3E OdditE: Githyanki Prestige Classes (Dungeon #100, July 2003)

Click here to return to the OdditE archive.

(Okay, so I kind of lied when I said I'd be back at the end of the week almost 3 weeks ago. But the Kickstarter went surprisingly well, so I don't feel as bad. Also it's my show.

Anyway, back to the content!)

The Githyanki are a species that I unexpectedly like. The concept of astral space pirates hunting mind flayers from the backs of red dragons while swinging around magic swords made of quicksilver feels like they were invented for one of those deliberately over-the-top awesome mishmashes from an early 2000s demotivational poster- just add some robot laser bear cavalry in the background and you're set. But beyond that, they have a pretty fleshed-out culture that interacts with the fiddly, gamified weirdness of planar mechanics in a believable way.

Unexpectedly (again, to me at least), a lot of this flavor is delivered upon in several githyanki-exclusive prestige classes published in Dungeon magazine during its second and final period under the control of WotC. Or, more accurately, it was delivered in the Polyhedron sub-magazine that was merged with Dungeon after Paizo Publishing acquired the rights to both the year before.

The classes are part of Dungeon's side of a series of githyanki "Incursion" adventures that was started in Dragon #309, revolving around the machinations of Lich-Queen Vlaakith the 157th and her agents. In fact, the section with the PrCs is a so-called "mini-game" where the players can take the role of the githyanki invaders as a sort of villainous prologue to the more heroic part where the party presumably tries to thwart them.

The githyanki have an odd culture. Millennia of enslavement and experimentation by the illithid left a deep impact on their ancestors the gith, but the 'yanki and their cousins the githzerai diverged sharply shortly after their successful revolution ages past because of a disagreement between their respective leaders, Gith and Zerthimon.

Whereas the githzerai became introspective and relatively nonviolent in their attempt to heal the wounds of subjugation, the githyanki became highly xenophobic and militaristic. As they tell their history, they are the only ones who are loyal to the teachings of their great liberator-queen Gith, who wanted to usurp the mind flayers as conquerors of the universe. Their generations in bondage has made them extremely protective of their own freedoms, but they don't think twice about raiding and enslaving (and then usually blood-sacrificing) anyone militarily weaker than them.

As a result, githyanki communities are a bizarre philosophical mishmash. They have no written code of law and take the individual liberties of their 'yanki citizens extremely seriously, so long as they continue to serve their queens Vlaakith and the forever-war that they are waging against the rest of the cosmos. 

Vlaakith CLVII is an interesting character. She died with no heir, but raised herself from the dead to continue ruling her people, and she's been at that for centuries now. Millennia, maybe? Time in the astral city of Tu'narath is fuzzy. She was born into the same adoration as all her predecessors, but over her long existence she has molded the githyanki into religiously devoted subjects. Any 'yanki who reaches 17th level is escorted to Vlaakith's palace where she drains the life from them to add to her own essence. It's suggested she's doing this to someday attain godhood. The githyanki have been raised to look forward to this for generations, and they see it as a rapturous experience far greater than any afterlife has to offer.

That, to me, is the core tragedy of the githyanki. With all of the freedom they fought, killed, bleed, and died to earn, plus the suspended aging of the Astral Sea in which they live, most githyanki do... very little that is truly free. Plenty of them exercise their right to violate the rights of others, but that's a pretty pathetic idea of freedom.

Most do little other than indulge in decadent distractions or half-commit to hobbies and shallow pursuits out of sheer boredom, all while making regular forays into the Prime Material to raid others. It's fascism and hedonism masquerading as some kind of radical anarchism, and the apparent meritocracy it's built upon is just a tool to line potential snacks up for the lich-queen. Unfortunately, it has most of the 'yanki duped.

And just like in real fascism, anyone who ceases to be a simpering bootlick for the powers that be—or even the ones who stay loyal but become too big a potential threat—gets quietly disappeared. Only in the githyanki case it involves fewer wetworks squads and more magical soul-sucking by an ancient lich dead-set on achieving godhood.

But in between the immortal ennui of Tu'narath, savage warfare against their neighbors, and the withered caress of ol' Vlakky, there are a few interesting paths for the githyanki to walk.

I will get it out of the way now that no, there is no red dragon rider PrC. Huge wasted opportunity, I know. But there's still some interesting and plain odd stuff to pick through.

I want to note that since I'll be going through so many PrCs in one post, I won't be as exhaustive in my analysis of every class feature like I normally do (or will normally do, when there's more than 1 other post in this series up).

Blackweave Warlock

All githyanki mages are called warlocks, regardless of specific class. That isn't as confusing as it sounds like it might be, because pretty much all githyanki mages are blasty battle mages anyway; the only difference is the exact spell list they do it with.

The Blackweave flavor of warlock is an arcanist, usually a sorcerer, specialized in negative energy so that they can deliver the necromancy school's save-or-die and save-or-suck touch spells more effectively. They operate as part of the army, often serving in small-scale missions that involve assassination or terror attacks.

They also dress like someone tried getting an outfit together for the bondage club but only had access to Hot Topic goth gear and Spirit Halloween merch.

"It's not a phase, varth! I was hatched this way!"

To qualify for the class, one has to be a githyanki, evil, trained in Arcana and Spellcraft up to rank 9, have Spell Focus (Necromancy),  know ray of exhaustion and vampiric touch, and have once tortured a living sacrifice to death using only magic, presumably to feed their energy to Vlaakith. The mechanical requirements aren't hard to meet at all, easily gained by 6th level, but the other bits make it extremely niche.

As does the way in which the class actually works, as you'll soon see.

The class is 10 levels long with 2+Int skills, Bad/Bad/Good saves, and no additional proficiencies. The skill list is a fairly standard Bluff, Concentration, Intimidate, Arcana, Planes, and Spellcraft. Half of the PrC's features are pretty standard. Boring, even.

In no particular order they get a choice of Weapon Focus (Touch or Ray), Death Ward, Energy Drain, and up to 3/day Death Touch attacks where the warlock rolls 2d6 per class level and if the sum is equal to or greater than the target's hit points, they die. The reliance on touch attacks is unfortunate, given that most applicants to the class come from the extremely squishy realm of d4 hit points and 1/2 BAB. The Blackweave Warlock offsets this ever so slightly by offering d6 and 3/4ths.

More curious is the other half of their features.

Starting at 1st level you get Necromancer, which adds Blackweave Warlock (BwW from here on out) levels to your previous arcane spellcasting class for the purposes of Necromancy spells. At higher levels this becomes BwW+1 and +2. But nowhere does it say you add your BwW levels to any other facet of your previous class. Your overall CL does not go up, nor do you even progress in spellcasting access. For that, you have to turn to...

New Spell Level, gained every 3rd level. This does exactly what it sounds like, granting you the next highest level of spellcasting that you can access. But if you're a sorcerer like most BwWs are, keep in mind you don't actually get new spell picks or spellcasts per day. For that you need to keep track of the Bonus Spells Per Day and Additional Spells Known columns.

In essence, BwW takes the generic "+1 level of existing arcane class" class feature that we've had since version 3.0 and divides it up into four different abilities. And I can't figure out why they did this. I initially thought that maybe they wanted to speed up advancement in some ways, but the math doesn't shake out that way either.

Their example character is Khosuvh, who flipflops between sorcerer and wizard depending on the example. Khosuvh is always 1 spell level behind generic sorcerers, and anywhere from 1 to 10 CLs behind them except when casting Necromancy spells, in which case he has a slight edge. If he's a wizard, he starts off 1 spell level behind and then the gap widens to 2 toward the end of the PrC, in addition to the CL falloff.

Sorcerer!Khosuvh gets 23 bonus spells per day and 17 additional spells known if he sticks with BwW for all 10 levels, which sounds nice at first. But that's actually 7 fewer spells per day and 3 fewer spells known than regular sorcerer progression from levels 7 to 16.

Wizard!Khosuvh doesn't even benefit from the additional spells known feature, because that's specifically for former sorcerers/bards. He does benefit from the bonus spells per day which amount to slightly more than wizard progression, but keep in mind that all of this spellcasting is done at frozen CLs unless it's from the Necromancy school, which isn't the biggest school by any means.

Those +2 CL and constant Death Ward are trying to pull way too much slack here, and the melee-range touch effects are more of a liability on an arcane caster than anything. The BwW doesn't deliver too much on its flavor either, though it could have done more. It might have been cool to tie them in some way to the undead that Vlaakith utilizes, or lean into the spec ops terror unit angle, but no such luck.

I find myself thinking it would be better just to use a base class for the same thematic purpose, and that's a damn shame.

Ghustil

Certain natural processes cannot occur on the Astral Plane. This includes natural healing, and aging. How exactly the body can do anything at all while its cells are arrested like that, I don't know. But that's how it works. This lack of natural healing is a particular problem for the Astral-dwelling githyanki, who are often in harm's way and never have clerics of their own, owing to their complete rejection of all deities except for the queen, and treating her like a goddess doesn't actually make her capable of granting spells- yet.

To get around this, the githyanki have a type of magical specialist separate from the warlock or gish, whose job it is to harness astral energy and transform it into healing magic that is neither arcane nor divine in nature. This is the ghustil, one of the hr'a'cknir* caste of noncombatant experts which originally debuted in the 2E Planescape splatbook A Guide to the Astral Plane. I think it's one of the raddest concepts in this whole magazine. It could fundamentally shift the magical paradigm of a whole campaign setting if given focus.

Unfortunately, the ghustil runs into some of the same issues as other partial casting PrCs.

The ghustil must be a githyanki (not necessarily an evil one) with Heal 4, Arcana 8, Planes 8, Skill Focus: Heal, and the ability to cast 2nd-level arcane spells for... some reason? The class fluff pretty explicitly states that their magic is neither divine nor arcane, so I don't understand why they even need arcane expertise to begin with.

Ghustil is 10 levels long with d6 HD, 3/4 BAB, Good/Good/Good Saves, and no new proficiencies. Its skill list is a mix of casting and social skills like the Blackweave Warlock, plus Heal, naturally- as well as Survival, more unexpectedly.

The ghustil has exactly one class feature, which is Spells Per Day/Spells Known. Instead of keying the ghustil's casting ability off of whatever class they entered the PrC with, they instead get an entirely new casting class and spell list that does not stack with whatever they used previously. There are several PrCs out there that do that, and they all kind of feel wasteful. Instead of having the character build upon their previous knowledge and experiences, their new abilities feel disjointed from the whole while the old ones quickly atrophy into uselessness.

Ghustil casting functions similarly to bardic casting, and caps out at 6th level with a rather modest list. They get some useful things like restoration, various condition removals, and raise dead, but for the most part it's a whole lot of Cure X Wounds. When the class fluff says they pale in comparison to clerics, it's not really lying.

Some more features emphasizing the astral nature of this class would have been a really nice touch, but as it is the ghustil feels unfinished. It isn't unfinished, because it accomplishes its stated goal of giving githyanki war parties access to basic healing spells, but it still feels unfinished. Maybe it would have worked better as a variant bard?

Gish Mindslayer

Perhaps even more quintessential than a githyanki dragonrider is a githyanki gish, the original fighter-mage of D&D if you ignore BECMI elves (and I always do). It's even better if that gish is so singularly devoted to their hatred of illithids that it has become their purpose and calling.

Enter the Mindslayer, an arcane remake of the psionic Illithid Slayer PrC from the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

To become a Gish Mindslayer (GMS), one must first be a githyanki, naturally. Then you need to kill an illithid. Fortunately you don't have to do it solo- you can kill one as part of a party of up to 6 people, which is coincidentally the upper end of average party size. You also need the Track feat, BAB +3, a few skill ranks, and 2nd level spells. Killing a mind flayer aside, the requirements are very easy.

Miraculously, this caster class is well put-together, at least in terms of structure and coherence. Most of that is probably because, as stated, it's a hack of a previously existing PrC from another book, but it's still a welcome change.

The GMS is another 10 level PrC with Full BAB, B/B/G saves, a somewhat light d8 HD, and 4+Int skill points per level, though the skill list is rather modest: Bluff, Concentration, Knowledge (Underdark), Listen, Sense Motive, Spellcraft, Spot, and Survival. There's a variety of class features, there are no dead levels, and we finally see our old friend, the "+1 to existing class" spellcasting column. Unfortunately we don't see them every single level, so a 10th-level GMS will miss out on 4 CLs, not including however many they sacrificed to qualify for the PrC.

It sets out to do one thing, and one thing only: track down and murder illithids. To accomplish this they get a host of abilities to hunt them as favored enemies, sense their presence within 60', resist and retaliate against mental attacks, debuff spell resistance, and even make their brains so unappetizing to mind flayers that they refuse to eat them.

I imagine a lifetime of hateful thinking is a bit like heavy brining or pickling, or the psionic equivalent of whatever they do to make hákarl.

The class features basically amount to a pile of +2 or +4 bonuses and the ability to force will saves on illithids (or whomever else tried to hit them with a compulsion, mind-affecting effect, psionic attack, etc.) Of course will saves are a mind flayer's best save, so how effective the GMS actually is against their sworn enemy depends on how well they can leverage their other gish abilities.

It's not the most powerful hybrid casting PrC out there, but that's perfectly fine. It's still a solid class that offers more variety than Eldritch Knight or something similar. I also want to focus on how well it delivers on the flavor that it set out to offer. And it does really well at being the most 'yanki class a githyanki ever could yank. Thumbs up, no notes.

Holocaust Warrior

I really do not understand what made the writer and editor(s) think this was an appropriate name for a class. I know that the word holokaustos has origins in ancient Greek religion and refers to burnt offerings, and that the word's usage was historically varied, even throughout the early 20th century. But using it as the name for a pyromaniac warrior in 2003 just feels tactless. At the very least, it's bad optics on WotC's part.

Shocking, I know.

Anyway, the HW is another mess of a partial casting PrC.

To qualify you must be 'yanki, evil, BAB +5, Fort +4, Will +4, have Concentration 6, Combat Casting, Martial Weapon Proficiency, Spell Focus (Evocation), and the fireball spell. You also must be reduced to 0 HP by fire damage and then revived, either as part of a ritual or just because it kinda happened on the battlefield. Nice of them to let you turn that near-wipe into something more positive(?) I guess.

HW is 10 levels like all the rest, with d8 HD, 3/4ths BAB, G/B/G saves, and 2+Int skills in a pretty standard caster/fighter skill list.

The bonus spells per day and additional spells known columns make their return alongside the ability Incinerator, which lets them add their character level to their HW CL for all [Fire] spells. It's even more limiting in scope than the necromancy spells of the Blackweave Warlock, but at least they let you add your entire character level to it? It's not like these firebugs are going to be using their spell slots for much other than more explosions.

They also gain the ability to give their weapons the flaming property, but only up to 3 times per day, becoming flaming burst at later levels. Each instance lasts for 1 round per character level (again, bringing in synergy from those non-caster levels), and it can apply to melee or ranged weapons. Fire resistance 10 at 4th level grows into fire immunity at 7th, though I feel like that could have come sooner or with more in-between steps.

HW does get a few less fire-obsessed features in the form of Improved Combat Casting (Ex) and Armored Casting (Ex), respectively. The former lets you switch to provoking an Attack of Opportunity at +4 AC if your concentration check to cast defensively fails, giving you a second shot at avoiding fizzling. The latter shaves 10% arcane spell failure off any armor you wear, letting you really rock that mithral chain shirt without having to shell out for a twilight enchantment or something similar. Small but nice features for a gish that I'd like to have seen in more classes.

The capstone is Burn (Su), which turns every weapon they hold into a flaming weapon (though they can still use that other ability to make it burst), and also causes struck foes or melee strikers to catch on fire. Unfortunately this is the Catching on Fire rule from the DMG, so the worst it deals is 1d6 damage a round for 1d4 rounds, or one move action to self-extinguish. It feels... underwhelming? Like a big AoE burst or firestorm might have felt more satisfying after a minimum 18 levels invested in this PrC and its prerequisites.

... Speaking of which, there should be no max-level HWs at all, anywhere, because Vlaakith would've already pounded their soul down like a flaming martini at happy hour once they pass 16. And good luck trying to go renegade and lie low when your entire existence up to this point has been about lighting things on fire. You are the loudest, flashiest berk this side of Xaositects.

I may be treating the class a little unfairly. They aren't all mad pyros. The githyanki see fire as the symbol of their ultimate triumph over the universe, and the HW gish is respected for that. But if any class could be axed to make room for a githyanki dragonrider, it's this one.

Mlar

I can't actually find this class printed anywhere outside of the magazine in which it's mentioned, but fortunately there is not a whole lot to it that I need to reproduce here.

The mlar is not a PrC, but an NPC class representing the vast artisan caste of the githyanki cities. They are the skilled builders and crafters of 'yanki society who keep the corsair fleets shipshape, the weapons sharp, and the works of art at least passable. It is also the only base class in the entire game, to my knowledge, that caps out at 16th level. I realize this was probably done from a narrative point of view so that commoners aren't among those who are mighty enough to be worthy of draining by Vlaakith, but I like to think they're the only 'yanki who have the common sense to stop where they are and say "nah, I'm good" when faced with the prospect of soul draining.

The mlar is quite similar to the Magewright NPC class in the Eberron Campaign Setting published a year later. Both are noncombatant crafters with access to very limited arcane magic, consisting mostly of utility spells. The main difference is that mlars are more durable and skilled (d6 HD, 3/4ths BAB, 4+Int skills), while Magewrights have access to far more spells. The mlar spell list is literally just one spell per level, from magic weapon up to major creation.

Sword Stalker

Here's a suggestion: if a set of objects is so prized to your culture that you will go on a universe-spanning manhunt to track down and kill anyone who dares steal even one of them, maybe don't put them someplace where they're in pretty good danger of getting stolen to begin with?

Because that's the situation with githyanki silver swords, which they've been preciously guarding ever since 1st edition. And with good reason; silver swords are pretty cool. They're +3 great- or longswords whose blades shift and shimmer like quicksilver, constantly rebalancing themselves for their wielder's attacks. They can also cut the silver cords of astral travelers, which is pretty much instant death for most visitors on githyanki home turf, the Astral Plane. Particularly strong ones are +5 and have vorpal.

But they seem to get handed out like candy to any githyanki knight or warrior above a certain level, and they get stolen or looted off of dead off-plane githwarriors regularly enough that the Sword Stalkers exist as an institution in the first place. It's a case of messed-up priorities, but one which it is admittedly 100% in-character for the githyanki to suffer from.

The githyanki Sword Stalker has among the higher requirements of all the PrCs in this post. They need BAB +6, Knowledge (The Planes) 8 ranks, Survival 7 ranks, the Alertness and Track feats, and access to 3rd level arcane casting. They must be githyanki, and also evil, because they're the kind of unhinged repo agent who will break your fence or tow your car away with you still in it.

They must also retrieve a silver sword. It doesn't say that this is done as part of an initiation, or as the conclusion to an apprenticeship, or anything. Before you can be a sword stalker, you need to retrieve a sword. Which means you can only join them once they've demonstrated that they're not doing their jobs, because otherwise a newbie with none of their sword-locating abilities wouldn't have found one in the first place.

Again, screwy priorities with this class.

For once we've got a PrC that isn't afraid to use a d10 HD, plus Full BAB, all Good saves, and 6+Int skills points in a very ranger-esque class skill list, minus the handle animal or nature bits. It's a good chassis to base a planar hunter on.

Less good is starting class features off with something that is hardly worth half a feat. Improved Alertness (Ex) at 1st level grants +2 to Spot and Listen, stacking with regular Alertness. But after that false start we get to the bread and butter of the PrC.

Mirroring the Mindslayer in sheer singlemindedness, the Sword Stalker's abilities all revolve around finding missing silver swords. At 1st level they gain Locate Object (Sp) at will at class level +2, but only for silver swords. At 5th level they can Scry Sword (Sp) at will which can also scry on the carrier of a stolen sword if they fail their save. Finally at 10th level they get Discern Location (Sp) 3/day as a 16th level sorcerer, but again only for stolen silver swords. And to make sure they can actually do something once they track down a thief, they can Smite Swordthief (Su) starting at 2nd level, up to 5/day. It works just like any other smite attack, but with a flat +4 in place of any ability score modifier to hit.

More generally useful, and far more interesting in my opinion, is their Astral Tracking (Su) ability, which allows them to track normally even on the trackless expanse of the Astral Sea for a base 25 DC Survival check. How many classes let you track in the void of space? Against DC 30 they can discern the destination point of a teleportation spell cast nearby, and then dimension door after the caster like one of the religious fanatics from that Jumper book that got turned into a Hayden Christensen movie. And considering again how much you can juice skill bonuses in 3E, this feature seems pretty dang reliable.

Observant readers might've noticed that this PrC calls for knowledge of 3rd level spells, but doesn't actually give you anything for it. Even the Ghustil had a flimsy excuse of needing "magical expertise" to do their astral thing, but the Sword Stalker? Nothing. Everything they get is a spell-like ability, and that's a huge waste of at minimum 5 levels in wizard. Like the Ghustil, I think Sword Stalker would've benefitted from just being a class variant; a sort of quasi spell-less ranger, in this case. Or heck, just a regular ranger with their spells made arcane, and this stuff piled on top. 3E rangers kinda needed the help.

Closing Thoughts

I might sound peeved or disappointed throughout much of this post, but I'm not, not really. More than anything I'm surprised that such a long list of githyanki-exclusive content made it into print like this. And while some of it stumbles (and stumbles hard), some of it is conceptually very neat. A little bit of modding with later balance sensibilities in mind could produce some really solid, flavorful character options.

Still needs a bespoke dragon rider class, though.

* As someone who is prone to using and perhaps overusing apostrophes in his fantasy names, I'm relieved that I'm at least not as bad as whoever came up with the Gith language. From g'hel'zor to tl'a'ikith to g"lathk (yes that's a fricking quotation mark in there), Gith has no shortage of weird punctuation. I've always justified myself by saying I only use them for glottal stops or for agglutinating languages, but those schemes don't seem to fit any of this. I really want to hear someone pronounce some Gith words. Do they show up anywhere in that there Baldur's Gate III game by chance?

Bridgetown is live on Kickstarter!

First of all, sorry for my absence this past month-and-a-half or so. I haven't exactly been busy writing, but I've been busy as in mentally preoccupied by the launch of our book's Kickstarter campaign, which happened two days ago.

Come check out and maybe back Bridgetown here!

To recap, Bridgetown is a campaign setting designed for Troika! about an infinitely long, perpetually crumbling bridge floating between two oblivions. There's all manner of punks and weirdos living on the Bridge, and there are always hijinks and adventures to get up to. Like casting rock magic that may or may not be killing the Bridge, or smashing a gatekeeper in the face with a brick.

My cowriter (The Lawful Neutral) and I will also be doing an interview about Bridgetown later today for WIP Workshop by RPGs Uncovered. It will start at around 7PM EST. Check out their Twitch and you might catch us live, or browse their YouTube channel in a few days for the VOD.

And to those of you who get backer anxiety about parting with money for something that might not even fund (especially in this economy!) I have one thing to say; fret not. We were blown away by the surge of support in our first day, and are now comfortably funded. Anything you decide to send our way is pure bonus acorns. I'm just sorry to report that our higher tier rewards like mossy dice and billy goat balm have all been snatched up.

That's all for this little update. I will be back to making normal posts later this week. I have so, so many mostly-finished drafts that it's actually starting to become a problem. The purge must commence. Hope you enjoy them!

Let's Dig Into: Dragonstar

Thank you to Kyana for telling me about today's topic, Dragonstar! I was originally going to make this a 3E OdditE post before I decided the whole book merited going over.

(Also I've decided to change "Furt Digs Into" to "Let's Dig Into" because I feel like I spam my name enough around here and it's starting to feel a little self-involved. It's not like I have a brand to market- yet.)

Between TSR's discontinuation of Spelljammer and the launch of Pathfinder's soft sci-fi spinoff Starfinder, there was a proliferation of small science-fantasy settings for d20 and other systems, all trying to fill a niche that wasn't completely dominated by a triple-A publisher.

One of these was Dragonstar, published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2001. It ran for a few years before being quietly discontinued somewhere between 2007 and 2008, coinciding with the end of the 3rd edition that it was created for. The website still functions and you can purchase pretty much everything digitally these days, though I don't believe the dedicated forums exist anymore.

Intro

We are introduced to the world (actually galaxy) of Dragonstar by a long first-person exposition by one John Caspian, a shoutout-tastic exiled prince originally from a relatively ordinary world in the style of standardized western faux-medieval fantasy. He was a typical adventurer with hopes, dreams, and a kingdom to reclaim, until the day the sky split open and spaceships bombarded every major city on the planet into submission. The emperor was executed by the invaders, his daughter was installed as figurehead, and the entire planet was summarily turned into another province of the galactic Dragon Empire.

Caspian delivers this exposition to a rookie years later, as they now both serve in that same empire's Imperial Legions as conscripts. Their new lot in life is to bring that same overwhelming firepower and iron-fisted ultimatum to bear on other worlds. It's a bit like waking up one morning to find the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k at your doorstep ready to 'adopt' your world, but more cosmopolitan and with fewer alt-right memes. The legionnaires do this either voluntarily or at gunpoint, in exchange for the promises of citizenship, adventure, and other perks in a rather Roman twist.

Caspian laments much of what has been done and continues to be done, but it's evident that this is the new normal for him. His way of understanding the universe completely disintegrated when his world was conquered by offworlders he'd never fathomed the existence of before. His way of coping with it, of surviving, was the same as it is for so many others when their world gets blown wide open: accept it, try to survive, and maybe find a new place for yourself among the stars.

Assuming the DM introduces Dragonstar to your campaign by starting it off as a traditional fantasy world only to swerve into a sci-fi invasion, new PCs might do well to heed his advice. Or maybe they should reject it entirely and flee for the planetary or galactic fringes ASAP- the last thing we need is another gods-damned collaborator becoming a cog in this scaly, imperial machine.

The Empire

The Dragon Empire is exactly what it sounds like; an empire ruled by dragons.

As some of the most magically powerful creatures in the galaxy it was inevitable that they'd eventually take to the stars. (One piece of info omitted from Caspian's history lesson is that space flight was actually invented by a gnomish confederation long before dragons got in on it.) In doing so, they discovered that there are other dragons who are similarly powerful but out numbered on other planets. Eventually they began to band together, in interplanetary kingdoms that were divided (unsurprisingly) by subtype.

The metallic kingdom of Qesemet and the chromatic kingdom of Asamet ("golden kingdom" and "iron kingdom", respectively) soon came to blows over their apparently inborn differences and started a war that wiped out entire planets, with plenty of mortals getting caught in the middle. Billions died as little more than footnotes in the histories of these two expanding superpowers. After all, individual differences aside, both kingdoms were built on the idea of draconic supremacy.

Only the near-extinction of the neutral yellow dragons due to some unknown catastrophe convinced the others to hammer out a peace. Otherwise, they feared, dragons would all wipe themselves out. After a lot of bickering and politicking, the kingdoms merged together into a single Empire (no fancy draconic name for this one, I'm afraid) where sections of the galaxy are de facto controlled by various houses and other factions within the greater whole, all of them nominally on the same side.

Part of what glued the empire together to begin with was a power-sharing agreement between the different colors of dragon. Each dragon "house" was allowed to rule for 1,000 years with an elected leader acting as emperor, after which point they handed the reins over to the next color in the chain of succession. It's the first use of rotating monarchy I've seen in a fantasy world, to my memory.

The empire began with the gold dragons under the empire's founder, Khelorn. Then over the next 5,000 years it went to the silvers, bronzes, brasses, and coppers, before we reach the rulers of the modern day- red dragons, led by the ancient red wyrm Mezzenbone.

The non-dragon subjects of the empire were sold on the idea that they'd get 5,000 years of peace when it all started, and they did. But now their descendants have to suffer the consequences of that agreement- not that they would have been able to do all that much against their unified dragon overlords if they wanted to.

The transfer of power was peaceful, and Mezzenbone didn't immediately declare himself emperor for life, but problems quickly emerged under the reign of the first of the chromatic dragons. Mezzenbone is unrepentantly evil, but it remains to be seen whether he is "merely" a tyrant who promotes war abroad while curbing rights and liberties back home, or if he's dedicated to the destruction of every bit of peace and stability that has come to the galaxy in spite of the machinations of dragons. He adored the mayhem of the Dragon War, after all. He has been in power for less than 100 years so far, which means only 900+ more to go before we get a palate cleanser in the form of the blue dragons.

This is the era players are dropped into, as a millennia-long status quo crumbles away into a time of danger and uncertainty. The metallics and chromatics both knew something like this might happen when the empire was founded. But when you're so privileged and live for so many tens of thousands of years that just waiting a millennium for the guy you don't like to leave office is no big deal, it's easy to overlook countless generations of mortal life.

It's not all a Dune-esque tale of feudal space darkness, though. This is still D&D, usable with all of the genre contortions that you can fit it into. There are still wizards, halflings, and bards. There just also happen to be battleships, space marines, and all manner of other sci-fi trappings mixed in. It doesn't do retro swashbuckling like Spelljammer did because the technology is more advanced, but that opens up other avenues in turn. It can be rather space operatic at times.

Worldbuilding & Religion

One of the most interesting parts of Dragonstar to me is how it incorporates the sameyness of early 2000s fantasy settings into the world-building. It's another universe where no matter where you go, what planet you visit, you can find a civilization of dwarves that speak dwarvish, elves that speak elvish, humans who speak some mutually intelligible dialect of common, etc.- except in this universe, it confuses the hell out of scholars.

The implausibility of this seeming fact of life has been wondered at for a while, and people have tried to address it and provide several explanations for it over the centuries. Their current most popular answer? Deific panspermia.

According to the Unification Church (the dominant religion in the empire), there were once twelve incredibly powerful beings who traveled the cosmos, ordering planets and seeding them with prefab life that always seems to develop in roughly the same way. Each of these beings embodied different concepts that keen observers now see (or perhaps try to see) mixed and matched in every deity worshiped across the galaxy: every god is just a reflection of one or more of these primordial "Deitypes", as the church calls them. Naturally, dragons consider themselves the favored children of these gods, and claim to act in their name (when it is politically advantageous to do so).

Deitypes are essentially a fantasy reimagining of real-life methods of religious and cultural comparison like Interpretatio Graeca or Romana, whereby one society attempts to understand other societies by relating similar parts of their belief systems to their own- essentially translating their gods and myths into a more recognizable language.

Up to a certain point, this is religious syncretism (and/or multi-traditionalism) like you get whenever you put two or more cultures in direct contact with one another. But when the group applying this interpretation is also a massively powerful, hegemonic force, it also affects real one-way change upon the subject of interpretation. This is clearly visible in Dragonstar, where the vast majority of the empire's citizens follow the Unification Church and either worship the pantheon of the Twelve, or worship local gods that have long since been given the deitype treatment.

There are two exceptions to this rule. The first is barbarians. The barbarian class actually gets a whole new rule about how they never abandon their old gods or refer to them using generic Unification titles. Barbarians are also typed as backwater folks from the galactic fringes who are decidedly unusual for their steadfast dedication to the old ways. That shows how profoundly the church (and the empire that indirectly promotes it) has shaped religion and the way people conceive of it; it is epistemic violence on a nearly galactic scale, and it's getting a little bit closer to becoming absolute with every new planetary conquest.

The second exception is Dualists. They are the largest minority religion in the empire, who responded to the reductionism of Unification with an even more radical reductionism of their own. They developed a sort of Zarathustran dualism where everything in the cosmos is reflective of the conflict between the generative Creator (typed as good) and the destructive Adversary (evil). This "Dualist Heresy" is divided between those who side with one or the other, and the so-called purists who venerate the oppositional totality of things. I like to imagine the purists approach it in a manner similar to dharmic cyclical transformation or Daoist radical acceptance, rather than the erratically swinging pendulum flavor of True Neutral that druids were saddled with in the old days.

Species

As hinted at above, all of the standard D&D species can be found across the Dragon Empire and beyond. Each gets a few additional features that interact with Dragonstar's unique skills or technologies, but otherwise they are unchanged from their base game forms in either mechanics or temperament. Dwarves are still miners, except nowadays they're likely to do it on asteroids, etc.

The core list was expanded for Dragonstar, adding a few more playable options to explore the vast expanse of space with- these include drow and orcs, the half-dragon template, and a brand new "race" called soulmechs.

Drow are still just as problematic as ever, except in the Dragonstar galaxy an appreciable number of them have traded in their spider silk lingerie for a black leather coat and a pair of jackboots. Drow comprise almost the entire Imperial Secret Police Directorate, and they serve Mezzenbone by rooting out perceived threats to the emperor like good little fascists. In this universe they still worship the Spider Goddess (Lolth with the serial number filed off), who is identified as a mixture of the Mother and Destroyer deitypes.

Orcs are, well... orcs. Still mostly chaotic evil, still mostly worshipers of war deities. They do get a little attention paid to their overall zest for life, however; drinking, dancing, feasting, and celebrating all their emotions, not just the violent and destructive ones, is how they live. Additionally, orc women are given a shred of interiority by flocking in growing numbers to more cosmopolitan areas of the empire because they won't live like borderline-chattel the way traditional orcish society expects them to.

Reading that part, I was remound of the sizeable population of orc and half-orc women that cropped up in Forgotten Realms' Phsant after some Zhentish orcs helped defeat the Tuigan Horde and got a taste for "civilization". Since Mezzenbone came to power, fringe orcs have started warmongering and invading neighboring planets that were previously considered more off-limits because of their membership in the empire. Mezzy boy is more than happy for that, because it gives the sensationalist media a bigger controversy to pay attention to, leaving him free to pursue his own authoritarian schemes.

... I don't like how accurate to real life that has become in the decades since Dragonstar was published.

Half-dragons here are as rough on a character's ECL as they are in base D&D, but they get some pretty big nonmechanical perks for living in the Dragon Empire. Even under the metallic dragons it was a highly stratified society, with dragons at the top and dragon-blooded creatures directly below them. Half-dragons enjoy a lot of social privilege compared to other humanoids, and more than a few of them are the spoiled illegitimate children of powerful dragon house members, unable to ever ascend to politics but free to tug at their parents' purse strings.

Soulmechs are Dragonstar's answer to the question of sentient AI. You cannot create a truly self-aware artificial intelligence using only technology- at least not yet. Instead, you can create a fully functional android body and then stuff a person's soul into it at the time of death to act as its pilot and guiding intelligence.

The process is expensive and time-consuming, but results in an effectively immortal body with almost all the abilities one had in the flesh. Unsurprisingly, a lot of rich people do this to cheat death. Some heinous crimes against humanoidity can also be committed on unwilling subjects of the soul transfer process. We're talking some real Black Mirror type stuff.

Soulmechs are notable, to me at least, for not falling into the whole "cybernetics eat your soul" trope. They suffer a -2 to Charisma from their new bodies, but they are still living things who are not prone to cold, calculated insanity or anything else that some sci-fi writers like to throw at the question of transhumanity. They're also pretty well-integrated into the empire at large, with only staunch traditionalist elves and drow seeming to have a problem with them- and even then, it's more a distaste for the unnatural ritual involved in the soulmech's creation, rather than the soulmech as an individual.

There are other species detailed in the supplement Galactic Races. Some them which are introductions of core species to the universe like centaurs, derro, and kobolds. Others are slight variations on common D&D species like the elems, who are like genasi except born from external planar influence instead of outsider ancestry. Others are more unique to Dragonstar, like the ith-kon mindflayer hybrids, living crystal tarn idoun, sapient ooze ulb, or the quasta, which I can only describe as hyper-inquisitive bird people crossed with one of the angels from the book of Ezekiel.

"Be not afrai- ooh, what does this button do?"

Oruks are another entry in that book that I want to give a bit of attention here. They're ogre-orc crossbreeds who have since become a viable and self-sustaining people. They're even worse pariahs than half-orcs, and either stay isolated on their "primitive" home worlds or go adventuring out of desperation. Instead of the usual no-downsides hybrid vigor or the creepy anti-miscegenation tropes that mixed groups get in a lot of D&D-derivative games, oruks get a mixed bag.

They are Large like their ogre ancestors, very strong and sturdy, and able to take feats to give themselves natural armor and higher strength checks. But their dense bone structure and thick skin cause them to suffer from poor lung capacity- they can't ever breathe quite enough to keep their massive bodies running smoothly. It's a very weird, very isolated instance of the writers nodding to the square-cube law as it applies to living things, in a game where giants and tarrasques regularly run around without collapsing under their own weight.

Classes

Core classes are mechanically unchanged, with the exception of small additions like skill lists or language on how new proficiencies work- fighters can take various gun-related feats as their bonus feats, for example. There are technological weapons and armor with a section dedicated to them, including high-tech versions of normal weapons, as well as vehicles and other devices that fall under the purview of two new classes; the pilot and mechanist.

Pilots are dedicated to, well, piloting the various vehicles and mechs that Dragonstar has to offer. I would have expected them to receive more than 4+Int skill points per level or to receive a class bonus to piloting, but no such luck- not that cheesing skills is hard in 3rd edition. Instead, their class abilities are dedicated to combat bonuses while piloting vehicles; dodge AC, to-hit, increased critical threat range with guns, speed, x/day damage reducing dodge actions, and bonus feats for more piloting tricks and bonuses.

Aside from the limited-use dodge maneuvers, the features are extremely passive numerical buffs. That's probably fine since vehicles themselves have a whole dedicated rules system to make up for any lack of depth and choice that the class offers, but by itself the pilot feels like a beefier NPC class than one intended for PCs. Outside of their machines, they get almost nothing- d6 HD, light armor, martial weapons, 3/4ths BAB, and bad/good/bad saves.

Mechanists are Dragonstar's glorified mechanics, but they are not quite as narrow in usefulness as Pilots. They get skills and trapfinding like a rogue, bonus feats, can specialize in types of technology like a ranger can terrains, two different abilities to jury-rig or temporarily unjam technological devices out in the field, an offensive sabotage ability, and can provide +1 through to +5 upgrades to any piece of tech at no cost. Upgraded tech is more prone to failure and harder to repair, but mechanists can make that all go away with a Repair check, and again, it's not hard to get skill modifiers crazy-high in 3E. As with pilots, mechanists like fish out of water when not specifically doing their respective machine thing- Tier 4, both of them, if I was to give a preliminary ranking.

I was struck by how open-ended the sabotage ability is. There's no daily limit, it's presumably only a standard action, and the DC to use it is a flat 20 no matter what you want. As long as you are in touch range and can make the check, you can disable one function of a device. Make it so a rifle can't fire, stop a hovertank in its (lack of) tracks, or deal scaling damage to a soulmech. Granted, you have to be in melee range and an enemy mechanist can undo your sabotage with a quick repair, but with surprise and/or planning you can absolutely cripple enemy machines or spread mayhem.

(One quick aside related to technology, since we're on the topic:

When I got to the weapons, power armor, and vehicles, I was shocked to find that there was no malfunction system like you'd get in later d20 games like Pathfinder. Things just do the things they're built to do without fear of catastrophic failure or explosions, barring the work of saboteurs or Plot. It simplifies things in a way that I don't dislike, especially in a game with a mechanist class. Because if the majority of the party's gear can break, it will break, and that would both make the mechanist absolutely necessary for a tolerable pace of play, and make it a very boring class to play. All they'd do every encounter is hotfix guns jammed by yet another full-auto attack.)

For the Prestige

The handbook also adds a few prestige classes, as any 3rd party splat worth its salt (and many that are not) does. These are the Gundancer, Negotiator, and Technomancer, all of them 10 levels long.

Gundancers are warrior-monks who have embraced the way of shooting people in the face. They even get a 1st-level class feature called Gun-Fu that makes them harder to disarm, as well as immune to AoOs while wielding light firearms in threatened spaces. They also get abilities to shoot better (surprise surprise), disarm enemies and shoot them in the faces with their own guns, steady their aim, become affected by haste 1/day, unleash a barrage of shots at everything in range 1/day, and absorb (and inexplicably heal from) a shot from an energy weapon 1/day.

The limited-use abilities are flavorful but too limiting, as is almost always the case. The concept of a Gun-Fu monk is redeemingly hilarious though. It's one of the parts of this book that dips into the pink mohawk style of Shadowrun tropes, and I'm kind of into it. Play this class if you want to be like the gun-kata guy from Equilibrium- the movie, not the German power metal band.

Negotiators are diplomancers who can be equally professional or sleazy, depending on player action. They get a mess of abilities to speak any given language when it's needed, alter people's reactions to them, detect lies, scrying, and surveillance, use the power of suggestion, and eventually read people's minds while being resistant to the same.

But most importantly, they gain the ability to Take 10 on bluff, diplomacy, intimidate, and sense motive checks at 1st level. This is the ultimate dip for anyone looking to push their charisma to the next level in a Dragonstar campaign. Just have a contingency plan for when the DM wizens up and starts throwing robots and other social-immune foes at you.

Technomancers merge the Dragon Empire's "twin pillars" of magic and machine, as the book puts it. Dragons are natural sorcerers and massive nerds both, so this makes sense. Technomancers are mechanists who have enough arcane magical talent to empower their tools and let them mess with the properties of nearby technology.

This ranges from changing the energy type of a weapon, to confusing and dominating robots, to turning themselves into code and hijacking a nearby vehicle. They also get some energy- and utility-themed half-casting. It doesn't stack with whatever class they got 1st-level arcane spells from for the requirements though, so this PrC is far better for a mechanist than for a wizard.

They are also the most Shadowrun-ass thing I've ever seen, if this art is anything to go by.

"I'm in."

There are a few other books in the Dragonstar line that I might look into later if I've missed something juicy, but I'm pretty content with this delve, and I hope you liked it too.

*Update*

I can't believe I neglected to mention the part where wizards have datapads instead of spellbooks, and they can wirelessly transfer or download them off of the internet. Scrolls are basically magical PDFs that self-destruct when you cast them. Rogues and mechanists can hack a spellbook if its malware protection isn't up to snuff. It's goofy and I love it.

That is all.

The One Where Furt Gets Pedantic and Trashes A Beloved Fantasy Illustration

Dragonslayers & Proud Of It
Larry Elmore, 1989

Note, this is no slight against Elmore's style or the people who like his art. His Dragonlance work still shapes how I imagine that world, and I'm also fond of his work for Everquest, even if his stuff isn't as iconic to the franchise as Keith Parkinson's. I just happen to have developed a sudden and inexplicably intense dislike for this picture in particular.

Dragonslayers & Proud Of It is the first piece of art one sees after cracking open a copy of the non-revised edition of the AD&D 2E Player's Handbook, excluding the Jeff Easley knight on the cover. It depicts a party of adventurers--two fighters, a magic-user, a cleric, and some sort of elf archer (perhaps a thief?)-- who have just become the illustration's namesakes. The adventurers display their kill, each one posing around the dead dragon as it hangs from a tree in some scenic wilderness. Some of the adventurers gaze at the trophy while others look at the viewer, almost as if they are staging a portrait or photo for the occasion.

The piece was instantly iconic, partly because of how effectively it communicates a goal for any new players to strive for. These are low- to middling-level adventurers with no obvious magic items or ridiculous plate armor, which makes them only a few steps above what a brand new party begins at. But they are a successful party with bruises and rewards to show for it; models for an eager newbie to aspire to to be like. 'With grit, teamwork, and a lot of dice luck,' the piece seems to boast, 'you too could survive long enough to kill a dragon and take its stuff!'

It just doesn't do it for me, though. And here's why.

I'll be talking about it a lot more down below, but for now I'll say there's something scrawny and pathetic about the dragon that just doesn't inspire a sense of wonder in me. It's tiny, as far as dragons go, and savaged by the party's collective injuries to it.

Similarly puny is the "hoard" that your eye is drawn to see after passing down over the dragon's carcass. And I mean, look at this thing.

I see a corroded old crown with missing jewels, something that might have once been a goblet or maybe an emblem of some sort, and then a bunch of silver and (if I'm being generous with the color) gold coins. It all fits in a box the size of one of those vintage tomato crates you still sometimes find in rural stores, which only serves to highlight how small it is. Unless they were on a quest to find that crown for a wealthy heir, I think this box barely contains enough treasure to buy a set of banded mail for one of the fighters.

And I don't want to seem like I'm deliberately avoiding the alternate interpretation that the contents of this piece are deliberately humble, to contrast with the reactions of the party and make the title ironic. Modest accomplishment met with wide-eyed enthusiasm by novice, green-behind-the-ears heroes is a great subject for an illustration. But I don't think that's what's happening here either.

Because not even the party seems all that impressed by their achievement.

The cleric and one of the fighters are playing things up to be more visually striking than they really are, either holding the head up with a look of grim vindication or gawking at it in faux-surprise, respectively. But they try to sell it a little too hard.

The elf and the magic-user seem incredulous or slightly uncomfortable, like they have an inkling of what this might look like as they pose with their little kill strung up like wild game.

"Are we really doing this...?"     "We're really doing this..."

About the only one who looks sincerely and thoroughly satisfied with the situation is the other fighter who's busy Jeremiah Johnson'ing up there, although even he has a bit of a smug edge to him. I bet it was his idea to do this.

That post-murder afterglow, yo.

I think there's a good reason why the party seems so iffy on the whole thing, and to answer that I'm going to have to get even more pedantic- let's bring up some 2E Monster Manual stats.

I think it's reasonable to assume that this greenish dragon was an actual Green Dragon. They're fond of sub-tropical and temperate forests, much like the backdrop here, so we'll be using that entry.

Dragons of all types in 2E are divided by age category, which determines things like hit dice, breath weapon, magic abilities, etc. And because TSR was as devoted to statistical minutia as Gygax or Arneson ever were, we are provided with exact body and tail lengths for each age category in each species of dragon.

Green dragons of age category 1 are 2-7 feet long with 2-5 foot long tails. Since the specimen above is shorter than the (admittedly rather tall) male human fighter even when stretched to full length, and the tail is about as long again, it definitely looks like an Age 1 or Hatchling dragon to me.

That puts the dragon's age at time of death somewhere in the range of 0-5 years. That looks bad even in the frame of human years, where at best the dragon was little more than a toddler. But for a species that regularly lives for hundreds, if not thousands of years, this is essentially a newborn, and one of the weakest examples of dragonkind presented in the book.

"But Furt," you may say as you spontaneously animate out of a bale of straw to serve my argument, "even young dragons can still be a challenge for low-level parties." And that's true! This hypothetical infant dragon still has an average of 31 HP, AC 3, and a breath weapon for 2d6+1 damage, even if it's completely lacking in the fear, magic, and magic resistance departments. This hatchling could have easily caused a party wipe- except it clearly didn't.

The party is barely injured in the picture. The elf still has a nearly full quiver of arrows, and no one has any serious battle damage on their gear, with the exception of a pair of pants: of the five members, only the two fighters show any sign of injury, and those only take the form of relatively minor claw marks on the legs. Neither of them look worse for wear, though. You can get nastier scrapes on a hike. Heck, I've bled more than both of them combined after eating slightly spicy food and sniffling myself into a nosebleed.

On the topic of blood, the overwhelming majority of stains in this picture seem to be from the dragon's blood. It smears almost everyone's armor and boots, like they had to struggle with the corpse to drag it out of its lair and string it up- at least I hope it was dead before they hanged it. Blood also seeps in drying trails from the dozen or more wounds across all sides of its body. It even wells up from its nostrils and streams down its face, perhaps squeezed out by the pressure of the noose. The battle was one-sided, and its death was not quick. This was less of an epic confrontation, more of an unlucky schoolyard beat-down.

Let's return to the general and green dragon entries one last time:

"During the early part of a dragon's young adult stage it leaves its parents, greed driving it on to start a lair of its own." (Emphasis mine.)

"The majority of green dragons encountered will be alone. However, when a mated pair of dragons and their young are encountered, the female will leap to the attack. The male will take the young to a place of safety before joining the fight. The parents are extremely protective of their young, despite their evil nature, and will sacrifice their own lives to save their offspring."

We've already established that this dragon was way too small to have been young adult (over 80' long from nose to tail for a green dragon), so we can assume that this one was not only a hatchling, but also an orphan. Maybe it got forced out by stresses at the family lair, or maybe some band of higher-level adventurers already merc'd mom and dad in that order; whatever the cause, our heroes killed a dragon that should not have been alone under normal circumstances.

Hell, maybe that tiny crate is all the hatchling had to remember its slaughtered family by.

... Okay, that one's a bit of a stretch, even for me.

All told, a party of professional murderers mildly inconvenienced itself to kill an abandoned child and steal its paltry collection of trinkets, then decided to brag about it. To me they're less like role models to aspire to, and more like those retired cops who drive up here from the Boroughs every hunting season looking to act tough, but all they really do is spend an entire weekend getting drunk in a deer stand before accidentally shooting a fawn and taking a selfie with it anyway.

I'm coming down on this piece so hard partly because Elmore already accomplished this same goal years earlier. He did that with his cover art for the 1983 D&D Basic set, popularly known as the Red Box. (Side note, it takes a lot for me to willingly compliment BECMI. It's by far my least favorite edition/continuum of editions.)

That piece, which depicts a lone fighter battling a very alive red dragon in its far more opulent hoard, feels like a more effective inspiration for new players. The fighter is obviously either a higher level than the AD&D party (or just suicidally brave), but it still hits on all the same points in order to grip and inspire a new player: there's danger to be surmounted, treasure to be claimed, and yes, there is a dragon inside a dungeon.

The way some of the edges bleed out past the frame also just looks quite nice. The dragon reaching out helps to include the observer in the artwork, as if the scene might be from the perspective of one of the fighter's party members, standing behind him for protection. Or perhaps the fighter is stepping into the scene directly out of the observer's imagination?

At this point I've pretty much tapped every last drag of that one art class I half-remember, so I'll just leave it at that.

Species & GLOG Class: The Trilobite-Knight (Veins of the Earth)

I am not a fan of Lamentations of the Flame Princess or any of its supplements that I know of, with the exception of Veins of the Earth by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess.

For those unfamiliar with it, Veins is basically a toolbox and implied setting for spelunking deep beneath the earth. It's far grittier and more claustrophobic than your average Underdark campaign, with a lot of attention paid to starvation, hypothermia, lack of light, mental stress, and the challenges of navigating a world that actively rejects surface-dwellers like you. The denizens of the veins are also stranger than most; the creatures are outlandish without being tentacular Lovecraft fodder, and many of the more humanoid cultures down there have deeply alien senses and mindsets which reflect the fact that it is a very different world you're setting foot in.

The disjointed, evocative nature of its writing combines with the sketchy, chaotic artwork of the book to create a reading experience that actually feels to me like the act of traveling through its tunnels: vague suggestions of shape and scope beyond the fitful reach of your lantern, occasionally broken up by spectacular, oftentimes terrible glimpses of what's really there, rearing up in full color, front-and-center. But even those moments of revelation are small and separate parts of a much greater whole, flashing without context before vanishing back into the dark just as suddenly.

I think it's neat stuff, and that's coming from someone who hates horror on multiple levels. It reminds me that for all of the hole-dwelling I do, I am as much a creature of the surface world as you humans. My domain of topsoil and sedimentary rock is a far cry from the world of deep darkness and deeper time beneath our feet. We are both blessed and ignorant not to know it.

Veins is also more subdued than a lot of other LotFP material. There's dark content like insanity, enslavement, and children being harmed a few different ways (I hate the trogloraptor so gods-damned much), but none of it is lurid or perverse in its attentions like certain other publications are.

This post isn't for me to wax poetic about darknesses, though. This is about trilobites!

Trilobite-knights are my favorite part of the book by far. They, alongside the tiny, philosophical presentist Gnonmen, are like unexpected pinpoints of light amid all the drear and fear.

Trilobite-knights are 5 foot-tall humanoid arthropods covered in clattering plate armor of their body's own making, equipped with dazzling compound eyes and a code of ethics weirdly similar to chivalry, hence the appellation "knight". They don't call themselves that, though. They don't even seem to have names, and they rarely speak. But their sign language is eloquent and beautiful to watch.

They are leftovers from an era hundreds of millions of years ago when an ill-defined but malevolent extinction event wiped out 94% of all life on the planet. They seem to remember those days, and are traumatized by the evil they survived. But they bide their time, knowing that it will be back, and that life will need them again. Until then, they wander like knights errant through the darkness, finding worthy opponents to challenge to contests, defending the weak, and generally being cool little buggos.

The knights remind me so much of the characters from Hollow Knight. Which is funny, because the original blog post for Trilobite-knights over on False Machine was published in January of 2013. That was a good seven months before the 27th Ludum Dare game jam that produced Hungry Knight, the precursor to Hollow Knight.

Sketches of different trilobites appear throughout the book, often accompanying the quotes that mark the beginning of each chapter. They're like the reader's guides through the veins, helping to keep you oriented. You tend to learn your way around after 250 million years.

The book mostly limits trilobite-knights to a few lonesome, random encounters while adventuring in the deep, but as the title you clicked on suggests, I want to do more with them than that. So here's another trifecta of GLOG/Troika!/D&D material.

Scrap Princess, again

Trilobite (GLOG)

Reroll: CON

Bonus: +2 Defense. Can eat detritus as Rations.

Weakness: Can't wear armor or clothing (except cloaks). Must Save when knocked down or lay uselessly on your back like a turtle for 1 round.

Silent, chivalrous survivors of the day that almost killed the world.

Trilobite-Knight Class

Starting Equipment: chitin repair kit, personal heraldic crest.
Starting Skills: Climbing and Chivalry. Also, roll on the adjacent table.

A: Protaspis
B: Meraspis
C: Holaspis
D: Paladin mucronatus

You gain +1 Defense for each Trilobite-Knight template you possess.

A: Protaspis

You are barely more than an upright larva, but you already grasp the fundamentals of survival in the veins of the earth. You decorate your carapace with trophies and mementos of things that didn't kill you- reminders of life's endurance in the face of adversity. Each time you survive damage from something (arrows, a fall, etc.) a total of 10 times, you become more familiar with and resistant to that danger. Once per day per danger, you can reduce incoming damage by 1d12 points.

B: Meraspis
Your first molt has come, and after much fitful squirming you have risen stronger and more confident for it. You gain +2 to Save vs Fear, and can reroll Save vs Fear once per day as you seize on the inspiring feats of past trilobite-knights. You can also use your chitinous body as a Light weapon.

C: Holaspis

Another molt, and you have come into your own, replete with clattering plates and bristling spines. Successful melee attackers must Save vs Dex or be disarmed as they lodge their weapon between your plates. You can also curl up into a ball and roll at 2x Movement for 1 minute per hour. You can roll up to escape being stuck on your back without making a Save.

D: Paladin mucronatus
Your terminal molt. It is a slow (or sudden) decline from here. You fully internalize the code of the trilobite-knight. Your reputation precedes you through the long, winding dark. You gain +2 to Reaction Rolls against the weak, the righteous, and those who have surrendered. You may Challenge enemies, as the Knight template.

1d6	Trilobite-Knight Skills
1	You hail from the shores of the subterranean Nightmare Sea. It is a far cry from the warm oceans that were stolen from you, but it still left you wistful. Start with the “Swimming” skill and a whalebone trinket.
2	You met a dying Olm who instructed you in the finer points of their people’s customs for the dead. Gain 3 rations.
3	You had a grizzled mentor, once. They gave you much, and then the dark took them. Start with the “Wilderness” skill and their old spine-pennant.
4	You arrived too late to save a village from raiders. Start with 1 Camp Follower (Orphan) and a vendetta.
5	You were tapped on the shoulder by a blackfoot gigaferret, once. Once. Start with the “Light Sleeper” skill and a scrap of fur worth 5sp.
6	You once befriended an honorable surface dweller- a rare thing. Rarer still, now that they have fallen in battle. You speak 1 extra language, and carry scraps of their armor to return home.

Trilobite-Knight (Troika!)

Possessions

• Chitinous Exoskeleton (Heavily Armoured).
• Salt-Encrusted Weapon of your choice.
• A Tattered Old Bug-Banner.

Advanced Skills

3 Etiquette

3 Fighting in your Salt-Encrusted Weapon

2 Climbing

1 Awareness

1 Strength

Special

You may curl up into a tight ball of armored plates and spines and roll out of (or into) danger at twice your normal speed. You can't do anything else while rolling.

Trilobite-Knight (5E)

Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 2, and your Strength score increases by 1.

Age. Trilobite-Knights go through life stages marked by molting. They are considered adult once they grow their last body segments, after which they molt progressively slower and slower. Since the trilobites tend to live deep below ground with minimal contact and nothing like a solar calendar, no one knows how quickly they mature, or if they even die of old age. The eldest ones seem quite old, however.

Alignment. Trilobite-Knights seem to follow a code remarkably similar to the human myth of chivalry, without all the sexist or hierarchical bits that make no sense to a bunch of primordial invertebrates. Some will deviate from this code, whether out of necessity or disillusionment. Most are lawful good.

Size. Trilobite-Knights stand about 5 feet tall and weigh over 200 pounds from the weight of their chitinous shells. Your size is Medium.

Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.

Superior Darkvision. Epochs spent in the bowels of the earth has not dulled the strength of your people's calcite-hive eyes, but they have lent them a strange luster. Your darkvision has a range of 120 feet.

Clatter & Clamber. Your kind forsook the boiling seas in desperation and shame long ago, but the gentle undulation of your many little legs lends itself almost as well to crawling and climbing as they did swimming. You gain proficiency in the Athletics skill.

Natural Armor. Your exoskeleton is covered in articulated plates of armor and protruding spines of chitin, giving you a measure of protection from a world that has forgotten you. You have a base AC of 17 (your Dexterity modifier doesn't affect this number). You gain no benefit from wearing armor, but if you are using a shield, you can apply the shield's bonus as normal.

Roll Out. You can curl up into a tight ball so that your chitinous plates protect you on all sides. Until you unroll, you gain a +2 bonus to AC, and you have advantage on Constitution saving throws. While rolled up, your speed is 50, you can't take reactions, and the only action you can take is a free action to unroll.

Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common, and communicate in the silent speech of the trilobites.

Heartseeker Houserules & Homebrew

I did not think I had enough content for a post on this topic until I realized I could get another alliterative title out of it.

I've expressed fondness for several Trollish Delver products over the years, including larger books like Tequendria and smaller products like the USR system and In Darkest Warrens. It's not any one particular thing that draws me to them, and it's kind of funny coincidence that they pop up so much in my posts- I'm just kinda down with them.

Most recently, I've gotten one of Scott Malthouse's sveltest works yet, Heartseeker.

It's a two-page document (not including cover and character sheet) dedicated to "Being a traditional fantasy adventure game" as the subtitle proclaims. It takes streamlined bits and pieces from The RPG Not To Be Described, as well as other OSR titles. I most clearly saw some Black Hack DNA in the form of class hit dice = damage dice, though I'm sure there are other influences I didn't pick up on.

There were some rules tweaks published for Heartseeker in its dedicated Write.as up until last year, though I don't think they reflect all of the version updates to the game overall- it references a universal d6 damage for all weapons that appears nowhere in my copy, for example.

But browsing it inspired me to come up with a few changes or additions I'd maybe make if I was playing this game, so I will. The game encourages you to hack it, after all!

Classes

Warriors only get d10 HD, a bonus attack vs weaker opponents, and the ability to wear all armor. This takes up the same amount of page space as allotted to other classes, which maintains the tightness of the writing that I like in this book. But it also leaves warriors feeling slightly lacking in features to me.

I would remedy this by giving them advantage on physical saves. Or, if that makes them a little too strong out the gate, give them advantage when lifting, breaking objects or commanding followers. This option is in keeping with the thematic ability check benefits that thieves and pathfinders get.

New Classes

Occultist: HD d6, can prepare spells and prayers equal to half class level-1 (round up). Advantage when researching, recollecting lore, or identifying magic. Can only wear cloth and leather armour.

Packrat: HD d8, can carry an extra 10 items. Advantage when balancing, haggling or repairing items. Get one free action to take out or put away an item when surprising. Cannot wear plate or banded mail armour.

Bloodlines

I personally love that the only thing separating one group from another is language as opposed to ability, and that several default bloodlines are traditional "monster" types, like kobolds or my relatives. Adding new bloodlines requires nothing other than coming up with a name. I wouldn't change a thing about this (except maybe go with a term like lineage or background; "bloodline" feels a little V:tM to me for some reason).

But if I did decide to add a crumbly little layer of differentiating crunch on top, I'd assign each bloodline an ability (physical, mental, aura) and let the player reroll one of the d6s that they rolled in the 3d6 set for that stat, keeping the higher result.

For example, I'd let an orc who rolled 1, 4, and 5 on their Physical reroll the 1 and keep a higher roll, potentially netting them a 14 or above and that sweet, sweet +1 bonus.

I suppose humans, the ever-adaptable cosmic favorites, each get to pick which die to reroll, if that's the world you play in.

Spells & Prayers

Past the mid-levels (where I realize the vast majority of games using any system tend to end), a Wizard or Cleric starts to have a good number of spell slots, but their spells don't improve at all. That's not really a problem, since everyone else is in a similar situation where dice numbers/sizes never grow.

But if it's something you want to fiddle with anyway, consider an alternative to the tiered spell levels used by The RPG Not To Be Described.

A Wizard or Cleric can choose to prepare a spell using 3 slots to cast an Enhanced version of that spell that doubles one of the spell's values of the caster's choice. Enhanced Mending Hands might heal d8 HP to 2 adjacent targets at once, Enhanced Arcane Shot might deal 2d6+2 to a single target, etc.

You're basically spending 3 spell slots to whip out what is effectively 2 spells instantly- it's inefficient, but useful when you really need something to pack a punch right now.

The spell value doubled is chosen during preparation and can't be changed later.

Obviously this doesn't work with certain utility spells, unless you're in range of multiple magic doors in need of unlocking at once.

New Prayer

Disillusion: Removes charm from an adjacent creature (or dispels a targeted illusion).

(The ability to remove charm felt like something that maybe should've been part of Remove Condition, so here it is alongside something else to half-justify its existence.)

New Monster

Zood: HD4, AC15, Atk blubbery smack +0 (d6),
SV P14 M9 A7, MV 20/60 (swimming). XP 40,
Special: Explodes if killed by fire damage. 30' burst.
Enemy save vs physical or takes 2d6 damage.