Changeling kiths

Here's a thing I posted on another blog some three years ago. It was kind of ill-fitting in that context, and never gathered any comments or anything, so I'm going to delete it there and repost it here. It's soon to become obsolete, what with the new edition of Changeling coming out in the next year (YAY), but here it is anyway. It promises two more upcoming posts, which never happened. I may or may not do them now.

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March 9, 2012

One of the greatest things about this setting is the incredible variety to the characters you can create with it. Even before you introduce individual creativity (e.g. “what kind of Hunterheart are you?”), there are an unusually huge number of options given just in the published materials, and whatever you choose has both a mechanical effect and a significant aesthetic one.

Because of this, one of the first things I got excited about when I first started obsessing over Changeling was the idea of making a fun system for randomly generating characters. I’ve gone through three or four versions of that, most of which I’ll be posting eventually. They’re great for randomly picking your own character, if you’re feeling adventurous. They’re even better for populating the Freehold you’re going to be Storytelling.

Before I share those, though, I have a few homebrewed kiths to post.

Here’s the thing. When you add up the total number of kiths in the base book and Winter Masques, there are close but uneven numbers under the six seemings. So in order to have an even chance of belonging to each seeming, I wanted to bring the number of kiths for each one up to 15.

Of course, you could also just accept the differences and call it a reflection of how things really stand in changeling society, or you could leave blank spaces with a “roll again in this seeming” note, but in my case, I thought it’d be more fun to provide some homebrew kiths. The numbers required to even things out are  one each of Darklings and Elementals, and two each of Fairest and Ogres.

So, here are my Fairests and my Elemental. Ogres and Darkling will come later. Please bear in mind that I have not explored anyone else’s homebrew lists around the internet, so if you have some you especially like, feel free to drop them in the comments!

FAIREST KITHS

• Puckbottom - This Fairest is actually hideous, but is madly attractive to those around him anyway. No one quite perceives his ugliness when he’s around, but it becomes disturbingly obvious in retrospect. Dirty Little Secret: Anybody the Puckbottom makes any opposed social rolls against is very reluctant to talk about him after he leaves. They have to make a willpower check to do so.
• Figurehead - This changeling has been groomed for leadership, and the Wyrd knows it. Useful details about government, both general and specific, just seem to flow to her mind, even if she doesn’t understand them. Savvy Instinct: Spend any number of glamour points to add that many dice to dice pools involving Politics. Points in the Status and Contacts merits can be bought for half XP.

ELEMENTAL KITH

• Aetherling - A changeling who spent much of her durance where no other elements are found, whether in the emptiness between fae stars or in the swirling void of her keeper’s own strange dimension. Cosmic Separation: An invisible force gently repels any unresisting objects or substances (of the Aetherling’s choice) from within arm’s reach. She cannot levitate or steer anything moved this way–it simply moves away from her by the most direct route, obeying gravity once it leaves her immediate vicinity. She can also add her Wyrd to any dice pools involving more forcible attempts to repel things, at the Storyteller’s discretion. This might include throwing objects, breaking down doors, escaping grapples, etc. Wyrd cannot be added to Dodge rolls.*

I’ve done my best to make these fairly balanced, but in the proud tradition of the base game, they’re probably not really. X) I would be thrilled to hear about it if anyone decides to play-test these, especially the Aetherling.

* If you can figure out a way to influence Dodge rolls without it being overpowered, I’d love to hear that, too.