Friday, June 13, 2025

Happy Friday the 13th! Here's a minimalist, untested, overpowered 5e Slasher class...!

Hey, it's Friday the 13th!  I don't know that I've ever posted anything on here related to that most ominous of preludes to the weekend (other than pointing out a product or two that became available on the special day), so I figured I'd correct that now.

And with my mind on constructing a fantasy heartbreaker, it seemed like it'd be fun to see if I could put together a really simple Slasher class that fits the "trimmed-down 5e" vibe I'm working with.  So...here we go...!  I'm sure this has been done plenty of times over...and probably even somewhere that has been linked from this very blog, especially when you consider friend-of-MM and prolific game content creator Pun Isaac's penchant for slasher flicks, as well as the excellent horror material put out by his friends at Bloat Games.

But...I mean, that's not stopping me from making a fantasy RPG...so why would that stop me here?
Image from Wikipedia

The Slasher

Hit Die: d12

Proficiencies
Armor:  None...you don't need it.
Weapons:  Knives, machetes, chainsaws, hooks, gloves with metal claws...really, anything with a blade, a point, or a portion capable of bludgeoning someone.  And all improvised weapons, too.  (Not guns, though.)
Saving Throws:  Constitution, Charisma
Skills:  Deception, Intimidation

What are your character’s interests and hobbies? What have they done with their life up until this point? Choose one additional Skill and one Talent or Weapon proficiency to represent these.

Equipment
Begin with a set of campaign-appropriate equipment (per DM).

Unkillable
Beginning at 1st level, whenever damage would reduce your hit points to 0 or below, your HP instead become 1, and you lose one round of action.  At the beginning of the next round, you gain 1d6 HP.

A Slasher always regains 1 HP per 10 minutes of in-game time until their maximum HP is reached.

Or, y'know, if you don't feel like dealing with all the bookkeeping, you could probably just ignore hit points altogether...just make sure you occasionally take a story-appropriate round to regroup so those kids can get away...

Getting the Hang of It
At 2nd level, you choose one specific type of weapon to be associated with your infamy.  You get +1 to all attack and damage rolls using this weapon.

Two Beheadings Are Better Than One
Beginning at 3rd level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn, as long as the attacks are each directed at a different victim target.

Ability Score Increase
When you reach 4th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1.

They Had It Coming
At 5th level, you gain the ability to quickly assess any group of people and determine who among them would please a hypothetical audience the most by dying.  (This is determined by the DM; if there's no way of knowing which one of those folks is actually an arrogant MFer who makes fun of old people and probably tortures animals, determine this randomly.)  If you subsequently kill that character, you may immediately take another round of action.

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Have a great weekend, all!  Stay safe out there!

Related side note that this is the only place it'll probably ever make sense to share on here...where I live in Jersey, I'm near this state park and obviously think about a certain character every time I pass it or a sign for it...

3 comments:

  1. Glorious! Or should that be gore-ious? Ha ha.

    I did my own tribute to the 80s slasher in The Curious Conundrum of the Conflagrated Condottiero, but it didn't occur to me to do it as a player class. Love it.

    Re the state park (and please tell me there's a Crystal Lake in there): I get it. Every time I watched Saved By the Bell as a kid, I chuckled when I saw Lark Voorhies' name in the credits.

    I mean, I probably shouldn't have known who Jason Voorhees was at that age, but that's on my parents.

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  2. Elegant and brilliant! Love the additional local detail as well. All of this makes me (almost) want to play some 5e ;-)

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  3. PS. a power idea for such characters, that I picked up from a V&V supplement, is a limited teleportation-like ability but only when out of sight... to explain the killer suddenly popping up in unexpected places.

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