Lux

Every power asks a price. The mage pays in years bent over books; the warrior pays in blood and broken bone. The Lux pays up front, in full, and never stops paying. Swear the vow and mean it — the world can tell the difference between a promise and a performance. So can you.

Scholars dedicate themselves to magic as a discipline — not a gift, not a birthright, but a craft refined through study and uncompromising attention to detail. Where warriors train their bodies and knaves train their instincts, scholars train their minds against the architecture of magic itself. A Lux is the scholar who decided that understanding was not enough, and bound themselves to something.

The binding is a vow — spoken plainly, meant entirely, and kept when keeping it costs everything. There is no patron on the other end of it, no god cutting a deal, no spirit whispering terms. There is only the vow and the one who swore it. Somehow that is enough. The world answers conviction the way it answers a key turned in a lock, and the Lux who holds their word finds power waiting in it. The Lux who breaks their word finds the lock has changed. What they believe, they believe hard enough to bleed for — and it is precisely that refusal to bend that the rest of the world cannot replicate, bargain for, or take away.

Role & Identity

A conviction-driven caster whose power flows from a single sworn Vow rather than study alone. The Lux casts Holy or Arcane spells fueled by Troth — a profession resource that answers to the vow itself, and runs dry the moment the vow is broken. Their Vow is a standing lens on everything they cast, shaping their magic toward truth, protection, sacrifice, pursuit, or defiance. Through Sworn Strikes they pour extra conviction into a spell or blow to make it land harder, and a Lux who commits to the martial Sentinel Calling carries that conviction into a weapon that strikes where armor doesn’t help. They lean Combat and Social, with the specific shape of their exploration and intrigue utility set by the Vow they swear.

Choose a Lux if you want a caster defined by a single line you will not cross — and the power that line gives back when you hold to it.

The vow is the wellspring. A Lux’s magic is powered by Troth, and Troth answers to the vow. Break the vow you swore and your Troth is severed — no casting, no features, nothing — until you atone. No other caster’s power can be switched off by their own choices.

Profession Table

Profession Group: Scholar · Hit Die: 1d4 · Trained DR: Ward · Skills: 2 · Profession Resource: Troth

The Spells and Troth columns above are the shared baseline. The Lector Calling adds a flat +1 spell known and +2 maximum Troth at every level, plus +6 more Troth at level 10.

Holy damage is moral, not elemental. It harms Abominations, Horrors, Hellions, Monstrosities, and Undead; it heals Beasts, Divine, Draconic, Fae, Giants, and Humanoids; it does nothing to Constructs, Elementals, or Plant. The Lux leans on this duality more than any other profession.

Linked Paths: Outrider, Manashaper, Bloodbound, Arcbolt, Morrowborn — all currently concept-stage only (name + theme, see /paths/), but confirmed as the intended Path options for this profession.

Magical Discipline (Level 1)

“Two kinds of fire. You only ever learn to carry one.”

Choose Holy or Arcane as your discipline. You may learn and cast spells from that discipline’s list. The highest spell Tier you can cast equals your Prowess — 2nd-Tier at level 3, 3rd-Tier at level 6, 4th-Tier at level 9. You begin knowing two 1st-Tier spells and learn more as you advance, as shown on the Profession Table.

This choice is permanent. A Lux does not dabble across traditions — the discipline is part of what the vow is sworn through.

Whenever you gain access to a new spell as you level, you may instead choose to gain Mastery in a spell you already know, deepening what you can do rather than widening your repertoire.

The Vow (Level 1)

“Anyone can say the words. The vow is what’s left over when saying them stops being convenient.”

At level 1, you swear a single Vow — a line you will not cross, declared aloud and meant to the bone. Choose one of the five Vows listed below. Your Vow is permanent; it is who your Lux is, not a tool they pick up.

A Vow does two things. It places a standing lens on your magic — a way your spells and senses are shaped for as long as you hold to it — and it binds you to a conduct, the thing you must do or must never do. The lens is always active; it asks nothing, costs nothing, and never switches off, so long as the Vow holds. Break the conduct, and the lens goes dark and your Troth is severed until you atone. A moment of weakness under compulsion is not the same as a choice freely made — what matters is whether you chose to break faith. The table decides the hard cases together.

See /professions/scholars/lux/vows/ for the full list of Vows to choose from.

Calling (Level 1)

“Some hold the line with a book. Some hold it with a blade. The line does not much care which, so long as it holds.”

At level 1, choose your Calling — the shape your devotion takes. It grants a benefit now and a greater one at level 10 (Higher Calling). Every Vow is available to either Calling; the Calling is how you fight, not what you are sworn to.

Lector. You walk the scholar’s road in full. You know one additional spell at every level (a flat increase to your spells known), and your maximum Troth is increased by 2. You are the deeper caster of the two, with more in your book and more conviction to burn.

Sentinel. You carry your conviction into arm’s reach. You gain training in light and medium armor, shields, and martial weapons. Additionally, once per turn when you hit a creature with a weapon strike, you may spend 1 Troth to gain Bolster as your conviction surges through the blow.

Sworn Strikes (Level 4)

“There is striking, and there is striking like the words are true. The second kind leaves a mark on the world.”

Beginning at level 4, you may pour conviction into a blow — of spell or of steel — to make it land with the full weight of your Vow. Once per turn, you may make a sworn strike:

• When you cast a spell, you may spend additional Troth equal to the spell’s Tier to cast it sworn.
• When you make a weapon attack, you may spend 1 Troth to make it sworn.

A sworn strike resolves one Success Band higher than its result would otherwise be — a Normal Success becomes a Strong Success, and a Strong Success becomes a Devastating Success. A result already at Devastating is not improved further.

Unshaken (Level 7)

“They tried fear. They tried a softer voice, and then a harder one, and then a knife. The vow heard none of it.”

At level 7, your conviction can no longer be turned against itself. While you hold your Vow, you cannot be Charmed, and no compulsion — magical or otherwise — can force you to act against your Vow or to break its conduct. The very thing that unmakes a lesser caster’s resolve finds no purchase on yours.

Higher Calling (Level 10)

“The book deepens. The blade sharpens. The vow was the whetstone all along.”

At level 10, your Calling reaches its full strength.

Lector. You may now learn and cast 5th-Tier spells — the highest reaches of your discipline, and the one exception to the rule that your spell Tier is capped by your Prowess. When you would learn a spell at this level and beyond, you may choose a 5th-Tier spell in place of a lower one. Your maximum Troth also increases by a further 6.

Sentinel. When you make a weapon strike, you may choose to resolve it against the target’s Ward instead of their Guard — seeking the place that armor and shield do not protect. Additionally, the Bolster granted by your Sentinel strike improves to Bolster (Tier 2).

Unfinished (Level 12, Capstone)

“They told her the wound was mortal. She said she’d heard, and asked them to wait.”

At level 12, your Vow will not let you fall while it remains unfinished. Once per session, when you would be reduced to 0 HP or forced into a Dire Choice, you may instead remain standing. For 4 rounds, you cannot be reduced below 1 HP and your Troth cannot be severed — you fight on, upright, on conviction alone. When the duration ends, you fall, and you resolve the Dire Choice then.

This refreshes when you complete a Recovery.

At the Table

Atonement & Broken Vows. A broken Vow is not the end of a Lux — but it is not shrugged off either. When a Lux breaks faith, their Troth is severed: no casting, no features, no power, until they have atoned. What atonement is belongs to the table, not the rulebook. It should cost something and mean something. A Witness who lied to save a friend might have to return and speak the truth they swallowed, whatever it breaks. A Burning who let another take the wound might have to seek out a danger and stand in it alone. The GM and player decide together what the Vow requires to be made whole — and until that is done, the Troth stays dry. Handled well, a broken Vow is one of the best stories a Lux can have. Handled as a tax, it is just bookkeeping. Aim for the first.

Speaking a New Vow. A Lux’s Vow is meant to be permanent — the spine of who they are. But people change, break, and are remade, and on rare occasions a Lux comes to understand that the words they swore are no longer the words they live by. This is not a level-up option. It is a story, and a hard one: the renunciation of a sworn thing and the swearing of another. If a player and GM agree a Lux’s journey has genuinely arrived there, the character may set down their old Vow and take up a new one. It should be rare, earned, and felt. A Lux who swaps Vows for mechanical advantage has misunderstood the entire profession.

Design Notes for Future Work

Migrated status: locked per Brad’s explicit call (2026-07-09), same treatment as Harrower — these are the source author’s own flagged uncertainties, not incomplete migration content. Preserved from the source rather than resolved here — the live Notion page carries its own explicit “working draft” callout, a stronger self-flag than most other landed professions, but locking doesn’t retract any of it:

1. This page is explicitly self-labeled “Lux v0.1 — working draft” on the live Notion page — not just carrying informal notes, but marked unpublished by its own author. Listed open items before publish: a Troth economy pass; the Sentinel (Higher Calling) DPR simulation against Marshal/Hilden baselines, never run; Sworn Strikes’ interaction with non-damaging spells, unresolved; and the Burning’s wounded-trigger, unplaytested.
2. Feature names are explicitly flagged as placeholders: Sworn Strikes, Unshaken, Higher Calling, and Unfinished are all called out by the source as provisional naming, not final.
3. Skills count conflict, unresolved. The live Notion property reads Skills: 2, but the source callout notes “draft said 3” — an unreconciled discrepancy between the database property and an earlier draft document. Migrated using the property value (2); also logged to design/open-questions.md.
4. Sentinel DPR simulation against Marshal/Hilden baselines — not yet run. Also logged to design/simulation-log.md.
5. Sworn Strikes’ interaction with non-damaging spells is genuinely unresolved — the feature is written in terms of Success Bands, which apply naturally to damage and many effect rolls, but the source doesn’t specify what “resolves one Success Band higher” means for a spell with no roll to escalate (e.g. a fixed-effect buff or utility spell). Also logged to design/open-questions.md.
6. The Burning’s wounded-trigger (half-HP-or-below bonus damage/healing) needs a playtest pass — untested whether the threshold and bonus size feel right in play.