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.
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…
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.
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.
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.