The Tithed Fist

Identity

A martial artist wired into the world’s current — you cast few spells and cast them huge, and you pay for the biggest ones out of your own body.

There is a current running under the world — through stone, along rivers, down the spine of every mountain range — and it is no more aware of you than a waterfall is of the wheel it turns. Your initiation was simple and irreversible: you cut a channel into yourself, and now it runs through you too, giving nothing, only flowing, and wearing away everything it flows through. In a story you are the one who reads the land, prices every promise exactly and pays in person: half geographer, half lightning rod, and nobody’s servant, because there is nobody there to serve.

The Tithed Fist is a monk plugged into an impersonal power source. There is no patron, no bargain, no one to plead with — only conductivity, cost, and the discipline that keeps the channel from widening on its own. You fight at fist range with a small stock of enormous spells, delivered like technique; when even those aren’t enough, you tithe your own Hit Dice to force the channel wider for a heartbeat. Your casting ability is Charisma — not charm, but the sheer force of self it takes to hold a breach open against the current’s pressure — and every technique is an aperture opened for an instant, every tithe paid in your own substance to something that will never notice.

Campaign rules apply. Thirteen spells are banned, two are modified, and every spellcaster uses spell points instead of spell slots in this campaign — see Campaign Rules. This document already conforms: banned spells have been removed and replaced at the same level, modified spells are annotated where they appear, and spell slots have been converted to spell points.

The current, and its lines. The rules call the power this class conducts the current: an impersonal, non-sentient flow that is not aware of you and belongs to no one. It has no patron, ever — nobody grants it, speaks through it or can be bargained with — and no feature in this document needs a god, a people or a place in order to work. The current runs strongest along lines (lines of the current). Standing on one, or at another place of power, is being on an active line; a place with no line on or near it is dead ground. The DM decides where lines run in any world, by default along great rivers, mountain spines and the like, and each world names the current its own way (see In Different Worlds).

This class conducts; the Ley-Walker walks along. Two classes in this library work with the same current, and they should never be describable in the same sentence. The Tithed Fist conducts: it draws the current through its own body and pays for it in erosion — the Tithe, in Hit Dice. The Ley-Walker walks along the lines, borrowing their direction the way a barge borrows a river, and never draws the current inward. The Ley-Walker uses these same neutral terms; the house-setting names (the ley-current, ley lines) are mapped under In Different Worlds.

Class Overview

Spellcasting summary. You cast spells from the Tithed Fist spell list, a closed, mostly Arcane list (see Spellcasting), using Charisma. Spell save DC = 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Charisma modifier; spell attack modifier = your Proficiency Bonus + your Charisma modifier. You cast few spells and cast them large, from a short-rest spell point pool, which you call Conduction (this campaign’s conversion of Pact Magic), and your day-to-day at-will magic is expressed through your fists, not cantrips.

Class Table

Cantrips Known: 1 at level 2, 2 at level 7, 3 at level 13 — utility only.

Unarmored Movement: +10 ft at level 2, +15 ft at level 6, +20 ft at level 10, +25 ft at level 14, +30 ft at level 18; vertical surfaces and liquids from level 9.

Mystic Arcanum: one 6th-level spell at level 13, one 7th-level spell at level 16, one 8th-level spell at level 19 — each cast once per Long Rest without spending spell points or Qi.

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Class Features

Level 1: Martial Arts

Your fists are the part of the channel you trust most. While you are unarmed or wielding a simple weapon and you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, you gain the following benefits.

• Die. You can roll your Martial Arts die in place of the normal damage of your Unarmed Strikes and simple weapons. This die changes as you gain Tithed Fist levels, as shown on the class table.
• Dexterity. You can use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier for the attack and damage rolls of your Unarmed Strikes and simple weapons.
• Bonus Strike. When you take the Attack action on your turn and make an Unarmed Strike or a simple weapon attack as part of it, you can make one additional Unarmed Strike as a Bonus Action.

Level 1: Unarmored Defense

While you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, your base Armor Class equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Charisma modifier — the current grounds through you, and what strikes you tends to shed sideways.

Level 1: The Breach

The channel is already cut; you can feel the flow. You always know which direction the nearest line of the current runs (along a major river’s course, a mountain’s spine, or wherever else the DM places one) within 1 mile. As a 1-minute ritual, you can read the local flow: you learn whether the place you’re in sits on a line, adjacent to one, or on dead ground, and you sense any active spell effect within 30 feet of you as a disturbance in the flow (you learn that effect’s school with a successful DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check, which takes no action).

Level 1: Arc Surge

The current wants to jump, and once each turn you let it. This is your at-will damage art — the through-line of your fists at every tier.

You have a pool of Qi points, a reserve of live charge you carry in the channel — the channel carries what the disciplines call Qi, and in you it is borrowed current, not your own. Your Qi point maximum equals your Tithed Fist level, as shown on the class table. You regain all expended Qi points when you finish a Short or Long Rest.

Once on each of your turns, immediately after you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike or a simple weapon, you can spend Qi points to pour the arc through the blow — 1 Qi at levels 1–10, 2 at levels 11–16, and 3 at levels 17–20, as the channel widens and asks more of the reserve to hold. This costs no action, Bonus Action, or Reaction and doesn’t replace any other part of your turn. Roll a number of your Martial Arts dice and add your Charisma modifier; the target takes that much extra lightning damage (or, if you prefer, force damage — the current doesn’t care which face it wears). The number of dice is 1 at levels 1–10, 3 at levels 11–16, and 5 at levels 17–20.

Arc Jump. After your Arc Surge damages the target, the current jumps: one creature within 15 feet of the target takes Lightning damage equal to your Charisma modifier. While you stand on an active line — a line of the current or other place of power (per The Breach) — it jumps to two creatures within 15 feet instead.

Level 2: Conduction

You learn to let the current jump through you deliberately, in shapes. You learn 2 spells of your choice from the Tithed Fist spell list (see Spellcasting), and you learn more as shown in the Spells Known column of the class table. Every spell you know comes from the Tithed Fist spell list, a closed list of spells that deal Lightning, Thunder, or Force damage or move a creature — including you — or an object, mostly from the Arcane list, with a few class additions from other lists that the list names. Misty Step, Thunderwave, Jump, Shield, Feather Fall, Lightning Bolt, Haste and Telekinesis are all on it.

Whenever you gain a Tithed Fist level, you can replace one spell you know with another from the Tithed Fist spell list.

Conduction. You channel spells by spending spell points from a short-rest pool, which you call Conduction — this campaign’s conversion of the Warlock’s Pact Magic. Your pool is the Spell Points column of the class table, and you regain all spent points when you finish a Short or Long Rest: the channel re-seals, and can be opened again. A spell costs 1st 2, 2nd 3, 3rd 5, 4th 6, 5th 7, and you can cast a spell you know at any level from its own up to your Max Spell Level by paying that level’s cost. A full Conduction means spell points equal to the cost of a spell of your Max Spell Level; features that once spent or restored a Conduction slot now spend or restore a full Conduction.

Casting looks like technique, not ceremony. When you cast a Conduction spell whose casting time is a Magic action, you can move up to 10 feet as part of casting it, and this movement doesn’t provoke Opportunity Attacks from the first creature you leave.

No damage cantrips, but you learn utility cantrips. The current doesn’t trickle into small damage — your Martial Arts and your Arc Surge are your at-will striking art — but you can shape a little of it to useful, harmless ends (see Utility Cantrips).

Level 2: Apertures

Beyond spells, an initiate cuts small permanent openings — channels held slightly ajar, always leaking a trickle of the flow’s shape. You learn 2 Apertures from the list below, and more as shown on the class table. Apertures work like Eldritch Invocations: permanent options you choose as you level and can swap on level-up. Unless an Aperture says otherwise, its benefit is always active and costs nothing to keep open. Whenever you gain a Tithed Fist level, you can close one Aperture and cut a different one in its place.

• Eldritch Sight (what you call Currentsight). You can cast detect magic at will, without spending spell points. While it’s active, active lines appear to you as visible flows.
• Static Step. When you take the Dash action, you can spend 1 Qi to teleport up to 15 feet as part of that movement, arriving in a crack of displaced air.
• Grounding Wire. You have Resistance to Lightning and Thunder damage.
• Long Conduction. The range of your Conduction spells doubles (a range of Touch becomes 10 feet; a range of Self is unaffected).
• Riverwalk. You can walk on flowing liquid surfaces (a river, yes; a still pond, no) as if they were solid ground, and you have a Swim Speed equal to your Speed.
• Overload. When you use Arc Surge, you can spend 1 additional Qi to have the arc leap onward: one creature of your choice within 10 feet of the target takes Lightning damage equal to your Charisma modifier.
• Deep Reserve (level 9+). As a Bonus Action while you have fewer spell points than a 1st-level spell costs, you can expend one Hit Die (gaining no Hit Points) to regain a full Conduction. Once per Long Rest.
• Skimming Read (level 9+). You can cast Detect Thoughts once per Long Rest without spending spell points — surface thoughts ride the same current everything else does.
• Through the Fingers (level 12+). You can cast freedom of movement on yourself once per Long Rest without spending spell points — a grip closes, and you run out between its fingers like water.
• The Far Shore (level 15+). You can cast dimension door twice per Long Rest without spending spell points, but you or your destination must be on an active line.

Level 2: Tithe

The current takes; you’ve learned to choose what it takes. When you cast a Conduction spell, you can pay a Tithe: expend one of your Hit Dice, roll it, and lose Hit Points equal to the roll (this loss can’t be reduced or prevented). The spell is cast one level higher than the level you paid for (maximum 5th). The cost is paid even if the spell fails, misses, or is wasted — the current doesn’t do refunds.

Tithe at the ceiling. If the spell is already being cast at 5th level, it can’t be raised any further, so the Tithe instead overpressures the same casting. When you pay a Tithe on a 5th-level Conduction spell, choose one:

• the spell deals an extra 2d10 damage of its own damage type (or Lightning if it deals none), or
• the spell affects one additional target, which must be a creature within the spell’s range and within 5 feet of another of the spell’s targets.

The extra damage is added once, to the first damage roll the spell makes after you cast it — never to each attack, object or later turn of a spell that lasts. If the spell makes no damage roll of its own, roll the extra damage once when you cast it and deal it to one creature the spell targets or affects. The additional target must be a creature the spell could target, so a spell that targets objects, such as Animate Objects, can’t take one.

Your signature mechanic never goes dead: below the ceiling it buys a spell level, at the ceiling it buys raw force.

Level 2: Utility Cantrips

The current will not trickle into small damage, but you can shape a little of it to useful ends. You learn 1 cantrip at level 2, a 2nd at level 7, and a 3rd at level 13, from the list below — utility cantrips only (no attack roll, no damage, no save-for-damage). They use Charisma. You can swap one when you gain a level. Choose from: Blade Ward, Dancing Lights, Elementalism, Light, Mage Hand, Mending, Message, Prestidigitation. Elementalism is the 2024 cantrip that absorbed the older Control Flame, Mold Earth, Shape Water and Gust; a table still using those may take any of them in its place.

Level 2: Unarmored Movement

Unarmored Movement — what initiates call Running the Vein. While you aren’t wearing armor or wielding a Shield, your Speed increases by 10 feet. This bonus increases as you gain Tithed Fist levels: to +15 feet at level 6, +20 feet at level 10, +25 feet at level 14, and +30 feet at level 18.

Starting at level 9, you can also move along vertical surfaces and across liquids on your turn without falling during that move.

The trick isn’t strength and it isn’t training, exactly. The flow under you has a speed of its own, and most bodies stand athwart it like a post in a river. You have stopped standing athwart. You are a thing the current is already carrying, and a wall is only ground the vein happens to run up.

Level 3: Course

Every initiate’s channel finds a shape — the current runs through them a particular way. Choose a Course: Deep Vein, Skyfall, Undertow, Still Point, Riverrun, or Maelstrom, each detailed after this list. You gain its level 3 feature now, and further features at levels 6, 11, and 17.

Level 4: Ability Score Improvement

You gain the Ability Score Improvement feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify. You gain this feature again at levels 8, 12, and 16.

Level 5: Extra Attack

You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Level 6: Confluence

Where lines cross, the flow is generous. When you finish a Short Rest at a place of power (on an active line, per The Breach), you regain one expended Hit Die, and one ally who rested within 10 feet of you regains one expended Hit Die as well — you’ve learned to let a little of the flow spill over.

Level 6: Unarmored Movement (+15 ft)

Your Unarmored Movement bonus increases to +15 feet.

Level 7: Evasion — what you call Grounded

You gain Evasion, which initiates call Grounded. When you’re subjected to an effect that allows a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage on a success and half damage on a failure — the energy passes through you and into the ground. You can’t use this feature while you have the Incapacitated condition.

Level 9: Sound the Deep

Your reading of the flow extends. The Breach’s sensing range becomes 10 miles, and once per Long Rest you can spend 10 minutes in contact with bare ground to learn the land’s shape along the lines for that distance — terrain, watercourses, and any place of power on the line.

Level 10: Unarmored Movement (+20 ft)

Your Unarmored Movement bonus increases to +20 feet.

Level 10: Scoured Mind

The current has worn your fear smooth. You have Immunity to the Frightened condition while you have at least 2 spell points remaining — it’s hard to feel dread with that much power humming through your sternum.

Level 13: Deep Tithe

Your channel bears more. When you pay a Tithe, you can expend up to two Hit Dice (rolling both and losing Hit Points equal to the total). The spell is cast up to two levels higher than the level you paid for (maximum 5th), or one level higher for one die if you choose. If the spell is already being cast at 5th level, each Hit Die spent instead grants one Tithe at the ceiling choice (so two dice can add 4d10 damage, two extra targets, or 2d10 damage and one extra target). The extra damage is still added only once a casting, as Tithe at the ceiling describes.

Level 13: Mystic Arcanum

Mystic Arcanum — what initiates call the Great Aperture. Three times in your career the channel opens past anything your discipline was built to hold, and something enormous comes through sideways. Nothing is bargained for; nothing is asked. But a draw that deep is still a draw, and the current takes its tithe out of the only thing it ever takes from — the channel itself, quietly, over years. You will not feel this one on the day you pay it.

You learn one 6th-level spell from the Tithed Fist spell list. You cast it once without spending spell points or Qi, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a Long Rest. At level 16 you learn a 7th-level spell, and at level 19 an 8th-level spell, each cast once per Long Rest in the same way. Whenever you gain a Tithed Fist level, you can replace one of these spells with another of the same level from the list.

These spells use Charisma. Each Arcanum has its own separate use: casting the 6th-level one does not spend the 7th or the 8th.

An Arcanum is not a Conduction casting — it spends no spell points — so you can’t pay a Tithe to raise it, and Wide Channel can’t deliver it through a fist.

Level 14: Wide Channel

Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can channel a Conduction spell with a casting time of one Magic action through the blow itself, and you spend the spell points as normal. Channeling the spell costs no action, Bonus Action, or Reaction beyond the strike, and the spell is your one spell of 1st level or higher for the turn. The channeled spell affects only the creature you hit, whatever its normal range, area or number of targets: a Lightning Bolt or a Shatter channeled this way strikes that one creature and no other. One roll, one aperture, one flash: a spell that calls for a spell attack roll hits automatically, and a spell that calls for a saving throw still allows it. Arc Surge rides the Unarmed Strike as normal and adds nothing to the spell’s damage. You can pay a Tithe on the channeled spell as on any Conduction casting, but at the ceiling it can add damage, not an additional target.

Level 14: Unarmored Movement (+25 ft)

Your Unarmored Movement bonus increases to +25 feet.

Level 15: Reseal

When you roll Initiative with fewer spell points than a 1st-level spell costs, you regain a full Conduction.

Level 16: Mystic Arcanum (7th Level)

You learn one 7th-level spell from the Tithed Fist spell list. You cast it once without spending spell points or Qi, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a Long Rest — a separate use from your 6th-level Arcanum. The aperture widens; the tithe on it is larger, and still invisible.

Level 18: The Open Channel

Your Tithes cut deep and clean. When you pay a Tithe, roll each Hit Die twice and take the lower roll for the Hit Point loss. In addition, if you have the Deep Reserve Aperture, it recharges on a Short Rest.

Level 18: Unarmored Movement (+30 ft)

Your Unarmored Movement bonus increases to +30 feet.

Level 19: Epic Boon

You gain an Epic Boon feat or another feat of your choice for which you qualify. Boon of Dimensional Travel and Boon of Speed both suit a Tithed Fist well.

Level 19: Mystic Arcanum (8th Level)

You learn one 8th-level spell from the Tithed Fist spell list. You cast it once without spending spell points or Qi, and you regain the ability to do so when you finish a Long Rest — again a separate use, spent apart from your 6th- and 7th-level Arcana. This is the widest the channel goes while you are still, technically, a person standing in it.

Level 20: Become the Current

As a Bonus Action, you stop being a thing the current flows through and briefly become a place where it lives. For 1 minute:

• once on each of your turns, you can cast one Conduction spell you know at your Max Spell Level without spending spell points;
• your Speed increases by 30 feet; and
• you can move through the spaces of other creatures (you can’t willingly end your movement in another creature’s space).

When the minute ends, you lose Hit Points equal to your Tithed Fist level (this loss can’t be reduced or prevented) — the tithe for a minute of being infinite. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a Long Rest.

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Courses (Subclasses)

A Course is the shape your channel settles into. It changes nothing about how the current itself behaves — only how it runs through you. A Course is a shape you carry, not a power you serve: nothing in it needs a god, a people or a place to exist, and each world gives the six Courses its own names (see In Different Worlds).

Course of the Deep Vein

The oldest currents don’t rush. They press.

Deep Vein initiates channel the slow crush of stone — the current as it moves through mountains, patient and unanswerable. They are hard to move, and they take their time deciding to.

Level 3: Bedrock Stance. While you’re standing on the ground, both feet are planted on your turn until you move, and on other creatures’ turns only if you didn’t move during your most recent turn (before your first turn in a combat, you count as not having moved). While planted, you can’t be moved against your will, you have Advantage on saving throws against being knocked Prone, and your Unarmed Strikes deal damage as if your Martial Arts die were one size larger (maximum d12).

Level 6: Stone’s Patience. As a Bonus Action, root yourself. Until you move, you gain Temporary Hit Points equal to your Charisma modifier + your Proficiency Bonus at the start of each of your turns, and you have Tremorsense out to 10 feet.

Level 11: Fault Line. As a Magic action, spend a full Conduction to slam the ground and send the deep current surfacing in a Line 30 feet long and 5 feet wide. Each creature in the Line makes a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC, taking 2d10 bludgeoning damage per Max Spell Level on a failure (half as much on a success); on a failure it also falls Prone. The Line is Difficult Terrain until the start of your next turn.

Level 17: Mountain’s Root. Your size can’t be changed against your will, you have Advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, and while you’re planted (per Bedrock Stance) you have Resistance to Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing damage. The mountain has adopted you.

Playing a Deep Vein initiate: you are slow on purpose in a world of hasty people. You sit on the floor of taverns. You are very hard to move, in every sense, and you know which hill to die on because you’ve stood on all of them.

Course of the Skyfall

Sometimes the current leaves the ground entirely.

Skyfall initiates channel the violent vertical — the arc, the strike, the fall of lightning that spent an hour choosing and a millisecond arriving. They are long stillness and then all-at-once.

Level 3: Arc Rider. After you cast a Conduction spell, your Speed increases by 10 feet until the end of your turn and your movement doesn’t provoke Opportunity Attacks — you leave as the thunder does. In addition, once per turn when you hit with an Unarmed Strike, you can have it deal Lightning damage instead of its normal type.

Level 6: Updraft. As a Bonus Action, expend one Hit Die (gaining no Hit Points) to gain a Fly Speed equal to your Speed until the end of your turn; if you’re aloft when it ends, you drift down 60 feet and take no falling damage (as Feather Fall).

Level 11: Stormcall. When a creature you can see within 60 feet hits you, or hits an ally within 10 feet of you, with an attack, you can take a Reaction and spend a full Conduction to answer: a bolt leaps to the attacker, which makes a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC, taking 2d10 Lightning damage per Max Spell Level on a failure (half as much on a success).

Level 17: Ride the Flash. Once on each of your turns, when you take the Attack action, you can teleport up to 30 feet before or between attacks, arriving in a flash-crack. In addition, your attack rolls that deal Lightning damage score a Critical Hit on a roll of 19 or 20:

• Unarmed Strike. When you roll a 19 on the d20 for an Unarmed Strike, you can declare that the strike carries the current: it scores a Critical Hit, and you must make it deal Lightning damage with Arc Rider or add a Lightning Arc Surge to it (paying the Qi). If you can’t do either, the 19 is an ordinary roll.
• Spell attack. A Conduction spell’s attack roll scores a Critical Hit on a 19 if the spell deals Lightning damage.
• No attack roll, no Critical Hit. A saving-throw spell such as Lightning Bolt, a spell channeled through Wide Channel (which hits without its own roll) and Arc Jump can’t score a Critical Hit.

On a Critical Hit, Arc Surge’s dice are rolled twice along with the strike’s.

Playing a Skyfall initiate: you are punctuation. Long stillness, then the sentence ends all at once. Cultivate patience out of combat; it makes the arrival mean more.

Course of the Undertow

Every current has a side that pulls.

Undertow initiates learned the grip beneath the surface — the part of the flow that takes hold of what enters and does not let it choose its own direction again. They decide where everyone stands.

Level 3: Dragging Current. Once per turn, when you hit a creature no more than one size larger than you with an Unarmed Strike, you can pull it up to 10 feet directly toward you. When you Grapple with an Unarmed Strike, its save DC uses your Charisma modifier instead of your Strength modifier, and creatures have Disadvantage on their saving throws against your Grapple or Shove.

Level 6: Riptide. You can hold up to two creatures Grappled at once regardless of your free hands (the current holds them), and dragging a Grappled creature of your size or smaller doesn’t cost you extra movement.

Level 11: Drown the Field. As a Magic action, spend a full Conduction to flood a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within 60 feet with invisible undertow for 1 minute (Concentration). The area is Difficult Terrain for creatures of your choice; when such a creature starts its turn in the area, it makes a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC or is pulled 15 feet toward the center.

Level 17: The Long Dark Below. When you hit a creature you have Grappled with an Unarmed Strike, you can spend a full Conduction to pull it briefly under — into the current itself. It makes a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failure, it vanishes until the start of your next turn, then reappears Prone in its space (or the nearest unoccupied space) with the Incapacitated condition until the end of that turn, hollowed by cold and roar. Once per Short or Long Rest.

Playing an Undertow initiate: you understand that most fights end where somebody is standing, and you decide where everyone stands. Gentle-handed out of combat — you know exactly how strong a grip can get.

Course of the Still Point

Where two currents meet head-on, there is a silence that is not empty.

Still Point initiates channel the null — the standing node where flows cancel. They are quiet made weapon, the answer to magic itself.

Level 3: Quiet Hands. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can ground its momentum: it can’t take Reactions until the start of its next turn. In addition, you have Advantage on saving throws against spells while you have at least 2 spell points remaining — the null travels with you.

Level 6: Null Step. You can cast Silence once per Short or Long Rest without spending spell points, centered on yourself and moving with you; while it’s active you can still cast your own Conduction spells (yours don’t need sound — they need flow).

Level 11: Cancel the Wave. When a creature you can see within your reach or within 30 feet of you casts a spell, you can take a Reaction and spend a full Conduction to press stillness into the casting. If the spell’s level is lower than or equal to your Max Spell Level, it fails and is wasted. If it’s higher, the caster makes a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC, and on a failure the spell fails and is wasted. This functions as Counterspell, with two differences: it costs a full Conduction rather than a 3rd-level spell’s points, and the Constitution save applies only to spells of a higher level than your Max Spell Level (spells at or below your Max Spell Level fail with no save).

Level 17: Dead Calm. As a Magic action, become the node: until the start of your next turn, a 10-foot Emanation around you is dead ground — spells of 5th level or lower can’t be cast within it, and spell effects of 5th level or lower are suppressed inside it. Your own Conduction is suppressed too; your fists are not. Once per Long Rest.

Playing a Still Point initiate: you are the pause in the conversation everyone notices. Speak less than you could. In a world that runs on magic, you have quietly opted out, and your serenity about that unnerves exactly the right people.

Course of the Riverrun

The river is never the same water twice, and it never once stops.

Riverrun initiates channel the current as pure motion — the flow that arrives before it’s expected and is already elsewhere by the time you turn. Nothing they do stands still, least of all them.

Level 3: Set the Current. Your Speed increases by 10 feet, and while you have at least 1 Qi point remaining, moving through Difficult Terrain costs you no extra movement. In addition, once per turn when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, if you’ve moved at least 10 feet on your turn before the hit, you can slide the target 5 feet to any space within reach and follow it, moving with it without spending movement.

Level 6: Oxbow. When you take damage from a creature or effect you can see, you can take a Reaction and spend 1 Qi to bend around it: you move up to half your Speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks, and you reduce the damage by a roll of your Martial Arts die + your Charisma modifier. If this reduces the damage to 0, you can’t be moved or knocked Prone by that effect.

Level 11: The Long Water. When you take the Attack action, you can spend 1 Qi to pour yourself down the field instead of making that action’s attacks. You move up to your Speed in a straight line without provoking Opportunity Attacks; this movement doesn’t use any of your own movement. Whenever a creature is within 5 feet of you during this move, you can make one Unarmed Strike against it then. You can strike a number of creatures up to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one), and no creature more than once; you choose which, so you never have to strike an ally you pass. You can still use Arc Surge on one of these hits as normal, and you can still make Martial Arts’ Bonus Action Unarmed Strike afterward.

Level 17: River Without Banks. Your Speed doubles, you can move across water, up walls, and across ceilings as though they were level ground (falling only if you end a turn on a surface that can’t hold you), and creatures can’t take Opportunity Attacks against you. Once on each of your turns, if you’ve moved at least 30 feet on that turn, your next Unarmed Strike this turn deals an extra 1d12 Force damage. The river doesn’t stop for anyone, and you have become the river.

Playing a Riverrun initiate: you are exhausting to pin down and impossible to corner. You take the long way because the long way is moving. Out of combat you’re the scout, the courier, the one already at the next town — restlessness worn as a discipline.

Course of the Maelstrom

Everything the current takes, it takes in a circle, and the circle has a throat.

Maelstrom initiates channel the spiral — the pull that doesn’t drag things away but draws them in, tightening, until the whole battlefield leans toward one point of their choosing. They are gravity with a grudge.

Level 3: Eye of the Spiral. Once per turn when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can pull each other creature of your choice within 10 feet of the target 5 feet directly toward that target — the space around your blow winds inward. In addition, when you use Arc Surge, you can pull the target itself 5 feet toward you, and your Arc Surge deals Force damage instead of Lightning.

Level 6: Gyre. As a Bonus Action, spend 1 Qi to set yourself spinning: until the start of your next turn, when a creature enters your reach or starts its turn there, it makes a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC or is pulled 5 feet toward you and its Speed is halved until the start of its next turn.

Level 11: The Churn. As a Magic action, spend a full Conduction to open a churning spiral: a 20-foot-radius Sphere centered on a point within 60 feet, lasting 1 minute (Concentration). The area is Difficult Terrain. When a creature of your choice enters the area for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, it makes a Strength saving throw against your spell save DC, taking 1d10 Force damage per Max Spell Level and being pulled 15 feet toward the center on a failure (half damage and no pull on a success). A creature can’t be pulled past the center point.

Level 17: The Devouring Turn. While your Churn is active, its center is a throat. A creature reduced to the central 5-foot space by the pull is Restrained (escape DC equal to your spell save DC) as the spiral holds it. Once per turn, as part of maintaining the spell, you can tighten it: each creature Restrained by the Churn takes 4d10 Force damage as the walls close. The world-eater has learned your address.

Playing a Maelstrom initiate: you don’t chase — you make the world come to you. You think in centers of gravity: the choke point, the doorway, the one tile everyone will end up standing on. Patient, a little terrifying, and very good at making a crowd into a line.

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Spellcasting

You cast spells from the Tithed Fist spell list, through the current you carry.

Casting ability. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for your Tithed Fist spells. You use it whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability, and:

• Spell save DC = 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + your Charisma modifier.
• Spell attack modifier = your Proficiency Bonus + your Charisma modifier.

Spells known, not prepared. You know a fixed number of spells, shown in the Spells Known column of the class table, chosen from the Tithed Fist spell list below. You can swap one known spell for another from that list whenever you gain a Tithed Fist level.

Conduction and Max Spell Level. Your spell points are a short-rest pool; “Conduction” is simply what an initiate calls it. You regain all spent points on a Short or Long Rest. You can cast a known spell at any level from its own up to your Max Spell Level (see the class table); the Tithe is how you cast above it. You can never spend spell points on a spell of 6th level or higher. Your spell points and your Qi points are separate pools: neither can pay for the other. Some Apertures and Course features let you cast specific spells without spending spell points, at their listed levels.

No damage cantrips, but you learn utility cantrips. You gain no damage cantrips from this class — your at-will striking magic is Martial Arts and Arc Surge — but you do learn a small handful of utility cantrips (see Utility Cantrips).

Tithed Fist Spell List

This is a closed list: every spell you know of 1st through 5th level comes from it, and the DM does not add others. It holds 75 spells (17 / 22 / 16 / 10 / 10 at 1st–5th level), sorted alphabetically within each level. Its test is the current’s: a spell on it hurls Lightning, Thunder, or Force, or it moves a body or an object (holding a body in place counts). Most are Arcane spells from the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Absorb Elements, Catapult, Snare, Dust Devil, Earthbind, Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp, Warding Wind, Thunder Step, Storm Sphere, Watery Sphere, Control Winds and Far Step, and the Arcanum option Whirlwind, come from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, where each is on at least one Arcane class’s list; Dragon’s Breath and Steel Wind Strike, first printed there, are in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Because the Arcane spells that pass the test run short of the list’s size at 1st through 3rd level, the list also carries class additions that fit the current. Six meet the test from outside the Arcane list: Wind Wall (Druid, Ranger), Thunderous Smite (Paladin), Spiritual Weapon (Cleric), Call Lightning (Druid) and Lightning Arrow (Ranger), all from the 2024 Player’s Handbook, and Zephyr Strike (Ranger, Xanathar’s). Ten are Arcane spells that ride the current without passing the test: Blur, Detect Thoughts, Enhance Ability, Knock, Locate Object, Magic Weapon, Mirror Image and See Invisibility at 2nd level, and Protection from Energy and Sending at 3rd.

1st level (17).

• Absorb Elements (takes in Lightning or Thunder and strikes back with it)
• Catapult (hurls an object)
• Chromatic Orb (as Lightning or Thunder)
• Dissonant Whispers (drives the target away)
• Expeditious Retreat (the current runs your legs)
• Feather Fall
• Grease
• Jump
• Longstrider
• Magic Missile (Force)
• Shield (Force)
• Snare (hoists and holds a creature; Xanathar’s)
• Tenser’s Floating Disk (carries a load)
• Thunderous Smite (Thunder; pushes; class addition)
• Thunderwave (Thunder; pushes)
• Witch Bolt (Lightning)
• Zephyr Strike (the current carries you; class addition)

2nd level (22).

• Blur (class addition)
• Detect Thoughts (minds ride the current; class addition)
• Dragon’s Breath (as Lightning)
• Dust Devil (pushes)
• Earthbind (drags a flier down)
• Enhance Ability (class addition)
• Enlarge/Reduce
• Gust of Wind (pushes)
• Hold Person (halts movement)
• Knock (a breach, with a thunderclap; class addition)
• Levitate
• Locate Object (the dowser’s pull; class addition)
• Magic Weapon (class addition)
• Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp (restrains)
• Mirror Image (class addition)
• Misty Step
• See Invisibility (class addition)
• Shatter (Thunder)
• Spider Climb
• Spiritual Weapon (Force; class addition)
• Warding Wind (Thunder-turning wind)
• Web (denies movement)

3rd level (16).

• Blink
• Call Lightning (Lightning; class addition)
• Fear (drives creatures away)
• Fly
• Gaseous Form
• Glyph of Warding (as Lightning or Thunder)
• Haste
• Lightning Arrow (Lightning; class addition)
• Lightning Bolt (Lightning)
• Protection from Energy (grounds Lightning and Thunder; class addition)
• Sending (a message along the current; class addition)
• Sleet Storm (denies movement)
• Slow
• Thunder Step (Thunder; teleport)
• Water Walk
• Wind Wall (pushes; class addition)

4th level (10).

• Banishment (removes a creature)
• Compulsion (moves creatures)
• Control Water (moves water and what is in it)
• Dimension Door
• Dominate Beast (the current decides where a body goes)
• Evard’s Black Tentacles (restrains, drags)
• Freedom of Movement
• Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere (Force)
• Storm Sphere (Lightning/Thunder)
• Watery Sphere (engulfs and carries creatures)

5th level (10).

• Animate Objects (Force; moves objects)
• Bigby’s Hand (Force; shoves, grapples)
• Control Winds (pushes, grounds fliers)
• Far Step
• Hold Monster (halts movement)
• Jallarzi’s Storm of Radiance (Thunder)
• Passwall
• Steel Wind Strike (Force; the current carries you between them)
• Telekinesis (moves creatures and objects)
• Wall of Force (Force)

The Arcanum list (6th–8th level). The three spells below are reachable only through Mystic Arcanum — they sit a full tier above anything your Conduction can reach, and you can’t cast them with spell points, at any level, by any Tithe. At this depth the current carries more than force: it carries distance, and (as any initiate who has kept Skimming Read open will tell you) it carries minds.

6th Level — Mystic Arcanum only

• Chain Lightning (Lightning; the arc as it was always going to behave)
• Arcane Gate (two apertures, held open)
• Disintegrate (Force)
• True Seeing (the flow with nothing standing in front of it)

7th Level — Mystic Arcanum only

• Forcecage (Force; binds absolutely)
• Reverse Gravity (moves everything at once)
• Whirlwind (moves creatures violently rather than far)
• Prismatic Spray (the current split into every colour it was carrying)

8th Level — Mystic Arcanum only

• Maze (removes a creature from the world for a while)
• Dominate Monster (the current decides where a body goes)
• Telepathy (thought riding the vein, across any distance)
• Demiplane (a door cut into nowhere, and held)

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Multiclassing

To multiclass into or out of the Tithed Fist, you need Dexterity 13 and Charisma 13. When you take your first Tithed Fist level from another class, you gain proficiency with simple weapons; you gain Martial Arts and Unarmored Defense if you don’t already have them; and you gain Qi points (this class’s Qi entry), Arc Surge, Apertures, and Conduction (spell points) sized to your Tithed Fist levels only — read every “Tithed Fist level” as exactly the number of levels you have in this class. Your Conduction points are a short-rest pool and do not merge with any other class’s spell points (you have both pools side by side and choose which to draw from). The Hit Dice of all your classes form one pool, and this class’s features spend from it as this class describes. If you also have Warlock levels, keep the two short-rest spell point pools separate — they recover together but are counted and spent apart.

Qi from more than one class. If another class in this library also gives you Qi points, or the Monk class gives you Focus Points, you have a single pool of Qi points; your Monk features spend it as Focus Points. Its maximum is the total of each class’s Qi or Focus entry for your level in that class (including any feature that raises a class’s maximum). A feature from any of those classes can spend from it. Each class’s share recovers by that class’s own rule, and a feature that reduces one class’s maximum reduces only that class’s share. Each feature keeps its own limits (once per turn, Surge dice, and so on). While your pool combines more than one class, you can use each class’s Surge no more times between one rest and the next than your level in that class. A feature that restores all of a class’s Qi or Focus Points restores no more than that class’s entry.

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In Different Worlds

Setting layer. Everything above this heading works unchanged in each of these worlds; only names, looks and stories differ. Names here are setting names, each mapped to the neutral name the rules use.

The house setting — the ley-current (the class’s origin)

Who has it. In the library’s own world the current is the ley-current, running under stone, along rivers and down mountain spines. Nobody owns it and nothing in it listens. Tithed Fists are initiates who cut a channel into themselves at a confluence, some because their village always sends one child to the flow, some to match a rival.

What they call it. The class is the Tithed Fist, and Arc Surge, the Tithe, Conduction and the Apertures keep their names. A line is a ley line, and standing on one is being on an active current. The Courses keep their names, but the Riverrun’s level-17 feature is Rivergod.

How it looks and sounds. Hair lifts on strong ground and a hum settles in the sternum. Arc Surge is blue-white and smells of struck flint. A Tithe leaves the initiate cold and hollow until they have eaten and slept. Ley lines are invisible to everyone else; to Currentsight they are slow, braided flows, brightest where two cross.

Story hook. The keeper of a confluence where three ley lines cross swears the place has started to respond — not sentient, she insists. A Tithed Fist is hired to stand on it and say whether anything is listening, when the initiate’s whole creed says nothing can be.

Rules caveat. None. “The ley-current” is only this world’s name for the current, and it has no patron here either.

Neutral name (rules)	House-setting name
the current	the ley-current
lines · lines of the current	ley lines
on a line · an active line	on a current · on an active current (a ley line or other place of power)
along the lines · where lines cross	along the current · where currents cross
River Without Banks (Course of the Riverrun, level 17)	Rivergod
Through the Fingers (Aperture, level 12+) · The Churn (Course of the Maelstrom, level 11) · Dead Calm (Course of the Still Point, level 17)	unchanged
Course of the Deep Vein · Skyfall · Undertow · Still Point · Riverrun · Maelstrom	unchanged
Conduction · Currentsight · Running the Vein · Grounded · the Great Aperture	unchanged (prose nicknames)

Arcane-industrial

Who has it. In a world of foundries, rails and licensed trades, the current is metered. Power companies lay copper along the lines and sell what runs down them, and keep a few people on the books who need no copper at all: the live-wires, surveyors who find a line without instruments and get sent in first when something sparks.

What they call it. The class is a live-wire. Arc Surge is the spark, the Tithe is line loss (what the wire keeps for itself), Conduction is the load, and Apertures are taps. Courses are company crews:

Course	Crew
Deep Vein · Skyfall · Undertow	the Footing Crew · the Arrestor Crew · the Pull Crew
Still Point · Riverrun · Maelstrom	the Insulators · Dispatch · the Turbine Crew

How it looks and sounds. Blue-white arcs, ozone and hot copper, and a hum at the pitch of a transformer under load. Spells land like a thrown switch: a click and a flash. Live-wires call each other by how much line loss they have paid, the way sailors count voyages.

Story hook. A company live-wire finds that the line under the new works has drifted a block east, beneath the tenements. The company wants the survey to say otherwise; the tenements want to know why their children have headaches.

Rules caveat. None. The class never draws on the grid, and a blackout touches none of its features. If the DM counts the great conduits as lines, The Breach, Arc Jump, Confluence and The Far Shore read them exactly as they read a river.

After the fall

Who has it. The old world drew on the current until something broke, and most of the land went to dead ground. A settlement that can keep a channel-cut person does, and calls them a Wick: the thing that carries the flame and is used up doing it. Wicks are paid in salt and shelter to say where the lines still run.

What they call it. The class is a Wick. Arc Surge is the spit, the Tithe is burning down, Conduction is the draw, and Apertures are notches. Courses go by what Wicks are good for:

Course	Name
Deep Vein · Skyfall · Undertow	the Holdfasts · the Strikers · the Salvagers
Still Point · Riverrun · Maelstrom	the Hush · the Runners · the Drains

How it looks and sounds. On a live line a Wick’s hair lifts and their breath comes out faintly blue. The spit crackles like wet wood on a fire. Burning down greys the hair a streak at a time.

Story hook. A settlement has lived for a generation on the last live line in its valley. Its Wick has read that the line is drifting west, toward a raider camp, and must decide whom to tell first.

Rules caveat. None. Dead ground is common here, so Arc Jump’s second jump, Confluence and The Far Shore find a line less often. That is the DM placing lines, which the rules already allow. If the fall also sealed off the other planes, The Long Dark Below still works, because it pulls a creature into the current, not onto another plane; Banishment, Demiplane and Maze follow whatever the DM rules for those spells in such a world, as they would for any caster.

Planar crossroads

Who has it. A hub city where many worlds meet, and lines from a dozen planes run together beneath the docks. Its Tithed Fists come from everywhere and work as porters, bouncers and harbour pilots. The city calls them conduits, because the current goes through them on its way somewhere else.

What they call it. The class is a conduit. Arc Surge is the jolt, the Tithe is the wear, Conduction is pressure, and Apertures are gaps. Every visitor brings other names for the Courses, so the docks use slang:

Course	Dock slang
Deep Vein · Skyfall · Undertow	Anchors · Bolts · Hooks
Still Point · Riverrun · Maelstrom	Mutes · Couriers · Sinks

How it looks and sounds. A conduit’s jolt comes out the colour of their home plane’s lightning. Tithing leaves a faint smell of somewhere else: salt on one, pine resin on the next.

Story hook. An envoy arrives from a plane where every line has gone dead at once, and asks a conduit to come home with her and read why. Nobody from that plane has ever needed one before.

Rules caveat. None. No feature cares which plane it is on. If the DM decides a plane has no lines, it is dead ground throughout, and the features that need a line wait for one. The Long Dark Below pulls a creature into the current itself, not onto another plane, so it works the same everywhere, and Banishment, Demiplane and Maze work as written.

Origins and Inspiration

Inspiration, not setting. Nothing here is a rule, and nothing here is assumed by one.

The ley line. Alfred Watkins’s The Old Straight Track (1925) named the “ley”: alignments of barrows, standing stones, churches and hill-forts across the English landscape, which he read as traces of prehistoric trackways. Watkins claimed no energy for them. The idea of power running along them came later: Dion Fortune’s occult novel The Goat-Foot God (1936) already speaks of lines of force between ancient sites, but the notion took hold in the 1960s counterculture, most influentially through John Michell’s The View Over Atlantis (1969), which tied leys to Chinese geomancy. Archaeologists generally treat the alignments as chance. The class takes the later, mystical reading as fiction and makes it impersonal: a flow you conduct, not a road someone built.

Dragon veins and qi. Chinese geomancy (fengshui, also called kanyu) reads lóngmài, “dragon veins”: the courses along which qi runs through ridges and mountain chains, traced with the geomancer’s compass, the luopan. The Deep Vein, the reluctant compasses of the quirk table and the habit of reading a site before resting on it all come from here. The class’s Qi points are the library’s shared term, not a claim about the tradition.

Dowsing. Divining for water and ore with a rod is old and widespread in Europe; Georgius Agricola’s De re metallica (1556) describes and illustrates it, sceptically. The Tithed Fist’s starting kit of copper rods and cord is a dowser’s kit.

The tithe. A tithe (Old English teogoþa, “tenth”) is a tenth of produce or income paid as a due, most familiarly to the church. The class keeps the word and turns it over: a due paid in your own substance to something that is not a church, a lord or a god, and that will never notice the payment.

Erosion. The core image comes from physical geography, not myth: water wears away the bank it runs through. The class’s cost is that, made personal.

The Courses and their touchstones

Every Course is one framing of the same nameless flow; pick one that fits your table’s world without touching a single rule.

Course	Mythic touchstones	Alternate-culture reskin
Deep Vein	Chinese dragon veins (lóngmài); Earthsea’s Equilibrium as the weight of stone; the roots of the world-tree	Andean apus, the mountains as living presences, and the initiate who carries one down into the valley
Skyfall	Indra’s vajra; the Thunderbird whose wingbeat is the storm; Zeus’s thunderbolt	Raijin’s ring of drums, a monk who runs the thunder down from the peaks
Undertow	The world-serpent’s coils beneath the sea; the each-uisge and the kelpie, which pull riders under; Charybdis	The Norwegian sea-draug; a diver-cult that wrestles the drowning-current for the drowned
Still Point	“The still point of the turning world”; Taoist wu wei; the calm in the eye of the storm; Cú Chulainn’s geasa	A silence order in the manner of the hesychasts, which treats loud magic as noise
Riverrun	Finnegans Wake‘s “riverrun”; Heraclitus’s river; the descent of the Ganga; the Salmon of Knowledge	Couriers sworn to the vanished Sarasvati, who never sleep two nights on the same bank
Maelstrom	The Moskstraumen, which swallows ships; the churning of the ocean of milk (samudra manthan); Charybdis’s throat	A whirl-shrine on a tidal race, whose fighters learn the spiral by dancing the drowning-eddy

• Deep Vein. The lóngmài of Chinese geomancy, the dragon veins in the hills; the Equilibrium, or Balance, of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, read here as the weight of stone; the roots of Yggdrasil, the world-tree of Norse myth. Reskin: in an Andean frame, the apus of Quechua tradition, the great mountains as powerful, living presences. In that frame the mountain is a person; the reskin holds only while the current itself stays no one’s, with the mountain as its image and not its source.
• Skyfall. Indra’s vajra, the thunderbolt with which he kills Vṛtra in the Ṛgveda; the Thunderbird of many Indigenous North American traditions, whose wingbeats are the thunder; the thunderbolt of Zeus. Reskin: in a Japanese frame, Raijin, the thunder deity usually shown inside a ring of drums.
• Undertow. Jörmungandr, the serpent lying in the sea around the world; the water-horse of Scottish Gaelic (each-uisge; Irish each uisce) and the kelpie, which carry riders under; Charybdis. Reskin: in a Norwegian frame, the draug of coastal folklore, the ghost of a drowned sailor, and a diver-cult that wrestles the drowning-current for the drowned.
• Still Point. The phrase is T. S. Eliot’s: “at the still point of the turning world” (Burnt Norton, 1936, later the first of the Four Quartets). Also the Taoist wu wei, action without forcing; the calm eye of a storm; and Cú Chulainn’s geasa, the prohibitions whose breaking, in the tale of his death, withers his strength. Reskin: a silence order modelled loosely on the hesychasts, practitioners of the Eastern Christian discipline of inner stillness (hesychia), which grew from the desert fathers and is associated above all with Mount Athos. Hesychasm is a living prayer tradition, not a fighting one; the reskin borrows only the image of a disciplined silence.
• Riverrun. “riverrun” is the first word of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), a river already moving when the book begins. Also Heraclitus’s river, into which, in the fragment as usually quoted, no one steps twice; the descent of the Ganga, whose fall from heaven was so violent that Shiva caught her in his hair to spare the earth; and the Salmon of Knowledge of the Fenian Cycle, whose wisdom the young Fionn tastes by accident. Reskin: couriers sworn to the Sarasvati, the river praised in the Ṛgveda and later held to have vanished underground.
• Maelstrom. The Moskstraumen, the tidal whirlpool off the Lofoten Islands of Norway, made famous by Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelström” (1841); the churning of the ocean of milk (samudra manthan), in which gods and asuras spin a mountain with a serpent for a rope; Charybdis’s throat. Reskin: a whirl-shrine on a tidal race, such as the Naruto whirlpools of Japan or the Corryvreckan off Scotland’s west coast.

How the material was adapted

The class is rooted in the house setting, where the impersonal current is the ley-current and its paths are ley lines, but no name, place or cosmology appears in its rules. The rules call the power the current and its paths lines, and leave it to the DM to say where lines run. Its two lore rules are written as neutral rules text: the current has no patron, and the Tithed Fist conducts it where the Ley-Walker only walks along it. The touchstones were never patrons either: dragon veins, a thunderbolt, a whirlpool and a river that has already started moving lend each Course a shape, not an authority. The one feature the house names for a god, Rivergod, is River Without Banks in the rules, a name that says what it does. The house names live in the house-setting example above, beside other worlds’ names for the same things.

Several touchstones belong to living traditions: the apus of the Andes, the Thunderbird, Raijin, the Ganga and the Sarasvati, and hesychast prayer. They are credited here as images. A table that borrows one as a reskin should keep it an image, as the Deep Vein note above does, and not turn a revered mountain, river or deity into the current’s owner, because the current has none.

Playing a Tithed Fist

The core of the character is a relationship with cost — because there is no one on the other end. A warlock can rage at their patron; a cleric can pray for an exception. You have a waterfall. It will never love you, never test you, never notice you, and this is either the loneliest fact in your life or the most liberating one. Decide which, because that decision is the character.

The physicality of the power. The current is a pressure you can feel — a low hum in the sternum, a tug in the fillings, hair that lifts a half-inch on strong ground. Casting isn’t a gesture at the air; it’s a stance, a breath held against a weight, a fist opened for exactly as long as the flow needs and no longer. When you Tithe, something in you goes momentarily cold and hollow, and it doesn’t fully come back until you’ve eaten and slept. Play the erosion as chronic, not dramatic: cold hands at night, a scar that hums near rivers, one gray streak that arrived the week of your initiation. You count Hit Dice the way other people count coins, and the party should see you do it — declining a Tithe is a statement (“not for this”), and paying one should always be narrated (“that one cost a January”).

A relationship with places. You read land the way a dowser does, and you detour to walk the strong roads. Give your character opinions about geography: a favorite confluence, a stretch of dead ground that frightens you the way deep water frightens sailors, a city built stupidly across the flow whose headaches nobody else can explain.

Why did you cut the channel? The initiation was voluntary and irreversible — so why? To match someone (a rival, a parent, a legend who walked the lines before you)? Out of need (the current was the only power available the day you needed power)? By tradition (your village has always sent one child to the flow — this generation, you)? Or a curiosity you’ve since dressed up as something nobler? The answer shapes whether the erosion feels like a price, a punishment, or a membership fee.

Quirks (d6).

1. You orient your bedroll along the nearest line and can’t sleep athwart it.
2. You touch stone walls in new buildings, reading them.
3. Your hair drifts slightly on dead-calm days.
4. You collect river pebbles from strong currents; each has a story.
5. Compasses near you are trustworthy but reluctant.
6. You say “downstream of that decision,” and similar, constantly.

Bonds and hooks (d6).

1. Your initiator’s channel finally widened all the way; you carry what was left — a handful of dry sand.
2. Somewhere there’s a map of every line on the continent; you’ve seen one corner of it.
3. A town on dead ground pays you yearly to confirm the line hasn’t moved toward them. It has.
4. Someone you love wants the initiation; you’ve been lying about what it costs.
5. A thing lives at one confluence — not sentient, you insist; it just responds. You’re either wrong or right.
6. You know where the current goes when it goes underground, and someone is digging there.

The arc by tier.

• Levels 1–4: you’re a new aperture, thrilled and leaking; the discipline is learned the hard way, one bad Tithe at a time.
• Levels 5–10: journeyman confidence — the tithes feel routine, which is exactly when they shouldn’t. You’ve stopped narrating the cost, and someone should call you on it.
• Levels 11–16: the channel is a highway now, and you’ve begun to suspect the current shapes its banks — that walking the strong roads for years has changed which roads are strong. Are you following the flow, or is it starting to follow you?
• Levels 17–20: you are a landmark. Other initiates detour to walk you. The Tithe never runs dry (it overpressures instead), and Become the Current lets you briefly stop being a channel and start being a place. What do you charge, and what do you refuse to become?

In the party. You’re a mobile striker-controller: fewer, bigger spells than any full caster, delivered from inside fist range, with battlefield movement — yours and theirs — as your signature. Arc Surge keeps your at-will damage honest between spells, so you never have a dead turn. You pair beautifully with anyone who benefits from enemies being moved: into auras, out of formation, off the cliff, onto the one tile a Maelstrom or Undertow initiate has decided everyone will occupy. Socially, you’re the party’s geographer and the one who knows why the old road bends. Your honesty about costs makes you a strange, excellent negotiator — you price things accurately, including promises.

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