The Mycorrhizan [OSR Discord Parasite GLOG Class Challenge]

Below is my contribution to a "contest" over on the OSR Discord. I cooked this up in a few hours and don't typically homebrew for the GLOG, but I'm fairly happy with what came out of it. Hope you enjoy, and while you're at it, check out the blogs of the other participants as well:
Micah
Ambnz
Lexi
Type1Ninja
Isaak Hill
wr3cking8a11
Oblidisideryptch
rtx

Mycorrhizan

A: Parasitic Passenger, Photosanisus
B: Distributed Dexterity
C: Genetic Graft, Emergency Spores
D: Grass Menagerie, Forced Fruiting


Okay, yes, all plants have mycorrhizae. But not like you, the mycorrhizan. You’re special. You can think and reason and speak (well, in a sense). When a mycorrhizan colonizes a plant, it uplifts it, turning it into a mobile being with the mycorrhizan acting as its brain. Unlike animals, plants don’t have much force of will (usually) so the mycorrhizan doesn’t have to worry much about the plant changing the way it thinks, beyond perhaps imparting some instinctual thoughts (why do you like meat all the sudden? Oh, right, pitcher plant). The mycorrhizan is also a habitual drifter, changing bodies as one might change haircuts or favorite lunch spots. Luckily for the plants, they just continue life as they normally would have, assuming the mycorrhizan didn’t leave them high and dry, away from life-giving soil.

Parasitic Passenger


The mycorrhizan does not have a body of its own. Instead it survives and moves by parasitizing plants. It requires 10 minutes for the mycorrhizan to spore and colonize a new plant, and a further 10 minutes to adapt the new plant’s anatomy into something mobile. The mycorrhizan can be uprooted safely by outside force during the latter stage. It can change its host plant once per day. The previous host is unharmed and will return to being a normal plant. However, it will be quite sad.


There is no restriction on what plant the mycorrhizan can colonize, however newly colonized plants possess only level+1 HP to start, as the mycorrhizan takes some time to integrate into the new host. When taking on a new host, the mycorrhizan’s STR, CON, and DEX are changed to reflect that of the host, at the GM’s discretion.


Plants parasitized by the mycorrhizan do not grow as normal. Instead the mycorrhizan can bend and twist their branches and roots into crude semblances of animal limbs. By default, the mycorrhizan can only control six limbs at once, and only two are capable of fine manipulation akin to human hands. If the mycorrhizan remains rooted for an extended period of time, it may make the host plant grow at an abnormally fast rate in exchange for losing the ability to control its movement. The mycorrhizan also has the ability to twist the host into any other reasonable structures with its branches and roots


Photosanius


The mycorrhizan is a plant. Well, more technically the mycorrhizan is a sentient fungal colony that lives on a plant’s roots and allows it to synthesize nutrients and minerals, but for our purposes, it’s a plant. As a plant, the mycorrhizan will naturally heal rather quickly over time given adequate food, water, and sunlight. As long as the mycorrhizan has access to fertile soil, water, and sunlight within a 24 hour period, it will regain 1 HP/hour while rooted. In the absence of any of these three, the mycorrhizan is unable to regain HP. Torches do not count as sunlight. Some magical light probably does. The mycorrhizan suffers from starvation and dehydration at the same rate as a normal human unless its host is specifically resistant to either.


Distributed Dexterity


The mycorrhizan has developed the ability to control more of the host at once. The mycorrhizan can now control ten total limbs, four of which possess the dexterity of human hands.


Emergency Spores


Upon reduction to 0 HP, if the host’s roots are still intact, the mycorrhizan can immediately release a cloud of emergency spores instead of dying along with the host. These spores may colonize any nearby plant. The new host is at 1 HP due to the hurried nature of spore release and cannot move or regain HP for 24 hours due to the tremendous amount of energy required for the mycorrhizan to establish a viable colony.


Genetic Graft


The mycorrhizan has mastered the ability to both integrate the genetics of other plants as well as maximize those of the host plant. If rooted for a full day, the mycorrhizan may perform one of two options.


A. The mycorrhizan devotes energy towards magnifying the expression of features of the host. Thorns may be grown into offensive weapons, poisons secreted in deadly amounts, sap production increased to provide food for others, thick bark grown in defense. GMs should allow any feasible exaggeration of a defining feature of the plant and provide a reasonable narrative or mechanical benefit.


B. the mycorrhizan integrates a sprig from another plant into the current host, adding beneficial characteristics from the donor sprig to the host in a manner akin to A.


The mycorrhizan can only perform these actions a combined total of [level] times on a given host.


Grass Menagerie


The mycorrhizan can now maintain multiple hosts simultaneously. INT/2 plants can be colonized by the mycorrhizan. The mycorrhizan cannot, however, distribute its consciousness and can only actively control one host at a time. It takes one round for the mycorrhizan to change active hosts. The others act as normal plants but will maintain whatever physical position and configuration the mycorrhizan left them in.

If at any time the mycorrhizan controls more than INT/2 hosts, whether due to a loss in INT or simply moving over the cap, one of the hosts, excluding that which currently possesses the mycorrhizan’s consciousness, spontaneously manifests a consciousness. Congratulations, is a boy/girl/mycorrhizan! The new being is likely to wander off if it’s not in imminent danger, but is otherwise a normal, sapient creature.


Forced Fruiting


By expending half of its maximum HP, once per day the mycorrhizan can cause the host to produce a bountiful harvest within minutes. Double the amount of produce typically expected from a single host plant. The produce is particularly nutritious and restores 1d6+level HP. The mycorrhizan obviously cannot eat its own produce. That would be silly.

Savage Worlds Initiative for OSR Games

Alright, so this probably isn't anything new or overly creative, but I figured it was about time to get something on my empty blog. 

I'm an unabashed fan of Savage Worlds. It's my go-to system for low-prep games with newbies to the hobby when I want to do something sufficiently outside of standard fantasy. It's light, intuitive, and the initiative system is really fun to use, since it requires you to have a deck of cards on the table, and tempts with the reward of a bonus if you draw a joker. 

Unfortunately, the layout of the Savage Worlds core rulebook is utter crap. It's far too wordy for how light the system is, the layout is in an unintuitive order, and, in my opinion, it's just plain ugly. Fortunately, they're currently Kickstarting a new edition which, at the time of writing, is way, way over its goal with plenty of time to go.

For the benefit of everyone who runs OSR games, I've taken the liberty of reformatting the Savage Worlds initiative rules to be system-agnostic and shorter. I've also taken the liberty of switching the suit order back to the normal alphabetical, since literally every card game known to modern man uses that card ranking (Seriously, Pinnacle. Why?).

Anyway, here it is in its 200 word glory:

Use a single deck of playing cards with both Jokers left in to determine everyone’s Initiative. 

Deal in characters as follows:

• Every PC is dealt a single card. Any Henchmen under that Player’s control act on her initiative card as well. 

• Named or otherwise Significant Adversaries are also dealt a card.

• Each group of normal Adversaries are dealt a card, which they share. The GM can choose to split this up however she wants so as best to represent how the enemies are coordinated in combat.
• Once all Players and Adversaries have taken their turns, discard all cards and re-draw for the next round's order. 
• Shuffle: Shuffle the deck after any round in which a Joker was dealt.

The Countdown

• Once the cards are dealt, the Player or Adversary with the highest card goes first, followed by all others in normal descending order (Ace high, Deuce low).

• Ties are resolved by suit order: Clubs are first, then Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades (alphabetical order, the standards for most card games).

• When a Player draws a Joker, her character can go whenever she wants in the round, even interrupting another PC’s or Adversary’s action if she wants.
•  In addition, the character doubles all her ability bonuses on checks and saves until the end of the round, regardless of whether she has acted yet.

Yep, that's it. If you want to modify it to accommodate particularly fast enemies or PCs, have said character redraw if they draw a card below a certain value (SW uses 5 for its Quick feat).

Hopefully some of you will find this useful. It's easy to slap into most games. Equally hopefully is that this will force me to start posting semi-regularly. Fingers crossed!