Writober! Rage! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short writing prompts. Today’s prompt is “Rage”.

Rage makes me think of Barbarians.  I’d love to see an official Barbarian class, but with a new ability or talent, a fighter can easily be a barbarian. The Weapon Mastery and Grit abilities make a lot of sense for a barbarian, and even the Hauler does too but we do want to bring in the Barbarian’s most memorable attribute from D&D since 3rd edition: Rage. So substitute Hauler with:

Rage. Once per day you may rage; all your attacks do an extra d6 of damage until that encounter ends. You may rage an extra time per two additional levels. (Twice at 3rd level, three times at 5th, etc.)

Or we can escalate the damage instead of the number of times per day:

Rage. Once per day you may rage; all your attacks do an extra d6 of damage until that encounter ends. At 4rd level this increases to d8, and at 9th level it is d10.

If you feel that’s too powerful as a replacement for rage, give the Barbarian just the basic “Once per day you may rage; all your attacks do an extra d6 of damage until that encounter ends.” Then allow rage to escalate in either way (number of times per day or damage die) based on a talent roll. Make ‘7’ the following (with 8-9 remaining the ability bump): Increase the damage of your rage die from d6 to d8 to d10 to 12 OR rage an extra time per day.

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.