Harrower

“They say I look at things wrong now. Maybe so. I see them better.”

Harrowers, like all warriors, were taught to stand and fight — schooled in steel and armor, drilled to hold against fear, trained to break and be remade until violence comes as readily as breath. But a Harrower’s craft does not stop at the edge of the blade. They turn outward, to the things civilization fears most — the things in the deep woods, the bog, the cellar that nobody opens — and they learn them. They keep books. They keep specimens. And to do what they do, they pay in flesh: the primal current runs through them with no spirit-bond to mediate it, and the body bears what the body cannot mediate.

A Harrower is the one who walks into the village with a torn cloak and a satchel of teeth, who sits at the inn’s worst table because nobody else will sit at it, and who, when the elder finally comes asking about the thing that took two children last month, opens a small ledger written in their own hand and turns to the right page. They are hunter and scholar of horrors both, and the proof of their craft is on them — slit eyes that catch the lamplight a half-second too long, a vein gone black at the wrist, a tongue that finds strange words when the wind shifts. They wear what they have done. They would not undo it if they could.

Role & Identity

A half-caster monster hunter who turns knowledge into killing power. The Harrower is the Warrior group’s specialist — armed and armored like any soldier, but carrying a curated catalogue of every creature they have hunted and a small, sharp set of Primal spells. As they cast and as the current passes through them, their body collects Primal Scars — visible adaptations that pay for what their magic takes. Their spell-engine, their Scars, and their signature features all share a single resource called Toll, which builds as they cast and spends to escalate their Scars or strike against a creature’s known weakness. Carrying too much Toll wears on them; their best work happens at the edge of what they can hold.

Choose a Harrower if you want to be the one who knows what’s in the dark, who carries the right tool, and who pays for that knowing in everything they have become.

Harrower casting differs from other casters. Where other casters spend down a Mana pool to release magic outward, a Harrower lets primal magic pass through their body unmediated. Casting builds Toll; Toll is then spent to fuel signature features. The two halves of the engine — gaining Toll and spending it — form the rhythm of being a Harrower.

Profession Table

Profession Group: Warrior · Hit Die: 1d8 · Trained DR: Guard · Skills: 3 · Profession Resource: Toll

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

Primal Spellcasting

“Primal magic does not come when called. It opens a door. What comes through is what’s been waiting on the other side.”

You can cast spells from the Primal spell list. You begin play knowing 2 spells, and you gain access to additional spells at the levels shown on the Profession Table, up to 7 spells known at level 12. The maximum Tier of spell you can learn and cast is equal to your Prowess (Tier 1 at Prowess 1, Tier 2 at Prowess 2, and so on), to a maximum of Tier 4.

At any level where you would learn a new spell, you may instead learn the Mastery of a spell you already know. Mastery is the deeper expression of a spell — its fuller form, the capability the base version only hinted at. You may learn fewer spells and master more, or learn more spells and master fewer, as your character grows.

Spell Resource. You do not have Mana. Casting a Primal spell adds Toll equal to the spell’s Mana cost — 1 for Tier 1, 3 for Tier 2, 6 for Tier 3, 10 for Tier 4. See Toll below.

Harrower’s Compendium (Level 1)

“My grandmother kept a journal of every bird she saw. Mine starts with the wendling I killed in the bog at fourteen. It has not gotten less alarming.”

Your Harrower’s Compendium is the personal catalogue of every creature you have learned to hunt — a leather-bound book, a sheaf of scrolls, a wax-sealed case of tooth and claw samples, or whatever your character keeps. It is more than a record. It is the spine of your craft. What you have studied, you can exploit. What you have written down, you can teach yourself again in the morning when your hands are not steady.

You begin play with 5 creatures in your Compendium, chosen with the GM during character creation. These represent the things you have already hunted, or the lore you trained against before play began.

Adding Creatures During Play. You may add a creature to your Compendium after you have defeated it and spent at least one uninterrupted hour studying it — its body, its tracks, its lair, or its remains.

Adding Creatures During Recovery. During a Recovery, you may add one creature to your Compendium — from a source outside your own field experience. This may come from a book or scroll, the lecture of another Harrower, access to a master’s private collection, or an exchange with a colleague. Regardless of the source, the creature does not enter your Compendium until you have spent the Recovery practicing the work yourself: drilling its anatomy, sketching it, repeating its movements, writing the entry in your own hand. What you have not put through your own body and pen, you do not own.

Compendium Entries. Each entry records what you have learned: the creature’s known vulnerabilities and resistances, its signature abilities, its DR profile, its category and threat tier, and any other detail the GM deems relevant. Several of your features — Wild Edge, Forge of Will — draw directly on what your Compendium contains.

Primal Scars (Levels 1, 4, 7, 10)

“Every Harrower I’ve drunk with has a Scar she’s proud of and a Scar she won’t talk about. Same Scar, often as not.”

A Harrower does not bond with primal magic. They take it in, unmediated, and the body bears what no spirit is there to share. These adaptations — visible, permanent, written into your flesh — are your Primal Scars. Each one is both an always-on change to how your body works and a place where you can let the current run hot for a moment, opening the Scar wide enough to do something you otherwise could not.

You gain your first Primal Scar at level 1, and additional Scars at levels 4, 7, and 10, for a total of 4 Scars at level 10. You choose each Scar from the list below. Once chosen, a Scar is permanent and cannot be exchanged.

How Scars Work. Every Scar has two parts:

• Passive. Always active, always visible. The change is on you whether you want it to be or not. The passive is the cost of having taken this Scar at all, and it is also what you carry between adventures.
• Flare. You spend Toll to escalate the Scar’s effect for a limited duration. While a Flare is active, the Scar’s visible manifestation intensifies, and witnesses notice.

Universal Flare Consequence. While any Flare is active, you suffer Strain on Charm Trials. This applies for the full duration of the Flare. Some people don’t get over what they see.

A Scar is what you carry forever. A Flare is what happens when you let it open up. See /professions/warriors/harrower/scars/ for the full list of Scars to choose from.

Wild Edge (Level 4)

“She didn’t change her grip. She didn’t change her stance. The blade just remembered something it had been holding back.”

When you make a weapon attack against a creature whose vulnerability you know — from your Harrower’s Compendium, from Witch-Sight, or from another knowledge source the GM deems sufficient — you may spend Toll to let your primal magic run through the weapon and out into the strike. The weapon’s damage type changes for the duration to one of the creature’s known vulnerabilities, chosen from Fire, Frost, Shock, Thunder, Acid, or Poison. Frost on the edge, ember in the arrowhead, sparks crawling the haft, a clap of sound on impact — the visual is yours to describe.

When you deal damage of one of these types, any secondary effects of that damage type apply as normal (Fire applies Burning, Frost applies Hobbled, Shock applies Static, Thunder applies Deafened, Acid reduces block rating, Poison applies Poisoned).

• 1 Toll: Your next weapon attack deals the chosen damage type.
• 3 Toll: All of your weapon attacks deal the chosen damage type for the rest of the Moment.

You may choose the damage type after rolling the attack.

Witch-Sight (Level 7)

“He looked at the thing in the cellar for a long count, then told them where to cut. They cut there, and it died.”

Years of unmediated primal current have changed what you see. When you let that current pass through your eyes, you do not merely look at a creature — you read past its surface, into the essence beneath. The old wounds it carries. The shape of what made it. The thing it cannot survive. The information comes the way knowledge does in dreams: complete, unargued, and certain.

Activation. Witch-Sight is invoked using the Cast a Spell action — instead of casting a spell, spend 1 AP and 4 Toll, and choose a creature you can see within 60 feet. Because Witch-Sight uses the Cast a Spell action, the action tax applies as normal — each additional Cast a Spell action you take on the same turn costs 1 more AP than the previous.

Effect. The GM tells you, openly, one of the following about the creature:

• A vulnerability (damage type, exploitable trait, or behavioral weakness)
• The relative order of its Defensive Ratings, from strongest to weakest (e.g., Guard, then Mind, then Ward — you learn which to avoid and which to exploit, but not the values)
• Its signature ability or attack
• Its category and threat tier

The information is yours to use immediately and to share with your allies. If you defeat the creature later in the same Moment, you may add it to your Compendium without the standard hour of study.

Forge of Will (Level 10)

“The current goes where you point it. The trick is having a place to point.”

By the time a Harrower reaches the height of their craft, knowledge and magic have stopped being separate things. What they have catalogued and what they cast pass through the same body in the same way. Spells against the known cost them nothing.

Once per Moment, when you cast a Primal spell against a creature whose vulnerability you know — from your Compendium or through Witch-Sight — the spell generates no Toll.

If the spell deals damage, you may also change its damage type to match the creature’s known vulnerability. The shape of the spell is unchanged; only the type of harm it carries.

The Harrowing (Level 12, Capstone)

“There is a version of her that walked into the cavern. There is a version that walked out. They are not the same.”

A Harrower of the highest craft can take the cost of an entire day’s casting at once, and for one Moment let everything they have become open up at the same time. The current runs through them without restraint. Every Scar surfaces. The body pays in advance, and the body keeps paying after.

Once per Recovery, as a free action on your turn, you may declare The Harrowing.

When you do, you immediately gain two tiers of Fatigued for the rest of the day. These tiers cannot be removed except by Rest. Your current Toll value is not changed.

For the rest of the Moment, all of your Primal Scars Flare simultaneously, and you may use Wild Edge and Witch-Sight without paying any Toll cost. The Universal Flare Consequence — Strain on Charm Trials — applies as normal for the duration. After the Moment ends, the Flares end and Wild Edge and Witch-Sight return to their normal costs. The Fatigued tiers remain until your next Rest.

The Harrowing is the work of someone who has decided this fight is worth being broken for the day. It is named for what the Harrower does to themselves.

Design Notes for Future Work

Preserved from the source rather than resolved here — none of these are settled:

1. Toll Limit math validation. The per-level Limit (3 / 4 / 5 / 7 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 17 / 18) was derived from deterministic analysis of cycling vs. Hybrid Mana baseline. Worth running a Python simulation against actual combat patterns — particularly the L7–L10 band where Tier 3 casting becomes routine — to confirm cycling efficiency lands at or slightly above Hybrid baseline as intended. Not yet run — also logged to design/simulation-log.md.
2. Hard-set Fatigue points at 6 and 12. These create a clean low-level onboarding curve (no Fatigue at levels 1–3) and a meaningful L4/L8 power-pivot. Confirm during playtest that 6 doesn’t feel punishing at L4–5 (when the Limit is 7–9 and the first Fatigue tier is reached on the first Tier 3 cast).
3. Flare cost balance. Current costs: 2 Toll (Slit-Pupils, Hardened Liver, Beast-Step, Bone-Spur, Hooked Grip, Stone-Knit Bones), 3 Toll (Bark-Patches, Whisper-Tongue, Second Heart, Iron Gaze). Average Flare cost across the menu: 2.4 Toll. Bone-Spur and Stone-Knit Bones came down from 3 to 2 because their effects are single-action or single-round in scope.
4. Ward training omission. Harrower is a half-caster but currently has no trained Ward DR. Open question: does a half-caster warrant baseline Ward training as part of being a caster, or does it remain a feature-earned thing? Could be revisited as a possible Path feature or a future L7 feature swap. Also logged to design/open-questions.md.
5. Witch-Sight activation type. Currently invoked using the Cast a Spell action — 1 AP, 4 Toll, subject to the standard action tax. The choice was deliberate: avoid creating a unique action type, preserve action tax tension, keep AP a real cost. Alternative considered: free action with no AP cost — rejected as too loose for a 60-ft reveal effect.
6. Wild Edge knowledge sources. “From your Compendium, from Witch-Sight, or from another knowledge source the GM deems sufficient.” The third clause is intentionally GM-adjudicated to accommodate Knowledge (Intellect) Trials, NPC instructors, found scrolls, etc. Worth a formal sidebar in the rulebook listing common knowledge sources.
7. Whisper-Tongue selectable twice. Currently allows a second selection at a later Scar slot to gain a second category. This is the only Scar with this structure. Confirm whether this should be a Mastery-style “select again for more” pattern or a unique Whisper-Tongue affordance.
8. The Harrowing — Toll value behavior. Current text: “Your current Toll value is not changed.” The Harrower takes both Fatigue tiers but their Toll doesn’t auto-fill. Worth playtesting — may need an additional clause if cycling through The Harrowing becomes exploitable.
9. Path slots at L2/L5/L8/L11. Harrower Paths not yet designed (Gnarlhide, Outrider, Saggitar, Wildsoul, Bloodbound are all concept-stage only — see /paths/). Possible directions: a Path that returns the Companion concept (currently moved out of the profession), a Path that deepens the Compendium into specialized creature categories, a Path that emphasizes spellcasting over Scars, a Path that emphasizes Scars over spellcasting.
10. Reserved perk slots (L3/L6/L9). Empty by design. Hold for post-playtest re-evaluation. If Harrower feels under-featured at those levels relative to other professions, consider restoring perk selection or layering a small profession feature.
11. Compendium as a player-facing artifact. Worth considering a printable Compendium template as part of the playtest kit, so Harrower players actually maintain their book during play.
12. Wild Edge damage type list and secondary effects. Six primal-flavored damage types: Fire, Frost, Shock, Thunder, Acid, Poison. Each applies a secondary status effect when damage is dealt — Fire/Burning, Frost/Hobbled, Shock/Static, Thunder/Deafened, Acid/-1 block rating, Poison/Poisoned. Wild Edge is therefore more than a vulnerability-damage tool; it’s a status-effect delivery weapon. Worth playtesting that this compounding power isn’t too strong at the 1-Toll-per-attack cost. If too strong, options: raise 1-Toll to 2, or specify Wild Edge changes damage type only (no secondary status effect).
13. Bark-Patches Fire interaction. The Flare ends immediately if the Harrower takes Fire damage during it. Intentional — bark burns. Could be softened to “lose one tier of Resistance per Fire instance” if the all-or-nothing version proves too punishing.