5e Classes (Orizon Supplement)
Adventurers have different backgrounds and races, but they also have different classes, skill sets for combat and traversal that allow them to go above and beyond what a normal person could ever hope to accomplish.
This chapter will be looking over the roles that each class has within Orizon and expand on the archetypes of those classes available to players within the setting. This chapter will also describe additional classes not from the player’s handbook.
Artificer
(Eberron: Rising from the Last War pg. 54)
The artificers of Orizon have helped countless people with the tools they develop and the skills they hone. Some of them are building off the shoulders of giants, rebuilding commissioned tools. Others are consummate inventors, creating new and interesting devices that draw from the flow of magic. Some artificers work within the lab, studying texts and tomes and researching the skills of artifice. Other artificers decide that they belong in the field, recovering ancient items for study or building things to match the needs of the places they visit.
The best artificers are inventive, prone to leaps of insight matched with detailed, exhaustive, preparation. Like wizards, artificers make exhaustive study of the nature of magic. Wizards look for insight into the nature of the flow and skills with weaves. Artificers are more practical, they have to find a middle ground between magic and the sciences. Artificers are chemists and engineers as much as they are arcanists. Alchemists that travel the world are practical, they need to be able to improvise and find new and exciting applications of their technology.
Skilled artificers have lucrative careers ahead of them, weaving magic into objects that anyone can use requires both dexterous hands and a nimble mind, along with years of study. For some, these tools are the only opportunity people will have to hold magic in their hands and can give someone an amazing resource to take with them. For adventurers a solidly constructed magic item can mean the difference between life and death.
The steady advancement of new technologies in the world of Orizon has been a boon for artificers. Printing presses has made it easier to document and share scientific findings. The advancement of gunpowder has sent many artificers scrambling to find new ways to advance on that technology.
Barbarian
(Player's Handbook pg. 46)
On Orizon, the rise of the barbarian was directly tied to the collapse of civilization and the impossibility of infrastructure. A wild world like the ranges of Orizon are places where people can find a place for themselves on the brutal fringes. They build a place for themselves with strength of will, or strength of arms where will fails them.
There are many dangers in Orizon and many regions are savage lands, where everything is a struggle. Fierce warriors grow out of these lands, and they spread out through their territories, exploring the ruins of peoples that could not survive the savage lands, or fending off attackers and invaders.
Sometimes these peoples leave, and venture out into the world at large. These people are rough and tumble in the unprepared civilizations, but their brutal bluntness makes them an “efficient” addition to a city. In “civilized” spaces a barbarian is a bruiser or a force of strength. militaries value barbarians as irregulars or brutes, though they are difficult to place with a formal regiment.
A true barbarian may be considered by some to be anathema to civilization. They are blunt and violent, driven by their emotion or a connection to the totems and iconography of the wild. However, their strength and simplicity has sometimes made them the foundation of bringing civilization as well as breaking it, there are many tiny kingdoms ruled by a barbarian lord who decided they could simply build themselves a lordship.
Bard
(Player's Handbook pg. 51)
In the skylands bards learn their trade from an apprenticeship system in association with bardic colleges that consider themselves the keepers of history and culture. These colleges are cultural centers and keep extensive records of songs and stories that traveling bards collect. These schools are also focused on general education, most children are expected to spend some time with the harper tutors learning simple lessons and songs to help them with reading, writing and arithmetic. One of the duties of apprentice bards in the skylands is traveling to more remote skylands to teach there for a year or two.
On the ground bards are frequently members of the nomadic caravans, traveling the world and singing songs and telling stories. These bards usually taught by fellow members of the caravans in communities referred to as “traditions,” these traditions record the history of their caravan through an oral history of songs and myths. Other members of the traditions range out into the world to find new stories and new places for the caravan to travel, or travel to meet other caravans and share between the traditions, or to settled territories to see who will share with the nomadic peoples.
Some bards are simple entertainers, but their foundation in the skills built up by the bardic institutions makes them valuable in their niche. Though there are many people capable of playing music or displays of skill and performance ability, bards are on a completely different tier, there is a magic to what they do, both literally and metaphorically. Bards are focused on their art and they are intensely skilled at performing it.
Cleric
(Player's Handbook pg. 56)
The gods are the most active in Orizon through their chosen clerics. Most clerics in Orizon belong to an established religious hierarchy, but some do not. The gods choose whom they will, and sometimes a simple devoted worshiper is blessed with the abilities of a cleric, despite not being at all affiliated with a formal religious order or organization. That cleric might be a contemplative hermit, a wandering prophet, or simply a devout peasant. The most extreme are luckless unknowns that a deity may have observed something special in.
Religious orders will often try to recruit these people who gain clerical ability and bring them into the fold, both to temper their actions and to try to gain insight into their gods through their choice of cleric. But not all wish to be bound to the order of a church. Conversely, not everyone who pursues a religious vocation is a true cleric. Some acolytes discover a different path for their lives, they serve their faiths in other roles, such as priests, scholars, or artisans, while some go on to vocations that have nothing to do with religion.
Some few who are denied the path of the cleric become embittered and seek favor with Incancatus and its fiends, or the outside entities. Religious scholars debate whether divine rejection led such a person to embrace this dark path or whether the person was rejected because the gods foresaw this in them. The gods will not say.
Some clerics are homebodies who serve a particular community of the faithful, but adventuring clerics tend to have a certain crusading zeal to do their deity’s work in the wider world. This work may include ministering to far-flung communities, or seeking out and defeating threats to the civilized world.
The existence of clerics is the surest sign of a true god over a lesser powerful entity. Feylords, for example, have no clerics. Neither do fiends, though they may have priests or warlocks. Only a true god may empower a cleric with divine energies.
Druid
(Player's Handbook pg. 64)
Druids are people who have turned their veneration to nature and the natural world. They have found insights and reverence in the subtle and powerful rhythms of nature. They venerate nature and the gods of the natural world, from the true gods to the myriad nature spirits and the fey.
Though most people associate druids with the forests, druids do not restrict themselves to such limited bounds. Druids are the appointed caretakers of all of the land, from frozen mountain peaks, to burning deserts. Druids tend to the rolling hills and the rough storm-broken coasts. Some druids have devoted themselves to the lofty skylands and their care taking.
In the skylands, druids travel to the untamed skylands, ensuring that groves of floatwood or native creatures are not exploited.
On the ground druids revel in the abundance of nature, the territories below are lush and fertile and large creatures abound. They seek to preserve this splendor against those who would despoil it.
Druids are an esoteric order of people, they rarely interact with the more established and staid people of civilization, instead their isolate themselves within their order of people and their deep wilderness. They are their own people, independent of the world within their own circles.
Fighter
(Player's Handbook pg. 70)
The life of a fighter is a common profession for those on Orizon seeking out adventure and excitement. Some become soldiers, some leap directly into adventure. Some people try to live peaceful lives, but they never keep a weapon far from their side.
A solid sword arm is a valuable asset to many. Knights are always looking to bolster their numbers from among the nobility. Just about every able bodied person has some modest ability with a weapon from serving as a part of the local militia and others continue this training on to join the military or the city guard.
Some people don’t embrace a career with the military, or at least not in the service to a higher cause or a nation. Some become soldiers of fortune, loyal to their employer and the gold they have to pay. Some become adventurers, hoping to find gold and glory or simply to scratch the itch of wanderlust.
These people without alliance to kings, countries, or gods find themselves in service to guilds or companies. Trading guilds hire warriors as guards or thugs.
Some fighters travel a less reputable path and become crooks, pirates, or pit fighters. They pillage and plunder along with rogues and barbarians to take what their swords can give them.
There are many dangers on the world of Orizon and a strong fighter can always find a use for their skills. Soldiers and mercenaries and adventurers always find themselves a place among people willing to pay a few silver and adventuring parties can always use a sturdy sword arm.
Monk
(Player's Handbook pg. 76)
Monks are people who turn contemplation into action. Meditation becomes form and the movement of fists is an expression of philosophy as much as it is of violence. A monk masters their body as a crucial step in mastering their soul. Through this ritual of contemplation and training, they learn to awaken abilities within themselves, expanding the magic of ki energy that comes from within.
Unlike sorcerers who exploit the overflowing energy of their heritage, clerics who have power granted to them from on high, or wizards that draw from the energy that surrounds them, monks built their strength and draw from within themselves.
The most celebrated places of Orizon’s monks are secluded monasteries built within the highest skylands, hidden away from the rest of the world where monks could contemplate hidden truths in privacy. Though these are romantic images and not untrue, there are monks spread out across the world, some are in the forests or the underground, others live inside the cities. Some, like the Ge Daii, travel the world hoping to find insight that way and to turn their skills to constructive ends.
Paladin
(Player's Handbook pg. 82)
Paladins are powerful fighters, empowered by their faith and the gods they serve to hunt down and destroy the enemies of the faithful. They exemplify a host of traits that folk consider honorable, just, and good, though they can also exemplify a host of traits that folk consider inflexible and intransigent.
These warriors aspire to be the best people they can. When such a warrior also has great devotion to a particular deity, that god can reward the faithful with a measure of divine power, making that person a paladin.
Different paladin orders in Orizon emphasize different elements of righteous behavior, but all paladins are expected to hold true to a common set of virtues:
Liberality. Be generous and tolerant. Good faith. Be honest and keep promises. Courtesy. Treat others with respect despite how they treat you. Give honor to those above your station. Earn the respect of those below your station. Lawfulness. Laws exist to bring prosperity to those under them. Unjust laws must be overturned or changed in a reasonable fashion. Bravery. Gain glory through battle. Defend any charge unto death. Pride in one’s actions. Lead by example. Let your deeds speak your intentions. Humility in one’s deeds. Do not boast or accept rewards undue to you. Unselfishness. Share resources, especially with those who have the most need. Good-temperedness. Render service cheerfully and without disdain. Wisdom. Cause the most good through the least harm. Piety. Be faithful to the precepts of your god. Kindness. Protect the weak. Grant mercy to those who seek redemption. Honor. Hold true to the code. Death before dishonor.
Every paladin grades and emphasizes these virtues based on his or her own personal ethos and religious background. Most paladins, like clerics, are devoted to a particular deity. The most common paladin deities are those that embody action, decision, watchfulness, and wisdom.
Their devotion to a higher ideal makes paladins popular folk heroes. Many tales are woven about noble knights and oath-sworn champions, although pragmatists note that the tales often end with a tremendous sacrifice.
Ranger
(Player's Handbook pg. 89)
The wilds of Orizon are vast, lush and savage. Those people who can navigate through these wild spaces have immense value to the communities that occupy the ground and those who range through the sky reefs and the unexplored skylands. Much like druids, the skills of a ranger and the value they hold to the community at large date back to the earliest days of the world and the people who occupy it.
Not every hunter or trapper wandering the hills and forests is a ranger. A ranger finds the wilds to be something holy, more so than the staid trappings of civilizations. To a ranger peace is never found from being at rest. A ranger believes in the sanctity of wild spaces, from the deep forests, to the twisting streets of the cities.
Though rangers are not always connected together by group or creed, they are linked by a loose creed or common goals and practices. Rangers will often leave marks and symbols to help other traveling rangers. These marks can indicate campsites, danger, monsters, shelter, or a ranger’s cache of supplies. These simple trail markers aren’t at all a “secret,” but they are usually meaningless to people who haven’t received a ranger’s training.
Often rangers out in the wild are bound to circles of druids and rangers may act as a companion to a druid, or as their more proactive foils.
Rangers on Orizon often find a place for themselves on the ground, ranging out from the settled ground territories to explore the wilderness to find resources that can be sold to the people who need it on the skylands. Though they also range on the wilder expanses of lost and undiscovered skylands.
Orizon’s rangers also explore the wilderness of civilization, exploring the twists and turns of the cities or ranging the skies from island to island, protecting the outskirts of civilization or its deepest depths.
Rogue
(Player's Handbook pg. 94)
The rogue isn’t a master of the blade, they aren’t artists. But in some way, they are. An expert rogue is a master at knowing exactly where to put their blade, at seeing the art in removing valuables without a trace. They are dexterous and quiet, carrying themselves with unconscious stealth. Their talents are often turned to illegal ends, their skills plaguing the wealthy and removing some of their gains. When a rogue looks to find more honorable paying work they act as scouts and spies or turn their skills to delving through dungeons, dealing with monsters and uncovering lost treasures.
Most large cities in Orizon have a number of small thieves’ dens, guilds and organizations that compete with one another. A few places have an organized group of rogues that controls all such activity. Most thieves’ dens are secret gathering spots for illicit trade of goods and information. These are often hidden beneath the city, and prone to moving as soon as they’re discovered.
The most common respite for such robbers is what they call the Honest Trade, adventuring, where roguish abilities may be used without censure and are later lionized in song and legend. Many thieves take to this life, adhering to a code that keeps them out of trouble in civilized areas but still keeps them rich; they vow to burglarize ancient tombs and monstrous lairs instead of the homes and businesses of the wealthy in civilized lands.
Some rogues have learned it is easier to pick someone’s pocket when you have a powerful backer. Many rogues take this idea and become diplomats, courtiers, influence-peddlers, and information-brokers, in addition to the better-known thieves and assassins. Such roguish spies blend more easily into civilized society, more often acting as grease in the wheels than a wrench in the works, or just stealing a few cogs.
Sorcerer
(Player's Handbook pg. 99)
Some people are born with the natural ability to manipulate magic, and the strength to command those energies. Some possess this ability as a chance happenstance, a twist of fate. Some possess power in their very heritage. Some have draconic blood, a draconic ancestor that disguised themselves as human. Others, more so than those with draconic ancestry, possess the power of wild magic, an energy that flows through Orizon like rampant storms.
This connection has given some sorcerers of Orizon, especially wild magic sorcerers, a fearsome reputation. Their connection to the frightful phenomenon of wild magic storms makes them the subject of fear and persecution when that connection is displayed in an eruption of wild energies. Some especially fearful communities will execute or drive out those with the touch of the wild storms. Many who discover that they have the talent of a wild magic sorcerer take care to conceal or outright reject their abilities .
Those who do decide to embrace their abilities will venture outwards into the wider world, hoping to find an opportunity to put their skills to good use, or simply to use the powers that destiny has granted them to the best of their abilities.
Many sorcerers seek out a master that they can apprentice to, someone who has learned to better command those same energies without disaster striking. Others simply venture out to make the best of it and to learn on the go, this may be a dangerous method, but it is certainly exciting.
Warlock
(Player's Handbook pg. 105)
People who have sought out power through a bargain with some powerful entity from beyond their ken and some even from beyond their home plane. This is a fast and comparatively easy way to gain power for those without the devotion to study or prayer, or the fortune to be born with innate ability. There are rewards beyond the power granted, as the warlock’s patrons may offer them insights they would not normally be able to discover with such paltry things as study.
The porous nature of Orizon’s plane makes it easier than ever for someone seeking this sort of power to access it. Portals remain open to various parallel planes, and portals to planes far flung across the multiverse occasionally are ripped open within Orizon. Cabals of warlocks establish themselves around these portals, exploiting these easy connections to their patrons to gain better access to their patrons.
Warlocks have a worrisome reputation in Orizon, most people don’t like to think of how permeable their borders are, and warlocks and their patrons, regardless of their actions or intent, are fearsome reminders of those inconvenient truths. Many warlocks conceal the truth of their abilities, claiming their skill comes from study, rather than from a bargain.
Wizard
(Player's Handbook pg. 112)
Wizardry is perhaps the most broadly approved of pure spellcasting path in the considerations of the lay people of Orizon, thanks in large part to the study required to perform it with skill. The wizarding universities and magical guilds strive to keep control over their members that operate in the public and to teach control of the world’s magical energies to those that come to them to study. Membership to, or certification by, one of the magical guilds may be required to practice the more powerful arcane arts within the more rigidly lawful skylands of Orizon. Where this certification is not outright required it is seen as a crucially important piece of accreditation. Some people will only trust magical advice that comes with accreditation from a magical guild or university.
These magical universities will typically offer incentives to people in the world at large to come and learn at their arcane centers. Once there students often become cloistered in their learning, closely supervised until their instructors can be assured that those learning won’t singe their eyes off. Then students are either allowed to continue their studies on their own accord, or apprentice themselves to one of the professors.
This educational system has a secondary purpose in that it teaches people control, not just for the sake of those individuals who come to learn, but also for the population at large, giving them a sense of security.
Many wizards dedicate themselves to the study of Orizon’s wild magic storms, the understanding is that these storms tend to coalesce around magical activity, and learning how to dissipate collected magical energy, or to anticipate the arrival of a wild magic storm is valuable knowledge.
Following their tenure at magical institutions, wizards either delve into research, which can send them out on adventure for more practical research. Some wizards remain with their institutions, pouring over the school’s libraries. Other wizards find careers with crafting guilds, merging their two fields of expertise and become enchanters of magical items. Some others find a path with the government, becoming advisors on arcane matters or serving positions like artillery within their military.
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