So I’ve been doing a lot of work on RPG projects lately. This is a good thing and beats every other job I’ve had. But I’ve been coming to that classic obvious revelation that when something becomes your work it can change to where it’s not always as fun as the purely hobby game stuff you do- without the intrusive ideas about how to polish this as a module for publication or help pay some rent with it hovering in the back of your mind. So I’m going to try to make more fun unpolished free stuff more frequently for my own kicks and inflict it on anyone who reads the blog.
These two classes are made for GLOG* systems which are relatedish to most OSR adjacent rules. You can also just steal these for as is for monsters or weird magic abilities if the classes don’t work for you. Thanks to Chris Meabe for walking the streets of Granada and bouncing dumb class ideas off the wall with me.
(*The GLOG are assorted DIY house ruled system hacks spread around heaps of blogs and kicked off by Arnold K of Goblin Punch that are loosely based on minimalist D&D type rulesets that constantly steal, mutate, and iterate from each other. The main consistency are hundreds of weird custom classes that follow a 4 level template patterned classes like these and a neat Magic Dice system for spells.
https://oblidisideryptch.blogspot.com/2020/07/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love.html)
Handyman
You lost your hands in an awful accident but a wizard was able to attach some new ones from a recent corpse. They work better than the original. Two isn’t enough- you need more. More. MORE. You’ve learned the secrets of harvesting and attaching hands on arms made of more hands to yourself and animating them.
Starting Equipment: A sewing kit, a dagger, a dozen mismatched gloves, and a set of magically-infused threads.
A: Second Hand, Hand Sandwich
B: Lend A Hand
C: Mage Hand
D: Ambidextrous
Second Hand: If you harvest an intact humanish hand from a biological creature you can sew it onto your flesh and give it new life. You need to collect 5 hands to build and operate one arm made of hands. You can sew on as many handarms as you want and they can hold or do anything a normal hand can. You still can just use one action or special ability a round. If you drop to 0 HP, you lose one handarm at random, the hands scuttling away from you and finding a dark corner to turn to ash in. Each handarm also has a special ability chosen or rolled from the Hand Jobs table.
Hand Jobs:
1. Hand(le) Bar: Hand has a small nozzle in its palm that can produce enough red rum a day to get 12 people outrageously drunk. Highly flammable.
2. Glad Hand: Can pat someone nearby, massage their neck, and squeeze their biceps. Gives a +1 to all rolls as long as the Handyman is adjacent to them.
3. Sleight of Hand: This hand can do one type of activity as a skilled thief, but only the hand. 1. Lock Picking 2.Pick Pocket 3.Cup Game 4.Climbing 5.Really, really good shadow puppets. 6. Knife Throwing
4. Man Hand(le): This handarm is swole and can shove any creature it hits smaller than a horse 10 feet if they fail a Save.
5.Out of Hand: Something you can hold in with the one hand vanishes. It reappears in 1d6x10 minutes.
6. Hand Off: Hand can pop off the handarm and be directed to scuttle around like a crab. Useful for scouting, getting into tight spaces, or attaching a small bomb to it.
Hand Sandwich:
If you eat an intact hand you gain 1 hp. Takes 1 round per hand to consume it. But then you can’t sew it to yourself, bummer. You can spend 10 minutes carefully unstitching one of your handarms for 5 hands to eat if you really need to- you don’t like doing that.
Lend A Hand:
You can rip the stitches out of a handarm and loan it to someone by sewing it on to them. They have an extra hand arm that can do whatever they want with, keeps any Hand Jobs it has. Lasts for 10 minutes x (Number of Templates) before it falls off. You can sew it back on to you after. Unwilling targets can Save to avoid.
Mage Hand:
If you harvest the hand of a magic user, the hand retains arcane remnants of a single spell. You can cast this once per day. Instead of choosing a Hand Job for the handarm, you can roll on a table of random spells.
Ambidextrous:
You now get two actions per round as long as you have at least three handarms.
Lamp Host
You saw the light. It called to you, told you to trust it- to find peace in its flickering. And the next thing you know you came to with a small fleshy covered lamp growing out of your shoulder. It would kill you to remove it, it’s part of you now. It’s your friend.
A: Illuminated Path- Lamp parasite is size of flickering candle.
B: Burning Revelation- Lamp parasite grows to size of handheld lantern.
C: Gaslight-Lamp parasite grows to size of impressive desk lamp.
D: Hive Mind-Lamp parasite grows to full lamppost size 5’ above your shoulder. Unwieldy to get through doors.
Illuminated Path: You are always surrounded by a 30’ halo of flickering lanternlight. You can cover the lantern to hide the light but it harms you 1d4 HP every 10 minutes to do so. The lanternlight allows you to detect magic auras by seeing them sparkle. If you tell a lie- no matter how ridiculous-anyone standing in its pale greenish light must Save or believe it until proven otherwise.
Burning Revelation: You can boost the light of the lamp parasite to a flash of blinding white green radiance (Number of Templates) times a day. All viewing with eyes must Save or be blinded for 1d6 rounds. Those wearing blindfolds or prepared including you get Advantage on the Save.
Gaslight: The lamppost parasite can give its hypnotic swirling glow. Any creatures with eyes with less than 2x (Number of Templates) HD must Save or begin to walk towards the light and stare into its glow. This lasts until they take damage or 10 minutes have passed- after which a small lantern emerges from their back, spreading the parasite infestation.
Hivemind: You (or is it your lamp parasite making you?) can command any lamp hosts you’ve infested with Gaslight as long as it doesn’t suicidally risk their lives and the wellbeing of their lamp parasite. They can save every (Number of Templates) weeks to try to break free of your control. Beware of powerful lamp hosts trying to do the same to you.