The Daredevil

"Let me guess. You thought I was dead."

Ovalchase Daredevil; Magic: the Gathering

Daredevils are not like their other nonmagical brethren, instead they are simply insanely lucky. By rights, they should not be alive, having less actual ability than an ordinary fighter, monk or rogue and yet a grim determination and/or exceptional derring-do which, combined with several hundred times the recommended dose of luck, sees them through.

Adventures: Daredevils are born to adventure, having a natural near-immunity to danger and a healthy dose of sheer dumb luck.

Characteristics: Daredevils have few real abilities, but instead they are always just lucky enough to have everything go the way that they want it to.

Alignment: Any. That said, daredevils tend towards the chaotic in results, regardless of their intent.

Religion: Gods of luck are the most common deities among daredevils.

Background: Daredevils are simply extremely lucky people, who never have to learn to be competent because they have enough luck to see them through either way.

Races: Any.

Other Classes: Daredevils are usually disliked by those who have to work for their talents., though they find some common ground with sorcerers.

Role: A daredevil provides a party with utility abilities, and has a knack with skills as well.

Hit Points

Hit Dice: 1d8 per daredevil level. Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier. Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + your Constitution modifer for each daredevil level after 1st.

Proficiencies

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Armour: Light armour

Weapons: Simple weapons

Tools: Any gaming set.

Saving Throws: Dexterity, Charisma

Skills: Choose two from Acrobatics, Deception, Performance, Religion or Stealth.

Special: Daredevils are proficient in initiative checks.

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

• a) A handaxe or b) 10 javelins
• a) A dungeoneering kit or b) an explorer's kit
• Any gaming set.
• A handaxe, a dagger and leather armour.

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the daredevil.

Righteous Desperation

A daredevil is committed to using more traditional means to solve tasks rather than resorting to magic. You must not activate any magical item, equip any magical armour or shield, attack with any magical weapon, use any spell or supernatural abilty, or willingly accept a spell or supernatural ability. If you do, you forfeit all your daredevil class features, and regain them at only one level per day. You must adventure normally to regain your class features.

In return, the daredevil learns to make use of what is available. The daredevil can find an improvised version of any simple weapon in one minute, though the item only lasts for 5 attacks (1 if thrown) before breaking. Similarly, the daredevil can find improvised tools to perform tasks which require tools. The daredevil takes no penalty for using improvised items. Also, the daredevil is completely immune to the Frightened condition.

Shrug Off

You are able to shrug off abilities which would hinder incapacitate a lesser fighter. This allows you to do one of the following:

• Pay hit points to negate one of the listed conditions. If the duration of the condition is permanent, you must pay double the listed price unless the condition is already one which never has a duration (Dead, Grappled, Petrified, Prone, Restrained, or Unconscious)
• Pay hit points to negate all of the effects of a spell before any rolls are made for that spell. In this case, if the spell would do more damage than the amount of hit points paid to negate it, it deals that much damage and the rest of its effects are negated.

Shrugging an effect off requires no action - just like deciding who to attack, it's done as part of the resolution of the attack. You must have enough hit points to pay the cost of the shrug off ability.

For example, a daredevil who is subject to a Power Word: Kill spell can either pay 105 hit points, or pay 50 hit points, or die. Of course, if the daredevil has enough hit points to pay 105, the spell wouldn't have any effect anyway!

Just Plain Lucky

A daredevil has amazing luck when attempting anything exceptionally difficult. You add half your proficiency bonus to all d20 rolls, up to a maximum of whatever bonus would allow you to succeed on a natural roll of a 15. For example, a daredevil with an intelligence bonus of +0 and a proficiency bonus of +4 would add an extra +2 when attempting a DC 20 check they weren't proficient with, but only +1 (enough to pass on a 15) when attempting one they were proficient with.

Lucky Charm

At 3rd level, a you choose a lucky charm, which gives you a variety of abilities at 3rd, 9th, 13th and 17th level. This lucky charm is the daredevil's source of luck, or at least object of superstition.

Ability Score Increase

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 10th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can't increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Uncanny Dodge

Beginning at 5th level, when an attacker that you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to halve the attack's damage against you.

Better Lucky than Smart

Beginning at 6th level, you gain proficiency in intelligence saves.

Lucky Stars

From sixth level, you score a critical hit on an attack roll of a 19 or 20, and you roll the dice three times instead of twice. Every four levels thereafter, the number you need to roll for a critical hit is reduced by 1, and you roll the dice an extra time.

Evasion

Starting at 7th level, you can nimbly dodge out of the way of certain area effects, such as a red dragon's fiery breath or an ice storm spell. When you are subjected to an effect that allows you to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, you instead take no damage if you succeed on the saving throw, and only half damage if you fail.

Better Lucky than Strong

Beginning at 10th level, you gain proficiency in strength saves.

Second Guess

Daredevils are exceptionally lucky, rather than relying on actual skills. From 11th level, you gain advantage on all attack rolls and skill checks while in immediate danger.

Better Lucky than Clever

Beginning at 14th level, you gain proficiency in wisdom saves.

Double Down

Daredevils are good at getting out of harm's way. From 15th level, anyone who attacks you gets disadvantage on the attack roll and you get advantage on all saving throws.

Better Lucky than Tough

Beginning at 18th level, you gain proficiency in constitution saves.

Escape Unscathed

At 20th level, you take half damage from all attacks, or no damage at all when you use Uncanny Dodge. Your Shrug Off costs are halved.

Tricks

Each trick lists prerequisites, its effect, and any special information about the trick if there is any. The italicised description is not rules text; it's simply a description of what the trick does for roleplaying purposes.

It's a dud!

Your opponents find that their equipment malfunctions at the worst of times.

Prerequisites: Daredevil level 11th.

Benefit: An opponent who tries to use a mechanical piece of equipment or an activated (except use-activated) magic item finds that it malfunctions unless they pass a dexterity save (DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + your charisma modifier). This effect only takes place when they use the equipment against you, or within 10 feet per level of you. A trap takes a dexterity save with its creator's save bonus unless its own is higher; failure indicates that it too fails to function.

An item that malfunctions is expended (crossbows must be reloaded, traps must be reset through whatever method, and charges of items are lost) but does nothing.

Just as Planned!

You know where to place a trap to make sure a creature stumbles into it.

Prerequisites: None

Benefit: Whenever you set a trap, choose up to two locations per level to put it instead of just one. The trap is only actually in one of those locations. Whenever a creature, friend or foe, would discover, or set off, the trap if it were at one of the locations, you have two options: unmark that location as a possible location of the trap, or decide that the trap really is at that location and the creature has just set it off.

For example, the "Razor wire across hallway" trap has triggers in two adjacent squares (because the wire is 10 feet long). It's possible for a second-level daredevil to decide to put razor wire in (0,0) and (0,1) as well as in (0,1) and (1,1), (2,2) and (3,3), and (2,3) and (3,2), even though two of the wires share a space, and the other two cross over. Only one of these locations actually contains the razor wire. For example, if a creature enters (0,1), the daredevil can decide that the first wire is real, in which case the creature takes 2d6 slashing damage and (0,0) - and no other space - still contains wire (and will do 2d6 damage to the next creature to enter whether the daredevil likes it or not), or that the second wire is real, in which case the same is true of (1,1) instead of (0,0), or that neither wire is real and one of the other two is. Therefore, (2,2)-(3,3) and (2,3)-(3,2) are possible wire locations.

Special: When there's only one possible location for the trap, the trap is in that location and there's no opportunity to decide that you never actually set the trap at all.

DMs should be reasonable about what is and isn't a trap. Caltrops and contact poison smeared on walls or floors are traps; creatures arranged so as to ambush someone, or the arrangement of creatures such that they might ambush someone, aren't (even if they may be a "trap" in common parlance).

Signature Gear

You are inseparable with your gear - literally.

Prerequisites: None

Benefit: Choose one item. You add half your proficiency bonus to attack rolls with that weapon, or to armour class while using that item or shield, or to skill checks using that tool or kit. Further, if a creature loses that item (that is, misplaces, rather than deliberately surrenders to another creature), it makes its way back to your possession at an average speed of 10 miles per hour, whether by rolling, moving through rivers, or being carried by passersby.

Special: You cannot choose magic items or items which you cannot actually operate. Ideally, you should choose items which are important to you directly, not just which you are entrusted with.

Spontaneous Combustion

"By the way, your house is on fire."

Prerequisites: None

Benefit: You gain the extraordinary ability to make things catch on fire - in reality, everything just happens to go right: you accidentally dropped a cigar in a place which later makes the building catch on fire when you need it; you created a small friction fire walking across something which only became relevant later, or something just caught on fire for a reason which was ostensibly nothing to do with you.

You may cause a fire to break out. The fire is candle-fire-size at first level, about a foot across at third level, and 5 feet across per two levels after 3rd. You needn't create the largest fire available. Once you've done this, you can't do it again until you've completed a short rest (any more often would stretch credibility, even for you).

Irrespective of the fire size, each creature and object in the fire takes 1d6 points of fire damage when it is created. The fire then continues to burn, and flammable creatures and objects in the area catch on fire.

Special: Due to your immense luck, you aren't caught in your own initial fire, though you might take damage from the normal fire as objects catch on fire.

Trump Card

Your luck at games of chance or even skill is legendary.

Prerequisites: None

Benefit: Whenever you play a game with even a moderate element of luck (such as any card game, any game involving dice, and generally a game with randomness beyond simple decisions of, for example, the first player) you add your proficiency bonus to the roll, in addition to the bonus for actually being proficient, and you have advantage on the check.

Lucky Charms

Daredevils are always lucky, but their lucky charms have a luck all of their own. A variety of items are suitable as lucky charms, and they always seem to make their own luck to go with the daredevil's. That said, the daredevil can always find a new one if the old one should be lost - and it always seems to be just as lucky as the previous one. Whether they are mere placeboes or really alter the fundamentals of luck, they are invaluable for a daredevil.

A lucky charm is an actual item which the daredevil steals, is gifted with, inherits, finds by sheer coincidence or otherwise obtains at 3rd level. A daredevil who loses a lucky charm can find a conveniently-located replacement with 1 minute of searching.

The Bag of Useful Items

A bag of useful items is a backpack which you - or someone else - filled up with just the right combination of gear to get you through whatever tasks you're about to face. Only you know what's in the bag, and you're not telling. Instead, you withdraw the items when they're needed, to the great surprise of your allies.

The Tarot of Secrets

Unlike the Deck of Many Things, the Tarot has no actual magical power. However, it is rumoured that the seventy-eight card deck has some ability to read, or perhaps even determine, the future...

Extra Draws

At each of 9th, 13th and 17th level, you can draw an extra card from the Tarot.

Token of Appreciation

A token of appreciation is an item given to someone symbolically to represent love, companionship, or gratefulness. It could be a small necklace, ring, or other piece of jewellery, but it might also be a small ornament or piece of crystal - in whatever case, it has little practical use beyond perhaps acting as a signet. These tokens are said to bless someone with companionship.

Remote Contact

From 9th level, you may consult a second contact before requiring a long rest, and the requirement that contacts be in places where they could reasonably appear is relaxed - contacts instead appear in any place where they could have any reason at all to appear. For example, a merchant would only reasonably be expected to appear in a town, but might have reason to visit a dungeon if they knew there would be adventurers afoot in need of supplies.

Friends in High Places

From 13th level, you may consult a third contact before requiring a long rest, and once out of these three times, you can call upon a contact with a social standing and prestige that would be expected of someone double their level.

I Know You!

From 17th level, you may consult a fourth contact before requiring a long rest, and further, you may declare a creature on the spot to be your contact if they are within the level requirement. For example, if you must deal with a frustrating bureaucrat of fifth level, it may turn out that the bureaucrat is actually someone you've dealt with before and have a good reputation with. Doing this still uses one of your contacts for the day.