Happily Ever After? (GLoG: The Ardent)
Image: Warwick Goble, Beauty and the Beast, 1913. Public domain source.
The creatures that roam this world are deadly, terrifying, and alien. This is a fact. And yet, sometimes they are powerful, awe-inspiring and surprisingly human. Folk tales are full of warnings - don't try to fraternize with monsters, lest ye be hastily gobbled up, or worse! - but adventurers aren't habitual heeders of warnings. Who is to say that if the right creature-person came along, one couldn't find friendship... or something more? Are the folk tales practical wisdom passed down through the ages or are they just a codified system of social control?
The Ardent
No one starts their adventuring career as an Ardent. It's something that happens to you. To take an Ardent template, a character must have seen or heard of a specific, intelligent creature capable of consent (henceforth, their Heart's Desire) and fallen in love.
A: Heart's Desire, Distant Admirer, +1 Max String
B: Better Together, +1 Max String
C: Til Death Do You Part, +2 Max Strings
Heart's Desire
Your Heart's Desire is the object of your love and devotion. The GM controls their actions (never the player). If your Heart's Desire is slain or if you betray them, you become Heartbroken (losing access to any other Ardent abilities) until your relationship is repaired.
Strings
Strings represent the exchange of emotional power in a relationship. You may have as many strings in play (on you or your Heart's Desire) as your Max Strings.
When you make yourself vulnerable (physically or emotionally) to your Heart's Desire, you gain 1 String on them. At any time, you can spend a String to ask them to:
- Answer a question truthfully.
- Follow a concrete instruction right now.
- Give a roll against them advantage.
- Give one of their rolls disadvantage.
If they do, they gain a string on you. If they don't, they must pass a Morale Test or flee.
Your Heart's Desire may do the same to you.
Distant Admirer
You always know the exact direction towards your Heart's Desire. You feel it in your chest.
Better Together
You and your Heart's Desire each gain a bonus equal to the number of Strings you have on the other on any test you are both involved in. (E.g. tag-team maneuvers, tests to heal or perceive things about one another, and any Saves against class features or monster abilities.)
Til Death Do You Part
If you and your Heart's Desire are in a scene together:
- In combat, roll both characters' Initiative, then choose which one both characters will act on.
- If one of you would take damage, the other may take all of that damage instead.
- If one of you would make a Save, the other may make it instead (suffering all consequences of the result).
Δ Catharsis
Requirement: You and your Heart's Desire ended things in a good place. You've moved on.
You lose any Ardent templates and immediately gain an equal number of templates from a class of your choosing. You lose all Ardent features except for Distant Admirer and any remaining Strings (though new ones can't be created).
Design Notes
I can't say this strongly enough: if you want to use this class, your table/server needs to talk about safety tools. Fundamentally, this class injects a conversation about vulnerability and romantic (and by implication potentially sexual) attraction to the table. Not all tables are interested in telling stories about these things.
Some of the mechanics here are echoes of ideas from Monster Hearts 2 by Avery Alder. You should check out their work on their website.
As an archetype and narrative flag, the Ardent is a character about monogamous relationships. Characters in fairy tales fall in love all the time. Sometimes that's the only thing they do all story! I wanted to put together a class that worked towards telling that kind of story - an uneasy, but auspicious first encounter followed by a growing sense of trust and ending in happily ever after.
GM Advice
As a GM, you have a couple questions to answer if your player inquires about a Heart's Desire. You'll need to set clear boundaries and be true to the fiction: is this character open to a romantic relationship? If no, be direct and transparent about it. The player might choose another Heart's Desire or they may choose another class altogether.
If yes, expect to see a lot of this character going forward. Figure out what they want, what they don't want, and sketch in some rough personality traits if you haven't already. Start a list of potential ways to pull Strings.
At some point, a big moment is coming: the Heart's Desire makes themselves vulnerable to the player to acquire a string. This can be seen as a mark of reciprocated interest. Save it up for a moment of narrative import.
Strings
As a model of relationships, Strings leave something to be desired. I wanted to avoid the relationship being represented by points or other "number goes up" models. The relationship here is about give and take. It's about offering something and seeing if your opposite number replies with a "yes, and."
The story can fork, however, into some dark places. Strings can absolutely be abused and modeling a relationship strictly as an exchange of power has a cynicism I find suspicious. I leave it as is for now, because I'm interested in both stories - the story where characters find true love or the story that ends in heartbreak. True heartbreak might effectively kill an Ardent, reverting them to a glorified Level 1.
Heart's Desire
I use the term Heart's Desire for two reasons. First, it evokes the story book quality I'm riffing on. Second, it's because this class is species agnostic.
The class spawned from a conversation about marrying monsters during an adventure. I leave who or what your character's fall in love with entirely in your hands, though consent is rules text here! I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum...
Technically speaking, one player character could choose another player character as their Heart's Desire. This seems like it would be really cool and works within the current mechanical framework quite well. It does seem like an even trickier thing to navigate than the typical application of the class. I'd recommend having an extensive conversation about boundaries in advance.