Saturday, July 13, 2019

New Wizard: Baboonist




This should come to no surprise to anyone, but nature never gave us the baboon.

How could they?  The face, the teeth, the genitals, the cruel intelligence of the baboon--these things set it apart from their fellow beasts.  They are artificial, as false as any other chimera.

Image result for mandrill angry
Technically not a baboon.
You'll find most baboonists among the nobility.  Baboons require a large amount of space and food, and require a large amount of resources.

Besides, many noble families enjoy employing the baboons as thugs--equipping them with blackjacks and matching vests.

Baboonist

Restrictions

You may never employ any hirelings except baboons.  You may never use any mount or war beast except a baboon.  If you break this rule, your baboons will realize your treachery as soon as they see you or smell you, and they will immediately revolt and never again obey your commands.  Your baboons are assholes.

One of your starting spells is always create baboon.

Boons

You can command a number of HD 1 baboons equal to the size of your liver.  To increase the size of your liver, you must eat livers from magical creatures.  Each liver eaten this way increases your liver by 1 size, up to the HD of the magical creature minus 1.  You start with a size 1 liver.

Baboons

The name is a misnomer.  A baboon can be a baboon, mandrill, or various mandrilloids (permutations of the mandrill schema).  The provenance of the liver determines the type of primate produced by the create baboon spell.

You can only give your baboons commands as a group.  They will not allow themselves to be separated or to be commanded separately.  Treat your baboons as a single pile of HP.  For every 4 points of damage the baboons take, one of the baboons dies.  the horde makes a single attack, with +1 to Attack and damage for every baboon beyond the first.

The baboons will not do anything helpful unless commanded to.  This means that your first round of combat is usually spent telling you baboons what to do.  They can understand up to three words, optionally accompanied by you pointing at something.

Spell List

  1. calm
  2. create baboon
  3. rage
  4. Shadoom's serpecation
  5. speak with beast
  6. weigh heart
  7. psychography (variant: your baboons do the writing)
  8. spider climb
  9. overload baboon
  10. secret beasts
  11. golden needle
  12. possess baboon

Legendary Spells

  1. wild polymorph
  2. elevate beast
Mishap
You take damage equal to whatever the doubles showed (1-6), and. . .
1. You are silenced.  (Int check at the start of each round to end; lasts at least 1 round.)
2. You are blinded.  (Con check at the start of each round to end; lasts at least 1 round.)
3. You lose all prepared spells except one, randomly determined.
4. You cast a random prepared spell at a random target with a random number of MD.
5. You start turning into a baboon.  Body party chosen at random: face, tail, hands, fur.
6. You learn wild polymorph.  If you've already gotten this result in the past, wild polymorph is instantly cast on you.

Doom
You turn into a foul-tempered baboon for 1 hour.  You, and all of your baboons, go on a rampage.  They will flee difficult combat in favor of easiest targets and/or rampant vandalism.  You forget that you were ever anything other than a baboon.
2. As above, except for 1 day.
3. As above, except permanent.

Also not a baboon.
Appendix A: Spells and Shit

New Rules: Mixed Success in Spellcasting
Some spells have graduations of success.  You invest your magic dice normally, but only the highest roll counts for the result.  The more dice you invest, the greater your chance of a critical success.

1-3 = Mixed Success
4-5 = Full Success
6   = Critical Success


Create Baboon
R: touch    T: primate    D: permanent
The ingredients required to make a baboon are 8 hours, a fresh liver, and a live mammal.  The animal must be fed a large amount of the liver.  (Rats can be purchased in a major city for 1c.)

Mixed Success -- Disfigured baboon causes you 1d6 Cha damage.
Full Success -- You create a normal baboon.
Critical Success -- Brilliant baboons allow you to give more complex commands.  (+1 word)

Shadoom's Serpication
R: touch  T: creature  D: permanent
Target is cured of a poison, which they vomit out in the form of a serpent.  The form of serpent depends on the type of the poison.  Although they look exotic, these new species behave like normal snakes.

Mixed Success -- Serpent immediately attacks you, and acts normally afterwards.
Full Success -- Serpent acts normally.
Critical Success -- Serpent is nonaggressive to you and will obey one command, once.

Weigh Heart
R: touch  T: heart  D: instant
You hold a heart in your hands.  The creature does not get a save, but [sum] must equal or exceed its Level.  You learn the best and worst thing that the creature has ever done (in the creature's own estimation).

Psychography (Baboon Version)
R: 50'  T: baboons  D: 1 hour
Ingredients: writing utensils and appropriate surfaces.  After one hour, one of your baboons will bring you the best piece of writing they've accomplished so far.

Mixed Success -- Pure gibberish.  Eroded Shakespeare.
Full Success -- The last interesting thing that happened here.
Critical Success -- The last two interesting things that happened here.

Overload Baboon
R: 50'  T: baboon  D: permanent
Each round, target baboon gets +1 to Attack and Damage.  At the end of each round, the baboon has a 1-in-4 chance of exploding.

Secret Beasts
R: 50'  T: creature D: permanent
Up to [dice] willing creatures are hidden inside of your body for [sum] hours.  (If you are a baboonist, up to [sum] baboons can be hidden this way.)  This lasts until either you or the creatures wish to be ejected (a free action).  Creatures hidden this way manifest on your skin--for example, a blond person will put blond hairs on your skin.

Golden Needle
R: touch  T: creature  D: 2 * [dice] rounds
Target creature takes Xd6 damage once the spell dissipates, where X was the spell's duration.  You can end the spell early as a free action.

Possess Baboon
R: 50'  T: baboon  D: [sum] rounds
Exactly what it says on the tin.  If the baboon is your baboon, it gets no saving through.

Wild Polymorph
R: 50'  T: creature  D: [sum] rounds
Look up [sum] random creatures (use the index in your bestiary) and choose one.  The target turns into the chosen creature.

Elevate Beast
R: touch  T: beast  D: permanent
Touched beast immediately turns into a beastman with an intelligence of [sum]-[dice].  You permanently lose 1 Wis and 1 Cha.  You choose how much of your memories, knowledge, goals, and personality you want to copy into the beastman.

10 comments:

  1. Only Arnold could take the skeleton of a solid necromancer class and make a baboonist. Whether this was his genius or madness is lost to time.

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    Replies
    1. Skeleton of a necromancer class. Heh. Did it raise your spirits?

      Delete
  2. This certainly explains all the characters I have in Caves of Qud that got murdered by baboons.

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  3. Another banger! I love the "graduations of success". It motivates those cowardly wizards to use all their dice!

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  4. Now I want to run an experiment to see if an elevated baboon is too terrible to worship zulin. Hypothesis: Being Decent in any way is so against baboon natural law that it simply explodes.

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  5. What is Golden Needle a reference to? If the target casts dispel magic, should the Xd6 fire (since the spell ends) or not?

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    Replies
    1. Golden Needle is maybe a reference to acupuncture. I just thought the imagery was cool.

      Yeah, dispel magic should trigger it.

      Delete
  6. He can't keep getting away with it!

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  7. could you use this in dnd 5e sessions?

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  8. How does Overload Baboon work with the baboonist's baboon horde? Does the horde get the attack/damage bonuses on their single attack, until the baboon blows and they are -1 baboon?

    ReplyDelete