Old School Stylish

Classless, Discovery-Based Advancement · By Heavy Pepper Games

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New Advanced or Secret Styles (and post your own!) Sticky

A topic by Heavy Pepper Games created Dec 06, 2021 Views: 508 Replies: 11

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Heavy Pepper GamesDeveloper2 years ago (1 edit) (+4)

This thread is for posting any styles you came up with and feel comfortable sharing with the world. Annotations about your thought process behind making it or what happened with it at the table are also welcome. If people are interested we could maybe do some kind of style "community pack", but nothing would be used without explicit permission. Anything you post here is yours.

I will start us off with one that didn't make it into the main book:

Asceticism

Type: Secret

+2 HP
Freedom: An ascetic cannot die of starvation or thirst, even if it would cause them to lose hit points (any relevant statistic cannot fall below the minimum to keep them alive).
Vippavasa: Every day that they do not eat or drink, they gain new abilities but suffer either the campaign’s normal effects of starvation other than death, or if no effects are set for this campaign use the “Negative Effects” on the following table:

Days of Starvation	New Ability	Negative Effect
- - - - - - (7-10) (11+)	None. Always see through illusions. X-Ray vision; can see through up to 5’ thick walls with 10 seconds of concentration. +1 max MP. Always under effect of spell “ESP.” Can levitate up to 10’ per round at will. Can shrink down to the size of a mouse or double in size. Ability scores remain the same. **Advantage on all rolls, MP doubled (after all other Style-based calculations).	None. Cannot lie. Radiate aura out 30’. Creatures detect them. They verbally dictate their actions just before they do them. -2 on attack rolls. All healing effects halved. Who needs a body? Hit points halved (after all other Style-based calculations performed). Disadvantage on saves against breath weapons. **Soul disassociates from body. Will spend one more day on Earth before moving on to seek nirvana on its own (character’s soul leaves party).

Every meal an ascetic eats causes them to revert to the previous level of starvation (i.e. they move up one position on the table) unless they are at day 8. They lose any abilities gained at their current level of starvation when they revert to a previous one.

Suggested Learning: A character can learn this from an actual mountain ascetic or make it 7 days without food. Use the effects of starvation outlined above without the benefits, and additionally the character takes 1 point of damage at the start of every day.

COMMENTS: I originally wrote this because it's such a big staple in Hindu myth, and also because I think the idea of embracing this kind of fantasy version of yoga fits in well with the mood of the rest of the book. However, at the end of the day, this one just felt a little too esoteric and fiddly. If you do end up trying this one in your game, though, let me know what happens!

Allvaldr2 years ago(+2)

I'm not sure if I'm entirely happy yet with the power balance of this style, but I really wanted this flavour in the game since I've always been disappointed in B/X Staff as a weapon. So here goes:

Staff Master
Type: Advanced
+2 HP, +1 Attack Bonus

Big Stick Energy: This person has mastered the use of the staff. They ignore the Slow quality when wielding a staff. They can use the staff as a Versatile weapon, either as a double weapon (D6/D6 damage); or as a reach weapon (10ft reach, D8 damage).

Suggested learning: A local mercenary called Shad is loudly extolling the virtues of the stick. Alternatively, get their ass kicked by an old man with a stick (he will use subdual damage as he's no killer).

Heavy Pepper GamesDeveloper2 years ago(+1)

Oh this is a good idea! The central idea is something that is probably worth doing with a bunch of the BX weapons-- take an underused weapon and give it something unique in addition to some small stat bonuses.

I like to give the weapon-focused stuff a flavorful kind of "ribbon" too -- like something that is only situationally useful but really sells the style as a unique thing people really want to learn. What if, for example, you could forego attacking to spin the staff and block projectiles, or maybe use it to pole vault? Like if you saw someone using this style and couldn't see what dice they rolled, how much damage they did, etc. what would visually tip you off that they're a staff master?

Thanks for posting that, it's definitely giving me something to chew on!

Allvaldr2 years ago(+1)

Using it for pole vaulting was one of the ideas I also thought about, but the reason I didn't add it is because I didn't want it to interfere too much with the acrobatics style already written. I'm doubting now whether or not that was a good reason though, so perhaps I'll actually add it back in.

I also love the idea of a staff spin to block projectiles though. Right off the bat I can think of 2 ways to implement it. I'm not sure what fits the idea of OSE Stylish better. Would you suggest an action with a x-in-6 chance to successfully block projectiles, or an automatically successful block projectiles that costs 1 MP to use?

Heavy Pepper GamesDeveloper2 years ago (2 edits)

One thing I would implore of people creating their own styles is not to worry about doing something another style already does. You don't know if you'll even use the other one in your campaign after all! That and I think it makes sense for styles to occasionally share features, as different martial traditions will inevitably borrow from each other.

For your other question -- I kinda like both, especially because for a home game you wouldn't be limited by space and so the mechanics don't need to be written "elegantly." Instead of the x-in-6 chance though, I think what I would do is have the player roll an attack and compare their result to the roll of the arrow that was fired. It's not at all simpler or "better" than x-in-6 of course; I just like the flavor of it.

Allvaldr2 years ago

That's some great advise, thanks. Gives me a lot to think about for other styles :)

Heavy Pepper GamesDeveloper2 years ago

Here's a go at a style for characters who want to get a bit more out of wielding lighter weapons like daggers.

Celerity

Type: Advanced

+1 Attack Bonus

Limitation: This style only works if you're wielding nothing bigger than a dagger.

Quick Access: As long as it's carried in a pack or otherwise on their person, this character can access any item they carry instantly.
Momentum: When you have a free hand and roll a 20+ on an attack roll, or your attack stuns, knocks down or otherwise inflicts a condition on an enemy, you may immediately move and take any action other than making another attack.
Twin Dragon Fang: When wielding two weapons, you may chose to forego making an attack roll and deal 2 damage to an enemy in melee.

Suggested learning: A distant monastery trains a secret sect of spies in wetwork. The principles of this style are well-recorded and archived, but protected.

bigfaceless2 years ago(+2)

this is my first shot at a style to replace some druid abilities and I'm looking for input. I hope to do a ranger/tracker thing next.

Hedge magic

Type: Advanced

-2 HP, +1 MP

Path-finding: Same as the druid ability

Pass without trace: spend 1mp to activate the Druid ability of the same name.

Spells
locate plant/animal 1mp

Purify food and water 1mp

Growth of nature 3mp

Heavy Pepper GamesDeveloper1 year ago(+2)

Messing around with sensing energy as a style.

Zanshin

Type: Advanced

+2 HP, +1 ATK

Awareness: A character practicing Zanshin always know if something with greater total hit dice than they have exists in a direction. They can extend or contract the range of this awareness, up to 50 miles.
Mind's Eye: If a character uses the Awareness ability to search within 50', they additionally know the highest level of spell that discovered entities could cast or how much MP they have, whichever would apply.
Intersection: If someone with Zanshin is attacked and they have done nothing yet that round, they may attack the original attacker first, rolling the attack with advantage. If their target survives, they also make their attack roll with advantage. The character who used this ability no longer takes whatever actions they otherwise would have that round.

Suggested learning: After spending a week practicing yoga in the wilderness, a character may choose to give up one of their ordinary senses to gain this style. If sight is sacrificed, this style is permanently equipped and does not occupy a slot.

Havoc!270 days ago(+1)

I'm working on using this for a solo game with Scarlet Heroes, but in my own setting. Decided to try my hand at Necromancy using the spells from the Necrotic Gnome Necromancer class.

NECROMANCY -2 HP, +1 MP

• Command the Dead [1 MP]: 2d6 humanoid corpses or skeletons rise up and obey the caster's commands for 1 round per level.

Commanded Dead - AC 7 [12], HD 1 (1hp), Att 1 x weapon (1d6 or by weapon), THAC0 0, MV 60’ (20’), SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (1), ML 12, AL Chaotic, XP 10

• Spells: ✦ Animate Dead [4 MP] | ✦ Speak with Dead [2] | ✦ Command Undead [3]

Suggested learning: Suffering a tragic loss and becoming determined to bring them back, only to figure out you can't really raise the dead.

It's slightly anxiety inducing to create these because I don't wanna feel like I'm cheating, but it's also really hard to condense the essential of a type of magic to just a few spells.

It's probably impracticable but I do sorta wish there were harder guidelines to making a style. Like, "you get 9 points, a spell can be cast by -1 MP than its level on the book, so an arcane class can have up to that value of spells on it." But that's probably because I suck at making spells hahahahaha

I'll also try my hand at some Blood Magic and using Wonder and Wickedness spells to see how it goes!

Heavy Pepper GamesDeveloper270 days ago(+1)

This looks good to me! One thing you could consider is dividing Necromancy into two styles: Undead Rapport and maybe Life Magic or something like that. Undead Rapport might be commanding/taking control of existing undead (note: if you have your own version of the spell written up as a feature, no need to add the spell, too) and speaking with dead, and Life Magic might be about animating dead and resurrection.

If you're playing solo, I feel like you should only think of it as "cheating" if you personally feel you're getting robbed of interesting play. There's no need to hold yourself to any more objective standard than that, in my opinion.

RE: magic styles, it is definitely loosey goosey in the book. A thing I tended to do was give a style fewer spells if the style gave access to what I thought of as more generally useful or potent spells, and give a style more spells if they were very situational. If commanding undead seems like it would come up a lot in your game, separating the two ideas like I mentioned above might be a good idea. If it's more niche, just make it one style. Again though, you should really only worry about changing this if you feel it makes the game too easy for you to make any fun decisions.

Havoc!269 days ago

I did think of dividing it up actually, I think I'll do that. It's just that seeing the spell list makes me a bit antsy at what to choose hahahaha

The idea of separating them by usefulness is very true too, I kept feeling like the direct command spells were much stronger and more useful than the communication one, but there were communication ones that I didn't put in because it felt like too much.

Thanks for the tips and pointers! I may come back in a while with a Blood Magic one, and I'm toying with a sort of Archery style but for black powder guns. I really like Old School Stylish and the JRPG-y vibe it lends the game :)

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Old School Stylish

New Advanced or Secret Styles (and post your own!) Sticky

Asceticism