A Barbarian Alternative

Of course, I realize AFTER posting my barbarian rant I realized I had already posted my own B/X version of the barbarian. Obviously, Blogging & Beer don’t always mix.

Well, in defense of my reverse stance on barbarians, I will say that PREVIOUSLY I was caught up “in the moment” when everyone was high on Pat’s excellent B/X Sword & Sorcery mix. However, even in B/X there’s very little reason to have a barbarian “class.” For reasons already cited, I feel that “barbaric” is a descriptive term that is easily applied to any of the original archetypal classes, and a barbaric fighter makes a fine “barbarian.”

That being said, the REAL REASON for my barbarian rant was as prelude to THIS post wherein I give an alternative class that, while perhaps non-archetypal, doesn’t seem to fit anywhere else.

The Beastmaster.

Now I’m sure plenty of you are rolling your eyes and recalling Marc Singer’s bronzed perfection and vapid/obtuse face from the 1982 film, but give me a moment or two to make my case.

Yes, I too have seen the (TBS Beloved) film about a hundred times on television, and Singer makes me wince a way Schwarzenegger never did (at least in the original Conan the Barbarian). But the story is pure fantasy…there’s no “real world” equivalent of the places or cultures in the film and the thing could easily be translated as a straight D&D adventure (with about as much “story” as usually comes from such adventures; i.e. not much), including the “dungeon setting” (temple) that the title character has to navigate towards the end of the movie.

Characters that communicate with beasts and birds…and who use those alliances to overcome obstacles…are nothing new in fantasy literature or film. Tarzan is, of course, the ultimate “beast master” character, and Sheena: Queen of the Jungle is his female counterpart. But other characters with animal buddies can act as inspirations for a beast master character from Kipling’s Mowgli to James Silk’s version of Frazetta’s Death Dealer.

Would Disney’s Cinderella or Snow White be considered beast masters? Quite possibly…and it doesn’t get much more fairy tale than that.

Unlike the barbarian, there’s really no archetypal equivalent of the beastmaster in D&D as written. Hmm, I may need to elaborate a bit so you folks know exactly where I’m coming from.

BY CONTRAST:

The “barbarian” ALREADY has an archetype in D&D. It is called The Fighter. Not true, say some, the barbarian class of AD&D provides better hit points, freebie bonuses, class restrictions, and a number of “skills,” none of which are possessed by the fighter class. HOWEVER:

- Inflating hit dice or additional ability bonuses are not a “change of archetype.” They’re simply “grade inflation.” If you want every barbarian to have a huge number of hit points & cat-like grace say “your fighter needs a DEX and CON of 13+ (or 16+) to be considered a barbarian.”

- Class restrictions are artificial impositions that can be placed on any character class by any player. The DM can say, “To be considered a true ‘barbarian,’ you may not wear armor heavier than X.” Alternatively, the DM could say, “To be considered a true ‘barbarian,’ you may not start with more than X gold at 1^st level.”

- Skills? Skills?! This is D&D, not D20! Characters have ability scores, and per B/X, ANY character can try to climb a rough, rock wall with an ability check. If you want to climb a sheer surface, play a thief. It’s not like there are giant sheets of marble for ‘barbarians’ to practice on “in the wild.” Don’t be ridiculous.

[by the way, the same thing goes double for the Cavalier class. There is already a cavalier archetype in D&D. It is called The Fighter. Write your OWN “Code,” folks!]

That being said, there’s NO equivalent of the beast master, despite the character’s presence in fantasy fiction. Yes, a high level cleric can “speak with animals”…but a beast master is NOT a cleric. They’re usually scantily armored (hello, Marc Singer!). They don’t have any truck with the undead. They don’t “pray” or “worship” (most appear to be fairly animistic if anything). Often, they use edged weapons (knives and spears). They aren’t granted other spells by a deity.

But really it IS the communication with animals that truly sets the beast master apart from other characters. The beast master doesn’t cast study or cast spells; hell, they can get by being illiterate pretty easily. But the ability to speak with animals AT WILL, and be listened to and gain the trust and friendship of animals…now that really is a special attribute of the beast master “class” that is unavailable to any other class.

So now we really come down to it: what the hell got me thinking about the beast master in the first place? Well, the Compleat Adventurer, of course. Of all the character classes in the book it is, interestingly enough, the beastmaster class that I’ve always remembered (its presence and its accompanying illustration) all these years. While we never had a “beast master” back in our old campaign, this is the kind of character that WOULD HAVE fit right in with the house-ruled weirdness we did have!

Not that I’m totally satisfied with the beastmaster class as written in the CA. It’s a little too convoluted and “record-keepy” for my taste; though it would be about on par with your standard AD&D character class (no more than, say, the assassin or monk). But AD&D, while definitely my “first love” in RPGs, is a game I’m no longer interested in playing, and so I’ll have to do some condensing and tightening to make it fit for my preferred B/X play.

Hmmm…level titles will be tricky. I don’t want to get stuck with terms like “man-cub” or “monkey boy.” I suppose I should read Burroughs to get some more flattering ideas for a beastmaster character class.

; )

The Riddle Of Steel

One thing I do enjoy in James Silk's retro-pulp Death Dealer books (aside from the Frazetta covers and the grim textual depictions of “axe work”) is the treatment of metals. The culture of his novels is ostensibly Bronze Age, but here and there some of the “bad” guys have developed steel, and their weapons and armor are shown to be uber-superior to the poor-ass barbarians.

I’ve seen this similar theme of “emerging technology usurping prior technology” in films like Pathfinder (Vikings!) and 10,000 BC, as well as literature. And I like it…by which I mean, I like it for something to add to a D&D campaign.

AD&D introduces the concept of “magic metals” in the DMG when it starts discussing how +4 weapons need to be made from mithril and +5 weapons need to be made from adamant. But interpolate the concept a bit…if one’s D&D campaign is set in a Bronze Age society, wouldn’t steel be the magical metal of the gods?

I’m not a metallurgist, but I know a bit about swords and such just ‘cause I’m a big nerd. And bronze weapons and armor were incredibly durable, stronger than natural “wrought iron” which was present in greater abundance than tin and copper (the two materials necessary for smelting bronze). The Iron Age which follows the Bronze isn’t about folks up and discovering iron; they had it already. It was instead about folks learning to smith at higher temperatures, so as to incorporate carbon into their iron, thus creating steel… a metal as light weight as bronze but many times more durable.

Here’s how I see it: a Bronze Age campaign is totally consistent with OS D&D play. For one thing it is both pulpier and Classical (in the ancient Greek sense of the term…Medusa? Pegasus? Cyclops?). For another it skirts the whole issue of “why is there no gunpowder?” (give it a few centuries, folks). Personally, I think a lot of the illustrations of characters in AD&D look more Bronze Age anyway (more loin cloths, less hose). Plus making steel a “magic” metal affords some cool opportunities for your game.

Like what? Well, like readily identifiable magic items, for one. Anyone can see that a shining steel blade is superior to its Bronze Age equivalent.

What else? Putting the old school alchemy back into the wizard’s handbook. If magic-user’s create magic weapons, then they’re going to be the ones with knowledge of metallurgy and smithing (after 9th level, of course).

Which also means? Dwarves once again become makers of magic arms and armor, even without the ability to use magic or cast spells. Wizards will be indenturing themselves out to dwarfholds (or at least going on quests) in order to learn the secrets of steel from the dwarves.

This is the way I’d work it: Bronze Age arms and armor are the default. These are readily identifiable by anyone. Arms and armor of shining steel are +1…also readily identifiable, and creatable only by a dwarf, elf, magic-user, or skilled blacksmith (a Normal Man) with the required training. Arms and armor of superior craftsmanship (identifiable by a fighter, dwarf, elf, or blacksmith) are +1 as well…combine the two and you have +2 equipment (steel of excellent manufacture).

So what then are +3 items? Well these are the obviously enchanted items. Stormbringer or Blackrazor (made with alien black metal and covered in glowing runes or starry constellations). The golden armor of Mordred from the film Excalibur. That kind of thing. Only dwarves of the greatest ability (i.e. 12th level in B/X) can manufacture items with true enchantments (for example, additional bonuses against giants), and mundane blacksmiths cannot manufacture them at all. These items of power may be obviously magical, but the identification of their powers will need to be accomplished in the “normal” (D&D) fashion.

Forty Whacks With An Axe

It would be fairly easy for me to fill pages and pages of this blog with posts about Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer character and axes in general…but then I should’ve called this the Lizzie Borden blog or some such. Maybe next week’s “theme” will be “Axe Week;” ‘course folks might mistake my blog for a History Channel ad….

Sorry for the tangents; perhaps I can relate all this to the topic at hand (i.e. RPGs).

James R. Silk (no idea if this is a pen name or not) penned a series of novels based on the Death Dealer character, first created by Frazetta in 1973 (the year I was born…hmmm…). Although Frazetta has created six Death Dealer paintings, I am only aware of four novels by Mr. Silk (each is based on one of the six paintings). I’ve read three of the books even though I’m not a great fan of Silk’s writing (he has an extreme tendency to over-using the simile and metaphor as tools of prose…it gets annoying). They are S&S Nouveau, 3rd generation Swords and Sorcery pastiche. Which is not terrible (hey, I bought the books!), just not terribly original.

What is original is Frazetta’s primal character. Called Gath of Baal in these novels, the “prisoner of the horned helmet” is an Ice Age barbarian of the forest, who gets his head stuck in an unholy artifact (said helmet) and is transformed into the embodiment of the god of Death. He gets a lot of titles (the Dark One, the Forest Lord, the Death Dealer, etc.) and he kills a lot of people (mainly with an axe) when his soul is not being saved by his fair lady (Ahh…how cute). The character is very different from the recent comic book series (which needs a post of its own), as the Death Dealer is a possessed mortal, rather than an animated corpse.

I’ve modeled stats for ol’ Gath in D20 in the past (that was fun), and even tried to craft his horned helmet under the BECMI artifact rules (a bit frustrating). I may or may not post these sometime in the future. However, the FIRST time I used the Death Dealer as D&D inspiration was the first and only time I played 2nd Edition AD&D.

This would have been around 1997…just before I met my wife but probably 7 or 8 years after my last high school D&D game. My co-worker, James, offered to run a game for me, I lassoed a couple other buddies, and we ran in his (I think) Forgotten Realms pocket campaign.

My then-roommate, Mike, played his usual (I found out later) ranger-archer character, “Keldern.” Kris ran his standard Thief (are they called “rogues” in AD&D2? I don’t remember); I belief he was named “Zandramas” but Zand may have been a later, different thief. I was thinking of playing a fighter (since AD&D2 bards suck), but it was strongly suggested that I play some sort of clerical-type. So I came up with my own version of the Death Dealer.

"Baalzac" (I believe that was his name, because we later referred to him as “Ball Sack”) was ostensibly a “cleric,” but a peculiar type of cleric. As I explained to my fellow players, Baalzac was a priest of the mad God of Carnage in War, Tarjan (yes, stole the “mad god” from Bard’s Tale). Tarjan’s priests were required to fight in combat with the god’s chosen weapon (three guesses, folks) and was granted higher hit dice and fighting ability than a normal cleric. However, as a trade-off to this, Tarjan granted no spells, nor did his priests have the ability to “turn undead.”

In other words: a fighter. But Baalzac specifically referred to himself as a cleric/priest, and had both code and doctrine that he was required to uphold. James was nice enough to let me run with this idea. "Keldern" did not appreciate the joke.

I was also fairly insistent that I wanted a “magic horned helmet.” I’m not sure what exactly I was thinking at the time (both Kris and I had decided to get a serious “buzz on” before sitting down to the table), and I’m sure James didn’t either (he was a military history buff, nor a Frazetta fan), but he gave me a "+2 helmet” that acted pretty much like a ring of protection…that is, it contributed +2 to my character’s AC and provided no other bonuses. God bless him, it was perfect.

The adventure was pretty random…go somewhere, do something, all that is forgotten now…but my character was a hoot to play. The highlight was definitely an encounter with an NPC noble-fighter and his retinue, during which “Ball Sack” took offense to the snubbing of his deity by the lord's high priest. I got to make a big speech and challenged the priest to a holmgang, “acting as proxies for our deities.” Of course, in a straight up melee my “cleric” slaughtered the high priest and Tarjan was “vindicated” as the mightier demigod.

Talk about an anti-paladin…

As a one-off game, AD&D2 wasn’t bad…of course, there are more rules than what are really needed for a one-off game (the “kits” James made us choose seemed fairly redundant). But as a “get-drunk-and-f-around-game” it was fun. “Keldern” the ranger was a total wanker, though. Really wish I’d had a chance to introduce him to the business end of my hatchet….
: )

"Talk To The Axe..."

I love Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer...as I know I've posted earlier, I am a HUGE fan of the axe as a weapon, and the wearer of the Horned Helmet is definitely the epitome of the axe-slinging barbarian.

Heck, I've even read James Silk's novels (based on Frazetta's art)...and of course I've seen Fire and Ice (nice in its own way).  

I always liked how the body and head seem to be floating away from each other....