As a clown, buffoon, jester, harlequin or a fool, you are a performer that entertains with a wide variety of skills: principal ones included songs, music, and storytelling; additional ones included acrobatics, dancing, juggling, telling jokes, and magic tricks.
Much of your type of entertainment is performed in a comic style as well as making contemporary jokes in word or song about people or events well known to their audiences.
- Skill Proficiencies: You are proficient in Sleight of Hand and Acrobatics checks.
- Tool Proficiencies: You are proficient in one additional instrument.
- Languages: You can understand one additional language
- Equipment: You begin with your choice of either a Robe of Useful Items or Heward's Handy Haversack.
You can often find work as a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain him and his guests. You can also secure employment as an itinerant performer who entertains common folk at fairs, a circus, markets, inns, taverns, and theaters. At such a place, you receive free lodging and food of a modest or comfortable standard (depending on the quality of the establishment), as long as you perform each night. In addition, your performance makes you something of a local figure. When strangers recognize you in a town where you have performed, they typically take a liking to you.
Suggested Characteristics
Travelling Clowns tend towards being rather free-spirited, carefree, highly creative and mischievous. Some clowns may act a tad off and exhibit eccentric or erratic demeanor both on and off the stage. Such behaviors may or may not be a part of their act or shtick contrived and done deliberately, but perhaps not sincerely as a part of their stage persona. Then there those who are truly touched in the head or completely mad as a march hare...
| d6 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I’m oblivious to etiquette and social expectations. |
| 2 | I eat like a pig and have bad manners. |
| 3 | I hide scraps of food and trinkets away in my pockets. |
| 4 | I know a story relevant to almost every situation. |
| 5 | Whenever I come to a new place, I collect local rumors and spread gossip. |
| 6 | I change my mood or my mind as quickly as I change key in a song. |
| d6 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | I like seeing the smiles on people’s faces when I perform. That’s all that matters. |
| 2 | When I perform, I make the world better than it was. |
| 3 | The world is in need of new ideas and bold action. |
| 4 | I try to help those in need, no matter what the personal cost. |
| 5 | The voices speak to me and usually, they forget to tell me about the rules. |
| 6 | My gifts are meant to be shared with all, not used for my own benefit. |
| d6 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | My instrument is my most treasured possession, and it reminds me of someone I love. |
| 2 | I want to be famous, whatever it takes. |
| 3 | I would do anything for the other members of my old troupe. |
| 4 | It is difficult to get anyone to take me seriously. |
| 5 | I would sacrifice my life and my soul to protect the innocent. |
| 6 | I suffer awful visions of a coming disaster and will do anything to prevent it. |
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I talk to spirits that no one else can see. |
| 2 | I say whatever comes to my mind. |
| 3 | I have an addiction, or several. |
| 4 | A scandal prevents me from ever going home again. That kind of trouble seems to follow me around. |
| 5 | I once satirized a noble who still wants my head. It was a mistake that I will likely repeat. |
| 6 | I’ll do anything to win fame and renown. |