Base Requirements

• Races: Any
• Sub-Classes: Any
• Ability Requirements: Health 13, Reason 13
• Alignments: Any
• Starting Cash: By class, plus one Animal

Weapon Proficiencies

• Weapon Slots: By class
• Bonus Weapon Proficiencies: none
• Required Weapon Proficiencies: none
• Allowed Weapons: By class, plus Bows Group and Spears Group
• Allowed Armors: By class

Non-Weapon Proficiencies:

• Non-weapon Slots: By class
• Available Categories: By class, plus Pastoral
• Bonus Non-weapon Proficiencies: Alchemy, Animal Handling, Animal Lore, Survival
• Required Proficiencies: none
• Recommended Proficiencies: Agriculture, Alchemy, Anatomy, Animal Rending, Animal Training, Cooking, Disguise, Endurance, Fire-building, Fortune Telling, Heart Feast, Herbalism, Hunting, Land-based Riding, Local History, Mountaineering, Organic Preservation, Pest Control, Rope Use, Set Snares, Spellcraft, Swimming, Venom Handling, Veterinary Healing, Weather Sense, Weaving
• Forbidden Proficiencies: none

Overview: Hedge wizards are spellcasters who have learned magic through private study. Though they are usually hermits or social outcasts, they will often provide aid in time of need, though they realize that no hedge wizards are really trusted by those around them. They are often blamed for general misfortune: bad weather, poor crops, soured milk, bad luck. In truth they are responsible for much worse-hedge wizards are creators of monsters.

Many an adventurer has given thought to where some of the stranger creatures encountered actually come from. Many a time these beasts are a weird combination of different animals that would seem a mockery of nature. Remarks about such monsters typically make the hedge wizard chuckle. Creating new and strange life is his craft, transmogrifying animals to fit his imagination and whim.

Hedge wizards spend their time puttering about, collecting unusual creatures for study, searching for odd and obscure facts, recording keen observations, and carrying on mysterious research on the creatures that live around them. They sometimes disappear for weeks at a time, only to suddenly reappear with a new horrific creature in tow.

Description: Because their research tends to set them apart from society, hedge wizards often have very limited resources and little incentive to dress well. They tend to favor heavy robes of cheap homespun cloth, usually in dark, drab colors. When traveling they usually carry a good supply of rope, traps, and cages for collecting specimen creatures for their experiments.

Role-Playing: Hedge wizards are prone to spend much time traveling the world in search of new creatures and source stock for their experiments. Some may spend years holed up in a secluded cotage or dismal tower until they discover that they need to find a certain beast, while others begin their lives amid the danger of adventure. They will often work with adventurers or most skillful hunters in the community to collect the odd components, rare commodities, and dangerous creatures needed for their researches. In return, the hedge wizard provides knowledge, advice, and the odd potion.

While most people tend to leave hedge wizards alone, there is always a small traffic in charms, tonics, elixirs, love potions, and the like, which the hedge wizard provides. Hedge wizards often take on apprentices to keep up their dwelling places and assist with their observations and experiments. The most adept apprentices may eventually become hedge wizards themselves.

Special Abilities:

• A hedge wizard can create a universal antidote that works for any poison. Brewing takes up to a day (assuming materials are available). The brew remains effective for three days per level of the wizard. Its chance of successfully countering a poison is 25% + 5% per wizard’s level.
• At 7th level, the hedge wizard can brew magical potions, according to the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
• Due to their ability to learn the nature of strange creatures, hedge wizards gain a +2 on all saving throws vs. any attack from a mutated animal with whose source stock the mage is familiar. This includes gigantic versions of species (like giant hamsters) to ones magically enhanced (like winter wolves).
• A hedge wizard can find food in even the most barren of environments. In a 24-hour period, a hedge wizard can find enough food to feed himself and a number of people equal to his level.
• Due to their experience in unusual environments (and perhaps some experimentation on themselves), a hedge wizard suffers no penalties, damage, or other restrictions in environments of either extreme cold or extreme heat (player’s choice). These immunities apply to natural conditions only, not against spells or attacks that use heat or cold.
• Once per week, a hedge wizard can cast a special good fortune spell on himself and a number of people equal to his level; the effect of good fortune lasts for a number of turns equal to his level. All opponents have a -1 penalty on their chance to hit when attacking those under the effect of good fortune. This ability is innate; a hedge wizard is not required to memorize good fortune, nor does it count against his daily spell limit.

Special Disadvantages:

• Hedge wizards may not have Alteration as a forbidden school. Likewise, regardless of their specialization (or not), a hedge wizard cannot cast spells from the school of Abjuration. The hedge wizard must always take the Path of the Merlane as his first path (this is not a bonus path).
• Hedge wizard Psionicists must take Psychometabolism as their first discipline, and Animal Affinity as their first Science.
• Runecaster Hedge wizards must learn at least two of the following runes before learning any others: Beast, Binding, Healing, Poison, or Transformation.
• Because of their callous view of life, a hedge wizard may never learn, nor use the find familiar spell, nor attract a familiar by any other means.
• Exposure to harsh climates, bizarre creatures, and strange magics gives the hedge wizard an unusual appearance, such as a tough, leathery skin or a head-to-toe covering of short, coarse hair. Because of his appearance and strange manner, a hedge wizard suffers a -2 reaction penalty from all NPCs, save other hedge wizards.
• All druids despise hedge wizards because of their experimentation on nature and will never have anything better than a Cautious reaction.
• Just as their studies provide them with natural immunities to certain environmental extremes, all hedge wizards suffer penalties when exposed to environments radically different from those to which they have inured themselves. A hedge wizard who is resistant to cold environments suffers a -1 penalty on all d20 rolls when in environments with temperatures above 100 degrees F. Likewise, a heat adapted hedge wizard suffers a -1 penalty on all rolls when in environments below 30 degrees F.

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