Two Classes: Primeval Sinner and Primeval Daimon
I'm going to get this out of the way first. One whole human is 50 rations worth of meat if entirely processed. This will be important for conceptualizing what follows. These classes are an attempt at 2 things. First a generic "platform" class by which one can easily create superhuman individuals aping the arbitrarily large men of Berserk and Dark Souls and probably many ancient myths but I am not above pop culture as shorthand. Not demigods, not mortals, more the gradient between them. The second class is an attempt at a prestige class, unlocked by filling out the first one. Both of these classes are built to be diagetically obtained over long-form play, possibly to the extent that filling out both templates is realistically impossible, or at least impossible without a lot of timeskips and hard work.
Primeval Sinner
You are a human who has indulged in the Primeval Sin, the consumption of one's own kind for power. You ate fresh, untainted meat, with a clear presence of mind and a soul unaltered by the touch of an Un-Worldly power. The first time you consume a human's weight in rations under these conditions, or one whole human body, you may take this class. You may only take another template by consuming 5, 10, and then 20 human bodies or an equivalent thereof.
Numinous Infusion: Your attribute cap is now 20.
Starting Equipment: None
Random Skill: None
Δ-A. Choose between Mighty, Vigorous, or Cunning, restore 1 physical disability.
Δ-B. Choose between Mighty, Vigorous, or Nimble, restore 1 physical disability.
Δ-C. Choose between Mighty, Cunning, or Nimble, restore 1 physical disability.
Δ-D. Choose between Vigorous, Cunning, or Nimble, restore 1 physical disability.
Mighty: Grow 1 foot taller, gain 2 STR as your muscles grow and tendons thicken, gain 6d6 additional years of life.
Cunning: Grow 1 foot taller, gain 2 INT as your brain furrows and spirit swells, gain 6d6 additional years of life.
Vigorous: Grow 1 foot taller, gain 2 CON as your skeleton hardens and organs flourish, gain 6d6 additional years of life.
Nimble: Grow 1 foot taller, gain 2 DEX as your reflexes sharpen and nerves bristle, gain 6d6 additional years of life.
If all templates of this class are filled, several things will happen.
1. You will need to consume 1 ration made of human flesh per day, or lose all gained attribute bonuses, losing 1d4 points in all stats per day until death or resumption of diet, at which point stats will be regained at 1 in each attribute per day. Jerky, stew, a rare and bloody steak, pemmican, any means by which meat is prepared is acceptable, or you could indeed just eat it raw, you beast.
2. You will have advantage on intimidation against non-sinning humans. They are rightfully terrified of you. You will also have disadvantage on charisma checks towards any zealous individuals of a True Faith, or a priest of such.
3. Depending on the society you dwell in you may be branded an outlaw, conscripted as a slave-knight, or given a marriage offer, or at least these things will be attempted. Regardless, you will not be ignored if you step foot in civilization.
4. You unlock the Primeval Daimon class, so long as you have not taken any template which would otherwise transform you into some different Un-Worldly thing. Only those of pure and untainted humanity are eligible.
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This is a strong class with few mechanical drawbacks. This is by design. It is a deeply tempting class to take a template from. This is also by design. It is intended to be used in a world where everyone knows this is a thing you can do and has strong feelings about it, most of them negative. The vast majority of people who take this class (primarily individuals of the second estate) only dip into 1 or 2 templates, 3 at most. To go too far is to be set on the same path of our Titan ancestors, and make prey of our loved ones and cattle of our kin by virtual of obligate anthropophagy.
Even so, it is often the springboard by which people become legends, the tides of annihilation are turned back, and the old orders upturned.
As a GM, I strongly recommend focusing on the logistics of procuring human meat and the reactions of those around the player should they choose to do this. People will talk. They will judge. In the setting this is intended for, settlements tend to keep track of bodies. Slain foes are buried or burned, and strict records of death are kept. Murders and periods of anarchy are scary not just because of the loss of life, but because of what might be done with the corpses. Necromancers aren't the only problem, anyone could give in to temptation and they don't need to know a thing about magic. Yes, you can go adventuring and hope to find people in the woods to prey on, and maybe even they deserve it, but then you have your fellow party members and hirelings to deal with. If you take this class, they'll either be terrified, or want in now that you set a precedent. It's letting the genie out of the bottle, its nuclear escalation. The powers that be monopolize it or ban it entirely. It has extreme social, cultural, and religious ramifications. You can do it once and explain it away, take the stat buff and extra years and pass yourself off as a particularly healthy and vigorous specimen. Any more than that and you will be known for what you are.
And then if you are really crazy, you can prestige it.
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Primeval Daimon
You walk the path to ancient godhood, the road of the Titans. You are a Daimon, a miraculous existence which imposes its presence on the world through sheer force of your soul instead of Worldly law or Gnostic ritual. Specifically, you are a Daimon in the image of the Titans, the crude divinities made from mortal humans. A fragment of their power, and potential, is now yours. To obtain your first template in this class you must have 4 templates in Primeval Sinner, and have consumed 100 humans worth of flesh. To obtain each additional template, you must consume 1000, 10000, and 100000 humans worth of flesh, and must consume 5, 10, 25, and then 50 rations worth of human flesh each day.
Numinous Apotheosis: Double your projected lifespan, double your HP, further HP roll results are doubled.
Starting Equipment: None
Random Skill: None
Δ-A. Titan's Body, 1 Primeval Miracle, grow 10 feet taller, restore 1 physical disability.
Δ-B. Titan's Longevity, 1 Primeval Miracle, grow 10 feet taller, restore 1 physical disability.
Δ-C. Titan's Presence, 1 Primeval Miracle, grow 10 feet taller, restore 1 physical disability.
Δ-D. Titan's Divinity, grow 10 feet taller, restore 1 physical disability.
Titan's Body: +1 to all attributes.
Titan's Longevity: Multiply your total potential lifespan by 10. For all intents and purposes you are an immortal, at least in regards to old age. You have advantage on all saving throws against disease.
Titan's Presence: You are recognized as a restoration of man's old glory. Those who venerate the Titans will treat you with awe and respect. If you are in a realm ruled by those devoted to the Titans, you may assume control of it if you can defeat the strongest of its lords. The others will bow without question. Try such a thing without this, and they will plot revolt as they would against any Worldly usurper.
Titan's Divinity: Choose 3 Primeval Miracles
Primeval Miracles
Primeval Daimons are themselves yet shadows of the Titans. Few if any can conjure forth a new spiritual paradigm. And with so many Titans to emulate, most then choose to do so, gaining fragments of the great miracles wielded by their ancestors. There may well be hundreds of miracles, but these are the most well-known.
Miracle of the Emperor: You possess advantage on charisma checks pertaining to your hirelings or crowds of soldiers, aligned to your or not. [template] per day, you can redo a morale roll for your hirelings until a neutral or positive result occurs.
Miracle of the Sun: [template] per day, for 10 minutes, you may direct a beam of sunlight 100 feet in radius, a maximum of 1 mile away from you, to shine upon a particular place, even creeping through windows and down stairs, flowing like water. If you focus the beam to 10 feet it does 2d10 damage to those caught within in a flash of searing heat. This beam can be manually directed at a rate of 10 feet of movement per turn.
Miracle of Thunder: You may grasp lightning with your bare hands, a Difficult dex test which you may do 1d4 times per storm. You may store these lightning strikes within you and emit them at will for [Own HD]d4 damage. You may store 10 bolts this way, but may only use [template]+2 per day.
Miracle of the Dynast: If you sire or bear children, they will be born with a one or more templates in Primeval Sinner if the mother consumes an appropriate amount of human flesh during the pregnancy. If four templates are taken, however, there is a 50% chance they eat their way out of the womb, an act fatal to the mother. [template] per day you may ensure a couple's next attempt at conception will succeed, even if it is incredibly unlikely.
Miracle of the Cycle: You cannot be magically aged. [template] per day, you may choose to appear as a youth (move 2 points from WIS to CHA or WIS to STR), in the prime of your life (CHA to STR or WIS to STR), or as a withered man (CHA to WIS or STR to WIS).
Miracle of the Waters: You can breathe water as if it were air, not needing gills nor fins. [template] per day, you may part bodies of water which are shallower than 100 feet, at a distance of up to 100 feet, for a width of 10 feet.
Miracle of the Befouled: Rotting corpses count as healthy rations to you, and you grow pale and sickly. If a monster is an eater of putrid human corpses, you have advantage on intimidation checks with them. [template] per day, you can revive a recently dead human, but they will assuredly become an undead monster of some kind as their soul malforms itself upon its recoalescence.
Miracle of Flame: You are immune to heat. You may bathe in lava and work metals like clay. [template] per day, you may belch a gout of fire, as fireball, 4+[template]
Miracle of the Smith: If you possess metal-crafting skills, all equipment you create is +1 magical gear. Weapons, armor, ammunition, seige weapons, cutlery, all on the table. The costs for doing so are double the price of a mundane equivalent, and no more than [template] can be made in a day.
Miracle of the Dominator: If you can best a Worldly animal 3 times in a contest of strength, it is tamed. Once you do this, you need only win once with other members of the same species. You can gift them to others, but their offspring will be wild unless you personally grapple them into submission.
Miracle of the Wanderer: You always know which way is north and which way is up. [template] per day, you and those within 10 feet of you may stride as if the journey was a tenth as long, for a distance of [template] miles. You appear as a vague blur to others when doing so. You cannot interact with the world in this state.
Miracle of the Reaping: You can tell what if any blight afflicts a crop by looking at it. [template] per day, you can bid flora to lie down or grow explosively, in up to a 100 foot radius. This can add or remove difficult terrain. If the plants which bloom are edible crops, the harvest will be bountiful that year.
Miracle of Sympathy: You can read a person's past by studying the traces it left on their body. If you can get a good look at someone's face, you can get a gist of what their past was like. For example, you could tell if someone was once a pampered noble then subjected to loss and tragedy, and then hardened by hardship. You get a sort of graph of the highs and lows of their life, a vague but concrete sense of their character.
Miracle of the Warrior: Choose a weapon type. Any such weapon held in your hand counts as a +1 magical weapon. If it is already so, +2, and so on.
Miracle of Desecration: [template] per day, you may choose to expend HP to bleed. The radius of the pool is determined as 5 HP per foot from its source, and the amount of rounds past the first is sustained by 1 HP per turn. The blood renders the ground barren for a generation, and does 1d6 damage per turn to those it touches, except for you. This is permanent unless the sun or other heat can evaporate it, or the earth absorbs it, or sufficient water disperses it. Typically about an hour, if these factors are applicable, but if in a cool, wet, rocky place underground or inside a building it can last for days or weeks.
Miracle of the Beautiful: You are beautiful by the standards impressed on you by your culture and by your own standards, a somewhat variable mix depending on how strong one's self-image is. Filth falls off you. You have advantage on checks to seduce or persuade (provided you match their preferences). [template] per day, you may change your sex. You may bear your own children, who look like identical copies of you writ small.
Miracle of the Hunter: You have no maximum range penalties. So long as you can see something and the weapon you possess can reach it, you may use a ranged weapon attack as if it were in optimal range. You can see for [template]x10 miles, or if you use an overworld map, [template] squares/hexes.
Miracle of Revelry: You may reroll reaction rolls with sapient creatures as long as you are playing an instrument or immediately hail and converse with them as if they were old friends. [template] per day, you may invite neutral or hostile but non-violent mortals to share your food and drink, if they fail a difficult WIS test (and you actually feed them and host them well) they will accept and will part amiably. While they may not become allies, they will stay out of further fights until you leave the area.
Miracle of the Tower: By rapping a wall or foundation with your hand, you may find its associated structure's nearest exit or its weakest point. You have an intuitive understanding of architecture and may direct the construction of immense buildings impossible for Worldly architects to grasp. Whatever structures a mortal may build, you can do so at ten times the scale, at the same speed.
Miracle of the Night: You can see clearly in mundane and magical darkness. [template] per day you may bid your eyes to glow luminously, as a spotlight lantern with doubled range, for up to one hour. In addition, [template] times per day you can move from one shadow to the next if both are touching, at a normal rate of movement (as intangible). If all shadows vanish you are trapped in a lightless abyss until
Miracle of Vigor: Eating a 50 rations of human flesh will restore one permanent physical or mental disability, if that mental disability is the result of physical damage. [template] times per day you may instead use this on another human.
Miracle of the Depths: You may move through solid, unworked stone at a crawling pace. It flows around you like water. [template] per day, you can choose to have the spaces you open up stay so, this change lasting an hour, as a tunnel with a width of 1 to 10 feet (your choice). This is permanent unless structural geology decides otherwise (such as loose soil or an unstable foundation.).
Miracle of Frenzy: You may begin to bellow, cackle, or wail derangedly after an attack, forcing enemies to test their morale. If they fail, you attack again, each strike chaining into an adjacent foe, once more testing morale. If they fail, you attack again the same way. This can be done [template] amount of times per day, and stacks with normal abilities that allow for additional attacks.
Miracle of the Great: Double your HP and gain a noticeably bulkier frame, on the cusp of inhumanity but still more a wide person than a monster. You must consume twice as many rations as you normally would.
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What if I eat other Sinners?
If you kill another Primeval Sinner or Daimon they can be rendered into rations equivalent to the last template they reached, with the one exception being a 1-template Primeval Sinner, which may be rendered into 2 humans worth of rations. Beyond that they would be worth 5, then 10, then 20, then 100, 1000, 10000, 100000.
If I eat a human's worth of meat from a dead Primeval Sinner/Daimon (even if it is proportionately just a small chunk) do I gain a template in Primeval Sinner?
Yes. You can shoot all the way up to daimonhood yourself if you somehow manage to process and consume enough of a deceased daimon's flesh. But the nature of demititans is to be ensconced in palaces and cities. When word gets out the entire population shall swarm its divine carcass like ants, and from there shall be a new feeding frenzy as they kill each other over access. Good luck with that. If by some chance you happen upon one dead in the wild, you may only render so much before the rest decays into unusability, and the wildlife will have grown queer and monstrous from their own feeding on the divine carcass.
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I have looked through many GLOG classes. This feels like a strong class to me, but maybe it actually isn't. I'm flying blind here. But strength is the goal. This is intended as a scary class to encounter or become. And I would recommend giving it to NPCs, particularly high-ranking nobility in less Heavenly realms.
Ideally, you cannot take more than one template in this class without performing an unspeakable atrocity or slaying an incredibly powerful foe and destabilizing the geopolitical balance of the region. Killing a daimon aside, killing and eating 100 people is stretching it on the moral scale, but an adventurer could maybe manage it in the space of a campaign without being a complete monster. Maybe, _maybe_ you can find 111000 people who will happily let you kill and eat them. _Maybe_ you can only feed on those who die naturally. And if you do fight a daimon, it will likely be regicide, or like killing a count or duke. It's a big deal, with a significant risk of failure.
Going by the normal method, this will take a very long time. There are some who have devoted centuries to the slow route, but is your game going to last that long?
What most people who seek this class do is just as bad as you can imagine. You have perhaps read about the charnel cities of the age of Titans. It would be like that, all over again. This is why those who indulge in Primeval Sin are looked upon with such suspicion.
The likely unsustainability is also intentional. At your peak, no matter how you get there, you will be eating a whole person a day. That is 365 people a year. How many people die per year where the campaign takes place? How many of them can be delivered to you? Looking online, cdc.gov says 981 people die in the US per year per 100,000 people. This is a modern country with modern medicine and no predatory monsters strewn about, so we can be generous and say that rate is probably higher in this world. Even so, that is all deaths. If you were reliant on natural deaths alone, there is no way every single body could be delivered to you intact and ready for consumption. Unless you can command an immense city or truly vast empire, you will require human-ranches, breeding programs, systems of dehumanization, if you intend to sustain a 4-template Demititan, or Heaven forbid, more than one. A population of a hundred thousand, certainly tens of thousands, may well be necessary to allow such an apex predator to thrive, given the inefficiencies at play.
As you can see, you need all that extra lifespan available to the demitians to prep for your life once you have assumed power, another thing you will need to do as this class. It is for domain level play or natural disaster and a tragic end. The winning move is perhaps to stay humble, take a mere 1 template, and leave it at that. A lesser daimon is still a daimon.
I fully admit that maybe it's just completely unplayable in most or even all campaigns, like the monsters from the Immortals Handbook: Epic Beastiary of DND 3.5e. I am certain it needs tuning even if it is actually playable. But it evokes the idea of the setting well enough and tells a story through the questions it poses and the demands it makes, so I am mostly satisfied with it.
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