Saturday, February 16, 2019

Random Advancement Magical Girl


DISCLAIMER: The concept of Random Advancement classes was made by one Zak Sabbath, and indeed his work is referenced below. However, I will not be linking to it. While I believe the work he started transcends him and can be used without being tainted, I will not  be linking to his blog or books so as not to give him views he does not deserve. I don't support rapists.

<Opening blurb about what a Magical Girl is, and also stuff about pronouns>
Magical Girls.  Pretty Guardians of Love and Justice. The term 'Guardian' is important as, while many Magical Girls are capable warriors, they are not soldiers. They are not, by nature, murderhobos. They are protectors of what's important to them. Fundamentally they are innocents who weaponize their femininity, cuteness, hope, and ideals to fight evil. Now, there are exceptions. Not all Magical Girls are girls. Not all of them are cute or feminine. But a Magical Girl is defined by fighting with their emotions, and of being sensitive to them. There are 'evil' or 'dark' Magical Girls, but they are often the products of hurt and trauma, cynics produced by broken and betrayed idealism. The 'evil' Magical Girl is, generally, a former idealist who now fights to protect themselves from harm and hurt others before they can hurt them. A Dark Magical Girl generally would love nothing more than to be like their brighter counterparts; they just believe it to be foolish or impossible.


For the sake of the below, I will use female-centric, heteronormative pronouns, but please adjust accordingly! Many Magical Girl protagonists are male, even moreso are homosexual, and even a few of them are gender-nonconforming or outright transgender.

Magical Girls, being spellcasters, roll once for each spell slot they gain at every level, including first level. Give them the spell slot progression of an Elf, and the Hit Dice and XP progression of a Cleric. Choose a spell list for your magical girl and stick with it.

Every Magical Girl has a Transformation Trinket, which can take the shame of a cosmetic, pen, jewelry, or plastic toy. it's mandatory in order to transform, and can be replaced with an hour-long ritual and level x 100 GP.

When a Magical Girl transforms, they transform into their ideal form, with the cute costume of their dreams, which is as durable and perfect as +1 Leather. Their AC score is replaced by their Charisma score, and a Magical Girl can maintain this form for (Level + 2x CHA modifier) minutes a day, though they can detransform and retransform as much as necessary and spend this time limit in chunks. When you transform, you also are able to add your Charisma bonus to your saving throws and physical abiltiy checks, and normal people cannot recognize that you and your mundane identity are the same person, unless you tell them or they see you transform. This is a magical prosopagnosia.
Finally, when you Transform, your Transformation Trinket becomes your Flashy Focus. A Flashy Focus can be a weapon, shield, or utility tool. This item is of masterwork quality and can be any shape you desire, but once chosen at character creation, this cannot be changed.

--

1-30. "Please... give me the power! The power to protect everyone!" Fill the spell slot as normal.

31-50. "I know it's dangerous, but I can handle this! Let me help!" +1 to Saves

51-55. "In in the name of the moon, I'll punish you!" +1 to Hit

56-65. "Form Change! ALA MODE!" Your Flashy Focus becomes even greater than before! Roll a d6:
1-2: Your Transformation Trinket can take another form! A different weapon/shield/tool/whatever!
3-4: Your Transformation Trinket gains a new magical spell or ability, as if it were some sort of equivalent magical item.
5-6: The Flashy Focus gains a +1 bonus. After reaching +5 overall enhancement, the die rolled for this result is lowered to a d4.

66. "I don't need this toy. My friends are my power!" You can teleport your Transformation Trinket back into your hand, no matter what. On a reroll, you can now recreate a destroyed Trinket for free, and no longer need it to transform. On yet another reroll, treat this as the 56-65 range.

67. "My work here is done!" "But you didn't do anything." You now have a mysterious guardian protector. He's hunky, dreamy, and his identity is hidden. Whoever they are, they are legitimately no-shit your actual destined True Love. Once a session, whenever you are in danger, they will save you, but they won't do much else. If you ever find out their true identity, they will become more reliable as a follower/guest party member but be less effective without their Deus Ex Machina plot magic. If they die, rerolling this result reveals a new protector love interest who is actually the SAME guy with a new disguise. This will shock you every single time, no matter how much it happens.
Rerolling this result while the boyfriend is alive causes them to get a new ability, or level, or whatever.
If your character is Aro-ace or a sufficiently young child, make this character a Fairy Godmother.

68. "Momoko, you have to become Peach Dream, it's your destiny!" "...you're a cat!" You gain a familiar, as if a wizard! it's some sort of cute animal, or perhaps a little fairy or colorful fantasy critter, and it can speak and cast Detect Evil at will. You gain all the normal benefits of a familiar, and on a reroll, roll on the following table:
1-2: Your familiar gains a single spell it can cast once a day. On a reroll, give it: A) A new spell, B) an extra use of its spell, or C) an improvement of its spell. Roll for it.
3-4: Your familiars gains the ability to transform into a badass fuckoff monster like a dragon or a griffon or some shit once a day in order to protect you, with an HD cap equal to twice your level. On a reroll, it gains A) an extra form, B) an improvement to its existing form, or C) an extra use per day of its shapechange.
5-6: You gain ANOTHER Familiar. Every time you roll this result, roll for an improvement of EACH familiar.

69. "If someone tells me it's wrong to hope, I'd tell them they're wrong every single time." Roll on Reynaldo's Paladin table. Unless you're evil, in which case roll on his Anti-Paladin table.

70. "U-uh...was that the right spell? Oh no, I can't fail Potions class!" Learn a spell as normal, but pick a spell from a different spell list! Oooooo!

71. "I mean yea, I'm a witch, but I'm also just a regular teenager!" Roll on the Magic-User table, rerolling if any of the results can't be justified as cute.

72. "Thank you everyone, please, listen to my song! I filled it with all my feelings!" Roll on Jeff's Bard table.

73. "Starlight Breaker! Friendship through Superior Firepower!" You are actually a cyborg or secret-robot, or your magic is atleast partially Sufficiently Advanced Technology. Roll on Ezra's Robot table.

74. "If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, and everything would be what it isn't." Roll on the Alice/Fool table.

75. "We have to collect all the Rainbow Heart Crystals!" .... Or maybe you're looking for the Key of the Twilight, or the Sword of Dios, or the Warhammer of Zillyhoo, or the Harmony Gems of Equestria. Either way, it's there. Four sessions of adventure away! You just have to go get it! If after four sessions you still do not acquire the treasure, you may choose to reroll this benefit. However, if you do so and later acquire what you were questing for, you lose what you rerolled for.

76. "I am made of love, and we're stronger than you!" You are now capable of the powerful magical art of Fusion! With an evocative dance and an intimate emotional bond with your dance-partner, the both of you can fuse into something more than the sum of your parts (Upon both partners succeeding on a saving throw)! Use the superior score for each stat and saving throw, combine your HP, and combine your levels for the sake of calculating abilities! However, control of this entity is a shared gestalt, and any time the characters aren't in instantaneous, unanimous agreement, they must both succeed on their saving throws to maintain the Fusion. A Fusion can technically include as many people as the Magical Girl wishes, but this becomes increasingly unstable.
When fusing with your True Love, the both of you roll your saving throws with advantage and do not need to save to initiate the Fusion. Every time you reroll this result, you may select one other person to benefit from this perk when fusing with you, so long as they have a positive, intimate, healthy relationship with you.

77. "Why?! After everything I've done, everything I'm still doing, everything I plan to do... after everything I've TAKEN from you, how can you LOVE me?" "...Because you need it." You have mastered the Power of Friendship, or rather, it is something that flows freely to you, second nature to your soul. From now on, you have the opportunity to redeem any antagonist capable of communicating with you. Indicate to the GM that the antagonist is important to your character and you are attempting to redeem them. The GM will then decide on one or more virtues that the NPC values, and assign a Resolve Pool (RP) number representing how much effort it will take to redeem this NPC. The RP number will vary depending on how significant the NPC and their redemption is to the overall game. During play, if one of the PCs display a virtue that the NPC values in a manner that puts themselves at risk or costs them an opportunity, they will reduce the NPCs RP by Xd6 points (where X is your level). If that action directly assists the NPC in some way, double the amount of RP lost. Any PC directly attacking the  NPC replenish the NPCs RP by the amount of damage taken. Any actions taken by a PC or PCs ally that run counter to the virtues in question replenish the NPCs resolve pool by an appropriate amount based on the action decided by the GM. The virtues that an NPC values are not public information, and should be discovered by the PCs during play. The PCs may not share the same virtues or morality as the NPC in question. If a creature's pool of RP is ever reduced to  0, they see the light and become your friend. This has amazing effects, as even a demon or devil could be redeemed; they might remain a creature that uses the forces of Darkness for righteous causes, or they might unfurl revitalized wings of white and gold, and walk again in Heaven.

On a Reroll, your empathic perception becomes sharper. You may automatically divine one of the NPC's virtues and values while attempting to understand them.

78."Make, Up! Turn into... a sexy stewardess!" Your ability to transform has branched out, and now you can magically shift into any mundane disguise you desire. You can change your appearance, apparent age and gender, as well as species. However, you cannot gain new limb functionalities or physiological abilities; this transformation is purely a glamour. You also cannot impersonate specific, named individuals.
On a reroll, this disguise now smooths itself over in your mind; You will instinctively walk, talk, and convincingly act like the role you're adopting, but only for the sake of bullshit. For example, if you disguse yourself as a palace guard, you can convincingly sound like you work there and that it's not weird for you to be around the place, but you don't know the actual layout of the palace or details on its people, and pointed questions can blow your cover.

79. "Woah, there goes the Class Rep. I heard she had an IQ of 300." "Well, have you seen her test scores? I believe it." You now excel superhumanly at all mundane skills that are not of significant narrative consequence. You're a perfect athelete, you get the highest score in all games you play and all tests you take, and you can understand anything you put your mind to.  Also you look damn good at all times, doing it.
On a reroll, gain 2 skill points as a Specialist, or whatever the equivalent of your game is for advancing skills by one level.

80. "My parents, you see, are working overseas, so I'm living here by myself." Your parents are working overseas, or they died, or the whole thing's a lie and you're actually from the Magic Kingdom and blending into human society. Either way, you are arbitrarily wealthy to the point that all your daily living costs are trivialized and never need to be accounted for, and you have a monthly budget of 1d4 x 1000 Money as extra funds. You do not get XP for this, it's your inheritance or whatever.

81. "Woaaaah, you mean this is all ours?! We can do whatever want here!" You gain access to an extradimensional space only you can access. This is a place with a fixed entry, like a hidden extra door in your school or the inside of a television or book. This space conforms to it's surrounding area vaguely; the 'extra classroom' example will seem to be the interior of a school building, somewhere, though the dimensions won't match up and it can otherwise be fantastically filled with whatever the owner of this space wishes; it cannot produce anything dangerous, nor can it create living things or precious materials. Honestly, it's basically a Holo-Deck.
On a reroll, your Transformation Trinket can take the form of a 'Key', and open this space from any suitable 'door' that matches the original entry way (such as a remote for any TV or a pen for any book).
On a second reroll, this extradimensional space no longer has to follow the rules of the real world, and outright becomes the owner's mindscape. On a third reroll, it can function as a Hyperbolic time chamber and possess an alternate flow of time at the owner's leisure. However, the restrictions on creating resources and living creatures still exist; don't starve in there, stupid.

82. "Woah... I'm sensing a really bad aura, you guys!" You're now capable of sensing Detect Evil at-will (like your Familiar, if you have one) and can also Detect Magic at-will. Additionally, on a reroll, you gain Telepathy for the sake of communication. if you use psionics in your game, you should roll a test for Wild Talent status every time you roll this if you aren't already.

83. "Ehe... I'm not brave at all! I can only act like it because you're here with me. I depend on you."  Your light shines out best through the people in your life. You can spend your spell slots to give a friend of yours the ability to Smite Evil once, with slots of higher level giving extra dice of damage. If you somehow have no spell slots and roll this ability, you can give out this blessing 1/day.

84. "I can feel them. As long as they're in my heart, I can reach them!" Your dreams are meaningful. This world is governed not by processes, but by perceptions. In truth, reality and dream are not so different; the most real thing in either is the people in them. Every night, when you dream, you can speak to someone in your dreams. It doesn't even matter if they're alive, or not even born yet. Everywhere, everywhen, and everyone crossroads in Dream. The GM will determine the natureof this dream, but if your character goes to sleep with an intense emotional need to speak with someone in particular, chances are high they'll get what they want.
On a Reroll, you can control the dreamscape lucidly. On a second reroll, you can astral project in your dreams.

85. "The reincarnation of a priestess? You're wrong, I'm just an ordinary girl. Where Is this, anyway?" Look, there's no way you're from the typical RPG setting, you're some sorta fuckery. Roll on Jeff's Pansdimensional Vagabond table.

86. "Steven's not like anyone else. There's never been anything like him before. We don't know how he'll grow." Your setting probably doesn't have a whole lot of Magical Girls. Give them a roll on Jeff's Everybody Else table.

87. "I love everything, and everything loves me." You can talk to animals. On a reroll, you can talk to plants. on a reroll, you can talk to the wind and the rain, the sun and the moon, the stars and the black inbetween. On a reroll, you can speak to the gum under the table, the spool of thread, the broken glass, the rotting trash. On yet another reroll... these things all LIKE you.

88. "Your mother had a real love for all living things. So much, her tears could heal." And you are the same. You can Lay on Hands as a Paladin of your level, but with no regards for whether a subject is living or not. You are not channeling holy power, but merely your own compassion; so no only does this ability work on constructs and the undead, but it also cannot be stopped by anti-magic.
On a reroll, you can use this affection to cast Remove Curse 3/day. On another reroll, you can cast Greater Restoration 1/day. On yet another reroll, you can cast Resurrection once every 3 days.

89. "Princess Sakura is the beloved of the gods. Trust her luck." You are beloved by heaven and the world. If you are ever in a situation where there is no malicious intention against you, and chance could spare you harm, it will. Fire will never burn you, boulders will never run you over, you'll fall from heights as softly as possible. On a reroll, you gain luck points equal to your Charisma modifier, and can spend these points to reroll any dice you wish in a session, including those rolled by other people. These points refresh every day.

90. "Starlight Wedding Night Sugarplum Ferris Paris SHINING SPARK!" Finally, a goddamn laser. You can now fire a giant beam, more like a breath weapon really, that deals xd6 damage to everyone in the crossfire, where x is equal to your character level. This damage is 'love' damage type, whatever the hell that means, and this beam can only be used once a day. Every reroll adds another use per day.

91. "Won't you have this dance with me?" With a successful Charisma check, you can cause another figure, even a hostile one, to dance with you. So long as you are also focused completely on dancing, so too will your dance partner, to the exclusion of all else, as long as they feel safe to do so (so no attacking them, or looting their shit right infront of them). On a reroll, your dancing becomes a symbolic musical number. The longer you dance, the more you understand the subject, learning new facts about their mind, memories, feelings, and inner self with each round.

92. "I won't forgive anyone who toys with a maiden's heart! Your enemy is here, so come!" - You can taunt an enemy; without fail, you can always prompt an intelligent and evil creature into giving you their full attention and aggression, as long as no one else attacks them.

93. "This is the fate of all Magical Girls. Their hearts are consumed by curses...and they become a Witch." Roll on the Anti-Paladin table, unless you're evil, in which case roll on the Paladin table. Additionally, if you die, roll a saving throw. If you fail, your soul is damned, and you become a monsterous symbolic personification of your regrets and despair, with ironically inverted powers.

94. "In the beginning, I felt so alone, but everyone's come into their own, and we have so many friends! I never thought fighting could be this much fun!" You gain 1d4 first-level Magical Girl followers. They are your kouhais and will call you senpai. If any of them die, you will be very hurt by this, but no one would really blame you unless you honestly have no excuse for your negligence.

95. "You mean... I was the Moon Princess all along? ...Well alright that does make sense." You've recovered some of your past life memories, and with them some of your power and former shape. Select any random class table, including a racial class, and roll. If you roll any sort of physical change to your body, the effects of this only exist while you are transformed.

96. "Oh quit crying, she dies like every season." You gain an extra life; if you die, it will be very dramatic but you'll be fine through some sort of Deus Ex Machina, like your Sugar Daisy blooming after all this time to reveal how your heart was filled with the light of all the smiles you protected, and now that power is giving back in order to revive your own shining, cheerful face, or some shit.

97. "You're better than you think you are! You're smart, and funny, kind, atheletic, and you're brave and reliable!" Pick one stat, and add +1. On a Reroll, add a +1 to this same stat, until you hit your racial maximum. Then choose another stat.

98. "We fight so that girls the world over can look cute, and pig out on crepes!" You gain +1 to Charisma, ignoring racial maximums.

99. "This...is my true power! Eternal Rainbow Starlight Angel Cure Super White Extra Hyper Rose Blossom PEACH!" You gain a SUPER Mode! An even more extravagant form which is even more stupendously amazing! You're prettier, and your Charisma bonus is doubled for the sake of all rolls, and you gain an extra spell slot of every spell level can cast! Additionally, you are capable of all modes of movement and can survive in all environments, including teleporting into the vacuum of space! And during this form, you may also wield a special Final Ability entirely unique to you, of your own custom design, so long as it doe snot exceed the level of being an 8th level spell, usable once a day!
The catch, however, is that your time in this form cannot exceed one minute per two levels, and it cannot be broken into chunks. Once you de-transform, any left-over time is wasted. Additionally, if you use your Final Ability, you will immediately detransform after your (regular) Charisma bonus in rounds. Please don't actually be in the vacuum of space when this goes off.

100. "Are you trying to become a god?!" "I don't care what I become. I just want all those girls to stop crying. I don't want their hopes to turn to nothing. No matter what rule or law stands in my way, I'll rewrite them. I'll change all these stories, past, present, and future... with my own hands. That's my wish... so grant it!" You are entitled to a Wish. A BIG Wish. An EARNEST Wish. A wish that comes from the depths of your soul, untwisted and untainted by anyone. A wish that shines brighter and truer the more selfless and good and whole and wide and beyond you it is. A Wish that, when granted, is the sort of thing that can get you canonized as a saint or a god. A wish that leaves a permanent mark on the world. A wish worth giving your soul for.

However it manifests, it will be satisfying to your intent. Whatever fate befalls you, you will find worth accepting. Fate, destiny, and the gods themselves cannot deter your will. The universe's cause and effect cannot help but bend, lest it break.

You're a Magical Girl. This is what you do.