Wizards With Guns: Wanderers and Vagabonds

Wizards With Guns

The sun beats down like lead weights. The man you’ve been hunting for three weeks has killed you twice, and your horse three times. The steel on your hip glimmers with the enchantments you spend the last day beating into it with a muttered cuss and silver chisel. The next time that cattle-rustlin’ Trouble-callin’ sonvagun rides into a town this side of the Arbiter Crossing, you’ll know, and you’ll be ready. There’s a law to the Land that you know in your bones, and not even death keeps your bullets from delivering the Land’s justice.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

Character Creation

1. Assign a d6, two d8s, and a d10 between the four stats: Breath, Bone, Gunpowder, Grit
2. Write the highest result of your Bone as HP. Write half the highest result of your Breath as Fatigue.
3. Choose a Magical Element: Sun, Stars, Dust, Whiskey
4. Choose a Gun Type: Long Gun, Shotgun, Handgun
5. Choose starting equipment and rumors

Magic Overview:
Sun Magic: Radiant power good for cutting through magical protections and starting and resisting fires. Common themes are steel, light, fire, modernity, law, and honesty.
Star Magic: Cool silver energies that excel at hunting Troubles and misdirecting foes. Common themes are shadow, the moon, shapeshifting, illusions, the wild, and the cold.
Dust Magic: Deathly energies that wither mortal men and make sure the dead stay dead. Good for killing people and hunting the undead. Common themes are dust, fear, bone, death, the wind, and ghosts.
Whiskey Magic: The animating force behind all of humanity’s achievements. Good for making friends and helping allies. Common themes are alcohol, healing, community, trust, protection, and luck.

Gun Overview:
Long Guns: Rifles and carbines. Good for setting up things carefully, with improved accuracy and increased duration.
Shotguns: Says it on the tin. Good for blowing shit up with extreme violence, with powerful spells and increased damage.
Handguns: Pistols, revolvers, derringers, and other small one-handed guns. Good for looking stylish and slick, with extreme versatility and dual-wielding.

Sun-Magic, wielded by the Zenith-Smiths
    Exact noon is the wizard’s hour. When the sun hits its zenith, its blinding light burns away all magic, if only for an instant. Wizard’s guns are forged at exactly this moment, so no magical impurities remain in its shining steel. Zenith-Smiths build communities and hammer out a haven in the unforgiving wild, and forge the weapons of humanity from men and steel alike.
Radiant Deliverance: You get +1d when rolling to overcome Wards with Sun spells. You may place your palm on an ongoing magical effect and test Gunpowder to dispel that effect for a minute.
Mantle of Smokeless Fire: You and your horse suffer no ill effects from mundane extreme heat or sun exposure. You may test Bone whenever you or your horse would take magical fire damage to gain immunity against that instance of damage. Against mundane fires, this ability instead grants immunity for one minute.

Star-Magic, guarded by the Shining Strangers
    The Untamed Lands are not kind to humanity. They are harsh and unforgiving, and frequently remind humanity that it is not a privileged animal, and that it must hunt for its survival in the same way that any other predator must. The Shining Strangers are the claws of humanity then, finding, stalking, and killing its enemies, and then melting away into the shadows. They are the least like other humans, and the most in touch with the energies of the Land. Their laughter echoes down from the hills when the moon is high.
Binding Silver: You can tell at a glance if someone or something is a blight upon the Land, though particularly powerful entities may be able to fool you if you aren’t expecting it. Your damage with Star spells against these Troubles is at +1d. You may test Breath to track a Trouble you have laid eyes on in the last three days by scent.
Stranger’s Smile: You may steal the form of any person or animal you can make laugh, abandoning any others you have stolen. Test Gunpowder to assume a stolen form for one minute. While wearing a stolen form, you have silver flecks in your eyes and short predator fangs, both of which are visible only upon moderate inspection. Coyotes are notorious jokesters, and you may always shapechange into one, regardless of any other stolen form.

Dust-Magic, administered by the Reaper’s Desperados
    The practice of killing folks acquaints one with the dirt often. Whether digging graves, taking cover from a salvo of spells, or tasting the dust of the road in the air between one town and the next, the earth reminds the duelist that man was once but dirt, and will be so again. The Desperados embrace death and dust, turning one into the other with practiced skill. They blow into town on the dry wind and out with the tumbleweeds, leaving nothing but corpses and stories to mark their passage. They know anything else would simply crumble.
Dust to Dust: Your Dust spells get +1d to damage against mortal humans and the undead. Any mortal humans you kill immediately desiccates into weathered bones and dirt. You may place your hand on the ground and test Breath to determine the presence and location of any corpses, animate, ancient, buried, or otherwise, within a mile radius.
Reaper’s Authority: Common folk try not to piss off wizards in general, but no sane soul would willingly cross a Desperado. If you make it known you are hunting on the behalf of the Land, common folk will provide you and your companions and horses the bare minimum hospitality and accommodations. You may be expected to provide funeral rites as a priest might in exchange for this aid. When you gather a posse to join your hunt, you may test Grit to also summon the ghosts of past town members, who will ride with you, scout ahead, and share local wisdom, though their combat capabilities are limited.

Whiskey-Magic, shared by the Bootstrap Men
    Whiskey is truly the lifeblood of the frontier. Without it, civilization would crumble to dust and mankind would surely die out. It’s a bitch of a life in a hell of a place, and oftentimes the only good part of a man’s day is when they are able to brush the dust off their coat, sit down at a table, and get absolutely hammered with their friends while the bartender makes sure no-one has cards up their sleeves and keeps their mugs full. The Bootstrap Men channel this unifying brotherly compassion and bring the camaraderie of being piss-drunk to every one-street frontier town in the West.
Liquid Courage: You never take die penalties to shooting due to being shitfaced-drunk. You get +1d to hit targets while you are under the effect of a Whiskey spell. You may test Bone to jump in front of bullets or spells that would hit close-by allies.
Favorite Guy in Town: If you spend your night in a welcoming town and have a wooden barrel available, you may test Grit (after you wake in the morning) to prepare a special batch of bourbon whiskey. Choose an emotion as specific as you’d like: it tastes like that. In addition, anyone who drinks it restores all Fatigue if it's the first flask of it they’ve had that day. It’s against Bootstrap code to charge for this service. Your bourbon lasts until you make a new batch, and has enough for a small frontier-town to have a wild party.

Long Guns
    Wizards who practice with long guns such as rifles and carbines know that honor is worthless to the dead. They practice their spells from a safe distance and watch the world twist and buckle to their will through unfeeling iron sights.
Careful Preparation: You may push your spells’ duration once without testing Gunpowder. This usually increases their duration from one round (6 seconds) to ten rounds (one minute).
Steel Sight: You never need to test Breath to hit a target protected only by light cover or Far distance, and never take penalties to Breath tests to hit targets from further than Far. If you take a round to aim before firing, you get +1d to the Gunpowder test.
Lever-Action: You may have up to four engraved spells before you must take time to handload a new brace of ammo.

Shotguns
    Wizards who specialize in shotguns know that oftentimes, the simplest solution is the most effective, and that oftentimes the simplest solution is more gunpowder. These terrifying forces of magical might are unmatched in arcane power and raw destruction. Just don’t ask them to improvise.
Volatile Gunpowder: You may push your spells’ damage or effect once without testing Gunpowder. This usually increases their damage or effect from d4 to d6.
Experimental Admixture: When you craft a spell-bullet, if it targets enemies, you may craft it with two Magic words instead of one.
Double Barrel: You may have up to two engraved spells before you must take time to handload a new brace of ammo.

Handguns
Wizards who employ handguns such as revolvers and pistols do what other wizards do but twice and with more style. Quick shots, quick mouths, and quick tempers, they make names for themselves whether they intend to or not and quickly get plenty of practice defending it. Where a handgun wizard travels, move on quickly or find yourself retold in the campfire stories they leave behind.
Fan the Hammer: You may push your spells’ number of targets once without testing Gunpowder. This usually increases their number of targets from one to two.
Practiced Duelist: Even when surprised, you may take your turn before any other combatant. When in a formal duel against any but another handgun wizard, you may choose to have any onlookers know for certain that you shot first or second, whether that is true or not.
Six-Shot Cylinder: You may have up to six engraved spells before you must take time to handload a new brace of ammo.

Starting Equipment and Rumors

1. A reliable horse, a fortnight’s rations for you and it, two glass bottles of fine whiskey, ten dollars in silver coins. You know of the location of a silver mine, abandoned soon after its opening for unknown reasons. You are known as a storyteller and wandering guitarist.
2. An ornery but strong mule, saddlebags, four week’s rations for you and it, two barrels of bad moonshine, ten dollars in raw iron ore. You’ve heard of a town that’s tamed buffalo as beasts of burden and are building some sort of monument. You’re known as a hard-ass trader, and people often try to pawn their worthless random objects onto you as treasures.
3. A large pack, a thick and sturdy walking stick, a loyal and slightly magical dog, rations for a week for you and it, maps of the area that probably aren't inaccurate, two gold teeth you stole off a corpse worth five dollars each. You’ve heard of a new rail line being constructed to absolutely nowhere out in the frontier. You’re known as a vagabond and trickster, and kids are curious about you, even if their parents strongly distrust you.