GLOG Class: Human (race-as-class)

 If you look around there are race-as-class templates for just about every fantasy race you can imagine, except for the most populous one, humans. I have come forth to fix this misunderstanding, once and for all. 

 

 You're a human, a kind of mostly-hairless bipedal ape native to the savannah. Your people are hunters-gatherers running after animals until they collapse of exhaustion, climbing trees for fruit and honey, digging up roots and tubers, and in general making great use of their aptitude for tool-use and well-adapted physiology.

HD: d6

A: Arm Structure, Bipedalism
B: Sweat Glands, Adaptable Metabolism
C: Pack-bonding, Mental Cartography
D: Aposematic Display

Arm Structure - Your shoulder joint is adapted to allow you to throw things more accurately and forcefully, granting you +2 to-hit when using javelins, throwing spears, atlatls, or just pelting things with rocks. Additionally, your unusually mobile wrist lets you grant additional momentum to swung clubs, axes, maces and the like, also granting +2 to-hit.

Bipedalism - You can reliably walk on two legs. It's pretty useful, you can wade through waist-deep water, carry things with your hands, see over tall grass, appear more threatening to predators, etc. I know this probably doesn't seem that impressive to you ingrates, but it was a big deal when early hominids figured out how to do this, mkay?

Sweat Glands - You have been blessed by your heritage with the very cutting edge of heat-regulation technology: sweating. If you're lightly encumbered you can cover 1.5x as much distance as a non-Human in a day by running. Your excellent disposition to endurance running also means that, on a long enough timeframe, you can outrun just about anything that's not a wolf or a horse.

Adaptable Metabolism - You're really good at digesting stuff you're not supposed to. You can eat every part of a mammal, except maybe the part of bone that isn't marrow. Thermal processing might improve flavour but isn't strictly necessary. Whenever you encounter and eat a plant that's supposed to be toxic for the first time, roll a save. If you succeed you, and other humans, can metabolize it. If it was close or the plant's really weird and suspicious the GM may decide it's only harmless in small quantities, processed in a certain way (brewed or smoked), or used as a spice.

Pack-bonding - You're a social creature and it shows. When you spend a week, or live through an important event with a person, an animal, an object, or a place, you may pack-bond with them. You gain +2 to the relevant check when cooperating with or using your pack-bond. If they're ever killed, broken, or lost irrevocably, save. If you fail, mourn and become relatively useless for d6 days. If you succeed, fly into righteous rage for however long it takes to resolve the situation and get revenge on whoever caused you to lose your pack-bond, then mourn. You may have 2 plus your charisma modifier pack-bonds. Other Humans you pack-bond with are assumed to be part of your Clan. Your Clan follows you around and helps you out, but they'll only fight if they consider it a necessity.

Mental Cartography - Your carefully-honed hunter-gatherer instincts cause you to semi-consciously map out your surroundings in your head. After you've spent a week in an area, you always know where the nearest hiding place, water source, food source, and stationary danger are. If you're returning to an area you used to know, roll an INT check. On a success, you still remember where things are.

Aposematic Display - You're big, loud, stinky, you travel in groups, and you're not afraid. Whenever you encounter a beast you may attempt to intimidate it by waving your arms and/or weapons around, stomping around and shouting. The beast  must make a morale check at -1 per appropriately adorned (weapons equipped, body paint, weird hair or headwear) pack-bonded Human, or two unadorned Humans.


So yeah, that's my first blogpost, and it's a joke. Hi. Hopefully it's useful in making you consider the biology of unhuman races. How similar are they to humans, really? Do elves sweat? Can dwarves metabolize capsaicin? Do goblins have the anatomical prerequisites to actually hit when they throw shit at you? Who knows? Who cares? My other posts will hopefully be more useful when/if I write them. Sorry about that.

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