The Pyrologist - now a booklet

[greyharp]

The Mule Abides blog discussed The Pyrologist character class the other day, posting a link to a scan that's been floating around the Net for a while now. The class appeared in the Diplomacy fanzine Liaisons Dangereuses (September 1976) run by Len Lakofka, who also authored the article. The scan is a shocker and very hard to read, with whole lines of text missing.

The class was based on OD&D and its supplements and so I thought it worth turning into a document that is a bit more readable. I've had to make a few assumptions where the text was missing, but I did so by trying to keep the document internally consistent. The Pyrologist, while having mostly his own spells, also had access to a small number of Magic-User spells and so I have included their descriptions in full. In a couple of cases the spell range &/or duration wasn't listed, so I looked to the 1e PHB for clues. I also did some minor editing mostly to clean it up.

Hope some folks get some use out of this. Here's the pdf and here it is in ready-to-print booklet form.

Enjoy!

Edit: links removed, see below.

[Falconer]

Yaay! Awesome!

Any hope of giving the Dwarf Craftsman the same treatment? Perhaps combining the two into a single booklet?

[greyharp]

Leave it with me.

[Deleted]

Nice work, greyharp!

[geoffrey]

Greyharp, you are completely awesome. Thanks for all your hard work!

[piper]

I've been thinking of basing the next iteration on my 1970's vintage OD&D campaign around the excellent "Elemental Deities" article in Dragon magazine #77. The pyrologist would be a good start to making the campaign really revolve around that concept.

[greyharp]

So Piper, all we need now for a full set is a Hydrologist, Geologist and an...errr...umm...an airy guy.

[bluskreem]

Meteorologist.

Great work Grey harp. I've been tempted to do this for the Dwarven Craftmason for quite a while now. I love the DC, it reads like a 4th ed class that snuck it's way into OD&D. If only i could convince a player to give it a shot.

PS: In reality I'm, a Geologist who's finishing off a hydrology degree. I fully approve of those becoming D&D classes.

[geoffrey]

Aug 15, 2010 14:01:28 GMT -6 Piper said:

I've been thinking of basing the next iteration on my 1970's vintage OD&D campaign around the excellent "Elemental Deities" article in Dragon magazine #77.

Yep, that article is both memorable and inspiring.

[greyharp]

OK, here's the new version of the pdf containing both the Pyrologist and Dwarf & Hobbit & Magic articles. Once again I've fleshed out the latter article by including all the spell descriptions for those spells listed but not detailed. And here's the ready-to-print booklet version.

Edit: In light of thedungeondelver observation below and given that I can't be bothered going through the process of amending both sets of files, I've removed the download links to the Pyrologist booklet in the original post.

[Deleted]

Hi,

The user from my forum (Dagger) spent 20+ hours creating the transcription that was picked up and used to create this file; could you please at least give him credit where credit is due?

this is the thread wherein he talks about the work he did.

Thanks

[greyharp]

Thank you for rightly pointing out my oversight thedungeondelver, I have uploaded amended copies with an acknowledgment to "Dagger" for his Pyrologist transcript. I must admit it never even entered my head since I figured both his and my transcripts of the LD articles and subsequent publication on the Net by us both were no doubt quite illegal and probably only of interest to a couple of dozen people, but as you say Dagger deserves recognition and I have also added the link to your forum to make sure I cover all bases and avoid further, but unintended, offence. Oh and I've included a link to the website that supplied the pdfs of the zine in the first place.

[Falconer]

Woo, thanks!

[Deleted]

I see the link to the PDF doesn't work any more. Is there any way I can get a copy of that?

[legopaidi]

Any chance the pdfs become available again?

[Deleted]

Not the PDF but here is a transcribed, lightly edited (commas, parenthesis, etc.) posting of the original text from Liaisons Dangereuses

[legopaidi]

thanks cameron!