Converting the Half-Orc to OD&D and then Overcomplicating it Again Anyway

The first three supplements for OD&D added a plethora of optional rules that would later be elaborated into AD&D 1E. Supplement I: Greyhawk was a testing ground for Gygax's ascendant crunchiness that offered a slew of character options including the thief class, multiclassing-without-calling-it-multiclassing, and the "alternate combat system" that finally, fully divorced D&D from Chainmail rules. Perhaps more surprisingly, Supplement II: Blackmoor was the same kind of thing for Arneson, what with the assassin and monk subclasses and hit location tables. Kinda goes against the grain of Arnesonian fantasy being rules-lite, but I already harped on that a bit in my Spirits & Spookiness interlude about the edition split. Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry added an early version of psionics, but we don't talk about that.

I'm more interested in a character option that the books didn't add between then and AD&D. And if possible (but probably not practical), I want to do a little backwards-compatibility to add it in.

We're talkin' half-orcs today!

Unlike their elvish counterparts, half-orcs did not debut in the Greyhawk supplement, and would not appear until the AD&D Player's Handbook released several years later (assuming there's no half-orc in a Chainmail book I'm unaware of, anyway). But the differences between AD&D and supplemented OD&D are not so large, and with a bit of work and an eye toward the """""balance""""" struck in OD&D, I think I can port them back.

To start off, we can skip a step entirely. Since OD&D doesn't use racial ability score modifiers, we don't have to futz with that at all.

Between Greyhawk and AD&D, racial level limits for all classes other than thief (which was the first class everything could level unlimitedly in) either stayed the same or increased very slightly with the addition of exceptional ability score benefits. The average seems to be +1 across the board. As an example OD&D elves can go as high as Fighter 4/5/6 and Magic-User 8/9, plus NPC-only Clerics 6; AD&D elves can rise to Fighter 5/6/7, Magic-User 9/10/11, and Cleric 7.

Working backwards from the AD&D half-orc with a -1 across the board, we would arrive at racial limits of Fighter 9, a truly abysmal Cleric 3, and Thief 6/7/8. I'll be ignoring the thief level limit in favor of making it unlimited like everyone else gets, since half-orcs lose out on their unlimited assassin progression thanks to that subclass being human-only in OD&D. Optionally, you could let half-orcs progress as assassins up to 6/7/8, or take the limits off it too. Or do something else entirely! Multiclass combinations from AD&D can stay pretty much unchanged, although I pity anyone trying to squeeze value out of that cleric level.

Next we look at racial abilities, where we have to get creative.

OD&D half-elves inherit their elven parent's ability to spot secret and hidden doors, but they don't gain the elf's combat abilities or infravision. This tells me that we can directly transfer some of the AD&D orc's traits onto the half-orc, but not all of them.

Well, I say "traits" but it's really only one notable thing from their Monster Manual entry: a 35% chance to notice construction underground and 25% chance to notice sloping passages, on account of old orcs being proficient miners before Gruumsh went the way of the Chaotic Evil berserker. We can slap those numbers onto the half-orc and round them off as a 2-in-6 and 1-in-4 chance, respectively. Orcs have infravision, but if we're being sticklers then half-orcs can't have any of that, since for some reason half-elves didn't receive it from their elven parents in OD&D, and in all likelihood the Great Value brand Peredhil would complain about unfair treatment if any other hybrids were so lucky.

Optionally, just go ahead and give half-orcs and half-elves infravision like their nonhuman parents. Or if that seems too strong, cut the values in half for 30' each.

Languages are super simple to deal with by comparison. Common, alignment (as much as those annoy me) and orcish for the defaults, plus goblin, hobgoblin, and ogre.

Finally, we turn to thief skill bonuses.

In OD&D and AD&D thieves get bonuses to certain skills depending on their species in the form of percentile increments of 5. Every thief in OD&D has 30 percentage points divided up among the various skills, except for halflings who receive a whopping 40 on top of a +1 to Hear Noises rolls. I'm unsure how to quantify the bonus to Hear Noises in terms of percentage points since I'm not sure if it means +1 to the skill's progression, I.E. you count as a thief 1 level higher than normal, or +1 is added to your current range of hearing, so 1-3 at 1st level and the skill is maxed out a few levels early at 1-6 at 11th level. I accept the former explanation that it's just a +1 to effective hearing level and so it would be equivalent to +5% on another skill, but that is my interpretation of ambiguous text- as so very much of early D&D is.

Halflings aside, we can take that standard 30 and use it as a budget for the most appropriate half-orc thief bonuses we want to cherry-pick from AD&D. The full list is as follows: Pick Pockets -5%, Open Locks +5%, Find/Remove Traps +5%, Move Silently 0%, Hide in Shadows 0%, Hear Noise +5%, Climb Walls +5%, Read Languages -10%.

We can ignore Climb Walls and Read Languages since the former scales (heh) with level, while the latter is just a flat 80% chance for all thieves regardless of background. I feel like we can also drop the -5% to Pick Pockets because no other thieves in OD&D get a penalty from species. That leaves us with Locks, Traps, and Hearing for a total of 15%, with 15% left to spend.

To figure out where to put those last few points I look at the distributions of the other species' bonuses:

Here we can see that there are no +10% values for Remove Traps, so I think it's a fine niche to fill by bumping the half-orc's bonus up by 5 points. Similarly, I will add +5% to both Move Silently and Hide in Shadows because there are literally no thieves with less than that, including half-

... Wait a second. Where are half-elves on this table? As a matter of fact, where're the humans for that line of "-"s across the board so we remember everything is being compared to a human baseline?

No, this isn't a bit, I actually did not realize that half-elves and humans were omitted until I was uploading a screenshot.

I guess that prompts an entirely different interpretation: half-elves share their human parents' versatile unremarkability in thievery when it comes to OD&D. And following the logic like I've been trying to do all post, that means half-orcs should do the same and have +0% to everything.

Well shoot. That's a slightly underwhelming conclusion to come to. Oh well. I'll still keep all the above in. Gotta show my work.

-

To condense everything down into a single block of text that probably could've been a tweet instead:

Half-Orcs: Can advance to Fighter 9, Cleric 3, Thief U, Assassin 6/7/8 or U (optional); multiclass any 2. Detects underground construction 2-in-6, sloping passages 1-in-4. Infravision 30' (optional). Languages: Common, orcish, goblin, hobgoblin, ogre, alignment tongue.

And while we're here, I can't not share the OD&D orc art.
How'd we get pigmen from a frumpy dude with a cutlass?

Blue Priest of the Salt Steppes (TROIKA! Background inspired by Sunless Sea/Fallen London)

The light flickers to life overhead, momentarily blinding you and transporting you someplace else. For just a moment, you imagine it is the warm glow of a sun you have never known. For just an instant, you pretend the blue dome that fitful lightbulb dangles from is in fact the vast, infinite heights of the Deep Blue Heaven that was stolen from you. Then the afterimage passes like wind on the steppe, and you are left to remember that you live not upon a sea of grass, but upon the peliginous waters of the subterranean Unterzee.

You begin chanting as your congregants kneel, and try to ignore the commotion outside the shrine as some Taimens take issue with another foreigner at port.

Possessions

• D6 Electric Filament-Bulbs
• Ritual Robe (not necessarily blue)
• Pocket Scriptures written in ʼPhags-pa Script
• Lacquered Wooden Horsehead
• Pouch of Darkdrop Coffee Beans

Advanced Skills

4 Religion - Deep Blue Heaven
3 Electrician
2 Etiquette
1 Secret Signs - The White-and-Golds

Special

You can jury-rig a flickering lamp from scraps, prayers, and a random battery found lying around. The lamp shines a bright cone of light for 2 hours before going dark. You may also choose to overload the lamp in a foe's face, forcing them to Test their Luck or be blinded for 1 minute and take Damage as Small Beast as they're showered with bright light and exploding glass.

Spirits & Spookiness: Gazetteer 10: The Orcs of Thar (1988)

Preface

Ugh. Alright, let’s get this over with.

The Orcs of Thar, written by Bruce Heard for BECMI D&D, is the 10th entry in the Mystara Gazetteer series detailing different areas of the campaign setting and how to play a game there. Orcs of Thar is a boxed set about the desolate and inhospitable Broken Lands, which are divided up between ten nations of humanoids barely united under the rule of the orcish war chief King Thar.¹

The set contains several booklets that detail the lore and history of the region, how to run a campaign in the Broken Lands, and how to play a simple grand strategy-style wargame using the armies of Thar. The players' guide and dungeon master's booklet also contains options for playing monstrous characters who hail from the Broken Lands, including the first playable shamans we've seen in BECMI so far.

It’s also my least favorite book in the entire Gazetteer series (that I’ve read, at least). Partly because I initially had unreasonably high hopes for it. That part is my fault. The book is entirely functional, and has more details on humanoids and shamans than most other BECMI books, making it a handy resource to adapt for one's game. But the style of writing throughout also seems to want to make it a tongue-in-cheek joke book.

The book's humor derives from how stupid, stinky, and goofy the orcs and their neighbors are. Slapstick and gross-out humor abound as the endless hordes churn against one another, driven by bits of narrative microfiction that read like a bad rendering of a Warhammer orc warboss’ speech. The book also has an art direction that looks halfway between “unhinged vaudeville show” and “racist World War II war bond poster”.

Less yikes but just a confusing, there's also this piece of some orc "punks" from the hard streets of the volcanic capital city of Oenkmar where everything has a vaguely Mesoamerican or Incan name for Reasons, seen here breakdancing with a boombox and massive traumatic head piercings, also for Reasons.² This doesn't really fit into my broader point, but I can't not share it.

Now we share a trauma bond.

Much digital ink has already been spilled over the years by other people about the weird borrowing of both racial stereotypes and scientific racism tropes for the book’s species breakdown section, which precedes the chapter on shamans. I don’t have anything new to add to that discussion or a creative way to express how nakedly yikes the beads-and-buckskin-wearing “red orcs” or the goblinus oriensis who parrot the Mongol-coded Ethengarian peoples are, other than reiterating that they very much are yikes.³ But I’d feel derelict in my duties as a responsible wannabe historian if I didn’t bring it up briefly. Of all the legacy content on DriveThruRPG that Wizards of the Coast has slapped a content disclaimer onto, The Orcs of Thar decidedly earns it in my opinion.

But I digress.

I don’t apologize for digressing, because it’s my show and I do what I want, but I do digress.

I came here to talk about shamans. For all its 1980s cringe, Orcs of Thar gives the first bit of concrete depth and texture to humanoid shamans in this edition, where previously it was all a matter of reading in between the lines or just outright imagining that the monstrous spellcaster sections in the core rules boxed sets are more meaningful than they might actually be- I know I'm prone to hyper-fixating and reading depth into things.

And, excluding the technicality of that one OD&D clerical title, this is the first ever book where shamans became fully playable in D&D!

Shamans & Wiccas

Thar shamans and wiccas (this book was published before the Hollow World campaign set changed them to wokani) both consort with dark powers, either by worshiping them or trying to control them. Anyone looking to become a shaman or wicca must apprentice to a master, and this apprenticeship lasts for at least 1 full level of play after character creation. After this point the spellcaster’s training is complete, and they are kicked out to continue practicing on their own.⁴

I find this rule really interesting. So many other character classes throughout D&D assume that the character’s days of apprenticeship are behind them and that 1st level is the era of messing around and finding out on one’s own. Sure, a cleric or wizard PC might have an old mentor in their backstory, or a druid might occasionally have to deal with other druids in their order because of the weird cage match rules that define grove politics. But a prospective humanoid shaman or wicca explicitly has to play through an apprenticeship and engage with a master NPC in real time to gain their most basic abilities. I think that’s neat, and it adds to roleplay opportunities.

This rule also gives way to another rule that I find to be quintessentially BECMI. Because this was the edition of race-as-class much like in the first three books of OD&D, every humanoid can only ever advance as their species. A kobold is a level 3 kobold, a troll is a level 8 troll, etc. And nothing can change that. But you also can’t just slap a second class on, because multiclassing is a distinctly AD&D system (ignoring the OD&D supplements that introduced multiclassing in all but name) and doing that would probably hurt brand identity or some other "board of directors" type worry like that.

To get out of this mechanical corner that the designers wrote themselves into, optional rules such as humanoid shamans followed an additive XP track rule: every “level” in your character’s side gig is an extra couple of abilities layered on top of their base class chassis, plus a debt of several thousand extra experience points needed to advance to your next real level in whatever racial class that is. It’s harder to explain than it is to just use (much like AD&D’s THAC0), but still kind of a funny relic of the time that we’ll see pop up elsewhere.

Anyway, once an apprentice has concluded their apprenticeship they undergo a ritual that leaves them a full-fledged shaman or wicca. The exact details of this ritual of passage are not spelled out in the book; only that it is probably one of the most grueling and frightening experiences of their life. The rest is left up to “you, the DM, and to your players’ tastes”, to quote the book.

That’s a moment of surprisingly thoughtful game design from an era before lines, veils, and other “Session Zero” style content discussions were common. I know it was probably written with the thought of “ooh, what kind of gross and screwed up do you fellas wanna make it?” in mind, but still, credit where credit is due.

The book does provide a table of ‘typical’ ritual effects to use, if you want. It’s a single d12 roll that explains how physically harrowing the experience was for your shaman, and how much of themselves they sacrificed or allowed to be eaten up by hungry entities beyond the veil. The damage can range from 1 or more points of permanent HP loss, to losing points of Constitution directly. Benefits include a small experience point boost, a permanent bonus to Wisdom, or just nothing at all; the powers that shamans treat with can be fickle pricks.

This ritual is undergone at the end of apprenticeship, as well as every time a shaman or wicca wants to learn a new spell from outside of their class list, replace a lost gri-gri (a tribal holy symbol that both classes require to cast magic, derived from the gris-gris of West African Vodun and its diasporic descendants like Voodoo), craft a talisman (a minor magical item unique to them), or exceed their racial spellcaster level limits (which are often quite low in comparison to their normal level limits). Over a decently long career, a Thar spell-caster will end up truly grizzled and wizened by their craft. They might even die outright from a ritual if not careful.⁵

I believe this was done in order to cement how nasty the shaman’s objects of worship are (and we will be getting to them shortly). But it does something else as well, perhaps unintentionally.

It invokes (please bear with me for a moment) the Jungian archetype of the Wounded Healer.

To paraphrase greatly, the wounded healer is someone who was drawn to their profession by the fact that they themselves have suffered similar traumas in life as their patients. The wounding is what opens up one’s empathy, and unlocks their healing powers- speaking figuratively, of course. In real life this deals with people in the professions of therapy, medicine, nursing, etc. But in the context of fantasy it is also quite literal.

Many modern writers and philosophers–mostly Westerners–connect the idea of the wounded healer with countless real life religious and mythological phenomena, including many shamanic traditions, where it is often the case that a person is considered ‘marked’ or otherwise destined to become a shaman by some ominous ordeal early in life, such as suffering from disease, injury, or mental illness.⁶

I am not going to dig deep into that theory because I don’t know the first thing about Jungian psychology and boy do I not have the patience to learn. However I will say that I'm leery of the theory and anything else that tries to orient diverse shamanic traditions around a single universality. Still, it does relate back to the real-life diversity of conceptions of shamans that I mentioned back in the etymologies and definitions post. Bit by bit, more of them are being borne out in the fiction of D&D as it grows and expands.

Religion in the Broken Lands

I’ve alluded to the dark powers treated with by Thar shamans twice now, and it’s our first taste of actual specifics for a shamanic religion, so let’s dig into that next.

The spirits and other forces shamans get their power from are very ill-defined in the text, and stand curiously separate and divorced from popular religion. This encourages you to come up with your own answers as to what they are, or leave them wholly opaque. Are they the spirits of the dead? Demons? Some other completely different entities? I don't know. All I know is that they are not Immortals.

Religion in the Broken Lands operates much as it does elsewhere in Mystara: instead of “gods” in the traditional sense, intelligent beings worship so-called Immortals. Immortals were once regular people who became powerful and badass enough in life that they ascended to immortality and carved out a sphere of deific influence for themselves. They are the “I” in BECMI, and therefore they serve not only as objects of worship for the world, but also objects of emulation for the player characters, whose long adventuring careers might just allow them to do the same.

The Immortals worshiped by humanoids tend to be former conquerors and warlords who paid for their divinity in foes slain and cities razed. The book says there are far too many to list, which encourages groups to come up with their own religions. The Immortals who are listed tend to be 1 per species, and they usually have portfolios centered on warfare, consumption, and destruction. It makes sense that a bunch of militaristic societies trapped in permanent endemic warfare would emphasize gods like that, although I think it's also a bit of a metaphorical chicken-or-the-egg situation as to whether they started to war first and picked up relevant gods second, or got pushed into forever war by their gods.

Something funny I noticed is that most of the Thar Immortals have alternate names in their entries. The bugbear Immortal Bartziluth is also known as as Hruggek, the orc warrior god Karaash is AKA Ilneval, The Shining One of the kobolds was once named Kurtulmak, etc. These are all names taken from the ethnic pantheons found in Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk campaign setting for AD&D, a decade and a half before they were turned into generic deities for 3rd edition. Another rare bit of cross-pollination between the otherwise separate branches of D&D.

Also I can’t believe that I’ve been playing or at least reading about Dungeons & Dragons for over 20 years and it took me this long to realize that the god of the gnoll hyena people is named Yeenoghu. Did anybody else miss that one? Maybe I shouldn’t be the one writing about media.

Shamans are described in this section as effectively being clerics of the Immortals, minus the ability to turn undead. Instead, they gain a unique ability that emulates a feat or quality their Immortal is known for, as well as a more general benefit enjoyed by all followers of that Immortal regardless of class. 

Karaash/Ilneval for example grants his shamans better authority checks against his faithful, as well as the ability to use a pretty nasty karaash sword, which deals 1d10 damage and causes wounds that can only be healed with magic.⁷ Shamans are often quite limited in the weapons they can wield, either by sharing the cleric weapon restriction or by a requirement to only wield “tribal” weapons, so seeing a shaman with access to such a big, martial weapon is rather novel at this time. Spirits or no, they are soldiers just like everyone else in the Broken lands.

While shamans and most wiccas worship one or more gods of their respective racial pantheons in the henotheistic fashion that was already standard for D&D religions, they explicitly are not obliged to pray to them for their spells. Instead, they get their powers from those capricious spirits that accept their sacrifices and nibble away at their bodies and souls level after level. It is remarkably similar to the patron/supplicant relationship that would grow out of the many iterations of the warlock class decades later. Alas, we won’t see many other examples of this ephemeral shaman-as-warlock archetype in our survey.

Shamilitarism

Because of how militaristic humanoid societies of the Broken Lands are, shamans and wiccas serve dual roles as mystical and martial figures. They are forced into the hierarchy wherever they will fit, and often rise to positions of authority beneath the various chiefs and kings of the land. Here they serve in some capacity as an advisor, a force multiplier during wartime (which is all of the time), and a sort of combination chaplain/doctor.

This role is borne out in the mechanics of the Orcwars! pullout wargame, tucked away inside the dungeon master's booklet. In Orcwars! a chief in control of a shaman gains +1 to their combat, authority, and servility dice rolls from utilizing the shaman's mix of potent magic and politico-religious legitimacy. They also seem to be regarded as very valuable to keep alive by all sides, because shamans are not killed during battles, and they always move over to the winning side, or else flee to another territory until a chief worthy of serving comes along.

One of the last parts of the boxed set we're treated to is Thar's Manual of Good Conduct, a primer on how to give and follow orders, obey hierarchy, win fights, and generally keep the military running as close to smooth as possible. In the section on "Orcish Sanitation" the two classes (shamans more than wiccas) minister to the troops in their tribe by inspecting them during ztan-HU'T (a pun on ten-hut) to make sure they're reasonably healthy and fit.⁸

Much space is afforded to extended jokes like making sure each soldier's feet smell an appropriate level of stinky or explaining why it's bad to eat rotten meat, but shamans also do more serious work like treating wounds and diseases through mundane, medicinal, and magical means. This marks shamans and wiccas out as the specialized repositories of vital, nonmagical day-to-day knowledge in humanoid societies, just as they often are in real life human societies where the shaman is an active participant in life in the community beyond just performing rituals in a hut kept separate from the rest of the village, as the tropes so often depict. Admittedly their Broken Lands counterparts do a whole lot more heavy lifting by comparison, because of how stupid most humanoids are typed as being.

Then again, on that last note, maybe knowledge like maintaining proper hygiene might actually be viewed as overtly magical by most of the tribes of the Broken Lands...

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the longer wait between last entry and this one. Next time we'll be looking at another entry in the Gazetteer, of which I believe we'll cover 4 in total.

Or you can click here to return to the Shamans in D&D Archive.

¹ Not to be confused with the Great Gray Land of Thar, a desolate northern region of the Forgotten Realms that also happens to play host to large warring armies of orcs and other humanoids. D&D is nothing if not willing to borrow from/cannibalize itself.

² Heard, Bruce. The Orcs of Thar: Dungeon Master's Booklet. 1988. P. 30.

³ Heard, Bruce. The Orcs of Thar: Player's Guide. 1988. P. 18, 40-42.

⁴ Dungeon Master's Booklet. P. 5.

⁵ Ibid. P. 6.

⁶ Jackson, Stanley W. "Presidential Address: The Wounded Healer". Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 75. No. 1. 2001. P. 1-6.

⁷ Dungeon Master's Booklet. P. 8-10.

⁸ Heard, Bruce. The Orcs of Thar: Thar's Manual of Good Conduct. P. 24-29.

Shepherd Class for BFRPG

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon Dragonsfoot's old OD&D and BECMI fan zine, OD&Dities. In addition to realizing how close I came to ripping off their name with my 3E OdditE series, I found a few things of passing interest to me; mostly different takes on character classes and optional rulesets.

The thing that really caught my interest in Issue #12 was the Shepherd class by one Kenneth Bailey. The shepherd is a rustic herder who combines a few thief/ranger skills, herbal healing, light fighting abilities, and nonmagical bardic music together into a generalist package that screams "pastoral folk hero" in like a thousand different languages and mythologies at once.

Naturally, I was piqued.

And then I was crushed, because for some reason the tables that should contain most of the information for the shepherd's abilities and how they scale with level don't appear anywhere in the zine.

All you get is its XP table (they level about as fast as magic-users on average), followed by a featureless, out-of-context spell progression table that resembles but ultimately falls behind the Rules Cyclopedia cleric's. It should be said that the shepherd is explicitly described in the text as not casting magic. Additionally, the section titled Shepherd Songs and Herbology doesn't include any of the herbology, leaving it a mystery what they do to use herbs in healing wounds, curing diseases, or doing weirder stuff like granting temporary infravision or invisibility to animals.

It's frustrating to find, and I don't know how it happened. Maybe the class was just published unfinished, or the wrong file version got submitted, or there was a major editing/formatting oopsie? I browsed around for several different hostings of the zine but all of them had the same imperfect file in their archives. I'm not going to blame anyone particular because it's a 20 year-old issue of a discontinued fan zine and I should really have better things to be doing, but it's pretty frickin' weird all the same.

I suppose I could just ask around Dragonsfoot to see if anyone from that era knows what the deal was. But I've never been a part of that community and don't know much about it, and ever since their AD&D 2E character roller with the dark green UI and half-ogres that I swear I didn't hallucinate went offline years ago, I've had little reason to start.

Anyway, with my curiosity frustrated thus, I decided I'd just make my own shepherd class instead.

Of course I'm not going to bother poring over enough Cyclopedia material to fully grok its class design all the way up to level 36, which is why you don't see BECMI in the title up there. Instead, I decided to recreate the spirit if not the letter of the class alongside my own personal tweaks in BFRPG, another OSR title of which I'm fond, and which I've made other mediocre content for in the past.

Shepherd

Shepherds are rustic hinterland folk and nomads who migrate throughout the year with their herds and flocks of animals. Some drive seas of cattle and horses across the plains to sell in distant markets, while others subsist with their small and hardy flocks in the hills and mountains. All are skilled in the ways of nature and life on the move. Such a tough life alone or in small, interdependent communities makes them competent survivalists with a broad skillset. It's no wonder then that some shepherds find themselves drawn to the adventuring life, where they help keep a very different kind of flock out of trouble.

I know I've used this art for posts in the past but I can't stop loving it.
Wanderers by merlkir

Requirements: To become a Shepherd, a character must have a Strength score of 9 or higher, a Dexterity score of 11, and a Wisdom score of 11. They may use any ranged weapon, but may not use any edged weapons besides daggers, hand axes, and shepherd's axes (see bottom of page). They may wear nothing heavier than leather armor (studded leather if using the armor and shields supplement), but not shields. There are no racial restrictions for the Shepherd.

Shepherds use a d6 to determine Hit Points. They fight using the cleric/thief columns and save as thieves. They may use magical versions of all allowed weapons and armor. Otherwise, they may utilize magical items that a thief would be able to use.

Special Abilities: Animals, both wild and domestic, are unavoidable and important facts of life for shepherds and their communities. Shepherds receive +2 to Reaction Rolls with all animals. Additionally, herd animals, beasts of burden, and all breeds of work dog never react worse than "Favorable" toward the shepherd.

Shepherds are highly proficient with the club/cudgel/walking staff and sling. When wielding a sling or walking staff, a shepherd adds +2 to their Attack Bonus. Additionally, shepherds may score a "critical hit" when an attack roll with a sling or walking staff results in a natural 20. A critical hit deals double weapon damage, increasing to triple at 5th level and quadruple at 9th.

Shepherds can Climb, Hide, and Track in wilderness areas, at percentages given in the table below. Tracking targets whom the shepherd is very familiar with, such as party members or animals from their flock, do not require a check to successfully track except in very adverse conditions such as severe weather or magical interference. When tracking a target, the shepherd must roll once per hour traveled or lose the trail.

Note: Track may also be used to represent gathering and preparing herbal medicine (see below) if your group is not using any optional rules for secondary character skills.

Shepherds are often miles from the nearest village with magical healing. As such, they are well-versed in folk medicine and herblore. Shepherds may spend time in the wilderness finding, collecting, and processing herbs into medicines that mimic the effects of a small number of cleric, magic-user, and druid spells.

To prepare a medicine the shepherd must be at least 1 level higher than a normal spellcaster who would be able to cast the spell it mimics. 1 use of medicine requires 1 hour of work per level of the spell being mimicked. Thus a poultice of cure light wounds can be made starting at 3rd level and takes 1 hour to make, a tea of cure disease becomes available at 7th level and takes 3 hours, etc. The shepherd must make a successful check (either the Track skill or an appropriate secondary skill) every hour to make progress. Failure means a setback and 1 wasted hour. Medicines of reversible spells cannot be reversed; they are not trained poisoners. Other herbal medicines probably exist out there in the world, to be discovered and learned through play. Medicines may be kept for 1 week before losing their potency.

Example Herbal Medicines include (but are not limited to):

Poultice of Cure Light Wounds - A mash of herbs applied to an injury to help heal cuts, reduce inflammation, and prevent infection. 3rd level, 1 hour.
Ointment of Protection From Animals - More of a noxious repellent, made from unmentionable substances. Slathered on the body to ward off animals, as protection from evil. 3rd level, 1 hour.
Tablets of Purify Food and Water - Pills containing bitter antimicrobial agents that kill most common pathogens, but don't help the taste much. 3rd level, 1 hour.
Tincture of Bless - A highly alcoholic solvent of one of the most powerful substances in the realms: placebo. Affects only the imbiber. 5th level, 2 hours.
Gel of Charm Animal - A cocktail of pleasant (to animals at least) botanicals sure to get the first pack of animals you encounter rubbing up on you. 5th level, 2 hours.
Tranquilizer of Slow Poison* - Depressants meant to arrest the progress of toxins until they can be fully treated. May cause grogginess. Must be formulated for a specific poison. 5th level, 2 hours.
Drops of Cure Blindness - A tiny, stoppered bottle, good for flushing out gunk and stimulating ocular muscles. 7th level, 3 hours.
Tea of Cure Disease - Technically a decoction, made by boiling horrible-tasting herbs, bark, and roots. Must be formulated for a specific disease. 7th level, 3 hours.
Eye Soak of Darkvision - Essentially just a highly concentrated dose of drops of cure blindness, able to briefly push human eyes beyond their limits. 7th level, 3 hours.
Needle of Neutralize Poison* - A rudimentary syringe with a single dose of antitoxin in it. Must be formulated for a specific poison. 7th level, 3 hours.

* Druid spell or druidic version of it.

Music is the shepherd's indispensable pastime. Without it, the long hours sitting around at pasture would be even longer. But those thousands of collective hours of boredom have also unlocked some of the secrets of those ancient songs, poems, and myths. Shepherds gain access to a limited number of Bard Songs related to wilderness survival, such as those listed below. They may also use and benefit from the effects of any magical instruments they come across. They begin with knowledge of 1 song and gain a small number of song proficiency points to either learn new songs or improve known songs according to the table below. Other shepherd songs probably exist out there in the world, to be discovered and learned through play.

Example Shepherd Songs include (but are not limited to):

Flock's Lullaby - Sometimes the animals are restless and need a bit of help settling down for the night. This song functions as the sleep spell when played to herd animals. Friendly targets may voluntarily fall asleep to it, in which case they gain +1 point of extra healing from a rest per rank.

Folk Hero's Ballad - This saga contains a little bit of everything; action, drama, tragedy, comedy, etc. And each chapter is more inspiring than the last. All allies within 60 feet receive +1 to saves against spells, initiative, or damage depending on if the shepherd uses the story to inspire caution, excitement, or righteous indignation in them. Additional ranks allow 2 or 3 effects to occur at once.
Wary Herder's Song - Predators in the night are a constant threat to the lone shepherd and their flock. The shepherd and all allies within 30 feet are less likely to be surprised, reducing the die roll range by 1 (from 1-2 on d6 to a roll of 1 on d6). A second rank of proficiency reduces the chance further to a roll of 1 on d8, and a third rank modifies the roll to 1 on d10.
Nomad's Migration Song - Moving camp across great distances is arduous business. This travel song helps lighten loads and spirits, increasing the carrying capacity of all who hear it by 20%, including any pack animals being used. Additional ranks increase this by +20%.

Song of Calling - This appeal to the land that sustains the shepherd summons a number of animals equal to the shepherd's Hit Dice from the surrounding wilderness to serve them and follow rudimentary commands for 1 turn per level. Unlike most bard songs, this can only be sung once per day. Additional ranks increase that limit by 1.

Shepherd

Lv	Exp. Points	Climb	Hide	Track	Songs (Max)	Hit Dice
1	0	80	10	40	1 (+1)	1d6
2	2,500	81	15	44	1 (+1)	2d6
3	5,000	82	20	48	2 (+1)	3d6
4	10,000	83	25	52	2 (+1)	4d6
5	20,000	84	30	56	2 (+1)	5d6
6	40,000	85	35	60	2 (+1)	6d6
7	80,000	86	40	64	3 (+1)	7d6
8	150,000	87	45	68	3 (+2)	8d6
9	300,000	88	50	72	3 (+2)	9d6
10	450,000	89	53	75	3 (+2)	9d6+2
11	600,000	90	56	78	4 (+2)	9d6+4
12	750,000	91	59	81	4 (+2)	9d6+6
13	900,000	92	62	84	4 (+2)	9d6+8
14	1,050,000	93	65	87	4 (+2)	9d6+10
15	1,200,000	94	68	90	5 (+3)	9d6+12
16	1,350,000	95	69	91	5 (+3)	9d6+14
17	1,500,000	96	70	92	5 (+3)	9d6+16
18	1,650,000	97	71	93	5 (+3)	9d6+18
19	1,800,000	98	72	94	6 (+3)	9d6+20
20	1,950,000	99	73	95	6 (+3)	9d6+22

Shepherd's Axes are constructed from a short staff with a small axehead mounted on it, sometimes with an accompanying metal spike or butt on the opposite end. They are commonly employed by shepherds in mountainous regions where they are useful as walking sticks, bushcraft tools, and even animal crooks (when the head is sheathed of course). Many are highly personalized, carved and decorated by their owners while they sit for long hours minding the herds.

Treat shepherd's axes as walking staffs for all intents and purposes, except that they deal 1d6 slashing damage in combat.

A monochrome public domain image to wrap up,
if that's more your speed.

Renegade Thoul Class for OSE Classic

Freak. Mutant. Abomination. Thoul.

You've heard it all by now. It doesn't phase you anymore. You don't even bother snarkily correcting their pronunciation nowadays.* It's not like they'd listen, anyway. You just ignore them, or show them what those claws of yours can do if they really push you.

You were born into the ranks a normal hobgoblin, or so everybody thought. The mutation was so vanishingly rare in your stronghold that they stopped bothering to test newborns for it generations ago. But then you came along, and before the end of your first year you accidentally paralyzed three wet nurses in a row. Then the commander slashed the sole of your foot open with a knife, and watched the cut knit itself shut even as you kicked and wailed.

So you were labeled thoul, and cast down into the proverbial dung heap of hobgoblin society. Only menial labor and the worst, most dangerous postings in the stronghold were open to you. As you languished in squalor, those of your birth-group slowly but steadily climbed the ranks, leaving you behind. You keep mostly to yourself now. Others only stop to bark orders at you, or to stare at you and try to pick out the one feature that marks you out as thoul. Sometimes it's your nose, or your teeth, or something absurd like the sound of your breath or the shape of your shadow.

At least your hardships has given you the opportunity to gain a perspective on life denied to most hobgoblins; that the promise of meritocracy and advancement through the ranks according to ability and duty is a load of festering stirge guano, meant only to keep society's subalterns obediently following the orders of their "betters". Otherwise, you'd have earned at least a captaincy by now.

But what are you going to do about it? Abandon your post and desert?

... You should probably see if that norker and the varag runt want to tag along. They aren't terrible company, and their prospects aren't much better than yours.

Hobgoblin by Tony DiTerlizzi

Renegade Thoul

Requirements: Minimum STR 9, minimum CON 9
Prime Requisite: CON and STR
Hit Dice: 1d8
Maximum level: 8
Armour: Any, including shields
Weapons: Any
Languages: Alignment, Common, Elvish, Hobgoblin

Thouls (contraction of hobgoblin tah'oul, lit. 'death hands') are strange unfortunates of hobgoblin society. They are the rare few who express a highly recessive mutation unknowingly carried by most hobgoblin populations from a long-forgotten magical experiment in which some bored god or wizard merged bits and pieces of hobgoblin, troll, and even ghoul biology. They are outwardly indistinguishable from other hobgoblins except upon close inspection.

Thouls often live in blissful ignorance among their kin until traumatic childhood events reveal their unique abilities. Almost invariably this revelation leads to the thoul getting kicked down to the bottom rung of hobgoblin society, where they are treated as mutants and aberrations lacking in honor. Some still rise through the ranks by proving themselves as bodyguards to more important individuals, while others take steps to conceal their nature. A few even strike out on their own, or with other outcasts and castoffs.

Claws

Thouls are forced to defend themselves at an early age using the long, sharp claws they sport on each hand. They gain 2 unarmed attacks for 1d3 damage each.

Infravision

Thouls have infravision to 60’ (see Darkness under Hazards and Challenges in Old-School Essentials).

Paralysis

Thouls, though not undead in any way, possess a distant echo of the ghoul's paralyzing touch. From 4th level, if a thoul hits their target with both claw attacks in a round, the target must save vs paralysis or be paralyzed for 1d4 turns. As usual, elves and creatures larger than ogres are unaffected.

Regeneration

From 7th level, a thoul regenerates 1hp per round after being damaged. Severed limbs do not reattach. Fire and acid damage cannot regenerate as normal. Either the wizard got lazy, or they couldn't cram a whole troll's worth of regeneration into a thoul-sized body.

After Reaching 8th Level

A renegade thoul has the option of creating an underground stronghold that will attract other outcast members of goblin societies from far and wide, including 1d6 other thouls of levels 1-3. Neighboring goblins will generally be unfriendly and suspicious of any community led by a known thoul, and will rarely collaborate in times of trouble at first.

Thoul Level Progression
Level	XP	HD	THAC0	Saving Throws
				D	W	P	B	S
1	0	1d8	19 [0]	12	13	14	15	16
2	4,000	2d8	19 [0]	12	13	14	15	16
3	8,000	3d8	19 [0]	12	13	14	15	16
4	16,000	4d8	17 [+2]	10	11	12	13	14
5	32,000	5d8	17 [+2]	10	11	12	13	14
6	64,000	6d8	17 [+2]	10	11	12	13	14
7	120,000	7d8	14 [+5]	8	9	10	10	12
8	250,000	8d8	14 [+5]	8	9	10	10	12

D: Death / poison; W: Wands; P: Paralysis / petrify; B: Breath attacks; S: Spells / rods / staves.

* It's pronounced like tool rather than thool. The 'h' indicates an aspirated consonant similar to that used in the word 'ghoul', and it would perhaps be better rendered as tʰoul in Common. But when do they ever care about accuracy?