New Race - The Varger

I’ve been working off and on (mostly off) on some campaign specific material. I came up with a Player’s Companion style write up for a race that I will build a couple of custom classes from.

Please check it out and feedback would be greatly appreciated: http://free-strife.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-playable-race-varger.html

Looks good, and the math looks to be right. The “racial thievery” should make for interesting classes with special abilities. I also appreciate the reference, and I observe they’d make great corsairs

Out of curiosity, any inspiration from Traveller’s Vargr?

Not directly, since I wasn’t aware of them until after I was working on them; but, they were in part influenced by a wolf race in Vanguard that may have been influenced by Traveller.

Vargr is an old norse word for wolf so its not much of a coincidence.

I like. The Varger have a norse vibe so a varger corsair would be a Viking…

Oh, wow - I just went “Oh, canine humanoids called Varger? Clearly a Traveler reference…” I guess it isn’t much of a stretch, though, given the name is straight from old Norse languages.

For clarification, Traveler Vargr are infamous for space piracy, and the space pirates are called Corsairs… but Varger Vikings certainly makes a lot of sense on its own, too, though.

Weirdly enough, I hadn’t yet made the connection between my Corsair class and my Viking campaign idea - it’s pretty obvious now that it’s been pointed out, and will work out nicely there.

I like this race; as the first ACKS thing I’ve read of yours, it’s outstanding!

A few thoughts …

“… still receive the benefit from the Fighting Value Trade-Offs table …”

And the potential XP cost as well, I assume? It would be easy to forget this.

“Varger can take Tracking (same as the Tracking proficiency) as a thievery skill.”

You don’t need to state this; any class construction can exchange a skill for a proficiency. Perhaps you mean to say something like all Varger have Tracking as one of their Class proficiencies?

Stepping back, I might change the order of some of the racial powers. For example, I would love to play a class with I Can Smell Your Fear. I would make this common to all Varger. With the existing order, Varger strike me as pre-built Barbarians, which may be your intent. (And the XP for Barbarian-something may be high …) As a player, I immediately think of playing a Varger against “type”, as a sly thief or mage, or a crusading swashbuckler. I Can Smell Your Fear makes all those possibilities more interesting, to me.

Looking forward to seeing your first class!

Thanks for the kind words, Charles.

They would certainly pay the XP cost for fighting value trade-offs. With tracking I’m not sure it matters how you skin that cat. The intent is that any Varger class can take Tracking as a class ability rather than spending a proficiency slot on it.

I wrestled a lot with the order of racial powers and in one draft I had I Can Smell Your Fear at 1 point of Varger. I moved it to the 3 point power because it seems stronger and the value more in line with a 3 point race investment in a class.

Still, I can Smell Your Fear does feel like an iconic power for the race. I could see swapping it and Animal Reflexes.

I did design the Varger race as something of a barbarian/ranger for preferred class, but I don’t like one trick ponies and I am working on a ancestor worshipping spirit shaman class for them as well.