The Odd Dead

I've had an idea of how to play a ghost in Into the Odd. I started writing this post trying my best to keep to the minimalist aesthetic of ItO but I ended going on several wild tangents that led to a ranty manifesto about fantasy fiction in general. So moving on.

When you die with unfinished business, from certain oddities or simply without noticing it, you can become a ghost.

• Ghosts don't have Strength or Dexterity scores. 
• All rolls attempted with those abilities automatically fail. 
• Impairments or damage to Strength or Dexterity do nothing to a ghost.
• A ghost's Will score cannot be healed normally.
• A ghost can come back from Critical damage after a couple of days, but not from hitting 0 Will.
• Sleep, food, air, warmth and other biological problems no longer apply, but you loose 1 Will foe every day of strenuous activity since biology no longer repairs itself.
• Ghosts can spend 1d4 Will to physically interact with the world or possess a target which get's a Will save to resist. Inanimate objects instead get a save based off their sympathetic relation to the ghost, with 10 being a casually known thing.
• A ghost can gain 1 Will by draining, stealing or eating 1d6 Will from a target.

Nothing revolutionary here, but what happens if we swap around those attributes?

• Zombies don't have Will or Dexterity scores. 
• All rolls attempted with those abilities automatically fail. 
• Impairments or damage to Will or Dexterity do nothing to a zombie.
• A zombie's Strength score cannot be healed normally.
• A zombie can come back from Critical damage after a couple of days but not from hitting 0 Strength.
• Sleep, food, air, warmth and other biological problems no longer apply, but you loose 1 Strength foe every day of strenuous activity since biology no longer repairs itself.
• Zombies can spend 1d4 Strength to woo someone with unnatural charms or make a target into a enthralled zombie upon critical damage. If the critical damage roll result is 15 or greater than new zombie is free to do what it wants.
• A zombie can gain 1 Strength by draining, stealing or eating 1d6 Strength from a target.

• Skeletons don't have Will or Strength scores. 
• All rolls attempted with those abilities automatically fail. 
• Impairments or damage to Will or Strength do nothing to a skeleton.
• A skeleton's Dexterity score cannot be healed normally.
• A skeleton can come back from Critical damage after a couple of days but not from hitting 0 Dexterity.
• Sleep, food, air, warmth and other biological problems no longer apply, but you loose 1 Dexterity foe every day of strenuous activity since biology no longer repairs itself.
• Skeletons can spend 1d4 Dexterity to apply a decent amount of force, or have their bones act while separated. Your bones can also be rearranged into novel body plans without spending anything.
• A skeleton can gain 1 Dexterity by draining, stealing or eating 1d6 Dexterity from a target.

Notes:

   My intention with this design is to offer an alternative to losing a dead character that doesn't cheapen the death of said character. The two ways I see this playing out is that either the undead character doesn't consume anyone and gets burnt out out eventually while allowing the rest of the pcs to complete the dungeon or they become a monstrous creature and that places a lot of interesting issues for players to deal with. Either of which would be a good result in my book. The former might be made more likely depending on how much a player misses being able to use all three attributes. 

In either case the hijinks factor of immunity to two of the attributes should be quite fun, except zombies end up getting a raw deal because strength is the most likely to be damaged and Dexterity is most likely to be saved for in a usual game. To that my answer is to allow zombies to form a horde, which is limited by horde always being blocked off by bad terrain and most of the zombies will have lower Str scores. If an enemy is ready for it, cover or elevated ground with copious amounts of fire should take care of the infestation.
   If applied to all undead in the setting, they will generally become more pathetic than threatening. Sometime even in a comedic way. I like this from a thematic perspective because it brings the horror of undead back where it belongs, to the fear of death and the absoluteness of entropy.
   I also vary deliberately avoid saying anything about the undead being inherently evil, simply because I feel that limits what you can do with them. The themes the undead revolve around include death, loss, the past's effect on the present, disease,entropy and humanities attempts to extend it's existence. There are a lot of interesting angles to work with here, beyond purging the world of abominations against nature. This is simply a personal preference, but I prefer all the characters in my fantasy to be sympathetic and someone you can talk to.


World Building Implications and additional ideas that fit in here:

• People generally don't like walking corpses, because grandma eating you is worse than when a some wolf does it.
• Being undead is unpleasant and people don't willingly do it without a damn good reason.
• The undead are still who they were in life, but degrading on all levels, physical, mental, spiritual.
• The undead will do things for their living friends and relatives.
• The great hero who defeated many foes even after taking a lethal wound is technicality the same as the monstrous creature that gave up it's humanity and prowls at night for victims. Nobody wants to admit that.
•  Some backwoods places have a tradition of where people sacrifice bits of themselves to their ancestors.
• There are special drugs brewed from highly poisonous mushrooms that allow you to lose your attributes for a couple moments. Allowing you to use the abilities of death without the commitment. Those who use this concoction are commonly called Berserkers.
• The most potent of these drugs destroys all three of your attributes, making you immune to all harm for a couple minutes. The only problem is that you irreversibly die afterwords.
• There is a notorious thief out there that has never been caught. His secret is that he has a ghostly brother on his side.
• The evil Mr.Chatter is a skeleton who has added a lot of bones to himself over the years, too many really. He has 18 Dexterity, a crocodile skull on one of his hands that does d8 damage and gambling addiction. He'd be quite the gentleman if it weren't for his terrible dread cackle and habit of stealing peoples bones in their sleep.
• It isn't clear if a zombie, a skeleton and a ghost can simultaneously be created from the same person. The intellectual and spiritual authorities on the topic deny it, but there are rumors.
• Since they fall to pieces if they move around to much, the unquiet dead are transported around the same way the quiet ones are. On a wagon, in coffins if budget allows.
• Vampires are dead that have found the secret of effectively draining people, thus are able to pass off as human if well fed.
• When a vampire drains, steals or eats from someone they get the full value of the die rather than just one.
• Vampires can drain the other two attributes instead of just the one. However when these attributes are damaged they loose at least half of it rounded up.
• So if a skeletal vampire with 10 Str takes 2 damage it will go up to 5 and if they take 6, it will stay at 6.
• Vampires can pass off as living humans if all their attributes are high enough, even if they are usually a skeleton or ghost underneath.
• Lichs hide parts of themselves in phylacteries, as long as it remains unbroken the lich is static and eternal. Should it break the lich dies instantly.
• As long as their phylactery is whole, a selected attribute of the lich will never change in any way. If broken, the selected attribute is instantly vanished as well.
• Lichs are not able to change or adapt without messing with their phylactery. Which caries the risk of killing them. Changing opinions is like performing open heart surgery on yourself and forming new habits is that on top of what humans already have to do.
• As such liches range from are either barely functioning old people or omnicompetent super geniuses who have thought of everything in advance, there is no middle ground.
• In the worst cases they are both.
• Some unquiet dead have a a remaining Dexterity attribute but are more spectral than skeletal. They lack both a body and a will but they still have their movement about them. They are poltergeists and whispering winds. You can only see them by their remaining shadow or the glint of an eye that isn't there. They can be slain if you are able to restrict their movement.
• I decided to go with skeletons as the player option to make each type have their own distinct thing.
• It's known that when someone dies on a phantom steed, they will become this kind of spook.
• There is a debate on if phantom steeds are themselves a kind of dead or a manifestation of the platonic ideal of SPEED. Studying them is difficult because they keep running away.
• Undead armies! 
• Zombie infantry!
• Ghost scouts and spies!
• Skeleton rangers and shock troopers!
• Living officers, because they don't have to worry about falling apart.
• A culture that believes that death is no excuse for being lazy.
• The undead don't have to sustain themselves on people, animals also have meat, bones and a spirit. The undead that do however become gain animalistc features and behaviours.
• There is a group of vampires who deliberately eat certain animals so they can have their features, either because they idolize those animals or for a fashion statement.
• Now you know why the pale thing in the sewers has a rats tail and whisker-like mustache.
• Corpse Bride style towns of the dead exist, except they are generally more lethargic and slower paced, as there is no rush and rushing around will shorten you death span.
• Some cultures have festivals once a year where the dead literally rise up from the grave to visit their living family like Dias Los Muertos. In these places, the towns of the dead have been deliberately built to house everyone's extended family.
• There is a specter stumbling across the waste, with tattered clothes and sun bleached bones. An old bag filled perturbs his gait, as useless boots get scratched on stones. And a quite mutter escapes those teeth, he repeats his mantra again, again, like he's spirit is kept alive by the sounds. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"
• 6 Dex, 0 HP
• The pcs can just tip him over and take his bag, he's too weak to resist.
• His bag contains old letters, and not much else. It could contain interesting adventure hooks, tidbits of flavor information, tragic stories or what have you.
• If snapped out of his daze the specter may ask the party to lend him some of their strength(dexterity actually) so he can make the final leg of the journey. He has nothing to offer you, except a speech about the importance of delivering mail and an appeal to moral ideals.
• He will fight tooth and nail to keep he's bag if force is used to take it from him, you don't need to bother rolling damage, he can't do anything.
• If he thinks your also a postman and is convinced to swallow he's pride for the greater good of completing the rounds, he will give you the bag with directions to it's destination and peacefully crumple into dust.

   I'll stop there, as I could go on endlessly coming up with cool tidbits and spin off new tangents. Almost of of it is a remix, reinterpretation or riffing on already existing ideas, either from other rpgs or other media. While I initially wrote this in a stream of consciousness kind of way, I have assigned a purpose onto onto this after the fact. The purpose is to create a good fantasy world that is both fun to play in and results in cool stories. One of the central pillars of any fantasy is how the magic works, and equally importantly what we understand about how the magic works. If put on a scale, there are two poles, on one is is we have complete systematization of the magic world, this can often lead to a world where the magic is banal and boring, many versions and variations of D&D have is problem I could go into detail but I'm lazy so here's a post where the issue is explained among other things. On the other end of the spectrum we have magic that is completely unexplainable and undefined. This approach has merit but it's not something you can experiment with to achieve something, a core part of OSR playstyle (arguably as OSR is vague term). So what I want is something in the middle. Coherent rules that have sufficient predictability that you could come up with hi-jinks but still have the flexibility to have unknowns that aren't accounted for. When you see something zombie, you can be fairly confidant that it is perpetually decaying and that it will be incredibly clumsy, and you can literally smell the decay on the zombie and you can see that the pieces needed for coordinated movement hanging out, it makes sense. However you can't be complacent about your zombie knowledge because sometimes life throws you a curveball and you see a zombie running at you from across a tight rope, and you have to adapt. Maybe you need to reevaluate what you know about zombies or ask if this is really a zombie and not someone in convincing make-up. There is an interesting conflict at play here, something to think about, and choices you need to decide before you receive a perfectly executed somersault to the face.
    I think that this is a good area for a fictional world to be at because it speaks to how our world works. The rules we live by are fairly reliable but not infallible. The more you find out about the world, the more you see what you don't understand, there are intricate details and complicated systems, there are atoms spinning with unknown particles, two lethal poisons somehow combine into salt a resource vital for life, and I don't know where to start on how complicated animals are, we do not fully understand how even our own brains work. All those things are also interconnected, and interact with each other, weave between, push and pull on each other. You can connect any human endeavor with another by some common feature, each natural phenomenon is tangentially connected to all the others and it is so big and complicated and always changing in brilliant whirls and swirls that we can't precisely grasp.  But we can grasp some understanding, and we can use that to get something done that we couldn't before we sort of understood. It's amazing, exhilarating, terrifying and awe inspiring. That is something I want to capture that magic of discovery in fiction, that slow creep towards knowing and the shenanigans that happen along the way.

Did I mention none of the game rules here have been playtested at all?

"Secret Lore":

Here are ideas that would be hidden information within the setting, secrets players could figure out themselves from observing the game world. Now I don't have a specific campaign or players to hide this from and OSR blogs are mostly viewed by GMs so the chance of accidentally ruining close to none, but better safe than sorry.

• There is a monastery fortress that holds a great treasure, it is guarded by immortal guardians in armor without eye slits. Nobody is able to best them in battle.
• The secret of these soldiers is that they are ghosts who trained in life for this role. Their bodies are puppets made with their own bones and belongings for the strongest sympathetic link. Each guardian has partnered monks who channels their Will to their guardians threw meditation. They regularly switch shifts to allow for rest and recuperation. In combat the guardians are basically impervious to all physical attacks, but will sloppily pretend that they aren't and avoid using ghosty powers to keep up the charade. They are safe from harm as long as they have connection with their monks that are safely hiding behind the walls of the monastery. Those with mystical vision are able to see a cords of energy that lead to the monks. If you figure out that the guardian can only be harmed thought their Will, it will take several rounds for more monks to arrive and bolster the guardian, unless all of them are occupied with something else.
• I'll eventually write up this monastery as a dungeon.
• Anyone can turn undead, all it requires is confidence in your own authority to turn undead and yelling.
• This is because zombies and skeletons have no Will, thus they don't get any save when they are yelled at and will instinctively turn the other direction.
• Ghosts do have Will to resist being yelled at, but stressing them out is also how you vanquish them.
• Do not tell this to the PCs thought, include wards, charms and holy symbols at various price ranges in the game and tell them they are used to ward off the dead. The power of these artifacts is a placebo effect to both the dead and the living, as everyone knows that the certain important symbols and holy words can do this.
•  A symbol or charm will always work if the it's part of the undead's culture and they feel guilty or wrong for being  unholy abominations against nature.
• The undead gets a save if they only one of the above applies, the symbol or charm is from a different culture but still obviously intended to ward off the dead.
• If the undead is shameless and/or doesn't recognize the power of the charm they don't need to save against it.
• Peasants usually use their local charms to defend themselves. Nomads, sailors and other traveling folk pick up a various trinkets from the various cultures they visit, at least the ones who believe in ghost stories.
• There are people who know this truth, most of them are sorcerers, religious figures and other mystics that have a professional interest in keeping it hidden. As so much of that trade relies on placebo.
• This is fantasy, so the line between placebo and supernatural powers is none existent. Most mystics would probably frame this in terms of belief and will power being able to change the world.
• This thread of thought has tumbled away from the topic of the undead, put a pin in it, as this deserves it's own post.
•  You also don't want the dead to know that they can just stop fearing wards and charms, those things are a major advantage against them.

Boy vs the Maze of the Blue Medusa Actual Play Session 1

On my little brother's whim, I ran Maze of the Blue Medusa using Into the Odd. My solution to running a dungeon that has adult themes with a little kid is to work my way around them when I get there. It's not something that came up because I  skipped the first room with it's specific entering instructions and plopped him down in room 2, using the fact that he had a Space Folder arcanum as justification. I'm also using a fake name for the sake of not throwing real names on the internet.

• Sanford is teleported in by the Space Folder.
• He meets Lady Capilli, she hands him paper and pen and tells him to go and right down someone's story that has to be original.
• Sam checks the three doors available to him and decides to go in the middle one.
• There he hears the riddle of Cynoxantha and decides to walk across the room.
• Maybe I should have been stated the riddle more clearly.
• Where he is made into a mosaic, and has a little scuffle with the snake where in both take two damage.
• He forces he's way out of the mosaic room back to where he was.
• Which required him to pass a Will save.
• Once outside he was still 2 dimensional, but used the Space Folder to become 3D once more.
• He than went over to the left door and went to the room with weird shadows. There was no one there and he noticed from a sudden draft that there is a hole where his shadow should be.
• Sam was going to pry a stone from the floor but reconsidered when I told him it was going to cause noise.
• We went to the door at the other side of the room and was only able to determine that there is blackness in there. As the handle didn't open he decided to leave the door alone and head back.
• Maybe I should have said that he has the options of smashing the lock or pouring the acid he had there.
• He walked out of the shadow room to the door on the right, where Lady Capilli was visibly annoyed.
• He went into the Etcher Stair room where he saw 5 lizard women trying to hide behind the knot of stairs.
• I started describing them before I remembered that the Chameleon Women will try to stalk the player. So I went with them failing to be sneaky.
• After a short exchange where they realize their cover is blown they charge Samford.
• Samford attempts to teleport behind them but in his hastes only ports over his Space Folder.
• As they are almost upon them he tries to knock one of them off the edge. He ends up falling over instead.
• Those were two nat 20s in a roll.
• In a last ditch attempt, Samford throws his acid flask that gently sails over and smashes somewhere.
• Samford lands on the cold hard ground and blacks out.
• Failed his Critical damage roll.
• When he comes back he is tied up and interrogated for information by the Chameleon Women.
• I rolled up that their sorceress has a Bone Magnet and a Heat Ray at this point, even thought it didn't come up.
• He truthfully tells them everything he knows. That being the several rooms he's been and the quest Lady Capilli sent him on.
• They decide not to murder them as to not annoy a dragon and let him go free, without his Space Folder, because who would trust a dirty mammal with such an artifact.
• He camps in the Stair room for a couple of days to regain his Strength without any incident.
• Literally, he was down to 5 from the fall.
• Four encounter rolls and all any of them showed was that he's light was going out.
• He set off down the east stair way and the session closed there because I haven't read that part of the book yet.
• Samford doesn't know, but two of the Chameleon Women are defiantly tailing him now.

Questions for next session:

• What is the relationship between the Chameleon Women's nation and the wizards that sent out Lady Capilli
• How should I handle resource management?
• Is a bad thing that I allowed Samford to heal 2d6 Str from camping in a dungeon? 

What went well:

• I didn't stammer into a hole to much and I didn't start panicing about stuff. I don't know.
• Referencing things in the book was fairly easy and I had no problems wrestling with Into the Odd that I have with every other system I've tried.
• I enjoyed playing the Chameleon Women foolishly.

What didn't go well:

• I don't think I communicated what was going on clearly, me and Samford weren't on the same page about fictional reality nearly as much as we should be.  I'm not sure I've figured out what is the right amount of information to give in any given senerio yet and I don't know if I've called for rolls at the right time. 
• During the interrogation I ruled is so that they wouldn't kill him, which may not have been the most OSRy way to do it.

Some Artifacts

Here are some artifacts extracted from my brain for you viewing pleasure. I've writing this for Into The Odd because that's what I run, but their fairly system neutral.

1. Mirror of Symmetry:
It's a mirror with a line of onyx inlaid down the middle. When the right invocation is spoken a target reflected in the mirror is enchanted, speaking the same invocation backwards undoes this enchantment. While under this magic any wound, ointment, paint or magic that is applied to one side of the target is also symmetrically reflected on the other side. The line of symmetry is determined by the inlaid onyx when the invocation is spoken. Any damage(or other things that apply to some part of the body) taken by the target is doubled unless care is taken to hit the target right along the line of symmetry. The effect is only skin deep fortunately for everyone who's eaten under the mirror's power.

2.The Heels:
While confidently striding in these extravagant heels, you can be anywhere within your line of sight as you damn well please. It's not teleportation, space just folds seamless, you were just walking yet somehow you ended up at the top of the tower, despite all the space between here and there. Unfortunately they make for very cumbersome footware, it's difficult to balance on these stilettos in even even on even surfaces, and due to their height you'll probably need help getting back up. Your going to have to make Dex saves to keep standing, and Will saves to stand proud for the Heels to work their magic.

3. The Heterofox:
Wait, you a creature, what are you doing in this list? Damn foxes. Either way, the Heterofox is a fox black wire fur that will follow you and whisper sweet blasphemies into your ear at night. If threatened it will jump into someone's mouth and hide under the tongue or between the teeth, shrinking to the size of a flee and flattening paper thin to do so. While it will try to make it seem like your blaspheming, it's really bad at mimicking other people's voices and can only clumsily force your jaw up and down. It knows a great amount of history, all of which pertains to religious conflicts, schisms and the minutia of differences in doctrine. It's willing to share, in fact it's difficult to get it to shut up about it. It has a sibling which it will always avoid talking about. Other than that it's a fox.

4. Spherering Marble:
Everything within a couple meters of this marble gradually becomes more and more round and spherical over time. Rock gets smoothed like river stones, smooth stones become more symmetrical until they are perfectly round. People get fatter and have softer features if they carry it for a couple of weeks, and luckily usually stop carrying it around to see the latter stages. Rumor has it that it has something to do with the Spherical Wizards. The marble is in a round bag with other marbles, so you can't quite tell which one is the magic one.

5. Seeing Nail:
If you shove this nail into you eyeball, it will grant you normal human eyesight from the end of the nail you didn't shove in there. It looks kind of cool, so I guess it's an upgrade.

6. Sigil of Malice:
With this symbol tattooed on your tongue, you will always be able to say how and why you hate someone, regardless of any languages barriers, ambiguities word choice, deafness, muteness or drunkenness. This will be one thing that you will always be able to communicate clearly and accurately. There is also an analogous Sigil of Love, Sigil of Confusion and Sigil of Restrooms. All of these sigils are exclusive to each other.

7. Remembering Boots:
When you walk in these boots you can cast your spirit to see, hear and smell a place where these boots have been. Roll as many d6s as you want, add them together and that's how many days worth of travel back you can cast your soul. Your able to instantly come back into your body unless you rolled an amount greater than your will, in which case your going to have to find your way back to your body. While your soul is cast back your body is in a trance state that continues walking indefinitely.

8. Spiritual Bindings:
These are large heavy and metal bindings for keeping buildings in place. Except their intangible and invisble without some form Wizard vision or second sight. They can be used to spiritually link two things, if your able to get them on and nail them in, but once there in there nothing will get them out. Rumor has it that the country up to the north is covered in these things, you know the one with bears roaming the streets and the regular bathing.

9. Pain Inversion Suit:
When wearing this garment, all pain is inverted into pleasure. Reduce incoming damage by 1 and gain complete immunity to effects that are purely pain based.(Why yes, I am literally stealing someone's idea wholesale, but have you previously considered that this could exist in D&D? Didn't think so.)

10. An Unsettling Garden Gnome:
All living things within a mile radius of the Gnome will sense it's presence and want to avoid it. All within 30' of it will have the that feeling you get when your next to a cliff and you can't help but imagining how easy it would be to fall down, except instead of a cliff it's the Gnome and instead of falling the action you can't help imagine in fear and curiosity is breaking this ceramic thing. Sleeping in it's presence requires a Will save.

11. Bound Key:
This key will never loose it's owner. If the owner is somehow stolen or lost from the key, they will find their way back to the key. Trading or giving away the key does transfer ownership thought. Your not sure but you think the current owner is a ghost.

12. White Tuning Fork:
When this tuning fork is struck against a surface and makes a sound, that surface will go invisible. If the surface is scratched or involved in any activity for 1d6 hours the invisibility will dissipate. It can be used on people however they will be blind while the invisibility covers their eyes. Closing your eyes while striking the Fork will allow prevent the blindness, but it will leave your eyes still visible. In the the room where the Fork is found there will be several invisible objects with vague silhouettes outlined by the dust that's settled on them. 

Very Smug Cat

A couple days back on a Google+ I stated that I was going to make a Glog cat class to accompany the noble Very Good Dog, the furious Very Angry Goose and Witch Coven, who isn't technically affiliated with the previous two on thumb-less adventures. I made it, workshoped it a bit on discord and just sat on it for several days. Speaking of which, thank you Chis Wilson, valzi, Type1Ninja, Skerples, AuratTwilight, Tomes and The Lawful Neutral for helping out with that (I think that's everyone (I'm not sure if this is the right etiquette for this sort of thing(I am however sure that nesting sentinces this way is terrible))). Fair warning, this has not been play tested, so I'm not sure how fun this class is.

Very Smug Cat

Equipment: None

A: Cat, Nine Lives, Tongues or Puss in Boots, Purr

B: Reflective Eyes, Opportunist 

C: Purr 2, Slip

D:A Cat can look at a King

For each Cat template you get +1 Stealth. For each 2 templates you possess you get +1 Initiative.

You generally shouldn't be able to multiclass with this class or get it after the first template without some ridiculous shenanigans.

Cat: 

You're a cat. You don't have thumbs to use tools and don't have an inventory(carrying anything large enought to take up inventory slots encumbers you). Your movement is 10 (Human movement is 12). You can bite and claw at people for 1d6+STR damage. You have excellent night vision and sensitive whiskers to sense what you can't see. Your able to climb shear surfaces as long as there's something for your claws to latch onto. Fall damage you receive is greatly reduced if you have time to flip yourself onto your feet. Getting pulled on the tail is the worst. 

In character creation reroll your Dexterity scores and take the highest of the two. Your HP is 6 and won't increase from that amount.

Nine Lives:

Unlike other characters you die at 0 HP but have 9 lives to spend before truly dying. When you would die, instead barely make it  with a nasty but badass scar and one less life. If the death is a continuous danger to your health, you get out of that danger as part of loosing that life. So if you drown, than you would wash up on some shore with one less life rather than repeatedly die until all your lives are depleted.

Scars include things like poked out eyes, torn ears and seared tails. Every scar you have adds a +1 bonus for saves against your Purr ability.

Each of your lives also counts as a soul and can be spent like one without any negative impact on the others.

Cat got your Tongue:
While you aren't able to innately speak if you are able to swallow a tongue you steal the voice of whoever's tongue you got. If you got only a bit of a tongue than you have only a bit of their voice and it will sound like really weird almost understandable meows. Since everyone knows cats can't speak, people will rationalize the sound as coming from somewhere else or consciously ignore it while it subliminally enters their mind. The sufficiently mindful or paranoid targets can get a wisdom save to tell that something suspicious is going on. Children, magic users, beings that never experienced cats and other people who don't know that cats can't talk aren't fooled by this.

You start the game with one random tongue from the Tongue Table.

Puss in Boots:
As everyone knows that cats don't wear clothes, if you wear clothes you aren't recognized as a cat. You are also now able to walk around on two feet, and can use tools as gracefully and elegantly as possible for someone who doesn't have thumbs. You are able to imitate speech and be understood as long as nobody stops to think about the sounds coming out of your mouth as sounds rather than words. Children, magic users, beings that never experienced cats and other people who don't know that cats can't wear clothes aren't fooled by this.

Purr:

When you purr you cast charm person that only works if the command is to feed, pet, adore or otherwise pamper you.

Reflective Eyes:

Your able to see spirits, demons and other invisible things, this works like Wizard Vision without the downsides.

Opportunist:
Whenever you get a situational bonus to an Attack roll (surprise, evasion, etc.) you deal an additional +1d6 damage.

Purr 2:
If you lay or sit on someone under the effects of your purr they are are not able to move until you get off them. If you so will it, you can also graciously bestow cure light wounds to someone your sitting on once per day.

Slip:
Once a day, if no one is directly looking at you, you are able to escape from an enclosed space regardless of plausibility.

A Cat can look at a King:

You are immune to differences in social standing. Regardless of if your speaking to a beggar a king or a god, you'll always be treated as roughly an equal to however your talking to.


Tongue Table: D8

1. The voice of a small child.
2. The voice of a awkward youth.
3. The voice of a kind grandmother.
4. The voice of a strict mother or teacher.
5. The voice of some nobody.
6. The voice of a sensual sort.
7. The voice of a brute.
8. The voice of a foreigner.

Edit: I've spruced up the presentation of this post and added some small additions to the class. The first is a healing ability to Purr 2 from the suggestion of Michael Thompson and the second is a starting Tongue table, which I realize is needed the same way random starting spells are needed.

New Spell/Arcanum: Chimeric Exchange

Years ago I came across this thread where people brain-stormed magic systems. And one of them stuck in my brain for years now, accumulating more details and thoughts. So I'm making it into a specific spell with a place in the world. The entry was this one:
"43. Body Parts
Inspired by a post in the "Why do wizards wear robes?" thread ...
People can't do magic. In fact nobody can really "do" magic, but creatures from other realms have properties that could be described as magical - and those properties are a part of their body. 
An air elemental flies on wings of lightning more manueverable than a hummingbird and faster than an arrow. A salamander has arms literally made of fire, that can stretch to fill an entire courtyard. And if you had those parts, you could do it too.

Not by stealing the parts and stitching them on (although that would be a possible magic system itself); that's not how the ritual works. But you can trade them, and many creatures are willing to make that trade. For them, the properties humans have are magical - things like being able to stand still when the wind blows or touch things without burning them. 

Sometimes, the parts you get in return are a straight-up substitute, but often they're insubstantial, or entirely different. So senior wizards tend to have a lot of prosthetics (hence the voluminous robes to cover up how strange they start looking). A master mage might have false legs (moves around by flying), one arm made of shadow, no tongue (communicates via writing and an assistant), and lives off heat from fires instead of eating food. Making the right choice is crucial - woe to the mage who trades a unique body part for something worthless. Assistants are always useful - while you can't trade their parts for more of your own, you can convince them to make the trades you need and use the resulting abilities on your behalf."

Chimeric Exchange

Level whatever spell

An object similar to a Chinese finger trap, but metal and not woven. (if it's an object)

As a spell the caster selects two parties. If the these two parties come to an agreement, than they can trade body parts between themselves with the same ease that item are exchanged. The deal is finalized with a hand shake (or equivalent custom that both parties except). 

As an item, it works the same except negotiations don't need to be identified before hand and the deal is sealed by both parties inserting an appendage into one of the wholes.

• For it to work, both parties need to agree to the exchange.
• The spell doesn't distinguish between willing agreement and coercion.
• Knowing the specifics of what your giving up and gaining isn't required.
• The exchange can be one-sided. For example, the spell allows you to give someone an extra eye without taking something from them, if both of you agree.
• You can trade goods and services that aren't body parts. This is equivalent to a one-sided exchange as far as the spell is concerned. In the above example, you can demand compensation of 10 gold for giving away your eye.
• As a spell, the caster doesn't need to be one of the two parties but they can be.
• Once an agreement is reached, the tendrils of etherealness appear and remove the agreed upon body parts and attach them to their new owner. While this is happening both parties are effectively petrified.
• If interrupted, both parties are unpetrified and die slowly from blood loss or immediately depending on which organs are exposed. If you were exchanging an eye, you'd probably survive with bandages and will eventually need a patch or glass eye to cover it up. If you were switching hearts, than you're screwed.
• The organs can be placed either where the agreement specifys or what makes most sense if not specified.
• After the spell does it's magic, a party may die if it suddenly doesn't have a vital organ. If you gave someone lungs without receiving some in return, you're going to start suffocating from not having anything to breath with.
• There are not scars or stitches left from this spell.
• Organs that are gained through this spell kind of become part of the person, kind of don't.
• It takes anywhere from a few weeks to a life time to get used to new body parts, based on myriad of factors.
• Younger people generally get used to it quicker for example.
• Beings changed by this spell do not breed true. Procreation results in the offspring using genetic code of whoever the organs originally belonged too. If I sell my testicles or ovaries, it means that anyone born with them are biologically my children.

You can ignore all the bullet-points if want to as the spell description is enought to go off of. The bullet-points are additional ideas that have accumulated over time as the ideas has bounced around in my head. 

World-Building Implications and Possiblities

• Wizards hide under large cloaks and big hats to hide their weird transmogrified bodies.
• Wizards that don't use this spell still do it to maintain the mystery.
• There are physically imposing opponents that none the less have great weaknesses. 
• Due to trading his liver for the strength of ten men, this person has to be vary careful with his diet.
• It's common knowledge that deals with wizards is full of peril.
• A variety of hybrid monsters have some interesting story behind them.
•  The Manticore is one of those bastards who demands you give him your best physical features on threat of eating you, than proceeds to eat you afterwards anyway.
• People want him dead for the obvious reasons, but other chimeric mages really want him dead for besmirching their image.
• Manticore is also an incredibly petty bastard.
• When the horse nomads came from the steppe to attack our lands, we we're amazed by how the horse and rider moved as one. To counteract whatever sorcery they use to achieve this, we have merged together our strongest steeds and most greatest warriors to produce the centaurs. It is a great sacrifice and those who under go it are noble men indeed.
• Nobody has the heart to tell the centaur's nation that the magic used by steppe nomads is known as "riding on horseback from the age of three".
• The Sphinx is also a lion-bodied human who eats people. However unlike fucking Manticore, she doesn't eat people from her country of not-Egypt and targets not-Greece instead. 
• There is conversely a lion somewhere who is enjoying having opposable thumbs while Sphinx out there eating people.
• Harpies are a group of birds that wanted human faces.
• You may wonder who would enought beings to agree that the Chimera should exist like it does. Don't, really don't want to know why this came about.
• Hybrid creatures that you want to be (un)natural without this spell could still exist, but I would make them "less hybridy". For example merfolk could be made either more mammalian, by making their tail more dolphin-like, or more fish-like like all those creepy mermaid illustrations.
• Different cultures can have different opinions on this magic.
• In one place this magic is despised and reviled. Mages who use it are assumed to steal the organs that they gain from it.
• In another culture the the practice is allowed and has become a part of fashion. Blue eyes are in season right now. Generally only the wealthy have the opportunity to mess around like this.
• In some places they choose a champion who receives the best organs from willing donors to represent the entire community in a sport or a war.
• The donors generally swap out organs with the champion and don't die from this.
• Some kings, priests and heroes have have lived beyond mortal years by swapping out bits of themselves Ship of Theseus style.
• In places the spell is known the slave trade includes the consideration of person's organs as having separate worth.
• In places that the spell is not demonized there is variation in whether or not it's ok to change you body shape to something nonhuman.
• The desperate will give away parts of themselves to survive or pay a dept.
• Artists would give up their painting hands to pay for things, having to rebuild the muscle memory from scratch.
• A teenager sell their face for an ugly one and a cold bag of coins.
• Spies could be anywhere and they can hide under anyone's face.
• They often don't but the possibility is still there.
• Grandpa lost his leg in a battle, so he could support the family he secretly went to a witch with a goat. She replaced the stump with the goat's hind leg and accepted the rest of the animal as payment for services rendered. Grandpa is deeply ashamed of having a goat leg and hides it from everybody. While he still walks with a hobble, at least he's able to support his family.
• The witch Matilda has cat ears instead of human ears. She replaced her ears with those of her familiar's back when she was an novice and has worn them ever sense. Even thought human ears make Matilda's familiar look kind of silly, he's accepted this because it makes Matilda so happy to have them. 
• That won't stop him from complaining about it thought, Matilda is wanted for heresy in several countries and they could use a lower profile.
• The dragon Zorsass has is the greatest opera singer in the city. They achieved this by trading away most of their body for a smaller and sleeker human form, the best voice in the world, large powerful lungs, a fully staffed mansion and enought bribes to become a member in the most exclusive of clubs.
• If encounter someone with dragon organs in the city, they probably once belonged to Zorsass.
• Other dragons are baffled and disturbed by Zorsass's life choices. Best to avoid the topic.
• As a dragon Zorsass has not spent a penny of his or her horde, they say that it's hidden in the depths of the dungeon.
• Zorsass may look fairly human, but underneath they are still a dragon, and could easily tear you in half with elegant grace. Will also lounge around like a dragon when guests aren't over.
• PCs can sell the random mutations they receive from chaos magic and potions as treasure.
• Clever PCs can improve their stats with negotiations.
• Losing your humanity in the pursuit of power has never been so literal.
• On the flip side of the last point, beware the Cat with Hands.

You could have a story based around solving someone's gender dysphoria by going on a quest to find people to trade away the body parts with. However I'm not sure how to handle that respectfully. Depending on how you handle it, this spell could lead to some dark places or mythical tales or gonzo shenanigans with puns.

New Spell/Arcanum: Curse Flesh

Curse Flesh

Level 1 Spell

A needle (in item form)

Upon casting this spell, or inserting this needle into living tissue, a curse is hidden within.

• The curse will lie dormant in the tissue until the tissue is pierced or cut open. When this happens, the curse will inflict itself upon whoever open the wound for it. Roll a random curse table to see what the curse does.
• The spirits of objects can be cursed if there's no one else around to take it.
• Magical arts that rely on the body like muscle wizardry or stuff involving chakras are impeded by the curse like the spiritual blood clot. 
• Flesh that has curses within it becomes is corrupted in a variety of ways. If the curse is removed, and the tissue is still living, the corruption will slowly fade away. If it is dead, than there is close to no way of getting it out.
• Corrupted flesh becomes more sickly, and constantly irritated by something.
• Corrupted meat is spoiled, foul smelling and has all the nutritional value of food poisoning.
• Corrupted bone, hide and so forth becomes infuriating to work with. It will be too easy to rip, and to stubborn to cut somehow simultaneously. No matter how much it's ground there will always be uneven chunks. Any vessel or pouch it's made with will have holes and leaks that won't be noticed until it's too late.
• While it's not necessary, it's difficult to cast this spell without a huge amount of expletives if your in bad mood. You may need to make a Will save if that matters.
• Methods of cleansing, curse lifting and disenchanting all work against this spell as long as it's not done by the hands of someone who would willingly cast this spell upon themselves.

World-building implications based around this spell existing.

• Anti-relics: The exact opposite of saintly relics. Both are used in necromantic magics, while easier to find then relics, anti-relics can still be a hassle.
• It's common knowledge that wizards need to be beaten with sticks. The exact reason why isn't always clarified, but everyone knows that wizards need to be hit with sticks.
• Some believe that they need to be hit with their own staves, others say they need to be oak and wrapped in mistletoe, others yet say you need planks used in the construction of a gallows. It's all very confusing and wizards find it upsetting.
• There are treasures that everyone knows the location of but none is able to get because it's stuck inside the stomach of a madman who has cursed their stomach millions upon thousands of times.
• Vaults where the cursed dead are stored, far away from where they could do anyone any harm.
• Complex contraptions that are used to indirectly pierce open sorcerers and the blighted iron spike that result from this.
• It's possible to bullshit your way out of being eaten by claiming that you have a curse upon your flesh. 

Snarvels

The only reason this exists is because I thought "Suddenness" sounds like a funny name for an attribute. Following that, "Spikiness" and "Snarf-ability" also sound amusing. From that I extrapolated to the only logical conclusion for a game system. Be warned, this text has not been written with something so trivial as play-ability in mind. Rather, it is meant to amuse you for like a couple seconds or so.

Snarvels

So the stats rolled 1d20 across ares:

Suddenness(SudS): Roll under to do things suddenly. Roll over to not get shot when a police officer and/or highwaymen says “now don’t make any sudden movements”.

Spikiness(SpkS): The amount of damage done on full body contact with you. Reckless touchings cause half SpkS damage. Gentle touching causes like 1 or somethings.

Snarf-abilitys(SnfS): Roll under SnfS to end up in people’s mouths, stomachs or lungs. If you don’t want to be inside in someone’s mouth for some weird reason, roll overs.

Sarcasms(SarS): Roll under or people take what you say literally. There is no not rolling this.

SarS also serves the vital function prohibiting snarvels of low sarcasms rating from being too sarcastics. Sthus allowing potential players to argue about whether or not their characters are too sarcastic, instead of playing this.

Such when a snarvels takes damage, the damage goes to the snarvels favorite stat, for God hates.

So each sentence spoken in character must start with an s and end with an s. Sis the most important rules. Sif you don't follow this rule, then any enjoyment you gain from this game is badwrongfun, therefor not deposit-able in any fun banks.

Secretly the goal of all Snarvels is world dominations. Since ever, everyone who interacted with Snarvels, knows.

Snarvels do not get singular tenses. Sthey don’t deserve it’s.

Snarvels despise the letter S.