Raised by wolves (Class: Animal Child)

26 Sep, 2025

It is not an uncommon thing for a child to be left in the care of beasts: parents killed by wild dogs who took pity upon hearing the babe’s wails, so similar to those of their own pups; the offering basket floating down the river, saved by the eagle’s talons; the cradle abducted by the tiger, black as night, who wanted a child of its own.

Many in your place would become wild, entirely unable to properly follow God’s laws. But your humanity was affirmed the first time your fingers curled around the haft of a spear.

The Animal Child¹

Extra starting item: a simple spear, stained by sweat and blood many times over
+1 to-hit per template
A: Instinct, Style
B: Mighty Feats
C: Indefatigable
D: Apex Predator, +1 Attack

A: Instinct

Your instinct is unparalleled; it is the source of your mastery. Instinct takes up slots in your inventory like fatigue; just like fatigue, you take a point of damage if something would occupy the same slot. When you take a day or a night to calmly and silently meditate (nigh impossible to do in Uruk), you may fill as many inventory slots with instinct as you wish.

Spend instinct to: reduce incoming weapon damage by 1d6 + [to-hit], riposting to roll a free attack against the target should you reduce their damage to 0 or lower; add +2 to an attack roll; double your speed for a round; or treat a fall as if it were ten cubits shorter. You may only spend a maximum of [templates] instinct in a round.

While you wear nothing but the clothes on your back and carry nothing but your spear in your hands, your inventory space is doubled. So long as you hold no shield and you’re not hobbled, sunk in mud, or tied up, your AC cannot be worse than 5.

A: Style

You are a student of one of the animal masters listed below, whose style you have taken to heart. You know two of their style’s techniques, stances, or lessons: your choice which. Each time you gain a template or spend a season training, you learn two new techniques, stances, or lessons from any style you know. Learning a new style requires a season of tutelage and study under its master.

• Techniques are active moves that replace or improve an attack. Using a technique against intelligent enemies costs one instinct for each time you've done so in the current fight, since it takes more skill and power as they grow wise to your tricks.
• Stances are passive and have constant effects. You can only be in one stance at a time, but you may change your stance at the beginning of each round in combat.
• Some styles might have lessons, which are permanent changes to your character that may be useful in combat or outside of it.

B: Mighty Feats

You can spend instinct to perform mighty feats.

You choose feats of strength (bending bars, breaking bones, lifting gates) or agility (acrobatics, running on beams, mighty leaps) when you gain this template.

Spending instinct replaces any roll you might need to make. If you are attempting a feat that is also a direct attack (seizing someone and breaking their bones, throwing a person at another person, kick-flipping off someone’s head), you may need to make an attack roll as part of the feat, to see if you can successfully get the target.

Spend one instinct to perform any feat a normal human could, spend two to perform any feat a human at their physical peak could, or spend three to perform any feat a wild beast could.

C: Indefatigable

You may spend instinct to heal HP on a one-to-one basis at any time. There is no longer a limit to how much instinct you can spend in a round.

D: Apex Predator

You are as an animal yourself. Spend a season in meditation and invent your own style, with its own four techniques, stances, or lessons. You are, of course, a master of your own style.

Styles of the Animal Masters²

Ψ: Waterfowl Dance

The style of the great egret of the lowlands, who took you under her wing and taught you her martial dance.

1. Stance: One-Legged Silhouette
   Anything you can balance on holds your weight, and you can run while balancing. Perch atop your spear, waiting. The first time someone attacks you in this stance, you drop out of it and immediately attack them first.

2. Stance: Tempo
   For each successful attack in a fight, you get +1 to-hit and +1 damage for the rest of that fight.

3. Stance: Flight
   You can double-jump. If your hair or wing-resemblant clothing reaches your ankles, you can triple-jump.

4. Lesson: Feather-Tongue
   You speak the lilting speech of birds and the creatures of the upper air, who treat you as one of their own.

Ψ: Tremor-Style

The style of the eldest catfish of the riverbed, who took you into his confidence and taught you his wily ways.

1. Technique: Mud Shot
   Spit a glob of mud at your target to distract from your spear-point. They must roll reflex or be blinded until they wipe it from their eyes as a minor action (in addition to being stabbed).

2. Stance: Torpor
   You can hold your breath for up to an hour without discomfort, three if unmoving, and you can feel the subtle movements of water to detect the direction and distance of anything moving in water you are immersed in, no matter how slight the movement or cloudy the water. While in this stance, your AC bonus isn’t affected by unstable or muddy ground.

3. Technique: Liquefy
   Forgo attacking to transform the battlefield into a muddy morass. It's difficult to cross, though not impossible, and anyone standing in it is at -2 to-hit and +2 to get hit. You know the tricks to slide right across it.

4. Lesson: Enrolled
   So long as you’re unburdened by armor, you can swim as fast as you can run for as long as you choose. You speak the bubbling speech of river fish, who treat you as one of their own.

Ψ: Camouflaged

The style of the shadowcat of the headwater tropics, who could not abide your weakness.

1. Technique: Ambush Predator
   You may meditate for up to [level] rounds before using this technique. For each round spent meditating, your next blow rolls damage an additional time and adds it to the total (e.g., if you spent one round meditating and hit someone for 1d6+2, you hit them for 2d6+4 instead).

2. Technique: Reaching Shadow
   Weapons in your hands are longer than they first seem. When you miss an attack, you may immediately reroll it.

3. Stance: Striped Shadow
   While in darkness, you are invisible. You may exit the darkness—and this stance alongside it—to attack a target with advantage, dealing double damage on a hit

4. Lesson: Eyes Always Watching, Ears Always Listening
   You may fall asleep instantly in any position, and you wake already leaping to strike. You can see in shadowy twilight as if it were high noon.

Ψ: The Way

The style of the matron elephant of the holy herd, who knew you even before you were born.

1. Technique: The Tusks
   When you could riposte, you can instead catch the attacking weapon with your spear and snap it like a twig. Assuming your skin is thinner than an elephant's, you take 1d4 damage.

2. Technique: The Grapple
   With your hand or trunk, grab their wrist. Your grip cannot be broken, except by death of one or both of you. They'll need to overpower you to use the grabbed arm meaningfully.

3. Technique: The Throw
   If you have someone grappled, you may throw them up to ten cubits as an attack on another target. If the attack is successful, the grappled creature and the target both take 1d6 damage and fall to the ground in a tangle. If you miss, the grappled creature falls to the ground anyway.

4. Lesson: The Memory
   So long as you have experienced it, you will not forget it. You can spend a day and a night meditating to purge your mind of something that must be forgotten at all costs.

#GLoG #MEGsopotamia #class