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A jam submission

Herbalist - A Lay On Hands ArchetypeView project page

Character archetype for lay on hands loosely based on the Filipino "Albularyo" and "Manghihilot"
Submitted by KTPie (@Jomnomnoms) — 54 days, 13 hours before the deadline
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Herbalist - A Lay On Hands Archetype's itch.io page

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Comments

(2 edits) (+2)

An intriguing archetype with a few implicit built-in world-building details: 

  • In spite of the Blight, there must be enough soil and seeds available for the Herbalist to grow their component herbs.
  • The references to alchemy suggest that Herbalism is a learned skill, not something that can be discovered innately. So that's already one possible story hook in itself; how did the Herbalist learn to concoct and use their oils? What the massage techniques?

By design, it already sets a more cheerful, upbeat, light-hearted option to the Bloodletter.

That said, it feels like a slight missed opportunity to introduce multi-type Archetypes. By explicitly drawing on both arbularyo and hilot traditions, it feels like an organic way to make a class that heals both Pestilence and one other secondary type:

  • Flesh - The  massage heals physical symptoms of the disease (e.g. boils, lesions, rashes)
  •  Soul - The whispered orasyon and hand movements drive out the spiritual corruption at the root of the disease

This has a direct effect on possible world-building, since the rules state:

Make sure your character’s healing ability is related to the problems faced by people in your world or caused by the Blight

An explicitly multi-type class potentially invites new ways to conceptualize the Blight, especially when combined with options from the Post-Fall Features prompt table. 

DeveloperSubmitted (1 edit) (+2)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I didn't notice the implications of some of the stuff I put down there that's cool.

Something that could be interesting is a character archetype that is fighting against the Blight head on (thinking somewhere around the creatures healing type but for plant life and food). I couldn't quite make it work with the Herbalist, and eventually leaned to heal those who are affected by the Blight instead. I think the Earth Guard Archetype really hit the nail on this one though

I never thought of the Herbalist being multi-type until you pointed it out. It got me thinking of how other healing types could intersect. I imagine you can imply a cyberpunk setting with a tech-body archetype, perhaps. So much cool stuff.