Cold Iron

Life outside city walls is often attended by risk and privation, but it offers commensurate rewards. Clarity of purpose is easier to achieve in simple circumstances, untilled earth harbors wonders in abundance, and isolation lends power to human connections. Stout Pilgrims are elemental embodiments of the unvarnished sanctity of the wilderness, and they are united by three qualities. Stoutness — an indomitable constitution, in both a physical and spiritual sense; pilgrimage — the continuous pursuit of deeper communion with their spiritual center; and holiness — conviction and ideological consistency of sufficient refinement to produce miraculous effects. Instances of this archetype are as varied as the virtues they embody. A cave hermit nourished only by sunlight and air, a mendicant friar whose laughter can cure or cause drunkenness, or a sainted pugilist wrestling the unquiet dead to their final rest all meet the defining criteria for a Stout Pilgrim. Leveling up the Stout Pilgri...

Few who taste fae magic come away unchanged, and faetouched have drunk more deeply than most. It isn’t blood or moonlight that fills their veins, but something between the two. This quality makes them apt emissaries for humanity to fae courts when an accord might be reached, but they can also be gleaming armaments against arcane machinations if negotiations fail. The core Faetouched ability is Minor Arcana , which allows it to learn and wield magic spells of the player’s choosing. Each spell has a base level, which costs no resources to cast, and Minor Arcana and Major Arcana levels, which give access to thematically similar — but more dramatic — powers. A high-level Faetouched ability gives them access to the Major Arcana versions of a small number of the spells they already know. Most of the variety for the class comes from the spells themselves, which offer a dependable suite of tools in much the same way as normal class abilities. Tinker , for instance, lets the caster mend no...

The Wood lies outside fae and human influence alike, but there are some who immerse themselves in its ancient depths nonetheless. The Woodsman does not dominate the wilderness, but they have reached with it what some might call a polite accord. In exchange for the cooperation of the world’s forests, rivers, and deserts, the Woodsman has dedicated themselves to a particular doom, and fate will have its due. There is much debate as to the nature of abilities conferred by the Wood. Are practitioners simply reading signs hidden in the natural world around them, or is the wilderness shaping itself to their needs? Those who have seen the granite bones of the earth explode from black soil to crush the Woodsman’s foes under the weight of geological eons do not ask these questions. The Woodsman is going to die. The Doom class feature designates a fatal circumstance that the Woodsman must one day meet, and it makes them a little more vulnerable to death when they do. There’s no avoiding it (...

There are chivalric orders among fae courts and human society dedicated to the preservation and accumulation of secret knowledge. Some of these orders beknight individuals with a mandate to employ these secrets toward a given end. Many of these knights go out into the world as Watchful Folk, using their knowledge and martial prowess to defend the meek and smite the cruel while simultaneously adding to their order’s store of hidden lore. The Cold Iron Knight is the most directly marshal of the initial four classes. It’s the only one that gets a general attack bonus via the Combat Prowess class feature, and one of its primary features gives it access to equipment made out of Cold Iron , which allows it to pierce nigh-impenetrable magical defenses and interact with fae in other, more interesting ways. On top of that, the threat of a cold iron blade is often more effective than its use. Fae beings facing down a knight at the negotiating table know that their counterpart could shred t...