The Festival of Trades is infrequent but joyful. All the citizens of a town line up in front of the cathedral and accept paper hats from the priests. These hats are colorful and meant to crudely represent different vocations. There is the hood of the rogue, the fighter's helm, the pointy magician's hat, and the Biretta of the priests themselves.
These hats are distributed randomly with the sole restriction that someone may not receive a hat of their actual profession. The hats are magical and grant the abilities of an apprentice of that trade for as long as they last. Being paper, this is usually but a few days. A hat traded with another will lose its power immediately.
Some say that, rarely, the priests will pass out fanciful hats that represent no trade-- an elf hat, a foreign hat-- but I have never seen one.
Sneaky priests, talent scouting the town.
ReplyDeleteI really like this not only as a means for mixing things up/trying out different paths, but also as a way to add strings permanently to your characters - what if you kept all the experience you could obtain having had this leg-up? What if you could get to 2nd level in a hurry as a weekend cleric? I think I'd let the character split-class from then on (assigning further experience where they chose).
Sure. I was mostly thinking of bumping players out of their ruts, but letting them learn a new class would probably make this festival something to look forward to and travel long distances to take part in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I chuckle at the visuals of somebody trying to turn skeletons, paper hat precariously perched on head. :)
or swinging a claymore or climbing a wall: "don't lose that hat!"
ReplyDeleteLove it. I can see one of my players trying to shellac the hat, or otherwise reinforce it to make it last way longer. (I'd probably allow it.)
ReplyDelete