The Fungus Among Us

Myconid

 I think mushrooms are the business. I like to look at them. I like to eat them. Full disclosure, I've never done psychedelics in my life, but if I had to follow a trend here . . . well. Anyway, I always wanted them to be playable, going back to my 3.5 days, but in more complicated roleplaying systems, home brewing races is hard. Or maybe I'm just stupid, I don't know.

But in the seemingly simpler world of most OSR games, I threw something together lickity split. Once again, i primarily play Lotfp, but the beauty of  the OSR scene is how convertible everything is, so feel free to do with this bad boy what you will.

• Myconids fight, save, and advance as halflings.
• 3-in-6 chance stealth, 4-in-6 chance bushcraft, but only in underground locales or deep woodlands/swamps, because in my personal head lore, this is where they hangout. Sewers, too, maybe, but then again, that's still underground.
• Darkvision
• -2 penalty to saving rolls and attack rolls in sunlit areas. Sensitive to the sun, yo. 
• Does not need to eat or drink, or even sleep, really. I picture sleep for a myconid being a coma-like torpor, standing up right.
• Do not regain hit points through rest, normally. Rather, they need suck up nutrients somewhere right? So instead, they need to attach themselves to something, like a tree, or a dead body. Or maybe the collective excrement of their fellow adventurers? We may glean over the finer details, but everyone poops.

• Starting at 3rd level, and then again at every other lever after that, a myconid may find themselves a nice little dark cave, or maybe a pile of dead leaves deep in the forest dark, and the myconid may spore. So you shoot out all your little spores everywhere,  as you do, and the greater bulk of these spores are gonna produce normal, everyday mushrooms, no big deal. But in 2d6 weeks, 1d4 of these bad boys are gonna grow into full grown myconid retainers, at half of your level rounding down. So you end up with perfect, but weaker clones, of your myconid PC. They function as normal retainers who you don't have to pay, until you die. And then, BAM, instant replacement. Hell, I wouldn't even make you come up with a new name, if you didn't want to.

So there you go, my homebrew OSR myconid. Not too complicated, I think. If you roll one out for your next game, come back and tell me how it goes.

-J

The Thing About Barbarians

Conan the. Kull the Conqueror. Red Sonja. When I think of the archetypical barbarian, these are the names that pop into my head.

A lot of games tend to package the barbarian and the berserker together, and the truth is, that isn't necessarily necessary. On top of that, working out raging mechanics for a game where they don't exist makes shit complicated.

Let's keep it simple.

My group and I primarily play James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess. First game part of the Old School Renaissance I bought into, and yes, primarily for the name.

So how do barbarian?

Well, trying not to break the game here:

Save and advance as a fighter, first off. Makes the most sense. Next most sense; save and advance as a dwarf. Get your Gotrek on.

My barbarians keep the typical attack bonus ( 1 +Strenght Mod) and instead receive a graduating bonus to attack damage. +2 at first level, +3 at second level, so on . . .

Catch is they can't be anymore than lightly encumbered to receive this bonus attack damage.

I suppose you could armor up and run around punching shit to death, and I'd roll with it. It's funny.