Wayward Guild

Most monster-hunting traditions are built upon certainties: identify the creature, learn its weaknesses, prepare the proper tools, control the battlefield, and strike when the advantage is yours.

The Wayward Guild was founded by hunters who learned what happens when none of those things are possible.

Its earliest members were itinerant hunters who travelled beyond established roads and guild territories, pursuing creatures too rare, too unpredictable, or too poorly understood for established doctrine. They fought monsters for which no reliable bestiary existed, crossed regions where supplies could not easily be replaced, and survived hunts long after carefully prepared plans had failed.

What began as desperation eventually became a discipline of its own.

Waywards study monsters as seriously as any other hunter, but they are taught never to depend upon a single plan. They learn to fight while wounded, turn failed attacks into opportunities, use unsuitable weapons, exploit moments others would consider too dangerous, and recognize the instant when a creature commits itself too completely to change course.

Many Wayward techniques are old; some predate the modern guilds entirely. Few have dignified names. They have been passed from hunter to apprentice around campfires, over scarred tables, and in the aftermath of hunts nobody expected them to survive. The name Wayward originally referred to hunters who worked beyond mapped routes and established guild halls. In time, it came to describe their methods as well.

To outsiders, those methods can appear reckless, improper, or simply ridiculous.

Veteran hunters know better.

Level 3: Wrong Tool, Right Job

3rd-Level Wayward Guild Feature

Proper equipment is a luxury. A Wayward learns early that surviving the hunt is considerably more important than looking respectable while doing it. You gain proficiency with Improvised Weapons.

When you use an object as an Improvised Weapon and the DM doesn’t have it use the statistics of another weapon it resembles, you can use a d6 for its damage die instead of its normal damage die. If the object is large enough to reasonably require two hands to wield, you can use a d8 instead.

The damage is Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Slashing, as appropriate to the object. You can use Strength or Dexterity for the attack and damage rolls of Improvised Weapons you wield. If an object can reasonably be thrown, it has a normal range of 20 feet and a long range of 60 feet when you use it as an Improvised Weapon.

You can draw, pick up, or otherwise take hold of a suitable unattended object as part of the attack you make with it.

Finally, an object you wield as an Improvised Weapon continues to count as an Improvised Weapon for your Wayward Guild features, even if the DM determines that it is similar enough to a Simple or Martial weapon to use that weapon’s statistics.

Level 3: Redline

3rd-Level Wayward Guild Feature

Wayward hunters preserve a collection of techniques that are effective largely because most sensible people refuse to perform them.

Once per turn when you make a weapon attack, you can expend one of your unexpended Hit Point Dice to Redline the attack. When you do so, choose one of the following techniques.

Overreach: For this attack, the reach of a melee weapon increases by 10 feet. If you make the attack using a ranged weapon instead, being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose Disadvantage on the attack roll, and the attack ignores Half Cover and Three-Quarters Cover.

Overpower: When determining the attack's damage, roll one additional weapon damage die. Starting at 17th level in this class, you roll two additional weapon damage dice instead.

Overcommit: You throw yourself so completely into the attack that your opponent has no opportunity to properly recover. If the attack hits, the target can’t make Opportunity Attacks against you until the start of your next turn.

After the attack resolves, regardless of which technique you chose and whether the attack hit or missed, roll the Hit Point Die you expended to use Redline. You lose Hit Points equal to the number rolled. This Hit Point loss can’t be reduced or prevented in any way.

 

Level 7: Field Experience

7th-Level Wayward Guild Feature

A Wayward hunter eventually develops an unsettling talent for salvaging attacks that should have failed. When you miss with a weapon attack, you can roll one die of the same type as one of that weapon’s damage dice and add the number rolled to the attack roll, potentially causing the attack to hit.

This roll is separate from the weapon’s damage roll. If the attack hits, you roll all of the weapon’s damage dice normally; using this feature doesn’t replace, expend, remove, or reduce any of the attack’s damage dice.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Level 10: Anything will do

10th-Level Wayward Guild Feature

Wayward hunters learn that almost anything can become useful in the few seconds before it breaks, bends, becomes lodged in something, or is otherwise lost.

Once on each of your turns when you take the Attack action, you can take hold of a suitable nonmagical object either within your reach or readily accessible on your person and use it as part of that action. Doing so requires no additional action and doesn't replace any of your attacks. The object might be something taken from your surroundings, such as a bottle, stone, loose chain, broken piece of furniture, tool, or debris, or something carried on your person, such as a coin, nail, piece of ammunition, utensil, length of cord, trinket, or similarly expendable item.

The object must be something you can manipulate quickly and can't be a magic item. The DM determines whether a particular object is suitable. Make an attack with the object as an Improvised Weapon against one creature within its reach or throwing range. An attack made as part of Anything Will Do deals no damage, regardless of the damage the object would normally deal as an Improvised Weapon.

On a hit, choose one of the following techniques. The chosen effect applies to the next weapon attack you make against that creature before the end of your current turn. Whether the improvised attack hits or misses, the object is expended afterward. It might break, become lodged in the creature or terrain, be thrown beyond practical recovery, or otherwise become unsuitable for another use of this feature. An object expended in this way can't be used for Anything Will Do again.

Drive It Home: You use the object to create a brief opening for a particularly vicious strike. If your next weapon attack against the creature hits, choose one of that attack's weapon damage dice. Instead of rolling that die, treat it as though it rolled its maximum value.

Knock it loose: You use the object to disrupt the creature's stance, guard, or balance before striking. If your next weapon attack against the creature hits, choose Push, Sap, Slow, or Topple. You can apply the chosen Weapon Mastery property's effect to the attack in addition to any Weapon Mastery property already being applied by the weapon. Resolve the chosen Weapon Mastery property normally.

Leave It In: You wedge, wrap, lodge, or otherwise leave the object interfering with the creature. If your next weapon attack against the creature hits, its Speed is reduced by 10 feet and it can't make Opportunity Attacks until the start of your next turn.

In Your Eyes: You use the object to obscure the creature's sight, such as by throwing dirt, shattering glass, splashing liquid, or using some other suitably distracting object. If your next weapon attack against the creature hits, the target must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or have the Blinded condition until the start of your next turn. The save DC equals 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + the ability modifier you used for the Improvised Weapon attack.

 

Level 15: I Know This Dance

15th-Level Wayward Guild Feature

There comes a point where experience stops looking like technique and begins to look like instinct.

When you roll Initiative and can see a creature whose type appears in your Monster Grimoire, choose one such creature. For 1 minute, or until you have the Incapacitated condition, you fall into an old hunter’s rhythm against that creature.

At the start of each of your turns, choose one of the following tricks, its benefit lasts until the start of your next turn: 

Seen worse:  After you're subjected to a saving throw from the creature, fail or pass, you have advantage on saving throws the chosen creature causes you to make for the duration.

Find the Rhythm: Once before the start of your next turn, when you hit the chosen creature with a weapon attack, you can reroll one of the weapon’s damage dice and use either roll.

Make them commit:  The first time the chosen creature misses you with an attack before the start of your next turn, you exploit its overextension. The next time you hit that creature with a weapon attack before the end of your next turn, roll one additional weapon damage die when determining the attack’s damage.

Once you use I Know This Dance, you can’t use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Level 18: Ahead of the kill

18th-Level Wayward Guild Feature

Against monsters you understand, anticipation and instinct have become almost indistinguishable from foresight. Your Studied Response gains additional triggers against creatures whose creature types appear in your Monster Grimoire.

When such a creature that you can see within the range of your Studied Response does any of the following, you can use Studied Response against it before the triggering action or effect resolves:

• It takes a Bonus Action.
• It takes a Reaction.
• It teleports.

Should Know Better

When you use Redline, you can choose two different Redline techniques instead of one. You still expend only one Hit Point Die and suffer the Hit Point loss from Redline only once.

For example, you could combine Overreach and Overpower to deliver a stronger attack from an unexpected distance, Overpower and Overcommit to strike hard while disrupting the creature's ability to punish your movement, or Overreach and Overcommit to attack from an unusual angle before slipping through its guard.