Skip to main content

Satyr Sub-Class: The Bacchante

These are the sorts of satyrs the Greeks and Romans loved to depict. They are usually found stumbling through the countryside in transient orgies, but they also seek out high-stakes adventures in order to more gloriously fulfill their vow of profligacy.

Is... is it okay to admit how pleased I am with the phrase "vow of profligacy?"

Walter Crane, Nymph Between Two Satyrs
Bacchante, The Blessed Revelers
Requirements: STR 13, CON 9, CHA 13
Prime Requisite: CHA
Hit Dice: 1d8
Max Level: 10

Bacchante are holy figures and greatly admired in satyr communities. It is their duty to give themselves over to a state of wild revelry.

May use any weapon.
Cannot wear conventional armor, and rarely wear clothes. May wear animal skins equivalent to leather armor.
Hit Progression and Save as Dwarf
May not use magic armor, wands, or arcane/divine scrolls.

Holy Debauchery: Must make a check against Wisdom to pass up offers of intoxicants or sex. If a bacchante successfully abstains four times in a row, they are no longer a bacchante. They lose all bacchante advantages, and must reroll all hit dice.

Vow of Profligacy: A bacchante must spend any money accrued by throwing lavish celebrations. A bacchante does not gain XP for treasure until it is spent in this way.

Ecstatic Frenzy: Once per day; +2 to hit and damage, until combat ends.

Dazzling Music: Beginning at first level, Satyrisci can cause 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. Instead of rolling on the normal encounter reaction table, roll 2d12 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. This 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, fauns grow rams horns that get larger and more intricately curved as they advance.

Tail: At sixth level, satyrs grow long, horse-like tails.

Create Fountain: At sixth level, a bacchante can, once per day, touch the ground with a thyrsus (a fennel staff topped with a pine-cone) and summon a spring of water, milk, or wine.

Thiasus: A Bacchante can never settle down and establish a settlement, but at ninth level, they will have attracted their own thiasus: a large retinue of ecstatic revelers. In addition to their permanent retinue, they will often be temporarily joined by locals from wherever they pass through.


1          Satyrisci            Dazzling Music; Ecstatic Frenzy            0                      1d8
2          Wild Faun        Horns 1d2                                                 1700                 2d8
3          Celebrant         Horns 1d4                                                 3400                 3d8
4          Ecstatic             Horns 1d6                                                 6800                 4d8
5          Goat                                                                                      13,000               5d8
6          Bacchante         Tail; Create Fountain                               27,000               6d8
7          Grand Bacchante                                                                54,000               7d8
8          Wild Sileni                                                                           102,000             8d8
9          Partylord          Thiasus                                                      204,000             9d8
10        Dionysi                                                                                324,000             9d8+2


Comments

  1. Wild Aegis was an AC bonus, but I'd decided against it. Forgot to strike it off the XP list, however. Thanks for catching that!

    ReplyDelete

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

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

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