The flesh trade is one of the most pivotal aspects of making any game grim-n-gritty. It immediately showcases that the campaign isn’t going to duck the uglier issues, and puts a more mature, more dark spin on things. After all, killing monsters and taking their stuff is one thing, but finding a thriving economy based around the buying and selling of sentient creatures is quite another. Of course, in such an economy, there’ll be people who specialize in the acquisition and training of such “merchandise.” Enter the Slaver advanced class.

Like all of the “Dispatch” series from RPGObjects, this product is a short one, being five pages in length (one of those pages being the OGL). The book opens with some grim (and slightly gruesome) flavor text showcasing the capture of a new slave. Following this are a few brief paragraphs about the kind of circumstances in an area that give rise to a Slaver, and some text about what sorts of character builds make best use of this advanced class.

A full 10-level class, the Slaver uses the Modern d20 rules, and isn’t Darwin’s World-specific. In fact, there’s no reason this class needs to be post-apocalyptic at all, as it’s certainly feasible to have such a character existing in the contemporary world, or possibly even the past. The class itself is based less around the process of capturing slaves, than it is about their training and breaking. The class abilities are both colorful and balanced (save for the mindcrusher ability, which has no cap on the total bonus it can grant), granting things like a small pool of obedient slaves the Slaver can command, or even the ability to change a slave’s allegiances! At the same time, the flavor text in the ability descriptions are minimal, meaning that the text never becomes uncomfortably detailed regarding the “how” of the Slaver’s slave-training abilities.

Overall, I found myself rather impressed with this advanced class. Save for the single mechanical problem mentioned previously, all of the class mechanics are well-done, being both innovative and colorful, as well as balanced. The flavor for the class is a bit on the sparse side, but there’s still enough here to thoroughly convey what it’s about and how it works best. Clearly, this is a class that will be regulated mostly to NPCs, but it helps fill a small but important niche in that regard. If your Modern campaign has a slave trade, the Slaver is an excellent addition.