The Grooch [OSR Racial Class]

This idea's been kicking around in my head for some time now, and April Fool's Day seems like as good a time as any to finally put out out there.

Grooch

Grooches are foul, furred humanoids taller than a dwarf but shorter than a human. They live unpleasant, solitary lives, and have personalities that make even the grumpiest of dwarves say “damn, that guy’s grumpy.” Grooches have bulgy eyes and are covered head-to-foot in dirty, oily fur that ranges in color from green, to brown to orange. They have no homelands of their own, but often form small, insular communities in the trash pits and cesspools of human cities or in unpleasant swamps far away from others.

While not necessarily evil, grooches are uniformly unpleasant--short-tempered, foul-mouthed, grumpy, and temperamental. Most grooches are of Neutral alignment, preferring to just be left alone. The cruelest of grooches cast their lot with Chaos. Even the rare Lawful grooches are insufferable pricks.

Oskar the Grooch says "Scram!"

Grooch Racial Class

Requirements: CON 9, CHA less than 9

Prime Requisite: CON

Hit Die: d8

Maximum Level: 12

Weapons: Any

Armor: Any, plus shields

Fights as: Fighter

Saves as: Fighter

Special Abilities

Immune to poison and disease: Due to a lifetime spent in trash and filth, a grooch is totally immune to all mundane and magical poisons and disease. They can also eat spoiled dungeon rations without ill effect, in fact they prefer it.

Scavenge:  Given time and a large enough trash yard, a grooch can find or piece together just about anything he needs. It takes 5 minutes per gold piece of value to find a specific item (for instance it would take 150 minutes, or 2 ½ hours, to piece together a functional suit of 30gp studded leather armor). In a city trash yard, he can find any item off the basic weapon, armor, or adventuring gear lists  up to a value of 100gp. In a village or hamlet, this limit is reduced 50gp.

This equipment is always in poor repair. Scavenged weapons break on an attack roll of 1-3, and armor breaks if hit with an attack roll of 18-20. Other gear may break at the DM’s discretion.

Foul Taste: At 4th level, a Grooch’s body fur is so foul and nasty that it becomes mildly poisonous. Any creature that successfully hits the grooch with a bite attack must save vs. posion or suffer a -2 to hit for 1d6 rounds due to nausea.

Speak With Vermin: Upon reaching 9th level (Grooch-Lord) a grooch learns to speak with vermin at will. This ability functions like the cleric spell Speak With Animals but only works on normal or giant-versions of worms, bugs, rats, and other foul creepy crawlies. Keep in mind, that most such creatures don't usually have much to say.

Reaching 9th Level: At 9th level, a grooch has an option of building a stronghold, usually deep in a forlorn swamp, ruined city, or other unpleasant place. Secret grooch building techniques allow these strongholds to be camouflaged in such a way that they appear smaller on the outside than they are inside (but this is just an optical illusion). Such a stronghold will reluctantly attract other grooches, while most other creatures will leave the area in disgust. A grooch will only attract other grooches as hirelings and henchmen, and he probably won’t get along with those well, either.

Level	Title	Exp Points	Hit Dice	Special
1	Groochling	0	1d8	Immunities, Scavenge
2	Guttersnipe	2,200	2d8
3	Pest	4,400	3d8
4	Crank	8,800	4d8	Foul Taste
5	Grouch	17,000	5d8
6	Grump	35,000	6d8
7	Grumbler	70,000	7d8
8	Curmudgeon	140,000	8d8
9	Grooch-Lord	270,000	9d8	Speak With Vermin
10	Grooch-Lord	400,000	9d8+3
11	Grooch-Lord	530,000	9d8+6
12	Grooch-Lord	660,000	9d8+9