New B/X Class: The Goblin

Image by Althwen.

Everyone loves goblins, right?

This post isn't really based on any specific 'version' of goblins, except insofar as it assumes them to be sneaky and grubby and vicious and usually mad. Warhammer, Pathfinder, and Magic: the Gathering have all been big influences.

I would rather have one of these guys in my party than a goddamn elf any day. 

The Goblin

To-Hit, Hit Dice, Saves, Experience Per Level, Weapons and Armour: All as per Thief.

Darkvision: Goblins can see perfectly in the dark.

Goblin Quirks: Starting at level 1, pick one Quirk from the following list. Pick an additional Quirk each time you advance a level. Goblins get quirkier and quirkier (read: more and more spectacularly deformed, freakish, and insane) the longer they survive!

The quirks you can choose from are as follows:

• Arson: By spending 1d6 minutes examining a building or object, you can intuitively work out what the most effective way to destroy it with fire would be. You gain a +4 bonus to saves against fire attacks.
• Beast Affinity: Pick one of the following creatures: giant bat, giant rat, giant spider, or wolf. You have an intuitive rapport with such creatures, and they won't attack you except in self-defence or when really, really hungry. If you encounter such a creature with a number of hit dice equal to or less than your own, you can try to press it into service as a mount by spending 1d6 hours 'taming' it and making a Charisma roll. If you succeed, it will let you ride it for as long as you keep it well fed, but if you fail then it attacks you once and then runs off. 
• Biter: All those hours spent filing your teeth has finally paid off! You have a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, which you can use to chew through wood, ropes, etc. Instead of making a weapon attack, you can bite for 1d4 damage. 
• Bouncer: You can jump a distance equal to your full height straight up from a standing start. You take half damage from falling. 
• Coward: You gain a +4 bonus to AC whilst running away screaming.
• Crazy Reflexes: Your body constantly jerks around in unpredictable ways, giving you an AC bonus equal to one-quarter of your level, rounded up. 
• Filth Eater: You can survive on a diet of just about any kind of organic matter. You gain a +4 bonus to saves against poison and disease.
• Goblin Fu: As long as you have both hands free, you can attack by hysterically clawing and chewing at people, inflicting 1d6 damage on a successful hit. If you also have the Biter quirk, this increases to 1d8.
• Hyperactivity: Once per day per level you can go completely hyper for 1d6 rounds, moving at twice your normal speed and attacking twice per round. 
• Lunatic: Your mind is so warped that it's very difficult for other people to control. You gain a +4 bonus to saves against mind-affecting powers and spells. Also you are crazy, but frankly you were probably crazy already.
• Mimic: You can perfectly mimic the voice of anyone you have heard in the last 24 hours, but can only maintain this mimicry for a maximum of 1d6 minutes per level before breaking down into fits of hysterical giggling. 
• Mushroom Mystic: Pick one first-level Magic-User or Cleric spell. You can cast this spell once per day, but only whilst stoned out of your head on hallucinogenic mushrooms. 
• Persistent Freak: Once per day, when reduced to 0 HP or less by an attack, you may draw upon your weird resilience to instantly regain (1d6+1 per level) HP. If this is sufficient to take you above 0 HP, then you simply get back up again the following round. 
• Poison Spit: Your saliva is so poisonous that you can envenom any edged weapon by licking the blade. The next person stabbed with it must save vs. poison or suffer 1d6 days of horrible, incapacitating sickness, which begins 1d3 hours after they are stabbed.
• Rat Head: You're a rubbery little freak, and as long as you're not wearing inflexible armour you can squeeze your whole body through a space half the width of your own head. This is super freaky to watch.
• Sneak: As long as you're not heavily burdened, you can move as soundlessly as a cat. 
• Spider Climb: As long as you're not heavily burdened, you can swarm up walls and crawl along ceilings like a fucking spider. This ability won't work on completely smooth surfaces.
• Stab Frenzy: When you successfully hit someone in melee with a dagger, you may immediately attempt to stab them again, with a -1 penalty to hit and damage; if you hit then you may attack a third time (with an additional -1 to hit and damage, for -2 total), and so on until you either miss, hit but inflict 0 damage, or kill them. You can only use this ability while screaming and gibbering incoherently.
• Substance Abuse: You gain +1 to-hit and damage in melee whilst drunk and/or high. 
• Swarm King: You have a swarm of pet vermin of some kind (rats, spiders, centipedes, etc), which either follow you around or are carried with you in a sack. On your command they can be ordered to swarm people, who then suffer a -1 penalty to attack rolls, damage, and AC for as long as they're covered in swarming vermin. (They don't get a save against this, but the effect ends if they find a way of getting the swarm off them: jumping in water, for example.) You can also use them for anything else you think a swarm of vermin would be useful for, but you can't give them any command more complex than 'go over there' and 'come back'. Your swarm is big enough to engulf up to one person per level. 
• Twitchy: Whenever you are surprised, you have a 20% chance per level of spotting the danger just in time. (At level 5+, this effectively makes you impossible to surprise.) You only sleep 1d4 hours per night, but never seem to suffer any ill effects as a result.
• Vandalism: You have a near-supernatural ability to destroy inanimate objects. As long as you're bashing things hysterically while screaming your head off, you gain +4 Strength for the purposes of breaking things only. 

'Goblin Wardriver' illustration by Chippy.