Scout

The Scout stopped us before the hill looked dangerous. He crouched, put two fingers into the dust, and tasted the air through his teeth. Then he marked a line with his boot and told us nothing with a spine had crossed it in three days. The hill moved after sunset. We watched from the wrong side of the valley, which was the right side because he had made us walk there.

-- recovered fragment, caravan ledger, Red Whale route

What a Scout is

A Scout makes the world legible before it kills anyone. Track, spoor, signal, weather, miasma density, animal silence, bent grass, old concrete, and the absence of birds are all part of the same text. The Scout reads it while others are still deciding whether there is anything to read.

Scout powers are practical. They mark targets, locate routes, find water, sense hostile ground, and keep a party from spending its strength in the wrong place. A Scout is not less important because the work begins before combat. The party that reaches the fight alive often reaches it because a Scout already won the first half of the problem.

Settlements use Scouts as outriders, pathfinders, hunters, couriers, and boundary readers. Warbands use them for ambush and pursuit. Wise World Masters give Scouts information that matters, because information is what the class brings back from the edge.

Experienced Scouts often develop a sensitivity to miasma density that resembles a sixth sense without being one. A storm-reader feels pressure changes. A Scout feels the Miasm thin before the dead-zone fringe, feels the heat of a saturated patch before it is visible, feels the animal silence that precedes a predator's approach or a hostile fauna movement. This is not channeling and not psionic practice. It is attention, trained to the point where it becomes automatic.

Where the Scout's psionic channeling runs -- the targeting beacon, the Miasm-pulse, the Wind-slot protocols -- it stops in a dead zone. Where the Scout's tracking runs, it does not stop. The footprint is still there. The broken stem is still broken. The terrain-read that took years to learn is not a channel; it is knowledge, and knowledge has no dead zone.

Chassis

Class features

The Scout's class features are the load-bearing infrastructure of every Scout, regardless of which path their practice takes. They are the mechanics of terrain-reading, creature-knowledge, and Wind-channeling through substrate-sense: the targeting beacon, the terrain-expertise, the protocols that carry on a scout's range of understanding. Psionic channeling begins at L1. The subclass that arrives at L3 sharpens what the chassis has already built.

Feature ladder

Wind slots

Psionic channeling begins at L1. The Scout is a half-caster: the terrain-read and substrate-sense anchor a WIS-driven Wind connection. Slots recover on a long rest.

Major class features

• Favored Lineage (L1, L6, L14). Choose one creature category as your primary study -- crawlers, omega-pair organisms, Rur constructs, a specific branch of sapience, or another category significant in the world you move through. You have advantage on WIS (Survival) checks to track creatures of that category, and on INT checks to recall information about them. At L6, choose a second category. At L14, choose a third. These are bodies of earned knowledge: behavioral study, scent signature, wound pattern, movement habit. The Scout does not hate what they track. They understand it.
• Substrate-Reading (L1, L6, L10). Choose one terrain type as your studied ground: arctic, coast, badlands, forest, highland, lowland, saltwater, or deep-structure. WIS and INT skill checks related to your studied terrain are made with doubled proficiency when you are using a skill you are already proficient in. While traveling for an hour or more in studied terrain, your group does not suffer slowed travel through difficult terrain, cannot become lost by non-psionic means, you remain alert to danger while engaged in other travel activities, you can move stealthily at normal pace when traveling alone, foraging yields twice the normal amount, and you track with exact knowledge of creature number, size, and time. At L6 choose a second terrain; at L10 choose a third. This is not channeling. It is the studied read of ground that has taught you everything it knows.
• Psionic Channeling (L1). The Scout is a half-caster, channeling through WIS -- substrate-sense, terrain-instinct, and accumulated pattern-recognition sharpened into a reliable Wind connection. WIS governs the channel. Channel save DC: 8 + proficiency bonus + WIS modifier. Attack modifier: proficiency bonus + WIS modifier. A resonance focus -- a terrain-sample, a carved marker, a tool worn smooth by years of use -- serves as the focus. Prepared protocols: WIS modifier + half Scout level (round down, minimum 1). Preparing a new list requires reflection during a short or long rest.
• Weapon Mastery (L1, L4). Two weapons begin trained in their mastery property. At L4, a third. A Scout understands the tool and the terrain together: what the weapon does best, and when the terrain permits it.
• Deft Passage (L2). The Scout's travels grant two benefits. First, choose one skill proficiency in which you lack Expertise; you gain Expertise in that skill. Second, you know two languages of your choice. The road teaches faster than any schooling, and a Scout who cannot read the land's inhabitants reads only half the text.
• Fighting Style (L2). Pick one trained style: Archery, Defense, Dueling, or Two-Weapon Fighting. The Scout who lives in the field does not have the luxury of a single weapon-form. The style is drilled until it compounds.
• Miasm-Pulse (L3). As an action, expend one Wind slot. For 1 minute per slot tier, you sense whether specific creature categories are present within 1 mile (or 6 miles in your studied terrain). You detect the categories of any favored lineages you know, plus omega-pair organisms, Rur constructs, and animated husks. This does not reveal location or number -- only presence. The Miasm carries their trace at the fringe of perception; the trained substrate-sense reads what others mistake for weather.
• Extra Attack (L5). When you take the Attack action, you can attack twice. The Scout does not rush a fight; they position for it. When the position is correct, two strikes cost the same attention as one.
• Terrain-Stride (L8). Moving through non-psionic difficult terrain costs you no extra movement. You pass through non-psionic plants without being slowed or taking damage from thorns, spines, or similar hazards. You also have advantage on saving throws against plants that are psionically created or manipulated to impede movement. The terrain is not your enemy; it is your ground.
• Cover-Setting (L10). You can spend 1 minute preparing a camouflage position. You must have access to materials appropriate to the terrain -- soil, debris, plant matter, shadows, broken structure. Once positioned, pressing yourself against a solid surface at least as tall and wide as you are grants you a +10 bonus to DEX (Stealth) checks for as long as you remain still and take no actions. The moment you move or act, you must re-prepare. The Scout who waits correctly is the Scout nobody finds.
• Beacon-Lock (L13). Taking damage can no longer break your Concentration on your psionic targeting beacon. The read is too deep at this level to lose by shock. The target's signature is woven into the channel so thoroughly that the channel does not snap under load.
• Ghost-Step (L14). You can use the Hide action as a bonus action on your turn. Additionally, you cannot be tracked by non-psionic means unless you choose to leave a trail. The Scout who does not want to be followed is not followed. This is not a psionic concealment; it is the practiced elimination of sign, which is a different thing entirely.
• Precise Beacon (L17). You have advantage on attack rolls against the creature currently marked by your psionic targeting beacon. The beacon at this depth of practice does not merely flag the target -- it reads the target's pressure, mass-shift, and Miasm displacement in real time. The Scout does not aim so much as confirm.
• Miasm-Sense (L18). Your substrate-sense has deepened into something a witness cannot easily explain. You gain Blindsight with a range of 30 feet. You do not impose disadvantage on your own attack rolls against creatures you cannot see. You are aware of the location of any invisible creature within 30 feet of you, provided they are not hidden from you and you are not blinded or deafened. This is the culmination of years of attending to the Miasm's texture rather than the world's surface.
• Epic Boon (L19). Choose one Epic Boon from Book 4 (sec. 4.4). The Scout at this level has not merely become harder to kill. They have become a permanent feature of whatever terrain they call their own.
• Foe Slayer (L20). Once on each of your turns, you can add your WIS modifier to one attack roll or damage roll you make against one of your favored lineages, or against a creature in your studied terrain. Choose before or after the roll, but before any effects apply. The targeting beacon at full development is not a separate consideration. It is woven into every swing.

Subclasses

At L3 a Scout's practice takes a field shape. One subclass is shipped at launch: Hunter, the Scout who specializes in living targets and whose precision comes from reading the Miasm the way another specialist reads a face. Four more are in design and will join in future updates: Pathwarden (the Scout who binds knowledge to a route and makes trade possible), Dead-Zone Runner (the Scout who works where the Miasm cannot be trusted), Outer Warden (the Scout who has made a perimeter their complete territory), and Delver (the Scout who reads sealed structures rather than open terrain).

Hunter

She marked the beast at noon and stopped looking for it. That worried us. At dusk she pointed to a stand of black reeds and told the bowmen to aim two feet above the waterline. The beast came through exactly there, already dead in her mind.

-- recovered fragment, marsh hunt account, Black Reeds

Identity

The Hunter is the Scout who specializes in living targets. Their mark is not a mystical brand. It is a psionic targeting beacon -- a Wind-readable signature laid over a creature until its movement, scent, pressure, and likely choices become easier to follow. When the Hunter places the beacon, the Miasm around the target becomes a continuous read: density shifts as the creature moves, pressure patterns show which direction it has favored, nanite traces reveal old wounds and current condition. The Hunter does not guess where the prey will be. They read where the Miasm says it already is.

This is a Substrate-powered process. The targeting beacon spends a Wind slot and requires Concentration. In a dead zone, the beacon does not fire; the Hunter is back to print, scent, and line-of-sight tracking -- still the best tracker in most parties, but no longer receiving the continuous feed. Hunters who work in dead zones learn quickly that their other skills have to carry the load, and most of them have drilled those skills until they are very good at carrying it.

Hunters can be providers, bounty-takers, monster-trackers, or quiet terrors in border wars. The best are patient enough to let prey explain itself.

Subclass features

L3: Psionic Targeting Beacon. You always have the targeting beacon protocol prepared. You can cast it twice per long rest without expending a Wind slot; the number of free casts increases to three at L6, four at L11, and five at L17 (matching your Favored Lineage progression). As a bonus action, you channel a Wind-readable signature onto one creature you can see within 90 feet. For Concentration, up to 1 hour: that creature takes an additional 1d6 damage from your attacks and the attacks of any ally who can see it, and you have advantage on WIS (Perception) and WIS (Survival) checks to find or follow it. Moving the beacon requires a new bonus action and ends the previous one. The beacon is a Substrate-powered effect -- it can be Dispelled, it does not function in a dead zone, and an Antimagic Field ends it immediately. It is not a brand or a label. It is the Scout's channel, held open against a moving target, so that the Miasm tells them everything the creature is doing without them having to look.

L3: Lineage-Read. While a creature is marked by your targeting beacon, you know whether it has any Immunities, Resistances, or Vulnerabilities. If it does, you know what they are. The beacon reads the target's Miasm signature against your accumulated knowledge of that lineage or creature type. The information is real and specific. A Hunter who has tracked crawlers for five years does not need to be told that a crawler's carapace stops ordinary blades. The beacon confirms what they already suspect and fills in what they do not yet know.

L3: Hunter's Prey. Choose one of the following options. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can replace the chosen option with the other.

• Colossus Slayer. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, the weapon deals an extra 1d8 damage if the creature is below its hit point maximum. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn. The targeting beacon reads the creature's current Miasm density -- diminished where it is injured, thinner where the colonies have already spent themselves trying to repair the damage. The Hunter hits exactly there.
• Horde Breaker. Once on each of your turns when you make a weapon attack, you can make another attack with the same weapon against a different creature within 5 feet of the original target and within the weapon's range. The two beasts that travel together leave a shared pressure pattern in the Miasm. A Hunter who can read one can land on the second before the second has understood what happened to the first.
• Giant Killer. When a Large or larger creature within 5 feet of you hits or misses you with an attack, you can use your reaction to immediately attack that creature back, provided you can see it. The beacon on a Large target is dense -- its displacement of the Miasm is significant enough that the Hunter's reaction is already in motion before the attack lands. The window is short. The Hunter uses it.

L7: Defensive Tactics. Choose one of the following options. Whenever you finish a short or long rest, you can replace the chosen option with the other.

• Escape the Horde. Opportunity attacks against you are made with disadvantage. A creature that crowds a Hunter has already misjudged the situation. The Hunter has been reading that ground since before the creature noticed them.
• Multiattack Defense. When a creature hits you with an attack, you gain a +4 bonus to AC against all subsequent attacks made by that creature for the rest of the turn. The beacon reads the pattern of the first strike. The Hunter does not move the same way twice for the same attacker in the same exchange.
• Steel Will. You have advantage on saving throws against being Frightened. The Hunter who has held a targeting beacon on a large predator for three hours is not surprised by fear. They have already been afraid. They kept working through it.

L11: Multiattack. Choose one of the following options when you gain this feature. The choice is permanent.

• Volley. As your Attack action, make a ranged attack against any number of creatures within 10 feet of a point you can see within your weapon's range. You must have ammunition for each target and make a separate attack roll for each. The Hunter who can beacon-read a cluster does not aim at one target when the Miasm shows them a formation. The arrows go where the pressure-patterns are.
• Whirlwind Attack. As your Attack action, make a melee attack against any number of creatures within 5 feet of you, with a separate attack roll for each target. The Hunter who fights in close ground does not find a single enemy -- they are surrounded, and they use the fact. The beacon reads all of them at once.

L15: Superior Hunter's Defense. Choose one of the following options when you gain this feature. The choice is permanent.

• Stand Against the Tide. When a hostile creature misses you with a melee attack, you can use your reaction to force that creature to repeat the same attack against another creature of your choice that is not the attacker. The beacon reads the inbound strike precisely enough that the Hunter can step out of the line and let the geometry of the attacker's own reach do the redirecting. The enemy's swing lands on something the Hunter chose.
• Uncanny Dodge. When an attacker you can see hits you with an attack, you can use your reaction to halve the attack's damage against you. The Miasm displacement of the incoming strike is readable a fraction of a second before impact. The Hunter does not stop the blow. They reduce the angle until it costs less than it should.

Pathwarden

The old road had eaten three carts that season. The Pathwarden walked it alone with a coil of red cord, a slate-stake, and a bag of white stones. When she returned she had not killed anything. She had made a way through.

-- recovered fragment, road tithe record, High Orchard

Identity

The Pathwarden is the Scout who binds knowledge to a route. They read safe passages, mark temporary hazards, establish camps, name water, and make the difference between a road and a rumor about where a road used to be.

Settlements love Pathwardens because trade follows them. Raiders hate them for the same reason. A Pathwarden's work can make a region richer without winning a single duel.

Subclass features

Subclass mechanics pending design.

Dead-Zone Runner

The channelers stopped at the gray line. The Runner did not. She checked her knife, tightened the straps on her mask, and walked into the place where all their cleverness ended. Three hours later she came back carrying the child and no stories about what she had seen.

-- recovered fragment, rescue witness, Pale Basin

Identity

The Dead-Zone Runner specializes in places where psionics fail, devices lie, and the miasma goes silent. They trust rope, water, tools, marks, discipline, and the stubborn old art of noticing without help.

Other Scouts read the Miasm as part of the world. Dead-Zone Runners train for the absence of that text. In campaigns heavy with dead zones, sealed caches, or miasma suppression, they become the person who can still move when the bright powers stop.

Subclass features

Subclass mechanics pending design.

Outer Warden

The trader who reached the Black Gate first saw her before he saw the walls. She was standing in the long grass sixty meters out, checking the ground to his left. When he came level with her she looked him over the way gate-wardens do, then turned back to the grass. He asked if she was going in. She shook her head once and crouched to press a marker stake into the soil.

-- recovered fragment, courier notation, Black Gate run

Identity

The Outer Warden has taken the Scout's practice far enough in one direction that the interior of the settlement is, at this point, not their ground. By lineage, by history, by compact, or simply by the drift of long practice -- they are outside. The settlement tolerates this because a perimeter guarded by someone who knows it at that depth is not the same thing as a perimeter guarded by gate-wardens who go home at shift change.

The Outer Warden knows every approach. Every soft ground, every sight-line, every drainage pattern and what the bird-silence means in it, specifically, here. They know the settlement's weak points as well as any raider who has ever scouted it. They use that knowledge to close those weak points before anyone else finds them.

The settlement gets better protection than it pays for. The Outer Warden gets territory they understand completely, and something that passes, at a distance, for belonging.

Subclass features

Subclass mechanics pending design.

Delver

We stopped at the seal without being told to. The seam in the rock face had marks on it we could not read and a handprint mold neither of us wanted to touch. The Delver read the marks, put her hand into the mold, and the seam opened. She studied the interior for a moment the way a person reads before they speak, then went through. We waited an hour. She came back carrying a sealed case and a new scar on her forearm she did not explain. The case was addressed to someone.

-- recovered fragment, expedition notation, the Broken Shelf approaches

Identity

The Delver is the Scout who goes into Redoubts and remembered ruins -- the sealed structures, the places that have been running their own protocols long enough that nobody alive understands the original purpose. Most people stop at the seal. The Delver reads it.

Their terrain is built: load-bearing walls, ventilation shafts, old security barriers, chambers sealed by design and chambers sealed by collapse. A cracked threshold has a story about what came through it. A room with no exits has a story about who expected to stay. The Delver reads these the way a Hunter reads spoor -- not with any faculty beyond practice, but with enough practice that the distinction stops mattering.

Redoubts are not safe. They run last-orders protocols that predate anyone's understanding, and what defends them does not stop defending because it has not been triggered recently. The Delver goes in anyway, because going in unprepared is what kills people, not going in at all. Their particular discipline is knowing the difference before they find out the hard way.

Subclass features

Subclass mechanics pending design.