Skip to main content

B/X Character Class: Satyr

Lace and Steel cover by Donna Barr
I've been doing my best to put together a decent Satyr for a B/X campaign which will be lightly modeled on the world presented in Paul Kidd's old game Lace and Steel. 

After helpful suggestions from some fine folks on G+, here's the present draft of the satyr. It's a work in progress—suggestions and advice are very welcome. There's a reaction table I'm especially unsure about. You'll know it when you see it.

Average satyrs are quiet, decent folk. They might live in a glade with the dewy-eyed woodland animals, or in a farming hamlet, or run a cheese shop downtown. They're naturally charming, of course, and this is helpful in combating the salacious reputation saddled on them by the behavior of troublesome elements in satyr society (the Bacchantes, Calicantsars, and Sabbat Satyrs, about whom, more later).

Satyr
Requirements: DEX 13, CON 9, CHA 13
Prime Requisite: CHA
Hit Dice: 1d6
Max Level: 10

May use any weapons, and any armor except plate armor.
Hit Progression and Save as Fighter.
May not use wands or arcane/divine scrolls.

Dazzling Music: Beginning at first level, Satyrisci can induce powerful effects in others through music. They require an instrument, and prefer pipes, cymbals, castanets, bagpipes, and lyres.
Invitation to dance: One time a day per level, a satyr can perform a musical Invitation to Dance. This can be done while moving at normal speed, or while capering. Instead of rolling on the normal encounter reaction table, roll 2d12 2d6 below:
2-3        Hostile, considering an attack
4-7        Uncertain, monster confused, listening to music
8-10      No attack, monster dances, conga line right out the door
11-12    Enthusiastic friendship
Panic: Once per day per level, a satyr can use music to inspire panic in others. It requires total concentration, and nothing else can be done while the satyr is performing. This triggers a morale check at -2 at any time, even if the creatures have previously rolled a 12. Undead and deaf creatures are immune.
Lullaby: A satyr can play soothing music to help willing creatures to sleep soundly. This can counter effects that might disturb rest needed for healing. The satyr must play for at least a full turn during the period of disturbance.

Horns: At Level 2, satyrs’ horns grow large enough to be used as weapons. The horns continue to grow larger and more intricately curved as the satyr advances.

Tail: At sixth level, satyrs grow long, horse-like tails. This provides no practical benefit, but they are very proud of them.

Woodland Fortress: Although Satyrs can be city and village dwellers, a satyr setting up a stronghold will probably seek the ancestral woods. A ninth-level satyr will attract a retinue of 1d10 satyrs (levels 1d4+1) with 1d12 non-combatant family members, and 1d6 non-satyrs (centaurs, onocentaurs, elves, nymphs, or other sylvan creatures).

1          Satyrisci            Dazzling Music                         0                     1d6
2          Faun                Horns 1d2                                 1900                  2d6
3          Buck                 Horns 1d4                                 3800                 3d6
4          Gruff                Horns 1d6                                 7600                 4d6
5          Gruff Hero                                                        15,000                5d6
6          Satyr                Tail                                          30,000                  6d6
7          Grand Satyr                                                      60,000                7d6
8          Sileni                                                                110,000                8d6
9          Papposilenus    Woodland fortress              220,000               9d6
10         Panes                                                               340,000               9d6+2
  

Comments

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

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

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