The Killer Ostrich and their Retainer, a dual character class

Swift-hunter, Man-tamer,
Talon-footed, Axe-beak,

You play as these guys but if they were friends.

Class Concept: This is a two character class. You play as both a sentient, Killer Ostrich and their human Retainer. While most Killer Ostriches hunt the dales and pastures of their kingdom alone, you are a bonded pair out for adventure. Symbiotic, each complements the other - the Ostrich, while deadly, lacks the skills and physiology to navigate complex dungeon environments and the Retainer, though clever, is comparatively weak and scrawny.

A faithful Retainer feeds his Killer Ostrich a hearty meal of iron.

HD: Special, d8 and d4

Attacks: +1 at first level

Saves: As Fighter

Level: as Magic-User

Alignment: Neutral

Armour: Special, 

• Ostrich - special-fitting light armour only (double cost), 

• Retainer - any.

Weapons: Ostrich - none. 

• Retainer - any.

Special: one class, two character sheets.

Nest Mates: Generate character stats 3d6 down the line for both characters as normal. If applicable, reassign the higher physical stats (STR, DEX, CON) to the Ostrich and the higher mental stats (INT, WIS, CHA) to the Retainer. Additionally:

• Roll 1d8 and 1d4 for HP; assign one to each. At first level only, the Ostrich’s CON modifier applies to the Retainer’s HP.

• Ostrich and Retainer share saves and XP total - levelling at the same time as a single character.

Bonded: An Ostrich and their Retainer are bonded from birth and cannot leave the company of the other. As a pair, in combat the Ostrich and Retainer share two actions per round (like a normal character’s move + action/attack). The pair act in the same combat initiative turn. Neither character may move or attack twice in one round.

Inseparable Comrades: Should the Retainer and Ostrich be separated, the player must choose a primary character to continue playing as (typically the character who remains with the most other party members). The other ‘off-screen’ character becomes an NPC and, regardless of circumstances, will be able to reunite with their partner safely after 1d4 days (or until they are reunited diegetically).

Ostrich Death: Should either Ostrich or Retainer die, the player may elect to continue play but does so at a disadvantage - individually neither is as strong as a core class.

Ratite Physiology: An Ostrich has no arms and cannot achieve anything that would require their use - no ranged attacks, no vertical climbing, uncorking magical potions, writing, turning the pages of a book, any fine motor task, etc. They must rely on their Retainer to support them in navigating these tasks. Both Ostrich and Retainer can speak the common language and Ostrich language. 

But What About My Beak?: An Ostrich may attempt to use their beak as a hand, rolling 1d6 per round, achieving that task on a roll of 1. After three failed attempts, the task is impossible. 

We Run!: Both Ostrich and Retainer cannot individually exceed an  encumbrance score of 2 (if you do not use encumbrance slots, to a Killer Ostrich and their Retainer items weigh double their usual coin weight - (they’re used to running across the heath unburdened). 

We Ride?: Can you ride a Killer Ostrich? No, the noble Ostrich will DIE after 1 round of being ridden.

The Killingest: A Killer Ostrich is a deadly and canny combatant. More than just two powerful kicks and an axe-like beak, the Ostrich is a trained, cunning and tactical combat master. On a successful melee attack roll, the Ostrich rolls 3d4 (one die per leg and beak), delivering damage equal to the highest die. Any result of 4 (or more, potentially, at higher levels) can be exchanged for special moves, the Ostrich may:

▼ Savage: +1 damage to highest damaging die.
▼ Kick: Knock opponent back 10 feet.
▼ Immobilise: The opponent cannot move for 1 round. 
▼ Reposition: Place themselves in any position adjacent to whomever they are striking, including behind or swapping places with them. The opponent continues to face the Ostrich. 

An Ostrich can apply one or two different special moves during a single round, including if a result of 4+ is their highest die. In this case, the next highest die deals the damage.

The Skillingest: The Retainer starts with 1 skill point (or +16% to any Thief skill - which all start at 16%) at first level.

Learn Together: The Killer Ostrich + Retainer class uses random advancement. At first level and each level thereafter roll a d6 and a d12 on the Ostrich/Retainer advancement table. Two dice for two advancements, the Ostrich takes one, the Retainer the other. While Ostriches can be given any advancement (1-12), results of 1-6 must be given to Retainers.

Ostrich/Retainer Random Advancement Table:

1. Gain 1 skill point (or increase any thief skill by 16%)
2. Gain 1 skill point (or increase any thief skill by 16%)
3. Gain 1 skill point (or increase any thief skill by 16%)
4. +2 HP to this character and once per day transfer a number of HP from one character to another equal to your level x3. This transfer can go either way and takes 10 minutes. On reroll, +2 HP and can transfer HP twice per day.  
5. Sprint: Once per combat make a free move at any point in the initiative order - during your turn, before, during or after the enemy turn. On reroll, twice per combat.
6. +1 to Hit
7. +1 to Hit
8. +1 to Hit
9. Flying Kick; +1 damage and to-hit when charging into melee. On reroll, +1 to both again.
10. Increase lowest Ostrich attack roll by one die size (d4→d6→d8 etc).
11. Increase lowest Ostrich attack roll by one die size (d4→d6→d8 etc).
12. Increase lowest Ostrich attack roll by one die size (d4→d6→d8 etc) OR +1 to Hit.

It goes without saying, this class need not be an Ostrich - Cassowary, Terrorbird, Moa, Emu, Axebeak, Clubnek or any other large, long-legged flightless bird (so no penguins) or even certain types of dinosaur can be used instead. The Killer Ostrich’s ‘special moves’ are inspired by the combat system of Mythic Bastionland.

If you enjoyed this class check out The Ape.

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Thinking about Special Rooms (Notes made during Meetings)

Yeah, I wrote these notes when I should have been being professional. It’s rough, ephemeral, unimpressive content and non-exhaustive but I was surprised by how little content for Special rooms is out there when I (blind, clueless) went looking for it. For me, SPECIAL means the room is/contains neither a trap, monster, treasure, nor is it ‘empty’ (though empty never truly means empty and there can be a grey zone between Empty and Special). Therefore there’s a huge range of possibilities of what a Special room can be. This spectacular range of potentialities is merely touched upon, as my (perhaps limited) imagination has rendered some rather basic ideas from such a fertile concept and there are some duplicates. Working to a concept would render more specific or nuanced special rooms. My sole purpose in writing these notes is trying to prime my brain (small, calcified) for designing more dungeons and quicker. These are the sort of notes that I could keep adding to indefinitely but I've been a little more inactive than usual so I'm sharing them. Hopefully, as a rough and ready resource it’ll be of some use to peo(ns)ple like yourself and drive some thought.

I have since found the following posts, they are very good and more polished than my stream of consciousness style. I have resisted going back to add to this post based on their wisdom, so you’ll have to check them out. If you have any other SPECIAL room resources (as I am sure you do), please link to them in the comments section.

"Special" Rooms on 3d6 (Or Maybe 4) by Clerics Wear Ringmail

The 10 types of special rooms by Traipse 

Combine these two resources together and you’ll be unstoppable. 

Special Rooms:

• Illusory room
• Drowning woman/Imperiled NPC ‘trap’ (it’s not a trap if it’s just a waste of time! It’s called a TRICK)
• Dangerous terrain/creature/trap
• Treasure (combine with something else fun to make not disappointing)
• The room conforms to a scene from a PC’s past, the DM asking the player a question ‘Tell me about a time your character…(almost drowned/was scared as a child/first killed someone, etc)’ and then the room appears as the event in question.
•  
• A room that talks; 
• A head that tells you rumours from around the world/dungeon if you feed it treasure/bodies
• Mocks, jokes with or curses (non-magical curses but the party don’t need to know that.)
• Asks a riddle, correct answers may open hidden doors or reveal important information.
• A room where magic always fails/is twice as powerful (but possibly at a cost)
• Similar room with violence - heightened damage, attack-rolls, critical hit chance.
• Anything really, terrible saves, everyone has 20 in a given stat.
• No violent act can be committed/no magic can be cast.
• A dungeon control room with levers and pulleys and buttons {in another language?}
• Blows up another room, floods it with gas/fire/snakes/spiders/water - freezes it.
• Changes the configuration of the map - moves a corridor, swaps two rooms.
• Moves the entire dungeon somewhere else on the worldmap/multiverse.
• A scrying room that allows remote viewing of a different section/room/character in the dungeon or elsewhere in the world (a deep dungeon NPC that is obsessed with a familiar character in the town, like the barkeep, and has a room dedicated to magically spying on them.) 
• A room that reveals the location of every vampire/troll/giant shrew in the dungeon.
• A summoning room
• Magical - like a portal that spits out a creature based on a sigil you press.
• Chemical - press a button to birth a vat-thing or combine two elements to make an alchemical golem or a player cloning machine
• Or via some vector that attracts a specific monster (bell, food stuff, mineral (like those elephants that go in the cave to lick salty rocks), anything pavlovian)
• A divination room that allows for viewing of, or information about, future events or the answering of lore questions - answers often cryptic
• cloud watching room
• A haruspicy room full of pigs or similar beasts
• Huge candle on a pivot to be poured into a pool of water or crucible of molten metal for divinatory purposes.
• Room secretes entheogenic slime that when licked grants and immediate and long lasting sleep filled with cryptic visions of future events. Or maybe  the room is filled with slick toads that die when licked like bees deprived of their stings.
• A magic altar, a classic, so many directions. But for substance, you can have any other SPECIAL room type of this list projected or encapsulated in/via the altar, it can essentially have any property. 
• I feel altars are just things that can go in any type of room, treasure, trap, empty, whatever. 
• Statues, like altars have many uses and functions. Totem poles too.
• A flashback room (play as NPC's, stats and all, recreating a short event from the past)
• Room affected by some substance - mundane, alchemical or magical. Sticky, frictionless, very hot/cold stuff or more unique or magical properties, reanimates the dead.
• Take any trap and make it so obvious that it ceases to be a trap. If too subtle the room may qualify as Empty. 'traps' like this may be: 
• Just a room full of fire
• Room one big pit trap or the floor is 1000ft below, it's not a trap, it's obvious. 
• A bridge over a bottomless pit, large powerful fans make the crossing precarious
• A room where the floor is literally ‘thin ice’
• A big blade that spins round the room.
• Obvious and constant blade pendulums. 
• Room slants precipitously, the floor greased, towards a wall of spikes
• A room full of in-built bear traps
• The ceiling is held up by something very fragile, if disturbed the room collapses.
• Likewise, any type of trap that isn't functioning properly but remains dangerous could count as SPECIAl, eg a room with two walls smashing into each other over and over again, a room constantly flooding with poisonous gas, an adventurers corpse being charred by a flame spout trap. Rooms like this can telegraph similar traps elsewhere in the dungeon - (surely, this is SPECIAL and not a trap as the trap does not function as a trap should?)
• Dangerous terrain - slime all over the floor, lava flow, a chasm that keeps yawning open and closed, geysers that erupt periodically with whatever substance you please, a miniature volcano.
• Machinery 
• Factory floor with conveyor belts.
• A machine that is/can mass produce something (that isn’t treasure). 
• Room of gears - could possibly be the gears that work some other thing in the dungeon - jamming the gears could disable a trap, open an inaccessible pathway or weaken an automaton boss monster.
• The room is a carousel or contains bumper cars.
• Anomalies, this list could go on forever, it’s inexplicable and magic and it does something interesting.
• Death as a biological function does not exist in this room.
• Iron (or any other material) becomes red hot, freezing cold, frictionless, vibrates, shrinks, expands, turns to slime/bugs/rose petals
• A part or item in the room is strongly magnetic/repellent to a particular material. 
• Room filled with invisible webs, walls, tentacles.
• Room has affect on character's emotions - this needs to have a real mechanical effect or it is essentially worthless.
• Room with specialist nature;
• Trash compactor
• Incinerator
• Alchemical machine that turns one substance into another
• A sleeping room that is both magically silent and magically soundproof. 
• An observatory (though the lens might be worth some money)
• A Dagobah style vision-cave
• Sweat lodge 
• A Sauna, Spa, Mudbath 
• The room is an oven with a temperature control just outside, like an oven or freezer room.
• Built in torture chamber
• Brainwashing room
• Cinema
• Photography booth
• A refinery like in Dwimmermount with Azoth, a laboratory would probably count as treasure.
• A special projection room that plays ‘holocron’ things, like vinyls, that can be collected in the dungeon 
• Perhaps controversial, NPC's who are not ‘monsters’ or monsters with no ability to act/agency.
• A wounded NPC adventuring party
• Ghostly presence or scene
• Helpless NPC/Monster(s) captive in some kind of confinement, a peasant in a pit or a demon in a summoning circle, a mammoth frozen deep in ice. 
• A puppy (players will not trust)
• Creatures to catch or not, a pool of large but harmless crayfish, koi (non-valuable), rookery, a large (harmless) bat roost, a large colony of birds, a regular sized termite nest. 
• Room that produces something, item or substance 
• Room that produces art but it’s not very good + worthless (AI, haha 😐)
• Factory production line that produces broken items
• A goo room that produces goo
• A room that manufactures the local weather and has a control panel.
• A weird way of ascending or descending dungeon floors (self-immolation to travel to any level of the dungeon, a lift that must be hand operated by a left behind character, a slide, false quicksand, )
• Room that changes the player(s) - positive changes must be the result of clever play or sacrifice. Can combine with any other special room type for something interesting.
• Alignment and stat changes are common, (why not religion?)
• Change characters backstory.
• Mutations. Players don't like being mutated. Telegraph your mutations and give them some predictability if you want more engagement.
• Grants a spell to be cast once per day as a magical ability. 
• ‘Device’ that shaves your head, stains you blue, turns you into an elf/goblin/vampire, replaces a limb with a cyborg part, makes you taller/younger/blind/not blind, cures your diseases, inoculates you against future diseases.
• Exchange stats, wowie
• A portal or equivalent that leads to another part of the dungeon/world/multiverse/timestream. 
• Chessboard style map of the campaign world with pieces representing the different factions at play. Any moves the players make influence the moves the factions will make. Perhaps limit these moves to one per player. 
• As above but with a blue painted canvas and natural-coloured paints (greens, tans, greys and browns). Whatever the party paint appears as an island off the coast. 
• Similar things can be done with books and are much freer. Books can be about anything. 
• An architect's lectern with a map of part of the dungeon. Players can make a single change (per in-game week/month?) to the layout that will instantly be reflected in reality. 
• Something, something Clay. Reshape a type of monster or the dungeon boss. Something Promethean to this. 
• Room that steals a spell from a party member and grants the ability to cast it to some other thing or things in the dungeon - this could be via another special room like spell transference chambers.
• Weird time/space room
• Anti-gravity
• Hyper-gravity
• Reversed gravity
• Time does not move outside the room/moves twice as fast
• Accelerated aging - 10 minute equals 1 month - hair and fingernails grow
• A gambling room, slot machine, wheel of fortune, magical dice, pachinko, pinball machine, goblin poker, blink dog greyhound racing - bonus for real minigames or meta twist. 
• Gladiatorial arena, magical and mundane, NPC vs NPC. Does this count as a ‘monster’ type room?
• Sacrificial room, give something up to receive a blessing (or a curse!)
• Wishing well, pond, pool or fountain
• Altar [see altar entry above]
• Prayer space, give up time for a blessing
• A statue you have to tell a joke to in exchange for a blessing/info. Make the actual DM laugh. 
• Big hungry beast, god-mouth, demon hiding in a hole - give it food for secret lore, a blessing, a clue, hint or curse on your enemies. 
• Some sort of personality test wherein whatever you give up renders a different ‘reward’ and possibly a quote, ie giving the personality test room a sword would give a character a +4 to-hit bonus but reduces their HD to d4’s/d2’s and says the quote ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’.
• Sacrifice time in a meditation zone for some benefit. 
• A food resource - replenishing feast table, tree with strange but otherwise ok fruit (should have some effect, perhaps it makes you feel sad to eat or jittery), a termite nest, an overgrown garden, a mouldy cornucopia, an meal-in-a-pill machine, a mushroom patch where as soon as one mushroom is picked another instantly grows up in its place, a fruiting topiary hydra that grows two fruit heads whenever one is loped off. 
• Novelty and Games Rooms, this can be closely related to the gambling rooms.
• Game room with chessboard flooring
• Novelty can mean a lot of things - everyone in this room turns into a random animal for a certain period of time or is reduced in size, in this room players can only communicate in in-character dialogue and stage-directions. 
• The room’s flooring functions like a seesaw, perhaps with dangerous things at either end - shark tank, acid vat, spikes etc. 
• A really comfy room, bonus to resting here if you can keep the monsters out. 
• A room that rotates, goes up and down or swaps with another room in the dungeon/world somehow. 
• Consider Tricks and pranks, not traps, just a little irritating jokes such as:
• Infinitely long corridor, reverse escalator stairs
• Pull my finger statue
• Sphere of annihilation mouth (haha, so funny)
• False doors
• Corridor with false perspective that quickly shrinks to a small door at the end.
• ‘Choose your door’ rooms
• In a more humorous than creepy fashion, statues or suits of armour that follow you about the room but won’t attack.
• Baby monsters, the infamous goblin babies. I don’t think this counts as a real capital M, Monster, room unless there is an adult in the room - watch out - eggs and some young creatures may count as treasure such as in the case of dragon eggs, like infant giant beavers, weird. 
• Room that swaps character’s minds (ie pass character sheet’s clockwise round the table).
• Examination room - physical, academic, guilt/sin, psychological, etc. Pronouncement renders different boons/maluses. Could make the players do a real test. Intelligence modifier could give a % bonus to the final score, +1 =10% bonus and so on. 
• Fun but otherwise mechanically and monetarily unimportant (and not dangerous) (do these count as ‘empty’ rooms? I think they might):
• An automated orchestra playing a single song on repeat. 
• An enchanted puppet or stage show. 
• Room contains the aura borealis
•  Room has piano flooring and does something if you play the right tune.
• A big boulder rolls slowly about the room.
• Room wherein everyone appears as their true-selves. 
• A large collection of effectively worthless objects, WOW, (empty?) (Kind of similar to the room filled with a flock of nesting birds, bats, etc.)
• 10,000 sacks of flour
• A thousand barrels of Mind-Flayer vomit
• A million baby teeth
• Room is waist deep in oil
• Ruined books (a real library would count as treasure)
• Stuffed (to the point it is difficult to move) with rotting mannequins. That will freak players out. 
• A vast space, stretching the definitions of a room, such as an ocean to sail over with islands that function as other dungeon rooms, that could function as a Special room.
• Perfectly safe room, free from wandering monsters, the room has features to indicate as such - may only be perfectly safe with some kind of cost. 
• PUZZLE ROOMS (that don’t (or maybe do) give up treasure upon being solved (but could bestow some other blessing) - I’M NOT SMART ENOUGH TO COME UP WITH D100 PUZZLE ROOMS FOR NO REASON. 
• Use rooms that best support Theme. Horror dungeons should have gruesome special rooms, just be wary that they don't act like traps. P

The Lost Books of Appendix N

Pushed into motion by the Appendix N Jam (find my entry here) I have engaged in an intensive, rigourous (and two-fisted) period of study, research and legwork looking into the early literary inspirations of D&D and have discovered a veritable corpus of lost works of fantasy fiction. A protracted campaign of beatings, blackmail and bribery has revealed the following titles were excluded, for mysterious reasons, from AD&D's Appendix N:

1. The Cruel Curse of Tzan-Tzeng
2. Through the Ghost-Field
3. Night of the Spine-Beast
4. Invaders, Ironclad... Invincible!
5. The Ghoul Machine
6. The Siege of Stinghollow
7. Across Broadsword Lake
8. To Duel the Devil's Daughter
9. Swords Against Prophecy
10. Lo, Death-Lords!
11. Against the Marquis of Madness
12. Sphere of the Godlings
13. Beyond the Impenetrable Darkness
14. Amazons, Charge!
15. The Twelve Tales of Tlalaklax
16. Into the Veridian Pit
17. Locked In Silver Shackles
18. Empire of the Eternity-Bomb
19. Adrift on Typhon's Trireme
20. Beware the Wizard's Eye
21. Die, Demon, Die!
22. A Vision of Burning Spires
23. The Beetling Bastion of Emperor Bhzz'tl
24. Mozag-Shah's Mountain of Power
25. Curses Upon Carloman 
26. The Gilt Death of Loquacious Grey
27. Not for All the Gold in Hell
28. Bathed in Troll Blood
29. Rise and Ride Again!
30. The Amphibane Cycle 
31. Flight from Castle Cromlech
32. Belburbug's Bloody Playthings
33. Damocles, Draw Thy Sword!
34. The Saga of Sigurd Silver-Eye
35. Ixø - City of the Witches
36. Beneath Foreign Planets
37. The Fiendish Company
38. In League with the Lizardmen
39. Sir John Sneak - The Rat with Twin Daggers
40. The Ringamble Series, particularly Ringamble the Crypt-King, Ringamble the Revolutionary and Ringamble - Upon a Backwards Horse

Also check out my module title generator.