I speed wrote/designed this today, so it’s a little uneven, but here are four 5th edition classes (with kits) that A) fit onto a single page and B) don’t make me feel like I’m doing calculus. They cover the major archetypes, though the clericky/warlocky one isn’t all that faithful to the traditional Van Helsing type. Pictures of the pages below and a download link here.
Thinking about running 5e again, probably for San Serafín.
In 5th edition, if you want to play a nature character, you can pick one of the following.
These do have various amounts of hippy and a broad range of mechanical differences, but explaining them even to a very engaged, interested player is KIND OF A LOT. I am playing a 5e game where it took a player three sessions before she could regularly remember if her class was a wizard, warlock, or sorcerer, and that makes sense. You have to dig through the book to really get the differences–there’s nothing about the names that really let you know how they actually work. SO, I’m crushing down the class list to four and then rewriting archetypes to cover a wider range of characters.
FIGHTERS are slashy smashy stabby types. (Paladins, Rangers, and Barbarians are getting collapsed into fighter). Monks, too, probably.
WARLOCKS are witchy and wild and traffic in gods and monsters. (Clerics and Druids are getting collapsed into warlock). They can learn to Wild Shape as a Pact Boon and can choose the Pact of Many Gods for a animist/priest/medium type deal. I’ll probably write a patron for a benevolent Abrahamic deity type.
ROGUES are thieves and assassins.
WIZARDS are scholarly magic types.
Sorcerers, Bards, and maybe Monks are out.
Fighter Martial Archetype: Paladin
THIRD LEVEL
Spellcasting. When you reach third level, you can cast cleric spells.
Cantrips. You learn two cantrips of your choice from the cleric spell list.
Spell Slots. The Paladin spellcasting table shows how many spell slots you have to cast spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.
Spells Known of 1st level and higher. You know three 1st level cleric spells of your choice. The Spells Known column on the Paladin spellcasting table shows when you learn more cleric spells of 1st level or higher. Each of these spells must be a level for which you have slots. When you gain a level of Fighter, you can replace one of the cleric spells you know with another spell of your choice from cleric spell list that you have slots for.
Spellcasting ability. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your cleric spells. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you sue your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a cleric spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.
Spell Save DC = 8 + proficiency bonus + Wisdom modifier
Spell Attack modifier = proficiency bonus + Wisdom modifier
Sense Evil and Good. You know if there is an aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead within thirty feet of you, as well as its general direction.
SEVENTH LEVEL
Weapon Bond. At 7th level, you learn a ritual that creates a magical bond between yourself and one weapon. you perform the ritual over the course of 1 hour, which can be done during a long rest. The weapon must be within your reach during the ritual, at the conclusion of which you touch the weapon and forge the bond.
Once you have bonded the weapon to yourself, you can’t be disarmed of that weapon unless you are incapacitated. If it is on the same plane of existence, you can summon that weapon as a bonus action on your turn, causing it to instantly teleport to your hand. For purposes of damage immunity, your bonded weapons counts as magical.
You can have up to two bonded weapons, but can summon only one at a time with your bonus action. If you attempt to bond with a third weapon, you must break the bond with one of the other two.
TENTH LEVEL
Divine health. You are immune to disease. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned and gain resistance to poison damage.
FIFTEENTH LEVEL
Taboo. You can issue a divinely enforced edict, preventing all around you from breaking a rule of your creation
When you use this ability, you shout a one-word command. All creatures in earshot must make a Charisma save vs your spell save DC every time they attempt to perform that action. If a creature fails their saving throw, they cannot attempt to perform that action again until the beginning of their next turn. This lasts until you lose Concentration or move from the spot you created the taboo.
You must take a short rest before you can use this ability again.
EIGHTEENTH LEVEL
Occult resistance. You have advantage on saving throws against all spells.
Warlock Abilities
Patron: The Many Gods
You have formed a pact with a minor deity: a beast, dragon, elemental, fey, fiend, or aberration with some measure of immanence. They cannot provide you with the kind of power an Archfey, Fiend, or Great Old One can, but they are also willing to help you personally–you can help them as much as they can help you.
You can summon one of your patrons with a 10 minute ritual. You can ask it to cast a spell it knows or to perform some other favor, like convey you to a destination, help you in a fight, deliver a message, or retrieve an object. Patrons always require something in return–they feed off of occult power, and you can always expend a spell slot as payment, but they also accept the expenditure of hit dice, blood, favors, treasure, or anything else that aligns with their ethos and goals. More powerful patrons require more sacrifice. Patrons are NPCs like any other–there is always a chance they will demand more for a favor, refuse to help you, or even temporarily become hostile.
You do not learn spells of 1st level or above. Whenever you would learn a spell, you can give the ability to cast it to one of your patrons. Patrons can cast such spells at will at your behest, enabled by your payments/sacrifices, but when operating on their own prerogative can only cast each spell they know once per long rest.
You start with a single patron. It is a beast, dragon, elemental, fey, fiend, undead, celestial, or aberration with a CR of 1 or less. It can cast your Spells Known at level 1.
When one of your patrons is reduced to 0 HP, you can revive it with an 8 hour ritual.
You can gain a patron by establishing friendly contact with a creature and completing a 1 hour ritual in its presence. You can always understand you patron, even if you do not share a language or it does not have a language.
Warlock Pact Boon: Pact of Borrowed Skin
You can use the Druid’s Wild Shape class feature once per short rest.
Warlock Eldritch Invocations
Shapeshifter
Prerequisite: Pact of Borrowed Skin, 5th level
You can Wild Shape into creatures with a CR of 1/4 your level or less.
Maleficence
Prerequisite: Pact of Borrowed Skin, 15th level.
You can Wild Shape into dragons as well as beasts.
Thinking about this post. Also thinking about Mononoke. The standard old school D&D cleric worships an impersonal, benevolent god. That’s an okay model, but I like the idea of deities as more present, dangerous, and visceral. A little more animist, I guess. Clerics can befriend gods, or form grudging alliances with them, or press them into service. Sometimes, clerics have to kill them. In this model, gods are NPCs and spells and adventures in one, and they influence clerics (shamans really, I guess) in direct ways.
Anyways, here’s a sketch of what this would look like:
She rebelled against her masters, so they tied her to a tree out in the scrub and left her there to die. When she finally became too tired to kick away the coyotes, when she had nothing but three days of hunger and three days of thirst, when her will to live exceeded anything her body could do, she swore by the blood in her mouth and then sun in her eyes that there would be a reckoning.
There is a tree in courtyard of the mayor’s house in the village of Segundo. It grows the most remarkable red flowers and draws the most remarkable red butterflies. The mayor ignores them, but every morning he pours a bottle of excellent red wine on the tree’s roots, and girdles its trunk with another red sash. He is a fine man, the nephew of the old lord, so the Segunderos ignore these eccentricities, but they wonder why he would lavish so much attention on a tree while ignoring the fruits of his labor, or why he would grow so fearful when he found out the merchant wouldn’t be bringing any shipments of wine for the second season in a row.
La Dama Roja, Goddess of Blood and Sunshine
AC 16 HD 3+1 MV 90’ (30′) ATK Spear DMG 1d8+1 ST Fighter 3 AL Chaotic
Spells, at will: Light, Command, Cure/Inflict Light Wounds
The true name of La Dama, the one that will let a shaman make a pact with her, is carved into the trunk of the tree in the mayor’s courtyard, beneath the dozens of tattered red sashes. If the shaman botches the pact-making ritual, she will do her best to brutally murder the mayor, who was the man who tied her to the tree all those years ago. If the shaman helps her kill the mayor, her Loyalty will increase by d4.
If a shaman wishes to extract a favor from a god without making a Loyalty check, they can make it an offering. La Dama accepts only blood. A small task, like casting a 1st level spell, participating in a fight tipped in the Goddess’ advantage, or translating the words of a creature that can’t communicate with humans, might require d6 HP. Major favors, like casting a 5th+ level spell, joining a fight with desperate odds, or revealing a powerful and ancient secret, might require 5d6 HP.
The Goddess of Blood and Sunshine makes a Loyalty check or requires an offering when the shaman violates one her her taboos in front of her, or when the shaman asks her to violate one of her taboos:
 |
| by edmund dulac |
HP, XP, Saves, Attack Bonus, Equipment Restrictions as Elf.
You are a spirit of flame and desire, sealed inside a magical vessel such as a ring, lamp, or sword. You must obey the commands of the person who holds your vessel. In fact, you must try to bring about all desires they verbally express in your hearing, whether they want you to or not (they can, of course, tell you to immediately stop what you are doing). You must always follow the letter of your vessel-carrier’s wishes, though you can otherwise interpret them however you want. This isn’t a matter of threat of punishment–this is simply what bound djinn do, though they certainly don’t always like it.
You do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. However, once you have completed all outstanding wishes, you are compelled to return to their vessel until called forth again. You must be within a few feet of your vessel into enter it. You cannot take any items with you.
Djinn vessels are indestructible, barring Wish-level magic, the fire of an ancient dragon, or divine intervention. Should you manage to get your vessel destroyed, you will be free to do as you please, assuming a magician doesn’t manage to cram you into a snuff box again.
Water and earth are anathema to djinn. You take d4 damage per turn of submersion or interment.
 |
| by edmund dulac |
Act of Change
When outside of your vessel, you can assume any shape you desire, within the parameters of Polymorph Self or Disguise Self. However, your height and length cannot exceed twice your level in feet. Changing shape is also tiring–every time you do so, Save vs Magic or take d4 Constitution damage. You do not need to make this Save the first time you assume a shape after resting inside your prison.
Act of Creation
Starting at level 3, you can create objects from nothing, but only to fulfill a command by the owner of your djinn-prison. The total value in gold pieces of objects you create over the course of a day cannot exceed your current experience total divided by 10. If a created object leaves your presence a number of turns greater than your level, it vanishes into black smoke. Djinni-created food and drink nourishes like any other meal if eaten before it vanishes.
Act of Strength
Starting at level 5, when in human or demihuman form, you can easily perform any feat of Strength a normal human is capable of and automatically succeed all such Strength checks. You only need to make Strength checks for tasks that would surpass the abilities of a single person. You can carry twice as many objects without being encumbered, as well. This does not confer any bonuses to combat.
Act of Nature
Starting at level 7, when in human or demihuman form, you can fly on a whirlwind at will, albeit clumsily, as the Chariot of Air spell.
Act of Desire
At level 9, you can grant a Limited Wish to the possessor of your vessel 1/week.
Etc
 |
| by sydney sime |
You are an intangible, invisible spiritual presence, unable to interact with the physical world except through your shrine and those who worship it. You can speak with anyone in earshot of your shrine, and you can see anything in line of sight. If your shrine is destroyed, you lose your only connection with the real world until someone decides to build a new one for you.
The Cult
Worshipers are a mercenary lot, so inducting someone into your cult requires you to hire pay them like any other retainer (LotFP has good procedures for this). Once you’ve indoctrinated/bribed someone into your religion, you perceive everything they sense. You can also speak directly to your retainers, as well as anyone in line of site of them.
If you wish, you can possess one of your retainers. When you do so, you control them directly and use your abilities and attributes in place of theirs, including HP (so rolling Strength during character creation wasn’t a waste). However, if you are reduced to 0 HP while possessing a character, you both die. Extricating yourself from a retainer’s body takes a number of turns equal to your level and causes them to make a Loyalty/Morale check as soon as you’ve left them.
 |
| by harry clarke |
Starting at level 3, you can acquire a Saint, who functions as a henchman in LotFP (they are a classed character two levels behind you, and get half of your treasure). Saints never check Morale, and all followers in their presence get a +1 to Morale.
Miracles
In a typical D&D system, you cast spells just like a cleric. If your DM is cool and has Wonders and Wickedness, you cast spells as a specialist sorcerer. Your school of magic and flavor of Maleficence determines your portfolio as a minor divinity. You don’t need to prepare spells–you can expend a spell slot to cast any spell you know.
Casting a spell does not require any of your retainers to take an action–it’s your divine intervention, after all. However, you must use one of your retainers as the origin point for any spell you cast so if a spell has a range of 100 ft, your target must be in 100 ft of your shrine or one of your followers). Furthermore, your might probably have some funny ideas about what participation in a cult entitles them to and get mad when you ignore their invocations (when a retainer calls on your power and you don’t provide a miracle, they make a Morale check).
You can’t learn new spells through research or transcription. Instead, whenever your followers burn a scroll or spellbook in your name, you learn all spells inscribed therein. If your followers sacrifice a wizard to you, you can choose to learn a single spell he or she had memorized.
Apostasy
If a hireling fails a Morale check, you can’t perceive with their senses, possess them, or use them as the origin for spell/miracles. However, if you manage to reconvert/rehire them, they get a permanent and cumulative +1 bonus to Morale/Loyalty.
Grow in Power
You don’t get experience just by collecting money. Instead, you get 1 xp for every gold piece spent improving your shrine. You also gain xp for building additional shrines. Establishing a shrine costs 2,000 gp. You can acquire worshipers in any town you have a shrine.
In addition to your HP, saving throw, and spell progression, you must issue an edict each time you gain an even level. An edict is a behavioral restriction that all of your followers must carry out. This might make adventuring life more difficult for them, but each gives all followers a permanent +1 bonus to Morale.
Other Stuff
LotFP has a bunch of kinds of retainers, but weirdly doesn’t include easy options for hiring mercenaries singly or day by day. I’ll say godlings (and only godlings) can hire cultists (who function as 0th level fighters, elves, halfings, or dwarves, to be randomly determined) for 10 sp a day + 10% cut of the treasure. Otherwise it’s linkboy’s and butlers.
An angry employer/divinity can compel a retainer or follower to reroll a Morale/Loyalty check through intimidation, threats, or show of force, but this causes a permanent -1 to Morale/Loyalty.
A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet is now on sale. You can get it here
Why should I buy it?
I’d like to think it is filled with good ideas you can include in your game, but also
HP and XP as Magic-users
Attack bonus and saves as Clerics
Also called Las Basiliscas, the Velvet People, Pretty Poisoners, Beauty Monks
Each major city has a House of Honey and Salt, which acts as the home and headquarters of all Saints in the region. These Houses are temple-brothel-hospitals; few injuries or illnesses are beyond the flesh-crawling curatives of the Saints, though they charge a high price.
Saints are the enemies of the medusae, the drow, and the Weaver’s Guild. Their cousins are the vampires. They have treaties with the basilisks, dryads, nymphs, succubi, and shadows. Saints make servants of bees and flesh golems.
Saints have a reputation for espionage, though nobody knows where their interests lie. They’re that good. A nation’s monarch having a Saint in their court is viewed the same way as having a child king or a doddering regent: a sign of instability and bad things to come.
The dogma of the Saints is Love and their doctrine is Spite. A Saint cannot wield weapons and must avoid inflicting pain wherever possible (This is interpreted liberally. The Saints as an organization make extensive use of poisons, and have no problem telling their underlings to do exceedingly painful things to their enemies). Saints also cannot wear armor, as it conceals their bodies.
 |
| from full metal alchemist |
A Saint is like this:
You’re always a little flushed, a little feverish, though you never seem to sweat. The whites of your eyes have no blood vessels, you tongue and lips are red; your hair is albino white or the iridescent black of crow feathers or else it shines like the sun on the sea etc etc. You look like the fervid imaginings of a court poet or a Raymond Chandler character or the lover of a hero from antiquity.
 |
| by Bernypisa, distributed under Creative Commons |
Level 2: Sweet Nothings
You can cast Suggestion at will by whispering into somebody’s ear for a full round, close enough that they can feel your breath on their face.
Level 3: Fascination
This bath costs 1,000 gp and works for a single person. You might have trouble finding the ingredients in backwater areas, though you can haul them around if you so choose; they count as 2 significant items.
Level 5: Carnation
Level 6: Pretty Poison
Level 7:
You can read someone’s mind as per ESP by staring into their eyes for a full round. They can feel you reading their mind, so usually they must be restrained or otherwise unable to look away.
Level 8: All Shall Love Me and Despair
Once a day, you can issue a Mass Command. (As Command, but afflicts everyone in earshot)
Level 9: House of Honey and Salt
You found your own House of Honey and Salt and gain 2d6 disciples.
Level 10: Only Lovers Left Alive
Once per day, you can kill someone with fewer HD than you have levels by touching their bare chest with your forefinger. No save.
 |
| christian dior |
 |
| from fire emblem awakening |
Self-sufficient magical devices constructed by the ancient people of Goriat. In ages past, golems farmed, built, and manufactured for their masters, but the only golems left today are engines of destruction.
Chlorolisk
A vine-wrapped porcelain skeleton, its ribcage packed with dirt and seeded with cursed orchids. Chlorolisks are not sentient, and the formulas inscribed on the insides of their skulls compel them to kill everything they see.
HD 8 Speed human
Armor plate Attack unarmed d8
Morale 12 Alignment Neutral
Goliath
A sandstone colossus with a stylized eye inscribed in its sphereical head. Each Goliath contains the soul of an ancient criminal, imparting it with limited intelligence and a tendency to hoard.
HD 10 Speed ½ human
Armor plate Attack flare d20
Morale 10 Alignment Neutral
Hex Vessel
A large clay pot that walks about on four spidery arms, illuminated by a torch-bright blue flame that hovers over its mouth. Hex vessels are animated by the ghosts of insufficiently talented sorcerers, and are most easily persuaded of Goriat’s golems.
HD 4 Speed 1.5 × human
Armor leather Attack flame d6
Morale 6 Alignment Neutral
Inkling
Child sized golems constructed from hexed ink and sublimated shadow. Though they possess a doglike susceptibility to affection, inklings are also the cruelest of the golems.
HD 2 Speed 1.5 × human, climb
Armor none Attack claws d4
Morale 8 Alignment Neutral
I actually like having a robust skill system. I don’t like players using skills to bludgeon past making choices. As a compromise, my new golden rule is: The player always explains their in-game actions, then the Referee tells them what skill they use. Saying “I use [skill]” means you automatically fail your next roll.
Still using LotFP HP, XP, and Spells. Using 5e’s equipment, skill, and armor system.
Your proficiency bonus equals 2. Increase it by 1 every 4 levels, or just use the 5e Player’s Handbook. Everyone is assumed to be proficient in armor; only Fighters, Barbarians, and Paladins are proficient with weapons.
Fighters
Barbarians
Paladins
Specialists
Magic-user/Magician
Summoners
Warlocks
Background
Pick four skills and a total of two tool and language proficiencies. Pick a background ability from the 5e basic pdf or handbook, whichever is available. If you have an idea that’s not in the book, let me know and we can work it out. Then give your background a name that explains how you have these skills (Scholar, Beggar, Assassin, whatever)
Skills
Animal Handling
Arcana
Athletics
Charm
History
Intimidation
Medicine
Perception
Nature
Religion
Sleight of Hand
Stealth
Tools
In addition to the default:
Barber’s tools
Dowsing Rod
Medic’s kit
Voice (I know it’s not a tool, but I don’t like Performance as a skill, and an Albion without opera singers in no Albion at all)
Languages
Picking a language from this list means you can read it and speak it. Everyone already speaks English, so pick it again if you want to be literate.
Ara Gorash, language of abomination
Britonnic, the old tongue of Albion
Elegaic, language of the greater dead
English
Enochian, language of angels
Fol, language of the fairies
Lament, language of the lesser dead and the damned
Mew, the language of cats
Edited the new warlock, but that doesn’t warrant a whole post on it own. I’ve been trying to get this patron system right for over two years, ever since I tried to glue World of Dungeons magic onto LotFP when one of my players cut a deal with The Man With A Clock For A Face.
With aching slowness, I am teaching myself InDesign. Here’s a thing I made for practice. Thinking my post-Albion project will be a monster hunt/pokécrawl.
 |
| painting by John Singer Sargent |
 |
| illustrations by Harry Clarke |
pdf is available here
