When you level up, you gain a random benefit based on your race or class. Here's what goblins get. You can also use this table for folks like half-orcs or maybe even tieflings, if that's your style of game.
If you prefer your goblins more whimsical and fairy tale oriented, may I suggest Papers and Pencils's d100 Gobbobilities.
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| Art by Goran Gligović |
Goblins
Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and badhearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far.
Roll a d50 to determine what dark gift you manifest.
- Mountain Maggot: You can see in the dark. You can operate as if you had dim light in total darkness. If there's dim light, your eyes are no better than anybody else's.
- Hardheaded: Your skull is as hard as stone. You can headbutt and deal damage like a hammer. You are immune to head-based Critical Wounds. You gain +1 Defense, but this doesn't stack with wearing a helmet. Unfortunately, the bottoms of your feet are very, very sensitive. Stepping on caltrops deals double damage to you.
- Bloodhound: You can smell as sharply as a wolf. You can identify people you've met before by smell alone. You can follow fresh trails unerringly.
- Spidery: You may climb sheer surfaces as if you had a rope. If you ever do fall, treat your fall as if it were 15' shorter.
- Trap tricky: If you set off a trap during combat, roll a d6. On a 1-2, the trap hits you. On a 3-4, it hits you AND a foe. On a 5-6, it only hits a foe.
- Singed: You are resistant to fire damage.
- Long Under the Shadow: You are resistant to fear damage.
- Packmaster: You gain the speech of wolves (if you don't already have it). Wolves you meet will default to friendly reactions to you.
★ - Wolfrider: If you roll this advancement again, it upgrades. Through negotiation and the sharing of meat, a wolf agrees to enter your service and serve as your mount. - Crow Gossip: Gain the speech of crows (if you don't already have it). Crows that you meet will tell you a rumour.
★ - Messenger Crow: If you roll this advancement again, it upgrades. By sharing a portion of your meat with a clever crow, they form a bond with you. The crow will carry messages for you over distances. - List of Grievances: Make a list of foes that have harmed or slighted you. You gain +1 to attack those named individuals. You can have as many people on the list as equal your Valour attribute (minimum 1).
- Looks Like Meat's Back on the Menu: At the end of the battle, if you were victorious, you may devour one of your fallen foes and reduce your damage taken by 1d6.
- Chanter of Black Rites: When you chant, you can conjure phantoms of illusion that baffle the eyes of mortals. Elves are never tricked by these, but other folk may react as if they are true.
- Cave Ambusher: You gain +2 to any test to set up an ambush while underground. Also, you gain +2 to your attacks during the first round of combat.
- Indolent Effort: If you can't get a slave to do the task, you'll try and find a way to cut corners. Reduce the time to perform a particular task by 50% by taking 1d6 damage.
- Where There's a Whip, There's a Way: If you spend a fast action driving and exhorting your fellows, all other goblins fighting with you gain +1 to attacks as well and +2 bonus to Morale.
- Pitwright: You can forge items of enchantment. ★ - Delighted by Explosions: If you roll this advancement again, it upgrades. You can now craft fireworks and bombs.
- Oft Evil Shall Evil Mar: Once per day, after you've seen the result of a roll, you may push a nearby ally into a trap or attack that was going to hit you and have them take the effect instead.
- Terrible Blow: You may choose to sunder the melee weapon you are wielding to gain a +4 attack bonus for the blow.
- Revenger: You gain a +1 to attack anyone who has damaged you in combat.
- Eater of Foul Things: In a pinch, you can eat food that would make other folk sick: the flesh of speaking peoples, rotten meat, worms and vermin.
- Cowardly: Gain +2 Movement in combat if you are moving away from a foe.
Flatfooted and Bowlegged: Gain +2 Movement. ★ - You may gain this advancement up to 3 times.
- Slave Driver: When serving as the Guide, reduce damage from forced marches for those you in your company by -5 for the first day, -4 for the second day, -3 for the third day, and so on, until you can no longer reduce the strain.
- Forked Tongue: When you whisper, you can choose exactly who can hear you--them and no one else. When you shout, you can be heard clearly, even over the din of battle.
- Sunblotter: When you deal a Critical Wound with an arrow, you may immediately make a second missile attack.
- Bloodletter: Your taste for blood is preternatural, giving you insights that no one else can understand. You can identify different blood types (allowing you to give transfusions). You can identify who is and who isn't related to each other. If a target is bleeding, you can follow them like a hound.
- Head Taker: Every enemy you kill during a combat increases the severity of Critical Wounds that you deal by one letter (from A -> B if you've killed 1 enemy, from A -> C if you've killed 2 enemies, etc.)
- Besieger: Treat your Strength as +4 higher for maneuvers related to smashing down doors, climbing held castle walls, bending bars, or lifting gates.
- Poisoner: With a few minutes of sniffing and tasting, you can identify the effects of poisons that you encounter.
- Edge Grinder: By tending to your weapon and oiling it (costs 1 silver piece/6 marks), you may increase its damage dealt by +1. This bonus lasts until the end of a battle in which you deal damage; afterwards, you must care for it again.
- Foul Curses: Once a week, you can say at least two rhyming couplets of foul poetry (calling down the wrath of the Night, listing vulgar names, inventing new disgusting epithets) to force the GM to reroll an attack or maneuver an NPC made.
- Hauler: Add +4 to your Strength score for the purposes of your carrying capacity.
- Black Legionnaire: Reduce the penalty from your worn armour to your Movement by an amount equal to your Strength score.
- Unrelenting Hatred: If you would fall unconscious in combat from damage taken, test Strength ΔX, where X is your Endurance - Damage Taken. On a success, you remain conscious and active. This test must be repeated each round as long as your damage taken exceeds your Endurance.
- Slinker: If you are ever in a position where you are trying to hide from observers, you may take 1d6 damage to find cover in an implausible (but not impossible) manner and hide in plain sight.
- Sense Hatred: You can clearly identify rivalries and enmities between people. Additionally, if you spend at least an hour in the company of a group, you get a sense of any repressed discontentment. The GM will tell which characters have negative views of each other.
- Haruspicy: You can spend an hour dissecting and inspecting the viscera of a bird to ask the GM: "If I do X, will Y happen?" You receive a “yes, ”“no,” or "maybe" answer by interpreting the signs at hand.
- Bane of Elves: You deal +1 damage to elves. Keep a tally of how many elves you have killed. At 50 elves, this bonus increases to +2. At 200 elves, this bonus increases to +3.
- Caution of Curses: If you spend an hour in contemplation of an artifact, the GM will tell you if there are any curses that lay on it and what manner they are.
- Songs of the Night: When singing Songs of Power, you may choose to use your Skill attribute instead of Beauty.
- Dwimmercrafty: You can tell how many charges or uses are left on a limited use item.
- Wheeling and Dealing: You may use Skill instead of Beauty when trying to influence the reaction of characters when buying or selling, getting a bargain, and closing business deals.
- Mind of Wheels and Engines: When you tinker with a machine, you may add some basic conditions to its functioning that follows an "If this, then that" pattern. For example, you could rig a trap with conditions like: "If triggered, then wait 30 seconds before firing" or "If stepped on by a goblin, then don't fire."
- Still Trouble the World: This virtue is only expressed when you fall in battle. After death, you will become a dark spirit and haunt the place where you fell, extending your hate after your death.
- Canny to Hidey Holes: Once per day, you may ask the GM "Is there a secret door in my line of sight?" and receive an honest answer.
- Tomb Robber: Once per day, you may ask the GM "Is there a hidden trap in my line of sight?" and receive an honest answer.
- +1 Subtlety
- +1 Strength
- +1 Valour
- +10 Endurance
A note
One of the big reasons I started writing random advancement tables is so that I could update my most popular blog post, 1937 Hobbit as a Setting. Previously, that post linked out to random advancement options on a blog that I no longer want to give traffic to. I've updated the original blog post with the new links.
It's nice to have my own rules to replace them—and I hope they're useful to you!
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