Welcome to the wondrous far-future world of DCC Dying Earth! The DCC Dying Earth Setting is an all-new gaming universe for Dungeon Crawl Classics, inspired by the classic sword-and-sorcery works of Jack Vance. To celebrate the release of DCC Dying Earth, we are showcasing a series of articles that looks at the many unique classes, spells, equipment, mechanics, and themes that go into making DCC Dying Earth a completely new experience! The Vat-thing: A Jack-of-all-Trades, Master of Some By Terry Olson Beauty lies everywhere free to be seen by all — by all except you. For this I feel sorrow, for I created you. I built your primal cell; I stamped the strings of life with the pattern of your body and brain. And in spite of my craft I erred, so that when you climbed from the vat, I found that I had molded a flaw into your brain; that you saw ugliness in beauty, evil in good. – the “T’sais” chapter of Mazirian the Magician (previously titled The Dying Earth) In creating the ruleset for DCC Dying Earth, we were eager to adapt Jack Vance’s vat-things to a PC class. One could argue that in all of Vance’s Dying Earth fiction, the characters with the most humanity are the not-quite-human vat-things. Consequently, as a class, the vat-thing has perhaps the widest scope for role-play compared to the other classes. It’s also ridiculously fun to play, because it can do a bit of everything and can contribute to almost any situation. Reading Vance, we learn early that even the more powerful magicians are challenged by creating vat-life; they frequently get something wrong. So, a 0-level vat-thing begins play with a flaw. These flaws offer opportunities for unique social interactions as well as long term “quest for it” goals for vat-things seeking to improve their own patterns of creation. Here are a few from the Vat-Thing Starting Flaw table, on which you roll a d30 modified by Luck. 2: The PC’s flesh is covered in a skein of overlapping plates that increase its base AC to 11, but impose a -1 check penalty to all checks to climb, jump, balance, swim, move silently, and other such physical activities. Roll 1d4 for type: (1) feather; (2) scales; (3) chitinous; (4) skeel. 6: The PC is wracked by memories of a previous existence. The PC...