Ruins Guide
Background — Homebrew for Heretics of the Old Gods
You take people into places they couldn’t survive without you and get them back out. Pre-Exodus ruins, Aeorian dig sites, collapsed undercities, sealed vaults — you know how to read them. Not just the architecture and the hazards, though you know those too. You know what it feels like when a space has been sitting undisturbed for centuries versus when something has moved through it recently. You know the difference between structural instability and something worse. You developed that sense the hard way, in the dark, with clients who weren’t paying you enough.
You work for whoever hires you — Court surveyors, independent excavators, academic institutions, treasure hunters who don’t know what they’re looking for. The work is dangerous and the pay is uneven and you’re still alive, which is more than you can say for some of the guides you trained under.
Ability Scores: Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity
Feat: Alert
Skill Proficiencies: History, Perception
Tool Proficiency: Cartographer’s Tools
Equipment: Choose A or B: (A) Cartographer’s Tools, a lantern, a coil of rope, a hand-drawn map of a site you’ve guided before, common clothes, 10 gp; or (B) 50 gp
Feature: Site Sense
Years of working in arcane-contaminated ruins have given you an instinctive read on spaces that most people can’t access consciously. Once per Short or Long Rest, upon entering a ruin, underground site, or structure of pre-Exodus origin, you may ask the DM one of the following questions. The DM answers honestly based on current conditions.
- Is there active magic in this space?
- Has something been disturbed here recently?
- Is this structure stable?
- Is something living in this area aware of us?
- Where is the most significant arcane concentration in this site?
- What kind of fauna are native to this place?