spellcasting ability). Longer, more involved spell creation may actually be a Project.

Starting Gear - first four

In the 5e game I run, replacement characters etc start at 5th level. The median party level is probably around 8 or 10, so that's a significant bump down, but it's also at the point where the Backgrounds in the Player's Handbook don't always cut it. Plus, and this is the real headache, character creation takes way too long. Stuff like this 'retroactive backstory' table speed things along, but not enough.

I'm almost tempted to make people start at level one, but I know I'd have a  mutiny on my hands (perfectly justifiable at this point in the campaign)

So instead, I want to make 'Level 5' as much like 'Level 1' as possible. This will include beefed up backgrounds, semi-randomized starting gear and magic items, and set spell lists for wizards and their ilk- so you're a 5th level wizard, well I can just hand you a spell list, I guess that was on the curriculum. And you can tweak it from there

Not all of this is binding of course, customization is encouraged, but this way you don't have to hem and haw over stuff you don't care about (you can keep your valuable hemming and hawing to stuff you really do care about!), and anyway, 5th-level characters need some place in the world, otherwise how did they get to 5th level? That's the added advantage, it gives a chance to embed context and world building into the character creation process


Here are the first four- I'm aiming for at least eight or twelve, and Backgrounds to go with them, but I'm writing kinda slow at the moment so I figure I better just get these out there for starters


Legionnaire's Pack
depending on your standing with the army, you might have kinda sorta 'stolen' these items when you were discharged. Or maybe you were gifted them in honor of your excellent service! Probably stolen, tho.

• Armour of the Legion- slightly mechanized armour, AC 16, grants advantage on Athletics checks (also disadvantage on swimming, because of the encumbrance)
• Legionaire's Helm, provides reverse-telepathy (others can send messages to you, you can block them out if you choose)
• Magetouched sword - minor enchantment, counts as magic but that's about it. Immune to most damage, especially acid and fire. Appears to be made of a strange grey ceramic material. Has a rune near the crossgaurd that you can command to glow, as a candle. 
• Jump Boots- 4 charges, return in an hour. Spend 1 charge to cast jump.

Tower Mage 
used by the official, kinda stuffy charter mages

• Beautiful robes that denote your school and rank. Warded to give you a +1 to AC and to all saving throws.
• A brass-tipped staff, which functions as a spell focus, and lets you know fireball and can cast it once per day without using a spell slot.
• A belt with several raven and owl feathers and strings of beads hung from it, used as impromptu foci for spells. 
• A pouch filled with little bundles of rocks, when thrown creates a cloud of incense smoke, most wizards use this to obscure escape. 1d4 depletion die.
• The Charter of the Arcane, a book of fussy magical rules that you're supposed to memorize.

Adept of Zulin

priests and particularly religious people

• Small blue pet snake. Likes to live in your sleeves or sit on top of your head, which you probably keep shaved for this purpose.
•  Incense of dream-binding: can bind any spirit into a dream, provided the dreamer stays asleep. A dreamer must be properly trained to a degree appropriate for the power of the spirit, and several properly trained dreamers can share responsibilities.
• Staff of Holding- Enchanted to count as magic and cold iron. Can switch between +2 attack and +2 defence as a bonus action. Weilder knows hold person and can cast it 1/day without using a spell slot. Also works like a bag of holding, but can only hold light or negligible items (items appear and disappear from weilder's hand, when they're holding the staff)
• Prayer Beads (roll three times, can have duplicates): 1-Purify Food and Drink; 2- Calm Emotions; 3- Detect Evil and Good; 4- Gentle Repose; 5- Zone of Truth; 6- Sanctuary. Spells can be cast from the beads as a bonus action, once cast they can't be used again until the adept prays over them at the next dawn.

Azure Pirate

There are many scoundrels in the world, but you are one of the most feared

• Gold earring- worth 2 gp, but you won't sell it because it's supposed to pay for your funeral or disability retirement.
• Eyepatch with an eye design embroidered into it-prevents you from being blinded by light effects, and lets you see in dim light as if it were brightly lit
• Cutlass of sky-blue metal, can be commanded mentally to float in water, slightly corrosive so kept in a ceramic sheath, has 4 charges and can expend a charge on a hit to 'tag' a target with acid, dealing 2d4 damage every turn for a minute, or until washed off by alcohol or seawater.
• Feather Token (roll 3 times, keeping duplicates): 1- Control Weather (Fog); 2- Call Wind; 3- Shark; 4- Wings; 5- Phoenix Down; 6- Rogue Wave; 7- Feather Fall; 8- Sympathy

Slaad!

Slaaaaaad!

Some Relevant Links.

I know I know, it's kind of blasphemy converting OSR things into 5e things, but it's what my players are into. Just think of it as the OSRification of 5e, if it makes you feel more comfortable.


Yellow Slaad

Medium Aberration, CN
AC 14 (natural armour)

HP 45 (6d8+18)

Speed 30 ft, swim 20 ft

STR16(+2) DEX 12(+1) CON16(+3)

INT 9(-1) WIS 6(-2) CHA7(-3)

Skills: Athletics +4, Perception +1

Resistances: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder

Senses: Darkvision 60, PP 11

Languages: Slaadi, Telepathy 60 ft

CR 2 (450 xp)

SPECIAL

Zone of Chaos. 50 feet radius centered on the Slaad. Whenever a non-slaad within the zone declares an action, they must instead choose two unrelated actions, and flip a coin to determine which one they actually do.

Schism. Turns into 2 Orange Slaad when reduced to 0 hp.

Abiosis. Requires 30 people. Can turn into nothing larger than a cottage, nor worth more than 1,000 coin.

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The salad makes one large and one small claw attack.

Large Claw, Melee Weapon Attack, 1d12+3

Small Claw 1d6+3

c'mooooon

Emptycanvass Deviantart

Orange Slaad

Medium Aberration, CN
AC 13 (natural armour)

HP 27 (5d8+5)

Speed 30 ft, swim 20 ft

STR15(+2) DEX 14(+2) CON13(+1)

INT 6(-2) WIS 6(-2) CHA14(+2)

Skills: Perception +1

Resistances: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder

Senses: Darkvision 60, PP 11

Languages: Slaadi, Telepathy 10 ft

CR 1 (200 xp)

SPECIAL

Innate Spellcasting The slaad is a 5th-level spellcaster. Its spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 12, +4 to hit with spell attacks). The slaad can innately cast the of the following spells, requiring no components:
At Will: randomize object

1/day; has one of these spells determined randomly: 1- enter chaos, 2- chaos bolt, 3- shatter.

Schism. Turns into 2 Pink Slaad when reduced to 0 hp. Pink slaad have stats

Abiosis. Requires 10 people. Can turn into nothing larger than a cart, nor worth more than 100 coin.

Standing Leap. The slaad's long jump is up to 20 feet and its high jump is up to 10 feet, with or without a running start.

ACTIONS
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Bite. +4, 1d8+2 damage

Pink Slaad

Small Aberration, CN
AC 11 

HP 13 (3d6+3)

Speed 20 ft, swim 20 ft

STR 8(-1) DEX 12(+1) CON10(+0)

INT 5(-3) WIS 6(-2) CHA8(-1)

Skills: Acrobatics +3

Resistances: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder

Senses: Darkvision 60, PP 8

Languages: Understand Slaadi, but only speak gibberish at best

CR 1/8 (25 xp)

SPECIAL

Death Burst. When the slaad dies, it explodes in a burst of chaotic energy. Each Medium or smaller creature within 5 feet of it must succeed on a DC 11 Dexterity saving throw or be effected. The effects are determined randomly, unless one would be particularly hilarious. 1- red light, blinded. 2- white noise, deafened; 3- pink goop, restrained; 4- green slime, 1d8 acid damage/round; 5- black goop, poisoned. The effects last for 1 minute, or until the target makes a successful save at the end of one of their turns.

Schism. Turns into 2 lumpy black pearls, worth 10 coin each

Abiosis. Can turn into nothing larger than a sword, nor worth more than 10c

Nimble Movement. The slaad does not provoke attacks of opportunity from characters who are adjacent to one of the slaad's allies

ACTIONS

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Bite. +3, 1d6+1 damage
Spit: +3, range 15 ft, 1d4+1 damage.