The Golemist (GLOG Class)

In the rain-soaked city of Ischaim, cloistered scholars and rabbis perform sacred rites and incantations over holy simulacra of men, designed to impart life and stewardship into these guardians of the faithful. You are not a holy man, or one of the faithful. The secrets of golemistry were leaked to the arcane public, losing the trappings of religion in the process. Now golemistry is utilized by most major countries, and wandering golemists fill secretive clubs and barrooms with hulking clay bodies, glimmering in the firelight.

This class was inspired by a lot, notably Judah Low from Iron Council and the State Alchemists of FMA. I wanted something like a summoner class that drew upon their surroundings for quick minion creation in combat. It’s kinda like a spellcaster if they only had one spell that got more specific as they levelled up. I’m not sure it’ll work, since I haven’t really tested it, but it was fun to write. Maybe in time, after some testing, I’ll give it another writeup and spruce it up (but probably not).

I wrote it as a competition with Spwack over in the OSR discord. Check out his Golemist class (I have no doubt his actually works) and his other stuff, it’s all very good and weird. I've never written a GLOG class before, so this was a really fun way of getting into things!

Mikoláš Aleš

Golemist

Starting Equipment: Notebook, dagger, set of brushes and inks, roll on your favorite random item list.

Perk: You can block out any external stimuli that would cause you to lose concentration on your work.

Downside: Any HP you use to create a golem can’t be regenerated by any means until that golem is dismissed.

For every Golemist template you have, gain +2 HP

A: Dismissal, Animate Lesser Golem

B: Understanding, Animate Common Golem

C: Usurp Command, Esoteric Material

D: Efficiency, Animate Greater Golem

To create a golem, you touch an object and invest a portion of your body and soul, in the form of HP. Each golem type has different HP requirements from you. I.e., you cut yourself for 1 HP and invest it into making a lesser golem. That golem has 1 HP, and you can’t regain that 1 HP until the golem is dismissed. Golems are brought to life by an arcane word inscribed in blood on their bodies somewhere. If this word is marred or erased, the golem is destroyed.

You start off being able to make clay or mud golems.

Universal Studios

Dismissal

You can instantly dismiss any golems you control with a thought, rendering them insensate matter once more. Greater golems get a save, while rogue golems have to be manually erased.

Animate Minor Golem

Spend 1 HP per golem HP to imbue a material or conglomerate of material with a portion of soul and the semblance of life. They can only follow simple commands (“Go for their legs”, “Protect this doorway”). Lesser golems are smaller than a human. Each HP you spend is one golem HP.

Understanding

You study something at a fundamental level, and gain an insight to it unrivalled in the field. Takes 1 hour of uninterrupted extrospection (30 minutes with proper equipment like a 10 gp microscope) on a solid you can examine with your tools and hands. Save vs. forgetting what you learned while you sleep, after three successes the knowledge is permanent. While you understand something, you have advantage on identifying it in other materials, and you know the best ways to kill or neutralize it. You can also create golems out of that material from now on, and golems made of that material go rogue 5% less.

Animate Common Golem

Cost 2 HP per golem HD. Your golems can be bigger (human to ogre sized), and more complex. They follow fairly complex or sequential commands.

Usurp Command

If you meet another golemist on your road, kill him and take his golems. You can impose your will over other constructs. Their controller gets a contest (or the golem does do, if it’s controller is dead). On a fail, take 1d6 psychic damage, and all your currently active golems are dismissed.

Esoteric Understanding

Your golems are stranger, utterly unique. You can use your gift of understanding on even stranger or more complicated things, like radium, air, ideas, or anti-matter. Up to GM discretion. Normal material understanding no longer needs a save vs. forgetting. Reduces all rogue chances by 5%. Stacks with understanding.

Efficiency

You bypass the Golem-Master Bond problem, allowing you to regain half the HP you invest when you create any golem. The HP is still drained, but you can regain half (rounded down) while the golem is still active.

Animate Greater Golem

Invest 3 HP per greater golem HD. These creations are thinking, sapient. Act as a hireling that is utterly devoted to you. See below on greater golem building.

Saddleback. Allows the golem to be ridden like a horse or riding lizard or whatever creature you want. Moves like an elephant. Costs 3 HP during creation.

Gun Barrel. Your golem can shoot cannon balls for 4d6 damage on a hit. Costs 6 HP, and you need a cannon on hand (or enough raw material to make one, I guess.)

Many-Legged. Your golem has more than two legs, possibly far too many. It cannot be knocked over. Costs 3 HP.

Amorphous. The whole thing is made of wet clay, living flesh, protoplasm, or other gooey substance. It can be cut in half and survive, and eventually reconstitute itself. Costs 6 HP.

Shell. The golem is hollow, with a space inside for you, the creator. Basically a mech suit, gives you the physical stats of the golem and AC like plate. Costs 6 HP.

Bladed. Covered in metal teeth, shards of glass, actual swords, sharpened bits of bone, planes of refined entropy. Does 2d6 damage on contact, really good at grappling. Costs 3 HP.

Keith Thompson

Rogue Golems

Creating a golem is a difficult undertaking. The more complex the mind, the more likely the golem is to break free of your mental restraints and act on its own initiative. This is known as “going rogue”. Whenever you create a golem and the first time you ask it to put itself in harm’s way for you, roll 1d100.

Lesser golems: 10% chance of going rogue

Common golems: 20% chance of going rogue

Greater golems: 45% chance of going rogue

Keith Thompson, again

A Few Example Golems

Here are some golems statted up so you can see what they do and how to model them in your games.

Scissor Golems. 2 HP. AC as rat. Tries to cut your tendons or stab your feet for 1d4 damage. MOV as rat. MORALE 20. Flock like piranha. They don’t do much damage if you’re wearing good boots, but god help you if you trip and fall.

Door Golem. 3 HD. AC as Plate. Can’t really attack, but will slam itself shut on your fingers if it has to, 1d4 damage. MOV 0. MORALE 20. Used as guardians, like sphinxes. If you answer the riddle correctly or know the secret password, the way is opened for you. Forgetful mages tend to include hints to their passcodes.

Clay Golem. 1 HD. AC as Leather. Pummels you with rock-like fists for 1d6 damage. MOV as human. MORALE 20. Stolid, dependable, unoriginal. Look for the secret word on its forehead or in its mouth. 

Ball-of-Flesh Golem. 2 HD. AC as unarmored human. Rolls over you, slashing at you with random appendages for 1d6 damage. 50% chance of trying to suffocate you and add you to its mass. MOV as horse. MORALE 20. When most people see a bunch of strewn bodies, they see carnage. You see raw material.

Oliphaunt Golem. 6 HD. AC as Plate. Hits like a fucking tank, tusk-blades do 1d8 slashing while the gun in place of its head shoots for 4d6 damage. MOV as elephant. MORALE 20. Not only is it huge and dangerous, it is cunning, and seeks only to aid its creator.

Artist unknown, from Goethe's Faust

What Your Golem Does When It Goes Rogue

1. Attacks everything in sight, including inanimate objects. 
2. Attacks only you, then leaves out the nearest exit.
3. Screams without lungs or vocal chords, then collapses back into whatever original matter it was constructed from.
4. Obeys your commands a millisecond slow, then sneaks away at its first opportunity.
5. Walks in a counterclockwise spiral until it hits an object, then reverses around it.
6. Begins eating everything it can fit in its mouth. If it doesn’t have a mouth, it just mashes the things on its face. The objects aren’t actually eaten; they’re still inside it, crushed and covered in clay.
7. Attacks everything but you.
8. Carries you to the next room/building/clearing/area then collapses.
9. Is entirely unresponsive.
10. Moves at one quarter of its normal rate; every attack is telegraphed so far in advance anyone can get out of their way.
11. Constantly emits noise/smoke/sparks, thwarting any attempts at stealth or polite conversation.
12. Walks backward, trips on everything.
13. Obeys only the most simple and direct orders. Like playing a text-based game. Even “Go through the door” will cause it to overheat and lock in place.
14. Whatever it wants. It is now an NPC. It remembers everything you’ve done to it, including while it was the base material.
15. Shadows your every move, obeys none of your commands.
16. Begins scratching every word and discernable noise it has heard on the wall/floor in dictation.
17. Does the literal opposite of all of your commands.
18. Uses whatever appendage is able to smash out its own word, crippling or killing itself.
19. Gets visibly hot, then explodes for 6d6 damage.
20. Transmutes to a new substance, then discorporates.

8 Strange Diseases, or Curses

Most scholars agree that curses and the myriad illnesses that plague humankind are one in the same, and that previous theories of predatory animals too small to see or vaporous miasmas are laughably inaccurate. A witch might curse you with a haunted reflection, or the common cold. Most cure disease spells, if pumped up with juice, will work on curses, although you have to know the effects of the curse inside and out to affect it, and that's generally hard to do, due to them not coming with instruction manuals.

That being said, here are 8 diseases that are fairly common and understood. Not to say that everyone knows how to prevent TVS, but a city doctor or priest can certainly be paid to help facilitate curing it.

1. Lobster-Dick. Your genitals become replaced with a lobster tail, complete with shell, tiny legs, and all the accoutrements. It's still functional. Gain a +1 bonus to save vs. groin attacks. If you have intercourse with someone (regardless of your sex or theirs) they become pregnant, and give birth to 1d6 lobster-men. Interestingly, this curse can be used on other body parts, but to less drastic effect (gaining a giant pincer is cool, and most adventurers can't write anyway).

How did you get it? Defiling the temple of a sea-god, or doing something truly reprehensible to a lobster. You fucking sicko.

How do you cure it? You can't. Sorry.

2. Spell Syphilis. Your mind begins to slip, and your spell slots rot right out of your head. Eventually, you die, but in the meantime you go crazy and become a stereotypical "mad wizard". Your aura, if viewed through a shew-stone or a spell like second sight, looks like a ratty old cloak made of bacteria or fungus, and you look like a living corpse. Spell slots rot at rate of 1 per day, then you start taking Wisdom damage. At 0 you die.

How did you get it? Handling any strange wands, especially those found in a dungeon.

How do you cure it? It's incurable, but you can stave off the effects by passing it on to someone else, a la It Follows.

3. Excessive Sanguinity. You have too much blood! For the first few days after contracting this illness you feel fucking great, and gain +2 to Dexterity and Strength checks, but then it starts to hurt as your veins swell and fill, with no extra space to grow to. After nearly two weeks of excrutiating agony, you pop. In that time, any being that feeds on blood (vampires, blood mages, mosquitoes) within a five mile radius knows exactly where you are.

How did you get it? Eating too many blood oranges, coming into contact with any bodily fluid already infected.

How do you cure it? Drain your blood to keep it in equilibrium, forever.

4. Spontaneous Osteo-Liquefaction. Your bones turn to liquid, usually in stages. First, the teeth liquefy and trickle down the back of the throat. Save vs choking. Then the extremities, the fingers, toes, and fontanelle, and you stop being able to hold things. Finally the main structural bones turn to liquid and you can't stand, or move quickly at all. You become a slime, of sorts.

How did you get it? Ingest the flesh of an ooze. It's a bit like lycanthropy, but grosser.

How do you cure it? Drink a bunch of milk. Bathe in milk. Sacrifice a finger to the calcium gods.

5. Scabification. Your blood begins to harden in your veins. It's slow enough that you definitely feel it, though not exactly what it is exactly. Something like arthritis or old knees, but it can affect a person of any age. Suffer a -5 penalty to all Dexterity checks. Eventually, your entire body becomes a rough, coagulated sculpture.

How did you get it? Picked too many scabs, or you didn't offer fealty to the minor spirits of bloodlust as you pass a battlefield.

How do you cure it? Drink a tincture of ground leeches and heparin, once a day for a week. The medicine makes you feel weak; -3 to your Constitution score until you stop taking it, and your save vs. poison is reduced.


6. Loss of Ontological Cohesion. Somehow, you or your body was convinced that it isn't really a human body. Your organs and tissues forget their purpose, turning into leaves and flowers and tadpoles and threads. You drift apart, your mind unravelling as your body does. Occasionally, you can remember who your were with enough fortitude so as to hold your new body together (like living armor) but this is rare. All of your physical stats begin to decrease as your body fades, and unless you pass a Wisdom save every day, so too does your mind.

How did you get it? Encountered a memetic virus, and Outsider or god thought about you too hard, or you got drunk and started talking philosophy.

How do you cure it? It can't be reversed, but you can halt it by reading anatomy textbooks and remembering bits of your past life.


7. TVS. Aka Terminal Velocity Syndrome. Once thought to be a combination of a vestibular issue and osteogenesis imperfecta, sufferers of TVS are affected by gravity at an abnormal rate. Every movement is compounded enough to instantly reach terminal velocity; even a fall from a foot or two up can be fatal. A stumble deals 1d6 damage, and all fall damage is multiplied by 5. Your attacks are a lot heavier, though, and deal +2 damage.

How did you get it? Struck on the head by a Stygian apple, or bitten by a gravity goblin.

How do you cure it? Remain suspended in an antigravity field for an hour a day.


8. Teakettler Disease. Your internal body temperature is constantly rising, causing pain and pressure on your bones. If you ignore it long enough without releasing it (roughly every three hours), you take 1d6 exploding heat damage. When you release it, it issues from your mouth in a burst of steam and a piercing whistle that can be heard from far away. Your sleep is rough and unsteady, and you gain 1/2 the XP you normally would.

How did you get it? You didn't offer a weary guest the customary drink, or touched a dragon's scale without washing it in grain alcohol first.

How do you cure it? Consume a cumulative 9 pounds of ice.

Larothe, City of Moths

The city sits in the shallow basin of the Waxahatchee river valley, more a plate than a bowl, slumped and sumptuous and decaying ever so slowly into the muddy water. There are roads leading to other cities and nations, carved out of the jungle in strange almost-tunnels that the natives of the region believe to have been tracks of the Great Worm, but during the rainy season they become impassable with fallen trees and flowing water.

Creatonotos gangis. Thanks for the nightmares, Skerples.

Like an emerald, Larothe shifts in the sunlight. It's hot and humid, and gharials and jaguars lounge about the stone canalsides and arcades that are submerged half the year. Creeping vines and hardwoods and drakeblood trees cling to the tops and sides of the buildings, and wiry men and women in undyed clothes pole thin canoes called sculs to market and out in the river, which is wide and placid enough to be called a lake. But the most striking thing any newcomer notices, stinking and sweating and usually fever-eyed, are the moths.

Opodiphthera eucalypti.

Dozens, hundreds, thousands of moths. They cover the city in a shifting mosaic of life. Species from all across the known world congregate in Larothe. The grinning, twitching moth-priests scratch themselves until they bleed and smile with teeth black with rot and lacquer and say that the River Moth gathers them here because they are his children.

Thaumetopoea pityocampa.

(There are no butterflies. Swarms of normally-placid moths find them and rip them apart as soon as they get within a rough three-mile radius of the city, leaving only gently floating vibrant wingscales on the breeze.)

Laothoe populi.

The moths are the lifeblood of the Larothi. They breed hunting moths the size of footballs, rigged with razorblades on their abdomens and blinders on their compound eyes, caterpillars the size and furred-texture of bison that never pupate. They scrape them from walls and mash them into a grey paste called uir gran that is used as a protein sample in every household. Larothe fashion is dictated by moth and by tedium; the sumptuous, shimmering clothes of the rich are sewn in mandalas of moth-scales, painstakingly plucked from still-living wings in religious ceremonies. At night, huge black vampire moths use their delicate needle-claws to draw blood from sleeping people and livestock (mosquito nets are a very necessary expense in Larothe), and huge nymph-pupae swim in the murky water like antlions, their blind faces seeking flesh to rend and devour with their immense mandibles.

Thysania agrippina.

Nominally, the King of Larothe holds dominion over the city and the satellite settlements that provide maize and rice to the metropolis, but the real power lies with the moth-priests. The kings have been elected by a council of apotheosis-seeking priests since the Dawn of Dusted Sun, and the populace knows it. Religious holidays are observed without fail, and divergence is punished with exile to the inverted tower. Outsiders are exempt from these laws until they reside in the city for 10 months and 10 days.

Attacus atlas.

The River Moth

Part god, part bogeyman. The moth-priests revere and revile it, and pray that it stays away during the driest time of the year, when the river recedes and the entrance to the inverted tower is revealed and yawns like a dead mouth. Swarms of moths circle over its top day and night, and some say you can read your fortune in their gyrations. No one has seen it, but every year it appears in dreams to some in the city, who are blessed with the Mark of the Moth, vertical welts down the face. It always looks huge and dark, with too many limbs and eyes and mouths, and with four huge, fluttering wings. It has an affinity with the moon.

Chrysiridia rhipheus.

To appease the River Moth, the devout smash open the still-living skulls of capuchin monkeys and smear the brains across the lentils and frames of their doors. The Moth passes them by, but the brains must be reapplied every other night until the river rises back up to the Third Mark, and the tower is filled with water once again.

Acherontia atropos.

The truth is that the River Moth isn't real, or at least isn't a physical being. It is a shared hallucination brought on by the chemical dust that falls from the wings of the Actias rursus, a flesh-eating moth that flutters over sleeping victims. The dust has a soporific and pruritian effect on the victim; they suffer strange, feverish dreams and begin scratching at their faces and heads until they scratch through their skulls and into their brains, which the moth then eagerly drinks up. This is called the "itching illness".

Agrotis infusa.

The priests take this dust and apply small amounts to their bodies to grant them the dreams of their god, and they leave their wounds open to offer sustenance to other fluid-drinking insects. They look like junkies in living cloaks of fluttering wings.

Utetheisa ornatrix.

Things to Procure in Larothe

The people of Larothe trade and barter, or use deathshead moth wings as currency, but they'll except your silver and copper. Larothe is a crossroads, remote as it is, and you can find pretty much anything there, but here are a few things you'll need in the jungle.

1. A scul. Holds 2 people and a small amount of gear. Goes pretty fast, and is really maneuverable.
2. A hunting moth. Eats fresh meat, ferocious, dies in two weeks. AC as hawk, d6 razor damage.
3. Mosquito net. Good for preventing malaria and having your brain eaten.
4. Silkworm armor. AC as studded leather, but takes up no inventory space and breathes in the jungle heat.
5. Grubslinger. A specialized slingshot that launches live larvae at enemies.
• Earworm. Comes in pairs. One crawls in your ear, the other is shot at an enemy. Slowly enters the victims ear canal and takes up residence. They vibrate at the same frequencies; you can hear what the enemy hears, but their voice is subsonic and only comes through as deep rumbling.
• Lead moth. Clings to the victim and starts gaining density, weighing down their swings.
• Sawbird pupa. The young form of a vicious, piranha-like moth, coated in microscopic iron-hard teeth. Rotates in the air like a buzzsaw, does 3d6 damage.
• Lipid moth. Confusing, spiralling, fractal. Too many legs and bends. It seems to dissolve into the skin and eats the fats out of the victim's body over the course of a week. Save vs wasting away, or lose 1 Con per day until you die.
6. Hoien ul. A lamp on a ten foot pole, shines a bright, nearly-white light for 60 feet. Draws every goddamn moth in the jungle; used by priests in ceremonies for new initiates.
7. Cocoon of the Fluttering Saint. The only mortal to attain apotheosis, the Fluttering Saint became a mixture of man and moth and flew up to live on the moon. His cocoon has been shredded, and thieves regularly sneak bits of it out. If you eat it, gain infrared vision for 1d6 hours. Save vs mutation or begin slowly dissolving into moths.

I'll add more, but I'm tired and I need to put something new up.