Companionship. Everyone and everything that has ever lived has sought it, needed it, nurtured it, and lost it. And though the bonds we share with others are sometimes fleeting and sometimes eternal, the Cultivator knows that there is power within such bonds, the likes of which can overcome any obstacle if only given the chance to do so. One could say that Cultivators are little more than farmers or gardeners, animal caretakers and so forth, the truth is that they do much more than raise animals or plants, or brew fine drinks.
The true strength of a Cultivator lies in their ability to forge bonds, and build bridges across the divides in one's heart. Through their endeavors, they bring about an infectious sense of understanding and community and create a feeling of unity and camaraderie.
Through persistence and hard work, Cultivators use their talents to draw upon the natural world, infusing their charges with an essence of appreciation and endearment. This effect is called Community (❤️), a special resource that powers many of their capabilities and allows them to form Bonds with others, and even aid those of other Epicurean professions!.
Roleplaying the Art of Caretaking
If you are familiar with the term 'support', then you will certainly understand the general concept behind being a Cultivator. Unlike other Epicurean professions whose payoff comes relatively quickly in the grand scheme of things, a Cultivator's rewards are reaped in the long-term, and while they have the power to speed up the process to some extent, you can expect some accomplishments to be days or even weeks in the making.
However, it is putting that work in that defines the role-play strategy of a Cultivator, allowing you to delve into the personalities of your charges, the magic of taking care of things and forming bonds. If your media involves growing plants, consider describing the plant's growth or some unusual circumstance, or if you're raising an animal, you might consider focusing on its mood and personality. Every living thing is itself a unique being, and exemplifying those differences allows you to bring it to life even beyond the confines of this page.
Community ( ❤️ ) and How to Use It
Community, which is represented by the ❤️ symbol, is a manifestation of feelings like loyalty, admiration, love, and endearment towards another. In the case of a Cultivator, it is a created by their bonds with their charges, and can be used as an expendable resource in order to power their abilities, which tend to revolve around empathy, camaraderie, and unity.
Cultivators have a maximum available ❤️ pool, equal to 10 + half their Cultivator Rank (minimum of +1). They begin each day with an empty pool and can never earn more than their pool maximum. At the end of the day excess ❤️ is lost. Earning ❤️ can happen several ways, including the following:
🌸 Caring for Charges: A Cultivator's primary and most reliable source of ❤️ are their charges. Each charge whose Condition is Average or better at the start of the day generates ❤️, and going up a level in your Relationship with your charge also generates ❤️. Finally, performing Dedicated Actions sometimes award ❤️, particularly if they are used to boost Low Spirits.
🌸 Sharing Moments: Cultivators can draw upon their friendship with others to accumulate ❤️ by being a part of, instigating, or witnessing Moments. Moments are a broad term for any time two or more characters share a bonding moment, such as someone expressing their feelings, revealing something important about themselves, or the simple act of enjoying a moment of closeness together. The GM has the final say in whether or not something defines a Moment, and the amount of ❤️ awarded for it.
🌸 Good Vibes: Cultivators are empowered by their experiences, and by the positive feelings around them, especially when they have a hand in bringing them about. As such, Cultivators can draw ❤️ from various events in which they were involved that turned out positive ending, such as resolving a quest to help someone in need, saving someone or something that is being threatened, resolving misunderstandings, or when a character experience a positive growth or change. Like Moments, what determines a Good Vibe and how much ❤️ is awards is decided by the GM.
Like the Forager, one of the ways a Cultivator can use ❤️ is to 'purchase' resources from their producing charges, such as milking a cow or picking the fruits from a tree. In this way, however, only one charge can be 'purchased' from daily, and some might even have tighter restrictions depending on the charge's species, its Relationship with its Cultivator, and its Condition.
Cultivators can also use their ❤️ as a source of interpersonal, empathic magic to Empower others with inspiration and motivation, discern the True Feelings of someone, and forges Bonds, as well as other capabilities gained through Secret Arts.
Finally, Cultivators can also use ❤️ to create Sanctuaries, imbuing whole areas with powerful magical effects temporarily to evade attacks, fend off the elements, or empower those within it. The details for creating Sanctuaries is discussed later in this chapter.
As one might expect given the name much of a Cultivator's capabilities and daily life centers around caring for living things under their burden. Called 'charges', they represent important obligations for Cultivators in exchange for a long term investment of goods, services, and most of all, happiness and a sense of accomplishment.
Charges, like characters, have a set of statistics that help define aspects of their persona, health, and relationship with their Cultivator, as well as their individual capabilities. These statistics are generally apart from a creature's stat block--supposing it has one--and are largely only used when it comes to caring for them as a Cultivator.
🌸 Condition: A measure of a creature's daily health and well-being, it is rolled each day after a Cultivator completes their Daily Care Routine (see below). A high Condition result means that the charge in question is in High Spirits and thus more apt to produce or accept training, while a low Condition result means that something is wrong and Cultivators may have to expend extra resources or complete a Dedicated Action in order to care for their charge properly.
🌸 Personality Traits: Some charges, particularly animals or monsters, have personality traits that influence how they must be treated in order to handle properly each day. For Wild creatures that a Cultivator is trying to tame, it defines what kind of taming process they might respond to, while Domestic creatures' traits define how the Cultivator needs to respond when their Conditions are low. They also come into play when defining what skills or tricks a creature can learn, as well as what personalities they pair with when it comes to breeding.
Natural Traits: Natural personality traits are intrinsic to the animal's nature, and are randomly assigned when it comes under the Cultivator's charge for the first time. It defines what sort of taming process a Cultivator needs to follow in order to reach an understanding with it. Natural traits are typically paired with like statistics. An inquisitive charge, for instance, responds best to Intelligence, whereas a friendly charge responds best to Dexterity.
Natural Traits
1
Inquisitive (INT)
2
Docile (CHA)
3
Playful (CON)
4
Friendly (DEX)
5
Aggressive (STR)
6
Simple (WIS)
Learned Traits: Learned personality traits are assigned when an animal becomes domesticated or tamed, and are used to define what caretaking methods a Cultivator has to use to get the creature back into good health or spirits when it has a low Condition result. Learned traits are paired with ability scores that are opposite in order to keep attention. An excitable charge might require a little Strength-based wrangling, whereas it might take some creative Wisdom to motivate a lazy charge.
Learned Traits
1
Pampered (CON)
2
Sweet (DEX)
3
Excitable (STR)
4
Lazy (WIS)
5
Affectionate (CHA)
6
Haughty (INT)
🌸 Relationship: A 'sliding bar' mechanic that defines a creature's relationship with its caretaker, it reads from -6 (Hostile), to -3 (Unruly), to 0 (Neutral), to 3 (Friendly), and finally, to 6 (Devoted). A creature's Relationship rises and falls throughout its lifespan, typically in response to three major things: its Condition, how it is treated by its Cultivator, and special circumstances, typically brought on by stressful surroundings or events that transpire around it. Relationship defines how difficult it is to manage a creature, especially during the initial taming process.
🌸 Maturity: A measure of how far along its lifespan a charge is and at what points it reaches a level of Maturity so as to allow to to undergo training or start providing harvestable materials. Maturity typically comes into play more for taming wild creatures, as well as for harvesting plants and animal products.
🌸 Products & Training: A listing of each charge's products or trained capabilities. Products can be harvested by expending Stamina when the charge reaches the correct maturity level for producing, and how much it produces is defines by a set base amount, then modified by its Condition. Training shows skills and tricks that the creature has learned through Cultivator's training efforts.
A Sanctuary is an area in which a Cultivator is able to influence the essence of their Community, influencing its atmosphere. A sanctuary, when set, can provide various different kinds of effects, such as dissuading would-be attackers, raising spirits or morale among its occupants, or even causing crops to grow, flowers to bloom, or food to be made faster.
Whenever the party establishes a base camp, a Cultivator can spend time making this space a Sanctuary. Each Cultivator may only have one Sanctuary effect active at a given time, and two instances of the same Sanctuary effect can coexist, but bonuses do not stack with one another. While their Sanctuary remains active, the Cultivator's maximum Community (❤️) pool decreases by 2.
Defensive Sanctuary: This type of Sanctuary pervades an effect that masks scents and odors coming from within, as well as uses nearby foliage and terrain to make it more difficult to find (increase Perception check DCs by the Cultivator's total Epicurean rank). In addition, the spell alarm is immediately cast on the surrounding area, and any creature that has intentions to harm anyone or anything within the Sanctuary has their speed halved for the first three rounds of an encounter.
Sanctuary of Diligence: This type of Sanctuary pervades a sense of unity in endeavors, capitalizing on feelings of inspiration, motivation, and accomplishment. By spending at least 4 hours in a Sanctuary of Diligence, those friendly to the Cultivator regenerate a single point of Stamina. This can be done no more than three times per day. In addition, any time a Cultivator expends ❤️ to grant others advantage on checks, it costs one less ❤️ (to a minimum of 1 ❤️).
Sanctuary of Friendship: This type of Sanctuary pervades an aura of calm and joviality, cuteness, or other such feelings that make one feel at home when entering it. All social skill checks made by the party while they are within the Sanctuary have advantage, including a Cultivator's social-based checks when enacting Dedicated Actions with their charges. NPCs within the Sanctuary can never become Hostile as a result of a bad social check and they will always respectfully treat this Sanctuary like a home, hearth, or other domicile.
Daily Care Routine & Charge Conditions
At the start of each day, a Cultivator must see to the daily care of their charges. This typically covers seeing to their base needs, which vary depending on the nature of the charges and the intensity of the work. In general, however, a simple expenditure of Stamina (usually 1 Stamina for every 5 charges), along with a relative measure of time, which usually takes no longer than it would normally take a wizard to study their spellbook or a cleric to see to their morning prayers.
In general terms, 'base needs' typically refers to providing water, sustenance, sunlight and so on depending on the unique needs of the charge in question.
After the Daily Care Routine, each charge must roll a Condition check for the day. Unless circumstances change, a Condition check is always 2d6, and a result of 4-9 is considered 'average'. Rolling a 3 or lower, however, means that somethings wrong and they are in Low Spirits, requiring a Dedicated Action (described in a later post) to resolve the issue. On the other hand, rolling a 10 or better means that the charge is in High Spirits, which means that they more susceptible to taming or training methods, or might produce more or higher quality products.
A charge's Condition, if left unattended, lasts for the rest of the day unless subjected to special circumstances, like being injured in a conflict or encountering an environmental hazard.
A Dedicated Action are special interactions in which a Cultivator attends to a specific need, either in response to charge that is in Low Spirits, or to progress a charge's training or taming, as well as some other miscellaneous activities. These actions are called Dedicated Actions.
A Dedicated Action can be simple or complex, short-term or long-term. They may require a Stamina expenditure, or they might have a resource cost. Dedication Actions depend a lot on the circumstances and scenario being presented. Animals, for instance, will have different needs and training proficiencies than Plants, and what is available for a domesticated creature will differ from that which is available to those that are still wild.
Cultivators can perform Dedicated Actions whenever time, stamina costs, and resource requirements allow them to do so, and are only constrained by location, as Dedicated Actions may only be taken in Camps or Sanctuaries. Performing a Dedicated action typically involves rolling 2d6 and adding proficiency with associate skills or tools. If the charge's Condition is Average, then the DC is 8. However, Condition, Maturity, and Relationship with the Cultivator can adjust this difficulty up or down, as can other outside factors. Rolling a fumble (two 1s) typically worsen Condition, which may prevent a charge from cooperating with the Cultivator entirely.
Some examples of Dedicated Actions, organized by media, include the following. Note that these are just examples, and do not represent the limit of possibilities.
🌸 Animal Products: Harvesting a product from one of your charges, such as shearing a sheep or milking a cow, or processing or refining a previously harvested product into a usable form, like skirting and scouring wool to increase its value or pasteurizing milk so it can be drank, sold, or used in some other form. Tending to animal's needs, like brushing them out, shearing hooves, and so on would constitute actions related to relieving Low Spirits.
🌸 Medicine: Diagnosing and prescribing treatment is typically considered a single Dedicated Action, whereas physical therapy, mixing medicines, and surgery are all considered their own Actions. Low Spirits might be the result of complications in existing problems or sudden developments.
🌸 Rearing: Checking the well-being of newborns, spending time bonding with young creatures, and teaching them skills necessary for Maturity are Dedicated Actions. This requires continuous, daily action to realize. Low Spirits would constitute a special need, like cutting new teeth, or dealing with peers.
🌸 Training: A training or education session to teach new skills, behaviors, or tricks are all considered Dedicated Actions, and often require continuous, daily action to realize. Taming wild creatures also falls into this category. Low Spirits would constitute an unwillingness or inability to learn.
🌸 Brewing: Preparing harvested crops and resources to be consumed, like grinding beans en mass, washing tea leaves, and crushing grapes or preparing them for fermentation. In addition, some ceremonial actions, like performing a tea ceremony or learning about a customer's preferences for what to order, all constitute Dedicated Actions. Low Spirits might constitute a problem with equipment, storage devices, and so on.
🌸 Crops / Non-Food Plants: Harvesting crops, as well as sewing new seeds are both considered Dedicated actions. Low Spirits would include overgrown weeds that need to be pulled, a problem with the soil, or perhaps varmints causing problems for the plant in question.
May 31st, 2023, 02:46 AM
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