Player's Guide to Rangers and Rogues.pdf

L, 1

I NTRODUCTION

C REDITS

A UTHORS :

James Maliszewski (Chapters 1–3)

and Rhiannon Louve (Chapters 4–6)

F RONT & B ACK C OVER D ESIGN :

Mike Chaney and Matt Milberger

D EDICATION

To R.K. Milholland and Something Positive , for the fantastic

laughs and acerbic wit. I’m never sure whether to laugh or be appalled

by your work, man, which must mean that it’s just that good.

A DDITIONAL M ATERIAL :

Joseph D. Carriker, Jr., Adam Eichelberger,

James Maliszewski, Blaine Seitz

G ROVELSOME A POLOGIES

To James Maliszewski , for leaving his name out of the Addi-

tional Materials section of the Player’s Guide to Wizards, Bards and

Sorcerers and the Player’s Guide to Fighters and Barbarians . Mea

culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

D EVELOPER :

Joseph D. Carriker Jr.

E DITOR :

Anita Hager

S PECIAL T HANKS

To Burt Jackson , for the Contacts rules.

To E. Deirdre Brooks , for Enkili’s knucklebones.

To Anthony Pryor , for general roguish ideas.

M ANAGING E DITOR :

Andrew Bates

A RT D IRECTOR :

Rich Thomas

G ROVELSOME A POLOGIES R EDUX

To Ethan Skemp , Michael Gill and Kevin Kulp for

crediting them the wrong chapters in the Players Guide to

Wizards, Bards and Sorcerers. The correct credits should be:

Ethan Skemp (Chapters 1–2), Michael Gill (Chapters 3–

4) and Kevin Kulp (Chapters 5–6)

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

L AYOUT AND T YPESETTING :

Mike Chaney

C OVER A RTIST :

Michael Phillipi

I NTERIOR A RTISTS :

David Day, Nate Pride, Grey Thornberry, & Tim Truman

Check out upcoming Sword and Sorcery Studio

products online at: http://www.swordsorcery.com

Distributed for Sword and Sorcery Studio by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

This printing of Player’s Guide to Rangers and Rogues is published in accordance with the Open Game License. See the Open Game

License Appendix of this book for more information.

Player’s Guide to Rangers and Rogues, Scarred Lands, the Scarred Lands logo, Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Sorcery Studio, the

Sword and Sorcery logo, Creature Collection, Creature Collection 2: Dark Menagerie, Relics & Rituals, and Relics & Rituals 2: Lost Lore

The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.

“d20 System” and the “d20 System” logo are Trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast and are used according to the terms of

the d20 System License version 1.0. A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com.

Dungeons & Dragons® and Wizards of the Coast® are Registered Trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, and are used with Permission.

PRINTED IN CANADA.

PLAYER , S GUIDE TO RANGERS AND ROGUES

P REFACE

I NTRODUCTION

B OOK O NE : R ANGERS

C HAPTER O NE : A H ISTORY OF H UNTERS

C HAPTER T WO : B ROTHERHOODS OF THE S CARRED L ANDS

C HAPTER T HREE : T O E NDURE THE W ILDS

B OOK T WO : R OGUES

C HAPTER F OUR : L AWS OF THE L AND

C HAPTER F IVE : P OWER OF THE G UILDS

C HAPTER S IX : T RICKS OF THE T RADE

A PPENDICES

A PPENDIX O NE : T HE W AYS OF S HADOW

A PPENDIX T WO : T HE M ASTERS OF S HADOW

120

A PPENDIX T HREE : T HE T OOLS OF S HADOW

128

L EGAL A PPENDIX

I NTRODUCTION

Welcome to the fourth in the Player’s Guide series.

Our intent with this series is simple: We want to

examine the ways in which players can become a stron-

ger part of the setting in which in which their characters

exist. By providing ways in which characters may derive

a background from and have a role in the setting’s

development, they become closely tied to the setting. In

turn, players adopt a more vested interest in both their

characters and in the setting as a whole. The more richly

a setting is developed, the more characters can “come to

life,” creating memorable role-playing and exciting ad-

ventures.

Thus, our goal is to help your characters become a

living, breathing part of the game world.

More than that, though, we want to see how these

classes might shape and inspire a campaign setting. The

player characters — and characters like them, past and

present — are the movers and shakers in the game world.

Not every character in the setting has levels in the so-

called “PC classes.” In fact, those who do are in the

minority. But from these relatively few individuals come

the events, both heroic and monstrous, that forever

shape their world.

Therefore, this series uses the setting of the Scarred

Lands to help show you how diverse classes weave their

influence into every aspect of the tapestry of a game

world. As with the rest of the book, you can refer to it for

your own Scarred Lands game, or use it as inspiration in

any other campaign.

The Player’s Guide to Rangers and Rogues is more

than suggestions and rules on how to play a certain type

of character. This is a book about determining where

your characters, and those like them, have affected the

world. To this end, we examine the skills and tricks

involved in hunting the shadows, whether the stalker

does so for the greater good or for personal gain. The men

and women who are the focus of this book tend to exist

on the outer limits of the law — whether because they

eschew those laws or simply because they haunt the

fringes of civilization.

Within these pages are the stealthy, the hunters, the

stalkers, the watchers.

So, welcome to a book filled with the vigilant and

the villainous, a book on criminals and bounty hunters,

assassins and protectors, law-keepers and law-breakers.

Welcome to the Player’s Guide to Rangers and Rogues .

J OSEPH D

C ARRIKER ,

J R .

S CARRED L ANDS D EVELOPER

S WORD & S ORCERY S TUDIOS

PLAYER , S GUIDE TO RANGERS AND ROGUES

While the Player’s Guide to Rangers and Rogues

is designed for use in any d20 campaign, you’ll find that

it is undeniably focused on the Scarred Lands. Through-

out this book, you will read many references to that

setting, its history and its inhabitants.

Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that this book’s

utility is limited to the Scarred Lands. As explained in

the Preface, the purpose of the Player’s Guide series is

show how the various character classes shape and inspire

a campaign setting. The Scarred Lands is used as a single

example of this process rather than the only one. Any

references to it are meant to inspire your own ideas

regardless of the campaign setting in which they occur.

Adapting material in this book to other settings may

require some work. This introduction should make that

easier, since it offers a comprehensive overview and

plenty of suggestions. Armed with its advice, players and

Game Masters should have little difficulty tailoring the

rest of the book’s content to campaigns set in other

worlds, or even to other conceptions of the Scarred

Lands setting than the standard one presented in Sword

& Sorcery products.

As always, the key is for GMs to remember the oft-

quoted — though oft-forgotten — truism: you are the

final arbiter of what is and is not the case for your

campaign, wherever it is set. This book offers a multitude

of options, variants and alternate takes on many aspects

of the core classes of rangers and rogues (not to mention

an exhaustive discussion of their place in the Scarred

Lands setting). If anything here runs counter to your

conception of things or would do violence to the estab-

lished truths of your campaign, feel free to ignore them!

That’s as true for campaigns in the Scarred Lands as in

any other setting. Use only what appeals to you and is

genuinely useful, and discard the rest.

So long as you bear that in mind, this book is as

valuable to players and GMs alike, regardless of whether

the campaign is set in the Scarred Lands or in a game

world of their own creation.

It’s important to note that some campaign settings

are broadly enough drawn that they can allow for mul-

tiple types of games depending on the interests of the

GM and the players. The following sections provide

some insight into the benefits and drawbacks of each

type. They also make it easier for those not playing in the

Scarred Lands to categorize their own campaign by its

type, so as to take fuller advantage of the material

presented in later chapters.

Simply read through the following to see where your

campaign best fits, and you’ll also find assistance of how

to adjust the rest of this book’s contents accordingly.

H IGH F ANTASY

High fantasy is, in many ways, the default type of

fantasy roleplaying setting. Its name derives from the fact

that its fantastical elements — magic, monsters, heroism

— are at the high end of the scale. High fantasy games are

in no way “realistic.” They pay little heed to notions of

plausibility. Instead, they rely on over the top plotlines,

outlandish locales and larger than life characters to tell

epic stories set in a mythical locale. Most high fantasy

games also have a strong component of black and white

morality to them. The forces of good are virtuous and

praiseworthy, while the forces of evil are vicious and

blameworthy.

High fantasy need not be simplistic, however. In

fact, many high fantasy tales contain very sophisticated

examinations of the nature of evil and the very real

temptation to choose it over good as a means to achiev-

ing an otherwise just end.

The Scarred Lands setting is largely a high fantasy

setting, so the majority of information in this book is well

suited to use in other high fantasy campaigns. High

fantasy settings are also strongly archetypal, which is to

say they use characters that embody certain universal

qualities or roles. Two such archetypes are the “wilder-

ness warrior” and the “thief with a heart of gold,” both of

which dovetail nicely with traditional conceptions of

the ranger and rogue character classes. Consequently,

very little in this book need be changed to accommodate

a high fantasy setting, since nearly every element is

commonplace in such campaigns. All the GM really

must do is change the references to those appropriate to

his own setting rather than the Scarred Lands.

T YPES OF G AMES

Fantasy roleplaying games come in many flavors,

not all of which operate under the same “rules.” That is,

each type has its own distinct mood, feel and tone, all of

which influence how the game is played and the types of

stories that are told within it. These in turn affect how

the characters relate to the setting and the kind of impact

that they can have on it.

L OW F ANTASY

Low fantasy, as its name suggests, is at the opposite

end of the scale when it comes to fantastical elements.

Low fantasy games are often described as “gritty” or

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