Sacred Bundle

Sacred Bundle

Overview
   Sacred Bundles are found in variety of forms depending on the society. For example: it could 
   be a satchel holding trophies taken in battle, a sash embroidered with symbols commemorating
   victories, or a box of hand carved wooden icons of enemies overcome. All bundles provide a bit
   of protection to the owner, but at the warrior gains in experience and renown their bundle
   becomes more potent, granting them greater power and protection.

   Only the warrior linked to the bundle through a sacred ceremony can benefit from its effects;
   bundles cannot be transferred to a new owner. A character can only have a single Sacred Bundle
   at a time.

   Once per level, after performing a significant exploit, the warrior can ceremonially add another
   totem to the bundle to commemorate the event and imbue it with more power.

Beginning a Bundle
   A sacred bundle is bestowed in a ceremony by a medicine man when the warrior first passes
   his rights of manhood or otherwise becomes a member of a tribe. If a character’s sacred bundle
   is destroyed they can undergo the ceremony again to start a new sacred bundle if they find a
   willing medicine man to perform the ceremony.

Empowering a Bundle
   Once per level, and only once during each level they earn, the owner of a sacred bundle may
   perform a private ceremony to empower the bundle with an additional power. If the character
   starts a bundle after first level, or if they miss empowering the bundle during a level, they
   cannot ‘back-fill’ the bundle for any levels they had previously earned. Note: if a character is
   drained levels they cannot add powers to the bundle until they have regained or re-earned the
   lost levels.

   The ceremony to empower the bundle must be done as soon as possible after achieving some
   significant achievement. The player cannot ‘hold off’ doing it in hopes of a bigger fight coming
   along later. During the ceremony the character must privately pray and fast for 24 hours as
   they carefully prepare a totem to commemorate the event to add to the bundle. The character
   also sacrifices the experience points they earned for the exploit they are commemorating during
   this ceremony. The ceremony transfers the experience into the totem and bundle which is how
   it is empowers the bundle with additional powers.

   What constitutes a significant event changes depending on the character’s level and
   circumstances. A third level character beating an ogre in single combat is significant but a third
   level character working with a large adventuring party or a tenth level character working alone is
   not. If the character attempts to imbue the bundle based on an insignificant event the attempt
   fails (although the experience sacrificed is still lost). It is up to the discretion of the DM to
   determine what is significant, but the player should not be told until the ceremony is complete
   and the experience points are sacrificed.

Powers of a Bundle
   When the ceremony is complete the DM determines what power is added to the bundle. This
   normally is done by rolling on the table below. The DM should modify the roll based on how
   well the player is roleplaying the character (such as honoring cultural taboos, etc) or for just
   how significant the event really was to the character. Additionally, the DM may just pick an
   appropriate power to the event or change the result to avoid making the bundle to powerful
   for the campaign.

Stacking Powers
   All powers from table 1 below can stack. Identical powers earned from table 2 generally should
   not be stacked, however the DM may decide otherwise if the event was truly extraordinary. For
   example: A warrior defeats a Hell Hound when he is 5th level and earned Fire resistance 3, at
   10th level he helps defeat a large red dragon and the DM decides that his miraculous survival of
   the full brunt of the breath weapon is deserving of increasing the Fire resistance to 6.

   Beginning Powers: All bundles provide the owner +1 to saves, hit points, and armor class when
   they are first bestowed upon a warrior.

   Some time during their first level and each subsequent level a character can add one of the
   following powers to the bundle.

Table 1 (roll d20 or DM’s pick)
        1   No power gained (EXP is lost but failure this does not count as a power for the level
              the character can try again after another heroic event)
    2-6   +1 to Armor Class
    7-9   +1 to Hit Points
10-11   +1 to Fortitude Saves
12-13   +1 to Will Saves
14-15   +1 to Reflex Saves
      16   +1 to all Saves
17-19   Roll on the next table instead
      20   Roll both on the next table and this table again.

Table 2 (DM’s pick)
     1-5   +1 to a specific type of d20 roll (DM picks type of roll such as to hit with a bow, strength
                 checks, saves verses poisons, skill checks with for tracking, etc.)
    6-9   Protection from an element 3 (DM picks type of element)
10-11   +1 to damage rolls
12-13   +5ft to movement speed
14-15   Damage resistance 1
16-17   Luck (1/day can reroll a d20 roll)
18-19   Heroic Surge (1/day can take an extra standard action)
      20   +1 to an ability score (DM picks based on event)

Author’s Notes:
   Ever since it was introduced in the 1st edition D&D Deities & Demigods manual I’ve been
   fascinated with the Sacred Bundle. However, it was too powerful to let low level character’s 
   have access to it and, to my mind, should require extensive solo adventuring by the
   character to assemble at higher levels, which might not work for the rest of the players. So this
   is my attempt to redesign the Sacred Bundle into a relic that a character could start with right
   from first level and that gradually grows in power as the character does. Sacred Bundles are holy
   objects common in some, but not all, primitive warrior societies. DM’s should normally not let
   other characters create Sacred Bundles unless they have in some way role-played adoption into
   that society.

   It is also recommended that the society have certain taboos or codes of ethics that the character
   should follow to offset the power of the Bundle and that when rolling to add effects to a bundle
   the DM should modify the role based on how good or bad the player has conformed to those
   ethics. For example: Nanoc si Semaj comes from a culture that associates honor with personal
   valor and physical combat, but the amount of honor decreases the more you relied on the skills
   of others over your own in achieving the victory: so performing well in a battle with the party may
   be honorable, but more so if you only used weapons you made with your own hands, and less so
   with manufactured weapons, and much, much less so if you used magic to win the fight.