Image: Artist unknown, sketch of pharaoh spearing a lion on limestone fragment, circa 1186-1070 BCE.

The scholars dispute the nature of the monsters that roam this world. Are they the natural outcome of ecological forces, the progeny of strange and unknown gods, or the result of arcane experimentation gone awry? For the Hunters, an informal but nonetheless professional association of monster hunters, these questions are immaterial. The only thing that matters is how best they can be killed.

A Hunter may practice their craft for coin, out of a sense of duty, or simply for the thrill of it. Nonetheless, their practice is one of disciplined study. Know the enemy. Deduce their vulnerabilities. Find their lair. Execute the kill. To do otherwise would be to court disaster.

Hunters are frequently employed by the church, minor nobility, or villages for individual hunts, but rarely stay on as retainers. Like all wanderers, folks maintain a certain distrust for outsiders, especially outsiders who reek of blood and weapon oil.

Background: 1. Constable | 2. Foreigner | 3. Poacher | 4. Scholar

Starting Gear: Trick weapon (see below), stiff leather coat (as leather armor), distinctive hat

A Trick Weapon, Hunter's Prey

B Dodge Roll, Weak Spot

C Read the Signs

D Lure Beast

Trick Weapon

You carry a trick weapon that can switch between two forms with a flick of the wrist. Choose a weapon type and either a second weapon type or piece of adventuring gear. You may switch between the two forms freely (even mid attack!). With a day's work you can build a new trick weapon.

Hunter's Prey

Make a list of the species of beasts you have fought. These are your prey. Humans and other sentient creatures are beasts. You can't add entries while fighting.

You gain Advantage on attempts to track beasts on your list, read their intentions, or predict their movements.

Dodge Roll

Whenever you are attacked, you may actively attempt to dodge out of the way. Before the enemy rolls to hit, you may make a DEX test. On a success, you avoid the blow completely. Regardless of the result, gain 1 Fatigue. (-1 to all Tests until you get a good night's sleep.)

Weak Spot

When you roll damage against your prey, you may discard a damage die from the top half your weapon's damage range to perform a maneuver (e.g. on a d6, you may discard a 4, 5, or 6). If you are using a trick weapon, you may transform it and make another attack. Tools used in this way deal d2 damage.

Read the Signs

With ten minutes of uninterrupted study, you can suss out what manner of beasts inhabit a space. Give your GM your list of prey, the GM will tell you which entries are in the area (e.g. the hex or dungeon floor including the encounter table). Tell the GM how you know.

Lure Beast

Once per area, blow a whistle, sound a horn, or otherwise make a loud noise and name a beast. If one is in the area, it enters the scene. (Roll a reaction as normal).

Design Notes

Nothing really revolutionary here. Just an obvious homage / wholesale theft of ideas from Bloodborne I had in my sketchbook. I've decided to sidestep the occult horror angle on that game's protagonists. That feels like the stuff that would happen to a character in the course of play, not automatically as a function of their character sheet. Part of the joy of that game is training to find werewolves and suddenly finding yourself neck deep in [SPOILERS] aliens.

I'm toying with an Into the Odd hack where all the characters are hunters, but figured I had enough to set this to paper right away. Part of that is the nice inventory compression of the trick weapon.

Weak Spot can really go off, toggling back and forth to do a couple maneuvers, but necessarily capped on how much actual damage it can produce. Combining that with the requirement of having fought this type of creature before seems reasonably balanced.

I don't love the amount of italicized reminder text I had to use here. It feels like a sign that I'm getting to clever or to reliant on game ideas that exist only in other modules for GLoG that might not be present.

Read the Signs and Lure Prey could probably be condensed into a single feature, but Lure Prey seems really disruptive so I want to reserve that til the end. I could see adding a little more interaction with dungeon / hex cartography. I'm trying to restrain my story game instinct to give the class delegative power over the encounter table.

The idea of using Lure Prey to summon any human is very funny to me, but not particularly useful.