The Fanatic, and an Important Announcement
Today, we have a few very exciting things to share with you all.
First of all, our homebrew for this week is our largest project so far, a full base class, the Fanatic! Fanatics are filled with a powerful, unshakeable fervor, making them formidable on and off of the battlefield. While they don't channel divine power into spells like a cleric does, strange, amazing things seem to follow fanatics wherever they go; while others are born accident-prone, fanatics seem to be miracle-prone. Creating the Fanatic was complicated but rewarding endeavor, and so we are all the more excited to here what you think!
Secondly, and even more exciting, we have officially launched a Patreon! We're only just getting started here at Gelatinous Cubicles, and so if you want to see us create even bigger and better things, pledging is the most direct way you can help us! And, if you can't commit to being a patron, but still want to chip in, we're still on Ko-fi [we aren’t anymore, sorry]. We're excited to start even more ambitious projects, and every bit of help you can give will go right back into making that a reality!
With all that done, we are pleased to introduce our first of hopefully many more major projects. Enjoy!
To see all of our more recent, premium content, join our Patreon, where all our spiciest new brews are at your disposal. We’re slowly remastering the highlights of our backlog, and if you’re a patron, you can vote on what gets updated next! And, if you want to ask us about our homebrew, new or old, our Discord is public and full of all kinds of brewers and internet goblins. If you’re either of those, we’d love to hear from you!
Fanatic
A bare-chested half-orc mutters his mantra in quiet contemplation, the ceaseless repetition serving to fortify his faith. He stands stalwart, enjoying the moments of tranquility before he must once more leap into battle and lose himself to the fray. He will soon become the hand of the divine, called upon to deliver swift retribution to the foes that might stand in his way.
An elf, her face twisted by single-minded fervor, brings forth her tools of punishment. Her duty is to extract the truth from the accused and confessions from the guilty. In truth, she revels in her gods-given purpose, taking sadistic glee in twisting the bodies of heretics until they can stand it no more. The accused will confess in short order and be swiftly punished, but she will never be satiated in her quest to cleanse the realm of blighted souls.
Scars adorn the chiseled body of a dwarven exile, her calluses and welts borne as trophies of her devotion. She parades through each town she encounters, declaring the undeniable truth of her creed and offering salvation to all those lost in their vile ways. None dare to challenge her as she draws steel across her flesh, her self-inflicted retribution for their unanswered sins serving as a testament to her passion and unending resilience.
Whatever forms their calling may take, fanatics are defined by their complete devotion to a faith, doctrine or creed. Unlike paladins or clerics, these individuals do not directly channel divine magic. Rather, they use their unrelenting passion as the foundation of their strength, functioning as an extension of their faith in the flesh. Such a path is never easy, both demanding physical prowess and iron-clad will, and it is often wrought with suffering, conflict, and strife. The life of a fanatic is not for the faint of heart, and rarely chosen; for those who bear the fanatic’s mantle, this is a life they are called towards by dreams, signs, visions, and circumstances.
Extremists and Outcasts
Fanatics do not necessarily belong to religious orders, and they are rarely accepted in any mainstream religious institution. Most function on the fringes, forgoing the benefits of placid priests and complacent churches in favor of spiritual authenticity. Though fanatics are rarely trained in the everyday function of religious institutions, they none-the-less take inspiration from the tools that the faithful employ, incorporating rituals and devotions born of their own perceptions and beliefs into their turbulent lives.
While fanatics are not magically augmented like clerics or paladins, they similarly are not lifelong pursuants of formal training in the martial arts like a fighter or a monk. A fanatic draws what they need from all walks of life, learning only that which is demanded to strike down the enemies of their cause, much the same as they appropriate prayer and ritual from other sources. What a fanatic may lack in formal training they more than make up for in utter commitment, often spending hours in solitude training their bodies and honing their minds in contemplative prayer.