Other Classes/ACFs that are illiterate? (Homebrew/3rd party acceptable)

[Luccan]

So, in one of my weird themed game ideas, I thought it might be fun to use only classes with the Illiteracy class feature. In 1st party material, this would include the Barbarian, the Savage Bard ACF, and Totemist and that's it as far as I know. I believe there's also a Dragon Magazine with an illiterate luck Wizard, but I can't remember the name. Does anyone know of any others that are good? This game would take place towards the early years of the world's existence (no more than a couple thousand years since the first humanoids showed up, while Giants and Dragons are still mostly in charge), so I thought enforcing that "we don't know how to write yet" theme for the PCs and the people like them would provide interesting class restraints. If you're worried about me inflicting this on players who wouldn't want to do it, don't worry. These ideas almost never get off the ground, so this is really more of a thought/world-building experiment: why do these classes exist now and not others? Also, I'm aware you can take the Illiterate Trait, but that's not really interesting.

TL;DR: Any more classes that are inherently illiterate?

[Sinner's Garden]

You're looking for the Anagakok from Dragon issue 344, pages 104 and 105. It still uses written spell formulae by casting Read Magic, and this is indeed the only writing it can read, but you may wish to stack on Eidetic Spellcaster from issue 357, page 89 to entirely remove their reliance on written text. You could also, for flavor points, keep sorcerers literate, due to being taught Draconic by their forebears, and thereby reversing the usual perspective of sorcerers being uneducated country bumpkins and wizards being ivory tower scholars.

In terms of additional content, I only know of some barbarian centric ACFs from dndwiki and Pathfinder that center illiteracy. There's also a flaw that does it, which is probably better than the trait for giving you an additional feat from a mechanical perspective, but is just as uninteresting from a characterization perspective.

Aside from that, if your players refuse to consider a game of prehistorical illiterate savages, then clearly they hate fun.

[Luccan]

You're looking for the Anagakok from Dragon issue 344, pages 104 and 105. It still uses written spell formulae by casting Read Magic, and this is indeed the only writing it can read, but you may wish to stack on Eidetic Spellcaster from issue 357, page 89 to entirely remove their reliance on written text. You could also, for flavor points, keep sorcerers literate, due to being taught Draconic by their forebears, and thereby reversing the usual perspective of sorcerers being uneducated country bumpkins and wizards being ivory tower scholars.

In terms of additional content, I only know of some barbarian centric ACFs from dndwiki and Pathfinder that center illiteracy. There's also a flaw that does it, which is probably better than the trait for giving you an additional feat from a mechanical perspective, but is just as uninteresting from a characterization perspective.

Aside from that, if your players refuse to consider a game of prehistorical illiterate savages, then clearly they hate fun.

Yes! I knew it was something like that, but couldn't remember how it was spelled. I was considering having it be the society's proto-writing: some of their mystics use it, but only for what they see as something most important that can't just be remembered or transferred by word-of-mouth. And it's currently developed specifically for that purpose, so it won't be much use for anything or to anyone else at this point. If the PCs decide they want to dedicate time and resources towards developing at least a basic writing system, I actually don't mind, but yeah the point is to start as illiterate groups trying to survive well before they have most resources or developments in a world of giant things that keep eating or enslaving them.

TBH, if there's nothing particularly good out there to expand it, I'm fine with this list: it covers the roles a party generally needs, albeit a bit lopsidedly.

And yeah, I think this would be a fun game, but actually I don't have any 3.5 savvy players for it. But sometimes there are people who object to ideas like this, as if the players are being forcibly put through it.

Edit: Further research has lead me to this: apparently Dragon 353 has No Turning variants for Clerics, one of which is the Shaman which trades turning and literacy... for an animal companion that treats you as a druid of half your level.

[Sinner's Garden]

Man, you just gotta ignore people like that, since they clearly don't get to play many games. Gimmick/theme games are the best. Also, I know you spoke against illiteracy as a trait, but I do firmly suggest a Shifter Druid as a very coherent and self-contained character that fits this theme almost perfectly; if you get players that aren't very experienced, you can just toss them a simple, foolproof character like that and call it a day.

Though, I'm kind of surprised there aren't more illiterate character options. It really seems like there would be one for the ranger, but I guess Aragorn memes are too big.

[Luccan]

Man, you just gotta ignore people like that, since they clearly don't get to play many games. Gimmick/theme games are the best. Also, I know you spoke against illiteracy as a trait, but I do firmly suggest a Shifter Druid as a very coherent and self-contained character that fits this theme almost perfectly; if you get players that aren't very experienced, you can just toss them a simple, foolproof character like that and call it a day.

Though, I'm kind of surprised there aren't more illiterate character options. It really seems like there would be one for the ranger, but I guess Aragorn memes are too big.

How is there not one for the Druid? But, if you didn't see my edit above, turns out another Dragon issue had an ACF for illiterate clerics. I don't think it would be worth it in a normal game, but if somebody felt Savage Bard wasn't gonna pull its weight as team healer...

[Psyren]

How is there not one for the Druid?

Dunno about 3.5 but Pathfinder has one - Feral Child (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/core-races/human/feral-child-druid-human/). No Wild Shape sadly so it's a pretty big downgrade, but if you don't mind being weaker than a normal druid, you can optimize it a bit by combining it with the Nature Warden (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/apg/nature-warden/) PrC to get some additional benefit out of the Favored Terrain stuff it gives you.

[Quertus]

Well, since you said that you were open to homebrew, I *was* going to say that, if you were running an official published world (which you are not), or a world that otherwise wasn't new as of 3e, you could use my "homebrew" "started in 2e, spent time as a statue, got woken up in 3e" trait, because all 2e characters were illiterate by default. But, as you said, not terribly interesting, or suited for your purposes

So, we've got Fighter (Barbarian), Wizard (Anagakok), Cleric (Shaman, Feral Child), and Thief (Savage Bard). Now all we really need to round out the party is an illiterate Psion :smalltongue:

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

No Time For Book Learning is a flaw (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterFlaws.htm) in Dragon 324 p93 which makes you permanently illiterate (i.e. you can't even learn to read later), and you also take a significant penalty on all Knowledge checks other than Nature.