This Sleep of Forgetfulness Will Not Last Forever (Classes: Magic-User and Chancer; d100 Spells)

 

art by Rebecca Storm

    Casting a spell requires a free hand and a strong voice. The aspects in the soul (housed in the organs) can't be entrapped in armor, but may be dignified by robes or other rich things.

    Common magic items include:

• Robes. Quality magical robes give +1 MD and some extra effect
• Wands. Cast spells with a certain number of MD a certain number of times.
• Diagrams. Drawings that evoke to the learned the insights needed to cast a spell— highly referential, very culturally contextually. Can be quickly imitated to release the spell in the diagram, expending it, or studied for three days to be learned with a d20 roll.

 Class: Magic-User

    Thanks to Louis, whose specialist I largely pulled from. 

    In Yarfu, magicians are called wizards because they have a reputation for wisdom, or for overwisdom. Students of the world as illuminated by Saver Heol, their traditions were wrought in academies which now moulder in ruins. The highest places of the Savadur are normally reserved for wizards.

    Start with a knife, 20 darts, an ornate hat, and two specialist toolkits of your choice— examples might include: a paint set, a set of surgeon's hooks, actors’ makeup, climbing gear, the makings for poisoning, a telescope. Start with a Lore of three topics

    +1 MD and +2 spells per template

• A: Lore, Quick
• B: Wizard Vision, Cool-Headed, 
• C: Practical Trade, Immunity to Sleep
• D: Instrumentalize

Lore: Made up a variety of topics you've studied and pondered. Remember, there is no writing here, so to study something fully you have to have visited strange and remote places, spoken to long-lived people, and connected dots on your own. Suitable topics includes:

• Any common artisan profession
• History and Etiology
• Military science
• Mathematics and architecture
• Surgery
• Curselore
• Folklore
• Poetry
• Philology
• Desertlore
• Bushcraft
• Arctica
• Alchemy
• Geopolitics
• Mythology
• Ex Chetera

The lowest possible roll for a skill check pertaining to a topic of your lore is 10. Most academics in Crocodole use the preceding list, minus the artisan professions thing, as a "total" taxonomy of knowledge.

Quick: You are skilled with all one-handed melee weapons and pick things up quickly when you need to. You can be taught something complicated by someone who knows what they’re doing, and will be able to do that thing as a passable amateur for the rest of the day.

Wizard Vision: One of your eyes changes to a random color. It can now see invisibility, and detect magic. If you lock eyes with another person you can tell how many MD they have.

Coolheaded: You can choose whether you wish to be affected by intimidation, seduction, charm, etc. This only works on non-magical effects. (I get that this is largely already true for PCs, but consider it extra license and a warning about magician NPCs.)

Practical Trade: If you make a melee attack on a target who is not aware of your presence, your attack inflicts an additional 2d8 damage. 

Instrumentalize: You can push yourself in pursuit of your goals. Once per day, you may do one of the following:

• When you take a turn, you can take another one immediately afterwards.
• You may attack three times instead of once.
• You may move at three times your normal speed for one turn.
• You may roll three times for a single ability or skill check, and choose the highest result

Spells
Magician players should work together with the DM to invent custom spells. A d100 table of the most common spells can be found here:

(Some of these spells are from Ashes to Ashes by Loch Eil. Crabalanche by Dunkey Halton)

 d100 magic spells (on repeats, round towards 100, or towards 1 if you're a priest of Saver Heol)

1. Sacred Bond - With a one hour ritual, establish a bond between yourself and another creature whom you trust, which contains [sum] points. You may each draw points from the bond to restore missing HP. You may only have one Sacred Bond at a time.
2. Ramose's Wall of Bronze - [dice * 5] bronze panels the height and width of an average human rise up from the ground. You can arrange them how you like. They have images of warriors on them. 
3. Beryx's Deferral - This spell is cast in response to taking damage. The incoming damage is reduced by [sum], and [dice] black pins appear in your arms. Wrenching these pins free deals 1d10 damage to you. If you have more pins in you than you have Max HP, you die by rotting over the course of a minute.
4. Water of the Mure - Choose an aperture you can see. White water pours from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. That soaked with the water cannot do violence and barely exerts friction. Shoes walk as though on ice, hammers tickle, and damage cannot be done.
5. Yanessa's Glorious Emanation - Transform into a ray of light, firing at an impossible speed towards any location within sight. The journey burns and weakens you to the tune of [lowest]+2 damage, and you may "bounce" your journey, turning at up to [dice]-1 non-black surfaces.
6. Sanctuary - Designate a space of up to [sum] by [sum] cubits that are currently warmed by the light of the sun. The undead cannot transgress the space and animals and those with evil intent must test morale to enter it. Lasts [dice] days.
7. Aset's Possession of the Power - Target corpse explodes for [dice]d6 damage, up to its HD total, in a [sum]x4 cubit radius. This spell can target an undead creature, but if it is not destroyed by the damage it does not explode out.
8. Water of the Prive - Choose an aperture you can see. Runny green water flows from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. It ignites flammable objects, and deals ~1d6 damage to someone the first time they touch it.
9. Ease Burden - summon [a yoke/a wheelbarrow/a cart/an ulu].
10. Water of the Al - Choose an aperture you can see. Thick sludge pours from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. The waters are sticky, and after ten minutes harden into a kind of groddy resin.
11. Hoopoe's Crown - Remove your head covering, and vibrant feathers (the color of your wizard eye, if you have one), bolding present themselves. You are the most prominent member of your group, and  those you newly encounter roll reaction at +2. The spell lasts for [dice] hours, and affected encounters reroll their reaction at the end of that time.
12. Teneniu's Royalty - Cause [dice] objects of up to [sum] stones to float in a gentle orbit around you for up to [dice] hours.
13. Izolda's Flare - At your solemn word, "Los-Kadur-Ra," the sun looses a missile of fire and light, and 1 minute later (or five minutes at night), it arrives, blasting the area you designate, dealing [dice]d6! damage to anyone present and scattering wooden structures as well as [marking/damaging/destroying/destroying and penetrating] stone or clay.
14. Magic Mouth - draw a simple image of a mouth on a surface. Whenever someone passes by it, or does some other triggering act you specify, the mouth animates, repeating a message you speak as you cast the spell lasting up to [sum] seconds.
15. Soft Animals of Your Body - weep and shiver, and vomit [sum] falcons. They cannot be easily commanded, but have a sense that they're on your side.
16. Instant Summons - You mark items with a special glyph that you learn when you learn this spell. You may snap your fingers and summon a marked item, expending an MD. You can have [level] active glyphs at once. The absolute maximum size of objects that can be moved is 20 slots. 
17. Mantra of the Plover - You yank the living spirit from yourself or a willing ally, in a movement like tearing a sheet off of someone's head. The character is undead for [sum] minutes, and doesn't take damage from being dismembered as long as the pieces come together before the spell ends. We should be well prepared.
18. Unnamed Hive - Follow an ache that tells you how to find the [dice] nearest places where a kiss was shared.
19. Gael's Memorialism - absorb [sum] XP and [dice] memories from a recently deceased human. If 4+ dice are invested, 500+ gp in funeral expense is expended, and the total HD of deceased figures involved in the ritual is 10+, summons a Mourner Giant, loyal to the caster but foul of temperament.
20. Tiye's Vantablade - summon a light-eating one-handed khopesh into your hand. For each die invested, choose one effect: 1. Foes attacking you treat light levels as dimmer than they otherwise are. 2. You get advantage on your attacks with the vantablade. 3. deal +1d4 damage with the first wound inflicted by the vantablade each round. 4. the blade shrieks and drinks blood, causing a morale test for worldly foes when it is summoned and when it slays a significant enemy.
21. Water of the Acon - Choose an aperture you can see. Scintillating yellow fluid pours from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. Wild beasts and undead cannot cross the waters.
22. First Men - Summon a 4 HD slime warrior and get +[dice] reaction with it. It gets +[dice] to morale if following your orders. Lasts [1 hour/1 day/1month/indefinitely]. Slimes without plants and fellows of their kind will grow sad.
23. Mantra of the Obelisk - In [lowest] Turns, do the skilled work of 10 laborers or architects acting in 1 Turn
24. Adorn the Case - Create an unguent which can preserve a body for [sum]x[dice] days. If this unguent is slathered on a weapon, it instead makes that weapon deal double damage against the undead for [highest] hits.
25. Prima Vedex - Assess up to [sum] symbols divided among [dice] objects as though they spoke their intention, context, subtext, exc.
26. Mantra of the Shining Gem - Enemies must test Morale to attack you for the first [dice] rounds of a combat. Lasts for 1 hour.
27. Yannez's True Strike - The next [dice] attacks you make within the next hour get +20 to hit.
28. Diet of Wyrms - Your sweat starts to glisten luridly. Those who touch you within the next [sum] without protection come into contact with a burning poison (1d4 damage), and must test Morale (or save with talent, for PCs) to resist immediately releasing you.
29. Water of the Pict - Choose an aperture you can see. Mirrorous fluid flows from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. Your will can shift its aspect to make the water seem to resemble anything.
30. Soul Jars - With a defiant twist, remove [dice] of your organs and place it in a vessel. You get +[dice] x 2 HP until the organ is replaced, and if the organ is your brain you can wear a helmet without interfering with spellcasting. The spell cannot be recast until the organs are returned to your body, and if one is destroyed you suffer the result.
31. Gwen's Sweet Archaic Song - Send a poem [sum] seconds long to a recipient you have met before. It arrives in their mind 1d6 x 10 minutes later.
32. Flicker - [highest] times after you cast this spell, you can choose to not be real when something tangible would affect you, such as an attack or a spell. You are unreal until the end of your next turn.
33. Nimlot's Little Slip - Make a chamber or labyrinth "skippable", going directly from an entrance to another area it has connected to which you've been to. Maintain the slip for [dice]+[dice] Turns.
34. Karoma's Dancing Blade - animates weapon to attack with +[dice] to-hit until it’s done [sum] damage.
35. Anger - For ten minutes, the next [sum] times someone tries to attack you, you get to attack them first.
36. Sorana's Courage - heal [sum] Morale divided among those you choose.
37. Ligia's Monstrous Form - Perform a sort of Haukepo'khe dance and transform into a bald woman of striated stone and metal. Gain [dice] DR for 30 minutes.
38. Animate Cloak - Your shadow animates and extends to follow your orders, moving up to [sum] cubits away and affecting objects and people with [sum] x 10% of human strength. It can be damaged by fire and has [sum] HP.
39. From Beneath, Devourer - You may crawl through the ground and breath dirt for [sum] minutes. Attacking foes from below grapples them.
40. Tara's Silent Hound - summon a silent (but vicious) greyhound that serves you for an hour. Invest 2 MD to make it a silent wolf, 3 MD to call two wolves, or 4+ MD for them to have ever-burning fur.
41. Telekinesis - lift [sum]x2 equipment slots of substance or [dice] people. Lasts [dice] minutes.
42. Become Ooze - You know, ooze! Lasts [sum] minutes.
43. Indifferent Rays - Swirl and dance and hop around a space, and after two rounds a half-cubit orb will give off a burning light for an hour, dealing 1d6 damage to organic things. Anyone reduced to 0 rolls on the atomic Table of Consequences. You have [sum] temporary HP to resist radiation for the duration of the spell.
44. Samzun's Arson - cavort and conjure [dice] 10x10 cubits of fire created.
45. Siamun's Command of Wealth - [sum] slots’s worth of coins act according to your command with [sum] x 10% of a human's strength.
46. Tenenan's Passage - Make a cut in your head (dealing 1 damage), then go unhindered through [highest] barriers. Makes a light twinkling sound.
47. Blade Atomic Blazing - Empower a weapon. It casts colorful light [sum] feet, damages ghosts, and inflicts [dice] fatigue on a successful hit for [sum] minutes. The spell is powered by a great fiery furnace deep underground
48. Flame Unto Flame - cause a fire to grow in heat. If enclosed in an oven, a kiln, or a hole, it becomes a marvelous furnace, though any item placed within burns with Atomic energy for [sum] times the duration it is inserted. The flame lasts up to [dice] hours
49. Wild Beasts - You summon [sum]HD of slavering beasts up from the ground. They are hostile to everyone
50. Mantra of the Large Pond - For one hour, see your surroundings as they might appear decades and centuries later, ruins of ruins. There is a [dice]-[dungeon level] in-6 chance of a rent ceiling that allows natural light to show, and a +[dice]-in-6 chance of searching for secret doors and other hidden things.
51. Sovereign of All the World - bleed a stinking green acid from beneath the nail of your pointer finger for [dice] rounds. Each round of contact destroys non-magical material— a fist of metal, a head of stone, a chest of wood, a horse of dirt, exc. the acid may be used as a melee attack for 1d10 damage.
52. Scorpion Sting - Summon a curved light knife made of chitin. The first creature stabbed with this knife takes [sum] extra poison damage, save for half.
53. Become Newt - You transform into a small lizard (the color of your wizard eye, if you have one), capable of climbing slowly and running at human speed. This lasts for four hours. During that time, you have [dice] HP.
54. Ally Across Time - Summon up to [dice] alternate selves. You may instead summon fewer selves to get rerolls. 
55. Sapphire Snake Bolt - Fire a beam 150 ft., bouncing up to [dice] times. Targets save or take [sum] damage.
56. Remote Viewing - See any space up to [sum]x10 feet away.
57. Water of the Cry - Choose an aperture you can see. Cerulean water pours from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. The water numbs and makes heavy, and makes living things giddy with excitement.
58. Mimic - Disguise yourself as an object you have seen, which is smaller than a cart. The object must at least be big enough to contain your body, unless you cast with 3 or more MD, then it can be any size, down to a pin. Objects you mimic work perfectly well for mundane purposes. You can be harmed and injured normally if people attack your Mimic’d form. 
59. Morvan's Acid Arrows - conjures [sum] bolts of lurid yellow acid you can throw like a bow sends arrows.
60. Animate Objects - Up to [dice] objects will be able to move of their own volition, [sum] rounds strenuous actions, [sum] minutes otherwise. Objects have a [dice]-in-8 chance of being particularly loyal, this is only rolled the first time you cast the spell on a particular target.
61. Tanguy's Coldsnap - An area [dice] x 5’ in diameter is exposed to a sudden burst of frigid cold. Creatures in the area take [sum] cold damage, water freezes, & so on. The area gradually returns to its normal temperature over the course of an hour.
62. Comprehend Languages - You understand and speak one language perfectly for [dice] Turns.
63. Siamu's Crabalanche - Point at a crevice and crabs start pouring out of it. Like a hundred crabs per round. They don't really do anything, just mill around for a while and then wander off. Lasts for [sum] rounds.
64. Water of the Vote - Choose an aperture you can see. Stinking fluid pools from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. This is flammable, and belches yellow smoke upon ignition.
65. Silence - [dice] creatures are made incapable of making sound for [sum] minutes. With 4MD, can instead make a single creature permanently silent
66. Mantra of the Crocodile - Seem to be a log, pillar of rough stone, or similar knobbly furnishing. You are totally silent. Lasts for [dice] hours or [until you take a step/until you are seen taking a step/until you attack/until you release the spell.]
67. Promethean Shriek - Call fire towards you by calling its name ("AAAAAAAH"). For up to [sum] rounds, pull a flame from up to 40 cubits away into your open mouth. On later rounds, you may spit the flames elsewhere as an attack or to set it safely onto good fuel.
68. Ego - Gain [sum] temporary HP and turn undead of [dice] HD or fewer.
69. Threading Dew - For [sum] rounds, instead of moving a normal distance you may flow like wind in the trees, seeming to suddenly appear elsewhere without having to physically traverse the distance.
70. Imperial Heart - Make a heart small and black and hard. It is indestructible and, if inscribed with the image of a river, immoble, even hanging in the air. Lasts [sum] minutes.
71. Jackal-Son-Of-Jackal - eat flesh and at least one organ from a dead body to learn the answer to [sum] questions. -1 die to compel honesty, -1 die to ensure full mental faculties. Eating a rotting organ has a [days dead]-in-20 chance of contracting a harmful akh.
72. Stone Plague - Your touch ‘infects’ stone or clay, transforming [sum] cubic cubits into damp sand over the course of [dice] minutes
73. Hide - Enchant a hooded cloak to disguise you from [highest] senses, sight counting as two. Fire touching your cloak reveals you. 
74. Enervate - Inflict [dice] Fatigue on a target, or [sum] if you have a part of their body in your hand (plucked strands of hair, for example).
75. Corpse Mask - Turn a corpse’s face into a magical mask with [dice] of the following properties while worn: resemble the face’s owner, gain their voice, learn one of their languages, recognize what they recognize. 
76. Snakelike Jaw - swallow things whole and get an extra attack each round, biting with +[dice] to-hit , +4 if you are stuck in or grappling. Lasts 1 Turn.
77. Night Dog Bite - Shivering, you make an extremity or object undetectable by pressure, sound, or pain for [sum] minutes
78. Leaden Bandage - The next [dice] magical objects you touch writhe and scream. If [sum] exceeds their HD, spellcasters and magical creatures are also affected, though only once per casting of the spell.
79. Shatter - Target object is struck as though by [sum] iron hammers, with a loud bang. 
80. Door to Chaos - Tracing a line of blood along the frame of a portal, name up to [sum] doors (minimum [lowest]) within a quarter-league that you have seen. Anyone passing through this door appears in a random door from among the ones you designate. Lasts 1 full day.
81. Animating Force - distribute [sum] HP among [dice] corpses, each one ritually prepared. They stand and serve as simple servants, clumsy fighters, and poor conversationalists. They lose 1 HP per day due to erosion.
82. Orbs of Lightning - String up to [sum] electric orbs throughout an area, no closer to each other than 4 cubits. Coming within 1 cubit of an orb causes a sharp discharge, expending the orb to deal 1d4 damage. Lasts 6 hours.
83. Viorel's Fumigade - spit [dice] bulging, scored seeds up. When thrown, a seed emits a hazy poison, filling a space with an 8-cubit radius, dealing 1 damage per round to all living and/or plant creatures. A seed retains potency for 1 day before crusting and sugaring over into an ingestible hallucinogenic sweet.
84. Rubbery Body - Immune to bludgeoning, fall damage and similar things. Amazing contortions. Lasts [sum] minutes.
85. Send Out - You transform into a buzzard. This lasts for [sum] minutes. During that time, you have [dice]x[dice] HP.
86. Torch - Breath on [the ground/a piece of architecture/an item/a face]. It glows with light (the color of your wizard eye, if you have one) in a 30' radius [for 4 hours/for a month/until broken/until broken]. An affected creature saves with favor or is blinded by the light
87. Sleep - [sum] HD of creatures suddenly enter a waking dream, sleepwalking as though living out their vision.
88. Tréphina's Cynical Work - Take a turn to perform an occult bone massage to heal [sum] HP, spending 5 to instead heal an injury.
89. Lust - Track someone by scent for [dice] hours. Get +[sum] to notice details about them but -[sum] to resist their deceptions.
90. Water of the Ride - Choose an aperture you can see. Thick red foam pours from it for [sum] rounds, inundating the surroundings. While it moves, it makes a baying sound that attracts living things (MOR test to resist), and functions as low-density blood, if you might need any.
91. Charm Person - One person with [sum] or fewer HD and wearing no charms or amulets treats you as a friend and teacher for a month and a day.
92. Ironflesh - Turn up to [highest] sixths of your body into immobile iron. Lasts until you desire otherwise.
93. Viamanse - [know the direction of the nearest road/intuit everyone who has walked a particular trail/ken the provenance of an item/bind a tiffin giant to serve you for 101 days]
94. Mantra of the Dark Green Hill - You and up to [sum] characters pass through [sum] nights. If cast in a forlorn place, instead that place passes through those nights, essentially existing in a time between time until the spell ends. You do not regain MD in these nights.
95. Babble - Issue [dice] commands to plant creatures. They will obey, provided they are not attacked, but impose [lowest] strictures on you in return. Their demands are usually irrational, rather than overtly dangerous.
96. Maelys's Eclipse - cast a heavy shadow on up to [dice] targets. Can make a person anonymous, conceal a doorway, exc. lasts [1 Turn/1 hour/1 day/until the target is bathed in the light of a rising sun.]
97. Ovidiu's Illusion - Create a moving, silent image which lasts for [sum] minutes, centred on a tiny songbird you conjure, which flies away into the sky at the spell’s end. You can move and reshape it as you like if the songbird can hear you whistle. If the songbird is killed, the illusion is destroyed. 
98. Darkness - Summon a black torch, which sheds darkness as a torch does light. It lasts for [sum] minutes. 
99. Enora's Dark Star - Play your hand over a flame. Its color becomes grey (or the color of your wizard eye if you have one], and you may have it switch between shedding light to shedding fog. It burns for [sum] x 10 minutes.
100. Mutant spell! Roll twice and combine. 

-

Class: Chancer

In the "jianghu scene" of Yarfu, there aren't really any characters of the chancer type. Stories from abroad speak of slinking wildmen, at home in the places where trees grow so thick they blot out Saver Heol's light, hirsute outlaws who fly on stone birds, assassinate priests, and lie. Thus "chancer" is a term of derogation and disdain.
 

The Written Word Remains: Spellbook Generator

 I like spellbooks. I like to imagine all the notes, marginalia, and non-spell contents in them. To spur that kind of detailed artifact on the fly in a game, I've made a generator for random spellbooks and their miscellaneous contents. Each generated spellbook will have 20 items listed. If you have an idea for how many spells you want the book to contain, simply stop after it lists that many. 

This is a brainstorming aid; it will give you prompts for spells, usually pretty actionable ones, but it will be up to you to designate the particulars.

This generator builds on my glog wizard generator and my wild west wizard generator. See also ktrey's Magical Marginalia and 100 Grimoires.

Wild West Wizard Generator

 Generates a moniker, some signature items, and a spell list for a wizard that draws from B/X's base magic-user spells, a few from other sources, and a collection of original spells. I prefer for campaigns to take the spell list in the book as a jumping-off point, from which we can dive into variation and invention.

I use this generator for cowboy names, so I imagine the "moniker" of each wizard is something they take on when they enter magician society.

The generator shows the spellbook of a 14th-level magic user. To get the spellbook for a lower-level magician, you can just ignore spells of a higher level than they could cast.

Seek After Wizards, to be Defiled by Them (GLoG: Wizard)

art by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin

Adventurers have a romantic view of magi. They are not the usual targets of arcane predation-- they have no children to steal, and if the head of state is impersonated by a wandering sorcerer, that's only good for business. Some were even raised by those magic-seeking freaks.

The problem is that all the best spells of slander and double-dealing are easy to acquire if you are a total cad. A wizard is a con artist who has demonstrated their willingness to break seals, read aloud from unknown tomes, and release bound evils. They must be kept from artifacts of power as a matter of simple civilization.

This class works to make PCs without having to roll on a spell list. For powerful NPC wizards, you can just pick up a class like this and roll several magic tools of folklore, or allocate them powers as appropriate.

Wizard

Start with: a long beard, a long hat, a long life, one inventory slot's worth of pure muscle, and a magic tool of folklore.

• A: Ripped, Spells
• B: Signs
• C: Curse Reversed
• D: Domain

Ripped: You can fill up to [level] inventory slots with pure muscle. For each slot filled, you get +2 to most tests of strength (but not attack rolls), and your kung fu deals +1 damage. A week of slovenly living degrades a slot of muscle and a week of shadow-boxing adds a slot of muscle.

Spells: Against foes of equal or lesser power, you may disguise yourself and see through their disguises, tell extremely convincing lies and easily discern their lies, conceal your intentions and know their intentions, make objects appear valuable or worthless, and make ordinary random events go your way.

Against foes of greater power, things are more complicated. You can increase the odds of successfully working a spell (from 0%) by 20% for each of the following conditions met:

• You know their true name!
• They have cheated or wronged you!
• You have put a curséd totém in the place where they sleep!
• You have put something from their body (hair, blood, etc.) into a curséd doll!
• The gods themselves cry out for their destruction!

Signs: Spend an hour in communion with the energy of the world to receive a confusing vision of a topic or question of your choice. This grants at least three significant images, tableus, names, or actions.

Curse Reversed: when you encounter ongoing magics, you intuitively understand a method to undo them. It may not be easy but it is always effective.

Domain: you start to attract the service of strange beings. Every time you seek hirelings, you find an equal number of monsters and extraplanar beings to swell your ranks. When in your home (or home complex), you can project a hologram of your head throughout its extent, seeing and speaking through it.

Magic Tool of Folklore: tables by Signs in the Wilderness, generator formatting by Spwack

GLoG Class: Graven Wizard

This is inspired by a think on a GLoG discord server.

Despite the unending variety of classes and character options available to an enterprising system-hacker, there are certain central ability-sets that we find ourselves coming back to time after time. Turns out, "being good at fighting" is a sufficiently desirable skill-set for enough games that people re-invent the fighter. Ditto "solving problems with flashy magic" and the multitude of re-invented wizards.

A selection of many alike options is not always desirable, but neither is a bloodless, generic class line-up. We want a fighter, but one that contributes to the setting, one that asks of us a certain height. It can be meaningful to call your fighter a zouave, even when its abilities are either generic fighter feats or random minor boons. Each of your campaigns can be radically impacted with small changes to the frame of old stand-by classes. Consider:

This, but more jacked

The Graven Wizard
Mortals born of mortals cannot wield the rudiments of power without implement, so the Great Masters carved their children from stone, making implements with artistry and arete. These were the graven wizards, representations of those gods and kings who never were and never shall be. The Masters are dead now, but in their vanity they taught students, who maintain the schools and keep them separate, and try to curate those wizards who have not left to wander.

Graven Wizards don't get whatever cantrips your wizard school of choice grants and they can't use scrolls or spell tablets. Graven wizards don't study spellbooks, at least not to prime their spells. Instead, they count facets of their power. They don't eat normal food and have no formal place in society.  Cruel and wealthy people won't have compunctions about using them as decorations or to hold up ceilings. Otherwise, the inspired depiction of mortal pain in their creation makes them act with normal mortal vulnerabilities. They sleep, weep, and are tortured by all the usual indecisions. 

Equipment: a six-pack, stone paint, a letter of provenance, three days of marble rations, the hatred of artists from all rival schools, and a painfully real set of Motif-Memories.

• A: +1 MD, cantrips, proficiency with stone arms and armor
• B: +1 MD, can illuminate scrolls with 5 gp to make them usable to you, art pieces worth more than spell scrolls count as scrolls of a relevant spell to you. (You should have started collecting art objects last level.)
• C: whatever features are normal for the wizard school of your choice
• D: whatever features are normal for the wizard school of your choice

Cantrips:
1. Eat Worked Stone. If you don't do this regularly, you grow gaunt and dull-minded.
2. Stand Totally Still. Everyone knows that graven wizards can do this, but a DM is obliged to put at least 1d4 stone statues in every dungeon in lands where graven wizards are common.
3. Read Art. Graven Wizards possess a form of prima vedex when observing art-- automatically comprehending the meaning of paintings, sculptures, and the like. Graffiti and children's scribbles yield up only a terse description of what is depicted, but the great masterpieces about which you could write a thesis yield a thesis-worth of information to them.  For instance, a graven wizard who encounters Judith Slaying Holofernes will know not only how it was made, but the story of the motif being depicted as well as the circumstances of the artist who made it.

Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi

(This allows them to identify the artistic school and spells known of other graven wizards they meet. Despite the wishes of their creators, graven wizards of different artistic schools usually don't bear each other any hostility. Think of how the ghost of Clytemnestra might greet the ghost of Julius Caesar.)

d10 Motif-Memories
1. Vague memories of making authorities look foolish. Start with a dose of hypothermic poison.
2. Vague memories of titanomachies and trysts. Start with three stone javelins.
3. Vague memories of exploiting others thoughtlessly. You can detach your head at will.
4. Vague memories of loss and being set aside. Start with flowing hair that counts as a stone helmet.
5. Vague memories of darkness and unheeded words. Start with a a stone walking staff.
6. Vague memories of succeeding at all you try. Start with a stone horse whose eventual death will ruin you emotionally.
7. Vague memories of making daily, impossible decisions. Start with a stone diadem.
8. Vague memories of torture and persecution. Start carrying your own skinned hide, which counts as a stone buff coat.
9. Vague memories of persecution and torture. Start with food and wine that you cannot eat yourself.
10. Vague memories of an actually pretty fine life. That's all gone now. Start with a stone lyre.