Flirting With Death (Class: Duelist)

 

This class owes an obvious debt to deus ex parabola’s Fighters and Rogues.

THE DUELIST

+1 to Hit per Template. 

A - Panache, Style, Parry & Riposte 

B - Like a Bird

C - Flynning

D - Like a Wolf

Panache

When unarmoured, you add your [level + 2] to your AC, representing dashing charm, fancy footwork and opportunely timed roguish winks. If you’re hobbled, sunk in mud or tied up, your AC is just 10. 

When you reduce someone to 0HP, you can choose to non-lethally embarrass them - for example:

• Spin their sword out of their hands

• Cut their belt and pants them

• Trip them down a staircase

• Flip a jug over their head

• Bonk 'em on the skull

• What have you, etc.

This removes them from combat in a kind of a “zorro kicked that guy offscreen and he’s no longer a problem” way, and onlookers and guards like it a lot more than maiming people. 

You can make 2 attacks in a round. 

Style

Pick one of the Styles from the end of this post. You know two of its techniques and stances, your choice in whatever combination you like. 

When you level up or spend a season training, you learn two new techniques or stances from a Style you know. Learning a new Style requires a season of tutelage with a manual or a master. 

Techniques are active moves for fights. Fancy attacks, and so on. Flourishes. You can use each Technique once per fight against intelligent enemies, as afterwards, they get wise to your shit. 

Stances are passive, at will, and have constant effects. You can only be in one stance at a time, but changing your stance can be done as you please (or at the start of your turn in combat).  

Some styles might have lessons, permanent changes to your character, many of which are useful beyond combat.

Parry & Riposte

Once per round, if you can both move and attack, you can parry, and reduce incoming damage from a melee attack by 1d6+[To Hit].

If you reduce the damage to 0 or lower, you may riposte and make a free attack against the target. 

Like a Bird 

You’re very physically fit. 

You can keep your balance perfectly while running, jump your own height from standing, slide down bannisters without falling over, climb anything it’s possible for a human to climb free-handed, and can do sick backflips. 

You are immune to high blood pressure and indigestion. 

Flynning 

You can attack thrice and parry twice in a round. 

If someone uses all of their attacks against you and does no damage (either from missing or parrying), they are stunned for a round. 

Like a Wolf

You deal double damage to enemies with less HD than you. 

STYLES

The Ψ in front of each style name is short for… pstyle, I don’t know, it’s 4am.

Ψ - Orbit

The style favoured in Urbis Orbis, the Eternal City. Considered classical. 

You might have learned it from a fencing tutor, or from an oft-reprinted manual. 

1. Technique: Disarming Strike

Upon a successful attack, you can knock whatever someone’s holding in their hand out of it. Fighters get a save. 

2. Technique: Finishing Blow

If an attack takes an enemy below [level * 2] HP, but still above 0, you can quickly finish them off with a punch, hilt-strike or rapid slice. 

3. Technique: Hilt-Strike

One of your attacks becomes a sudden bludgeon with your sword’s hilt, dealing blunt damage and having advantage. 

4. Stance: Tempo
   For each successful attack in a fight, you get +1 to Hit and +1 Damage for the rest of that fight.  

Ψ - Ossean
The style of the Osset League, a collection of mercantile cities to the far north. 

You might have learned it from a down-on-her-luck soldier, or an iron-plated book. 

1. Technique: Sweep

If an attack you made this round would also hit the AC of a creature near your target, you damage them too. 

2. Technique: Vom Tag 

You may forgo both of your attacks to make one massive strike from above your head. If it hits, you deal +6 damage and knock the target away or prone. Experienced fighters or large monsters may save to keep their footing. 

3. Stance: Bog Fighting

Your extra AC from panache isn’t lost when you’re on unstable or boggy ground. 

4. Stance: Hill Fortress

Enemies attacking you from the low ground have disadvantage on their attacks, and you have advantage to attack them. 

Ψ - Admirat
The blessed sword-style taught to Inquisitors of the Seventh Church. 

You might have learned it from a visiting quisit, or from a small black book. 

1. Technique: Rose

If you miss an attack, you can flourish and immediately move 15’. 

2. Technique: Carnation

Before you make your attacks for a round, your sword blooms with harsh red weirdlight - an enemy must save or be blinded. 

3. Stance: Careful Analysis

You can See HD and See AC. 

4. Stance: Removing Shadow

Your sword glows with blue weirdlight. This is a stance of the soul, not the body. 

Ψ - Excabrian
The old-fashioned military style of the cyclopean-built fortress-city of Excabria. 

You might have learned it from a pompous captain, or from a book of iron plates. 

1. Technique: Stratagem

You may forgo an attack to have an ally who can hear you attack instead. 

2. Technique:  Portcullis

When you successfully attack, you can sweep downwards and hobble a foe. Fighters get a save. 

3. Stance: Gate and Walls

When in a choke-point, doorway, or other narrow passage, you parry with a d8. 

4. Stance: Control

You add +2 to the damage-reduction rolls when you parry. You get an extra save against being disarmed. 

Ψ - Aderran
The strange way they fight in the great port of Aderro. Requires a trained falcon. 

You might have learned it from a wild-eyed falconer, or from a scratched-up codex. 

1. Technique: A Bird in the Hand

When an enemy misses you with an attack, you can suddenly throw your falcon in their face, dealing 1d6 damage and blinding them for a round. 

2. Stance: Bird and Sword, in Accord

If you made a successful attack on this round, your falcon may attack any target you can see once, using your To Hit and dealing 1d6 damage. 

3. Stance: Eagle Eye

What your falcon sees, you do. 

4. Stance: Look Up! 

You can parry arrows and bullets. If your parry is successful, your falcon can riposte the people that fired them. 

Ψ - Marcione

Named for the style’s inventor, the sword-genius Ana de Marcione. 

Maybe you learned it from her, the most dangerous old woman in the world - or you bought her book. 

1. Technique: Feint

After a missed attack, immediately make another attack with advantage. 

2. Technique: Deflect

You can make one free parry with a durable object held in your offhand (such as a metal gun-barrel) though you cannot riposte off of it. 

3. Technique: Quick Step

You can dodge one melee attack with a quick backstep. 

4. Stance: Crystal Sphere Resonance

You can see magic (though only a wizard can read magic) and your sword is a +1 Weapon. When under the open sky, you can hear it hum. 

Ψ - Requiem

The style of the grim city of Requiesa. Designed for killing the dead once more. 

You might have learned it from a weary gravedigger, or found it carved into ancient stone walls. 

1. Stance: In Pacet

Your attacks deal full damage to all undead, and people you kill are rendered incorrupt, like a Saint.

2. Technique: Quickshot 

After making two attacks, you can make one free attack with a gun held in your offhand. No sense relying only on old tools. This doesn’t mean you can reload guns one-handed. 

3. Technique: Turn Undead

When you make a successful attack against an undead creature, you can force them to test morale or flee you. If they have the same or more HD than you, they will stop fleeing at the end of their next turn. 

4. Stance: Sure and Certain Hope

While in this stance, you see in black and white, but are immune to fear, XP drain, possession and add +[level] to saves vs. death. 

Ψ - Tamburo
The style of the sword-master Plato of Aviso, who bodyguards the Archpriest.   

You might have learned it from the pious swordsman himself, or bought his book. 

1. Technique: Crash

When you make a successful attack and are holding a shield, you can follow up and clap the target round the head - they must save for be stunned for a round. 

2. Technique: Thud

When you are reduced to 0HP and are holding a shield, you are reduced to 1 instead. 

3. Technique: Clang

When you riposte and are holding a shield, you may bash with the shield instead of attacking, dealing +2 damage and knocking the target prone. Fighters get a save. 

4. Stance: O Useful Buckler

When holding a shield, you parry with a d8. 

 

Ψ - Talpa

The secretive style of the Populares, who control the dark undercity of Urbis Orbis. 

You might have learned it from a lantern-carrying woman with black eyes, or an old vellum scroll. 

5. Technique: Strike from the Dark

When attacking a target that can’t see you, have advantage and deal double damage. 

6. Stance: Lantern Hand

A lantern counts as a shield for you. 

7. Stance: Tunnel Fighting

You can parry and use panache while crawling, crouching or in the foetal position. 

8. Stance: Pack Tactics

If you’re attacking a target an ally of yours has hit, you have advantage. 

Ψ - Volpe
An elegant, showy style, favoured by criminals and rakes. 

You might have learned it from a retired footpad in a smoky room, or from a loose sheaf of papers. 

1. Technique: Daylight Robbery
   When you could riposte, you can instead take an item from an enemy’s inventory.

2. Technique: The Goad

When you make a successful attack, you can embarrass the target (such as by cutting your monogram into their clothes) - enraged, they will attack you next round if able. Fighters may save against this. 

3. Stance: Defense in Motion

While moving, you have +2 AC and can parry arrows and bullets. 

4. Stance: The Dangerous Dance

When you parry you can move up to 10 feet, passing through other creatures by tumbling or sliding between their legs. 

Ψ - Cynical

The style of the Cynocephali of the north-east. Designed to maim. 

You might have learned it from a dog-faced mercenary or a dog-eared codex. 

1. Stance: Aggro

When you hit two successful attacks on the same target, you can make another for free. 

2. Technique: Humerus

When making an attack, you can lash out violently - target must save or have one of their arms (your choice) disabled for 1d6 days. 

3. Technique: Sudden Cut

You draw your sheathed sword and immediately make one attack. You can do this before initiative rolls. 

4. Stance: Manhunter
   You deal +2 damage to humans. The scars of your weapons ache. 

Ψ - Wose
The unrefined style of the Woses, who live in the god-ruled wilds to the north. 

You might have learned it from a hirsute wildman, or a barkcloth scroll. 

9. Technique: Ambush

Attacking an unaware target, deal double damage and knock them prone if they fail a save.

10. Stance: Run Quick

In a straight line, you move as fast as a horse so long as you have no fatigue. 

11. Stance: Walk Lightly

You are invisible in foliage and leave no footprints. 

 

12. Stance: Eat Well
    You deal +2 damage to animals and wild beasts. 

Alright fuckers I did twelve fuckin’ Styles I am personally challenging YOU to do like five or something. Yeah, you, motherfucker, you reading this.

People who have answered this challenge:

• Archon's Court, and it was answered well, these styles are better than mine. 
• Craggenloch Tribune also did some excellent, interesting styles.  
• Spiceomancy also answered, with the finesse they often show in RPG design.
• Dungeonfruit also answered with some really good styles. 
• The City Draws Breath also made some wonderful contributions. 
• Grimawlkin also answered! I release you from this curse!
• Numbers Aren't Real answered with an excellent kung-fu themed hack of the class!
• Carriongods gives us duelling styles from the Nine Rivers.

Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG)

 This is not an exhaustive list.

INADVISABLE DECISIONS

𝚫 - Noticing the Problem

Point a powerful telescope at the darkness between the stars, become aware that it moves. 

You can now learn the Basic Alienist Deltas. 

BASIC

𝚫 - Basic Preparations

Find a way to obscure your soul from esoteric observation. The classical answer is a lead helmet that locks shut around your head and neck, but that only works while you’re wearing it. 

Creatures that “see” you via the presence of your soul will not be able to see you. This won’t help with grues - they know you’re there, but the other things you encounter along the path might not. 

𝚫 - Grue Theory

Establish a cogent theory on what grues actually are. Write it down. If you lose your theory, find evidence that disproves it, or forget your theory, start again.

If a grue has a choice between eating you and eating somebody else, they won’t choose you. This might save your life. If there’s no other options, they’ll happily eat you.

You can now also learn the Theoretical Alienist Deltas

𝚫 - Opening the Mind

Lose your allegiance to any nation, find any faith hollow and papery, abandon your pride, forget your hometown, forget the faces of your parents. Put a hole in your skull, literally or metaphorically. 

You’re immune to charm effects of all sorts (including propaganda) - you can sense reality decay like  a bad smell. Most of the world smells pretty foul. 

You can now also learn the Connective Alienist Deltas. 

𝚫 - Mouth with No Tongue

Don’t worry, it’s a poetic term. Create or find aperture (a door, perhaps) that opens into true darkness. If the aperture is ever closed permanently, start again. 

The image of the aperture calls to you in your dreams - it beckons you enter. Things thrown into it are gone forever, totally unrecoverable.

You can now also learn the Invocative Alienist Deltas. 

𝚫 - Blind Corner 

Create a space where there is no possibility of light entering, scribe it with glyphs in your own blood, and keep it perfectly dark for a year and a day. If light ever gets in, start again. 

You can move around totally dark spaces as if you could see, if given a stationary hour to sense out the space’s dimensions and properties. 

You can now also learn the Geometric Alienist Deltas. 

THEORETICAL 

𝚫 - Collapse Projections

Complete three of: Watch something mechanical come apart violently, watch a corpse rot for a week, watch a lost person go the wrong way, watch a violent act, or watch something important break. If you turn away, interrupt or forget, start again. 

You can tell exactly when something physical that you can see is going to break, fail, stop working, come apart or become useless. This borders on the precognitive. Future sight is never perfect and circumstances can change. 

𝚫 - Jade Box

Lose your sense of wonder and drive a wolfram nail into your head. If you get it back or lose the nail, start again. 

Your mind can’t be read. If people try, they immediately envision their worst memories and also probably vomit. You can’t be possessed or mind-controlled - anyone trying to inhabit your psyche finds it somewhat like trying to inhabit a paper-shredder. 

𝚫 - Expert Preparations

Tear your soul out of your head without dying. Store it somewhere safe. If it’s ever destroyed, die. 

Now even grues can’t tell you’re there. Creatures that track by soul (and other things, like scries and detection magic) can’t find you. You could be classed as a lich now. The death of your body is no longer necessarily the death of your self. You’ll need another way to get a new body if you lose this one, however. 

𝚫 - Colourless Arguments

Read a library’s worth of history, mathematics, statistics, politics, theology, philosophy and esoterica. Stare into true darkness for a week - if you blink, start again.  

By talking to someone calmly, you can destroy their trust in institutions, traditions, people or systems, at a rate of one per hour. These wounds can be healed by therapy or time, but they immediately reopen if the victim sets eyes on you again. 

𝚫 - Ghost Town 

Describe a blasphemous glyph in eight animal bodies (at least one of which once had a soul), in a location below sea-level, that has never been touched by sunlight. If sunlight ever touches the glyph, or if the glyph is destroyed, start again. 

You place local reality partially into [ ]. For 500 metres in all directions from the glyph, animals cannot grow properly, plants die quickly, light has a greasy feeling, nobody can recognise you if you don’t want them to, reaction and morale rolls suffer a malus of 4, fire fails to produce proper heat, water doesn’t slake thirst, metal rusts quickly, and shadows are darker than normally possible.

You can expand the Ghost Town 1d6*50 metres by adding another formerly soul-inhabited body to the glyph. 

In this place, Advanced Theoretical Work is possible. 

CONNECTIVE 

𝚫 - Tenant

Drink a pint of blood. Put a hole in your digestive system in a place where there’s a straight line to the night sky. Fall asleep, if you can. If you awake before dawn, start again. 

Your entrails are now inhabited. Poisons you consume will never reach you, but you must eat double rations for yourself and your occupant. You will never be harmed by anything you put down your throat. Your spit gives people a sickness that causes them to be pallid and weak for months. 

𝚫 - Incursion Vector 

Put a hole in one of your hands with a wolfram spike, then let it heal over. Then do it again. Then do it again. Then do it again, but leave the spike in this time. If it’s removed, start again. 

Your muscles are inhabited. Contact is established. You can let the Unrestrained Force flow through you whenever you want - while you do so, you are personally as strong as a piece of industrial machinery, tearing through walls and bending steel with your bare hands. You can stop bullets by running into them and jump very high (though you’re not necessarily able to land any safer). 

Absolute silence and focus is required while letting the Force flow through you. You have to take 10 minutes to re-suppress the connection. 

If you break focus or let your mind wander (i.e., plan too much IC or OOC) it takes its chance and hits you like a train crash. If you survive the result, you’ll wish you hadn’t. 

𝚫 - Fantasma Enamorado 

Look at your reflection until you don’t recognise it. Figure out a way to put a hole in it you can see through. If the mirror breaks, start again. 

Your reflection is inhabited. It can move independently of you inside mirrors, and exists physically on the Umbral Plane. It stares in a bright-eyed sanpaku way with somebody else’s eyes. It can interact with the intangible, and when you have something in your hands in a reflection, it does too on the other side - strangle a spirit with piano wire or stab a ghost to death. 

It looks right at you whenever it can. 

𝚫 - Mind Hovel 

Sit in a small dark room alone for a week without dying of thirst or hunger. Eat a piece of wolfram. If you leave the room or see any light during the week, start again. Afterwards, consider the memory of sitting in the room. 

That memory is inhabited. Whenever you consider the memory, you can “physically” move around inside it. When considering the memory you appear to all outward examination to be dead. Nobody will move you from where you are while “dead”, even if they otherwise would and should. While “dead” you have no need of food or water. 

You can store thoughts, spells, memories, ideas and beliefs inside the Mind Hovel for safekeeping. They can’t be harmed there, but while they’re inside, you forget about them. 

𝚫 - Black Blot 

Dig a straight hole from sea-level, down to a place that sunlight has never touched, in one night. At the bottom of the hole, bury a complicated mechanism, a full skeleton, and enough money that it hurts to let it go. Then cover the hole up. If sunlight ever touches the bottom of the hole, start again. 

Target a complicated system you can explain in full detail, such as an engine or a financial trust. Illustrate a complicated diagram, then soak it completely in ink or soot such that it can no longer be read. Put a hole in the diagram. The effects of entropy on this system will be maximised - parts will rust hastily, contracts will become unreadable, agreements will fail, joints will break, systems will spin into uselessness. 

Your mind is a complicated system. 

Put a hole in it - in this state, Advanced Connective Work is possible.

INVOCATIVE

𝚫 - The Millstone 

Break one of your limbs and let it heal wrong. Get a bone from a downtrodden worker as a lure. If conditions in that worker’s profession materially improve, or the profession ceases to be, start again. 

With the lure, and forty pounds of salt, summon the Millstone. It only approaches those with poorly healed wounds or damaged limbs - it is bizarrely skittish. 

It is a grinding feeling, a persistent sound, a tiny point of distorted space sliding over itself. Anything you throw into the Millstone is immediately rendered into a fine powder which maintains the thing’s original properties (this includes, say, water or chlorine gas). If you try to powder a living thing, the Millstone just eats it instead. Don’t wear a tie. 

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will wizen and twist and a limb will become incapable. 

𝚫 - The Opener of Ways

Stretch a pig around the frame of your Mouth with No Tongue without killing it. Nail it in place with wolfram. If the pig falls off, dies, or you can’t fit through it, start again. 

With 20 gallons of blood (any kind), you can transform your Mouth with No Tongue into the Opener of Ways. It looks like rainbow-coloured slime mold that grows and pulses and threatens to overspill the door. Walk through it, and it will take you wherever you desire. If you spill blood in its mouth (for that is what you pass through) it will consume you instantly. 

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will forget the places you remember. 

𝚫 - The Headless Oracle 

Develop a unique cocktail of chemical reagents. Find a way to extract memories from your own head - extract a memory of success to serve as a lure. If you remember what you forgot, start again. 

With the lure and sacrifice of the reagents, you can now draw the Headless Oracle through your Mouth with No Tongue. The part it will put through into the world is a slithering mass of ice-cold white tendrils. If you give it a decapitated head, it will slither into the neck and take a human shape. It will speak in the head’s voice and converse with you, acting with all the memories the head’s owner had until their death - even the repressed and forgotten ones. 

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will forget who you are. 

𝚫 - The Prince Deferred

Forge documents giving you a claim to something important but now destroyed, and have someone believe it. If anyone discovers your deception (and manages to report it), start again. 

With a crown of gold, and a dose of poison imbibed by yourself, you can summon the Prince Deferred through your Mouth with No Tongue. 

It has a humanoid shape locked in warped armour, and it talks. By god, it talks. It gives you 2d6 of its twisted, ashy bristles - they can be used like daggers or extremely shitty arrows. These bristles, when stabbed into a thinking creature, make them forget delusions until the bristle is removed - delusions like “mercy” or “law” or “borders” or “love” or “fear” or “ego” or “money”.  You choose the specific delusion.

Don’t let it see your soul, or you will forget the faces of your friends and family. 

𝚫 - The Intercessor

Enter a state of altered consciousness, via chemicals, meditation or concussion, as necessary. Blind one of your eyes, temporarily or otherwise. Stare at the dark moon of the world uninterrupted, without blinking, from sunset to midnight. If you blink or turn away, start again. 

Your Mouth with No Tongue will open up into an empty place the next time you visit it. Something there will speak with you. He knows many things, and used to see everything, but God made him blind. He will give you tasks. For each task you fulfil, he will answer a question to the best of his ability. After five tasks, he will consider you one of his own. 

With his patronage, Advanced Invocative Work is possible. 

GEOMETRIC

𝚫 - Idiot Waltz 

Leave a pair of shoes in your Blind Corner for a week, then put them on and go dancing. Go dancing with other people. Ignore what they say, and stand on their feet. Do the steps wrong on purpose. Listen to the silence above their heads. If you deign to notice anyone in any way before the sun comes up, start again. 

In your dreams, you learn a “dance” that lets you walk into corners and keep walking. The corners are infinitely deep and seem to narrow infinitely. You can stay inside as long as you keep moving. Don’t stop moving inside a corner or nobody will ever see you again. You can leave things hidden inside corners and come back to get them later, if you want. 

𝚫 - Dry Rot Instincts

Sleep inside your Blind Corner. Don’t wake up no matter what torturous images your brain provides you. If you wake up, in a cold sweat, saying her name again, start again. 

You can navigate unconventional spaces, fucked up portals, dangerous pocket dimensions and gravitational fuckups without danger. You have a sense when a massive collapse or natural disaster is about to strike your current location. You get extra saves against explosions, vehicle crashes or other things where survival is purely a case of luck. 

𝚫 - Sacrifer 

Inside your Blind Corner, produce a box with indestructible walls. Adamant would be easiest, but the spells to shape it broke a long time ago, so you’d need to find one. Place something you actually value inside the box. If you ever take it out, start again. If whatever box you made ever breaks, start again. 

The Sacrifer can contain literally anything. A raging spirit? An explosion? The name of a god? Sure, chuck it in. It won’t be able to get out. Nothing can. 

𝚫 - Blade of Disaster

Inside your Blind Corner, take a weapon and break it beyond use, then kill a thinking person with it without repairing it. 

This is now your Blade of Disaster. It gains one charge every time you use it as an implement of murder. You can expend a charge to make the Blade able to cleanly and harmlessly divide things it “cuts” for an hour, to make it able to cut light for an hour, or to make it extremely poisonous for an hour (as in, “someone else picking it up sickens and dies in minutes” poisonous.) Your Blade will never harm you unless you want it to. 

𝚫 - Broken Geometry 

Find a way to unmoor your Blind Corner from conventional reality. If reality notices and it is normalised, start again.

Your Blind Corner slowly expands, like a tumour, into a labyrinthine nightmare of dark passages. Every season it’s unmoored it gains 10d6 cubic metres of new space. The spaces that are present iterate - pillared halls lengthen and grow new, worse pillars, staircases gain pointless new flights, tunnels lengthen and narrow. Crossing it takes an inconsistent amount of time. You can navigate it perfectly. All teleportation, apportation and similar fails if trying to leave or enter it  - distance does not exist to be subverted. 

In this place, Advanced Geometric Work is possible. 

AND

𝚫 - The End

Be eaten by darkness.

Find oblivion.