Skip to main content

B/X Character Class: Harpies

Harpies by Donna Barr. Used with permission of the artist.
Flying PC's can be a real hassle, because they can circumvent challenges that were planned two-dimensionally. But I think these harpies keep things pretty balanced. Let me know if I'm wrong.

They are directly inspired by Paul Kidd's Lace & Steel, created in collaboration with Donna Barr. If you know Ms. Barr's work, there's no doubt the harpies were one of her contributions to the world of Middlemarch.

If you don't know Donna Barr's work, then here you go, your new favorite thing: The Midnight Library.

Anyway, harpies.


Harpies (Lesser Harpies, Stormcrows, the Kindly Ones)
Requirements: CON 9
Prime Requisite: CON
Hit Dice: 1d4
Max Level: 8

Harpies have the heads and torsos of humans and the wings and bodies of large, predatory birds. Their hands emerge from the prominent joint of their wings.

Although harsh and unforgiving in disposition, lesser harpies are distinguished as “the Kindly Ones” both because they can bring rain to farmlands and, unlike their wild kin, they do not eat human flesh.

Harpy females are larger and more domineering than the males. Any harpy character with a STR of 12 or over must be female.

May use any weapons, and wear leather armor.
Hit Progression and Save as Thief.
May not use wands or arcane/divine scrolls.

Flight: Flies at 180’ per round, unencumbered, ignoring terrain and obstacles. Can only fly when less than half-encumbered (leather armor and less than 400 coins weight). Cannot use hands while in flight, even to hold small objects, but can hold objects in talons.

When flying, harpies attack either by swooping in to attack with their talons (see below), by dropping heavy items on enemies (treat as ranged attack, 1d6 dmg.), or, if they have a STR of 12 or more, by picking up an enemy (requires successful melee attack with talons), flying upwards, and dropping them (1d6 dmg For every round spent flying upwards. The victim may attack the harpy with a -2 to hit during these rounds).

Talons: As they mature, harpies develop powerful clawed toes.

Control Weather: At seventh-level, a harpy can cast Control Weather twice a day.

Aerie: At eighth-level, a harpy can establish a mountaintop stronghold.

1          Fledgling          Flight                           1d4       0
2          Siren                 Talons d2                      2d4       1800
3          Snatcher           Talons d4                      3d4       3600
4          Harpy               Talons d6                      4d4       7200
5          Swiftwind                                               5d4       14500
6          Stormcrow                                              6d4       29000
7          Stormqueen    Control Weather           7d4       58000
8          Kindly One     Aerie                              8d4       100000
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knaves, fancypants

I've prepared a new layout document of Ben Milton's Knaves . Knaves is a great, light rules set that has an extremely elegant core mechanic while retaining total compatibility with OSR material. It's pretty much the rpg of my dreams. This document contains the complete rules, plus a bunch of useful hacks from the community, plus a few of my invention, plus some useful resources from Ben Milton's previous effort, Maze Rats . EDIT: I've updated the layout to fix errata and make a few tweaks. Further, I've made 3 variations: KNAVES TABLET LAYOUT The Tablet Layout is meant for scrolling on screens, and contains hyperlinks. KNAVES SPREAD LAYOUT The Spread Layout is set up to print on Letter-sized paper. KNAVES A4 LAYOUT The A4 Layout is set up to print on A4 paper, and is probably the most elegant of the three versions. This is presented with generous permission from Ben Milton, and should in no way be an excuse for not purchasing a copy of Knav
14 comments
Read more

Reviewing Rules for Play-by-Post Optimization

I’ve played a lot of PbP games: all your favorite flavors of OD&D, AD&D, and their retroclones, Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, Traveller, Dungeon World, etc. ad nauseam. In almost every instance, I forgot what ruleset we were using at some point. Which is a good thing. Once chargen is over, you spend a lot more time describing your characters actions and poring over the GM’s descriptions than you spend interacting with rules. When you do roll, it’s usually a combat to-hit roll, which you’ve probably programmed into the online dice-roller as a macro. Pretty much any game will work for PbP. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t points of possible optimization. Point 1: Resolution. Anything that can keep the action moving is a boon to PbP. A game that requires a back-and-forth exchange of information to resolve an action is going to progress very slowly. A good rule of thumb is that it’ll take 2 or 3 days to get a response from any given player. At that pace, an exch
Post a Comment
Read more

Maze Rats by Post

In my previous post , I reviewed a bunch of my favorite rulesets for optimization for Play-by-Post. It occurred to me almost immediately that I hadn't really thought about Maze Rats enough. In fact, I'd mis-remembered and mischaracterized it. Upon reflection, one of the mechanics I took issue with is actually a big strength. Re-reading the rules, it seems like just a few very simple hacks could make it a highly-optimized PbP game. As follows: Danger Rolls are rolled by the GM. Danger rolls usually fail, so it is in the player’s interest to describe their actions plausibly and mitigate as many risks as they can, in the hopes that they don’t trigger a danger roll. 2d6 + ability bonus ≥ 10 If you have taken enough precautions to have a distinct advantage in an action, but not enough to have eliminated the distinct possibility of danger, the GM will give you a roll with advantage. 3d6 keep 2 + ability bonus ≥ 10 Because each character only has 3 ability scores (S
1 comment
Read more