The Cipherwright
Plays like: the Wizard — the scholar-caster, weaving what others perceive.
The Cipherwright is the scholar who learned early that the deepest vault is a mind, and the sharpest blade is a well-placed fact. Spies, forgers, court analysts, and heretical librarians all study under this Calling — anyone who’d rather unravel a secret than a throat. They weave Threads: living cognitive constructs spun from stolen patterns, false memories, and borrowed faces, and they draw on the Knowing — the Chaos discipline that sits astride the Order/Chaos divide, trading in mind, pattern, fact, and illusion alike.
“Give me an hour alone with your letters and I will hand you back a stranger who signs your name.”
Quick Build & Core Stats
Section titled “Quick Build & Core Stats”Quick Build: High Intelligence, then Dexterity for defense, then Wisdom for saves. Choose the Veilwright Lexicon if you want to be the party’s face and infiltrator; Analyst for the puzzle-solver and counter-caster; Thoughtplayer for the outlawed witch-lineage of attention-riding.
- Hit Die: d6 (d6 + Con mod per level after 1st)
- Primary Ability: Intelligence
- Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom
- Armor: Light armor
- Weapons: Simple weapons, hand crossbows, rapiers, shortswords (no heavy weapons)
- Tools: Three of your choice from: thieves’ tools, forgery kit, disguise kit, cartographer’s tools, calligrapher’s supplies, any one gaming set
- Languages: Two of your choice, plus you can read any written language after studying a sample of it for 1 minute (Cipher’s Eye, below)
- Skills: Choose 4: Arcana, Deception, History, Insight, Investigation, Nature, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Religion, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
- Starting Equipment: A rapier or shortsword; a hand crossbow and 20 bolts or two daggers; a Cipherwright’s Codex (a coded ledger that serves as your ritual focus/spellbook analogue); a Focus Stone set in a ring, pin, or spectacles; light armor; a set of two tools from your list; a scholar’s pack or spy’s pack
The Cipherwright Table
Section titled “The Cipherwright Table”| Level | Proficiency Bonus | Features | Threads | Filament Techniques Known | Max Working Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +2 | Reaching: The Knowing; The Codex; Ritual Weaving; Threadweaving; Cipher’s Eye | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| 2 | +2 | Quick Read | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 3 | +2 | Lexicon chosen; Lexicon feature | 5 | 2 | 2 |
| 4 | +2 | Ability Score Improvement | 5 | 2 | 2 |
| 5 | +3 | Woven Reserve | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| 6 | +3 | Lexicon feature | 7 | 3 | 3 |
| 7 | +3 | Deep Cipher; Stolen Pages (first page) | 8 | 3 | 3 |
| 8 | +3 | Ability Score Improvement | 8 | 3 | 4 |
| 9 | +4 | Braided Thread | 9 | 4 | 4 |
| 10 | +4 | Lexicon feature | 10 | 4 | 4 |
| 11 | +4 | Cascade | 11 | 4 | 5 |
| 12 | +4 | Ability Score Improvement | 11 | 4 | 5 |
| 13 | +5 | Severed Pattern; Stolen Pages (second page) | 12 | 5 | 5 |
| 14 | +5 | Lexicon feature | 13 | 5 | 5 |
| 15 | +5 | Unbreakable Cipher | 14 | 5 | 6 |
| 16 | +5 | Ability Score Improvement | 14 | 5 | 6 |
| 17 | +6 | Master Weaver | 15 | 6 | 6 |
| 18 | +6 | Thread Beyond Sight | 16 | 6 | 6 |
| 19 | +6 | Ability Score Improvement | 16 | 6 | 6 |
| 20 | +6 | The Unwritten Page | 18 | 6 | 6 |
Class Features
Section titled “Class Features”Reaching: The Knowing. At 1st level you gain a Reaching into the Knowing, a Chaos discipline (mind/pattern/fact/illusion). You may attempt any Working of the Knowing up to your Max Working Tier, but you must know its shape first — and a Cipherwright keeps every shape they have ever learned in one place: the Codex (below). Casting a Working spends Fray as normal, subject to your Faith Die and the 75%/cap thresholds. As with every Chaos discipline, your Fray never clears on a short rest — a long rest of genuine stillness restores half of it (a quarter if the rest is broken), and its losses are drawn from the Loss Menu you wrote at character creation. Your eyes flash magenta and absorb light on every cast, giving watchers advantage on Insight to read you. Casting above your base Tier requires your Focus Stone; if it’s sundered by a called shot, you’re capped at cantrip-tier Knowing until you rebond it over downtime.
The Codex (your library). Your Cipherwright’s Codex is not a list of what you can do today — it is the ledger of everything you have ever decoded, and it has no upper limit. It begins play holding six Tier-1 Workings of the Knowing of your choice, and each time you gain a Cipherwright level you decode two more Workings of any Tier you can attempt into its pages, the ordinary fruit of your study. Beyond that, the Codex grows the way any good archive does: by theft, purchase, and witness. Whenever you find a Knowing Working written down — a rival’s cipher-ledger, a temple fragment, a dead colleague’s marginalia — or personally witness one cast and hold its shape in mind, you may transcribe it into your Codex over 2 hours of work and 10 seals of inks per Tier of the Working. A Working transcribed is a Working owned; the Codex forgets nothing.
Prepared Workings (your loadout). The Codex is the vault; your working memory is the key-ring. From the Workings in your Codex, you hold a number prepared equal to 2 + your Cipherwright level — these are the shapes you can weave at casting speed. When you finish a long rest with your Codex in hand, you may re-select your prepared set from anywhere in its pages: the infiltration loadout on Tuesday, the counter-caster’s kit on Wednesday. A Cipherwright who reads their ledger before bed is never the same caster two days running.
Ritual Weaving. A Working woven slowly is a Working the self barely feels. When you cast a Working directly from the open Codex, taking 10 minutes or more over the weaving — tracing the cipher line by line as you go — it costs no Fray at all. The Working must be in your Codex (prepared or not) and its Tier can be no higher than half your Max Working Tier, rounded up. The slow channel carries no urgency and no edge; it is how a Cipherwright unpicks a lock, reads a dead man’s letters, or drapes a safehouse in a false face without spending an ounce of themselves. The eye-flash still shows. It always shows.
Threadweaving (signature resource). You hold a pool of Threads, shown on the table. As a bonus action you may spend 1 Thread to weave a Filament — a small, sustained construct from your known Filament Techniques (below). You know one Filament Technique at 1st level and a second at 2nd; you learn an additional Technique at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level (six known in all), as shown on the Cipherwright table. A woven Filament persists until you dismiss it (free action, at will) or it triggers/expires. The first two Filaments you weave between long rests cost no Fray — light weaving is the Cipherwright’s tempo. But the Knowing bills the self like every Chaos discipline: every Filament you weave after the second since your last long rest costs 1 Fray (rolled against your Faith Die as any Chaos cost, minimum 1). The mind that spins too many threads at once starts to lose track of which are the world’s and which are its own. You may hold woven Filaments simultaneously up to a number equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1); beyond that, the cognitive load imposes disadvantage on Concentration saves and on your Knowing Faith Die rolls until you drop below the limit. You regain half your Threads (round up) on a short rest and all of them on a long rest.
Cipher’s Eye. At will, as no action or as part of another action, you may read a surface pattern you can see or touch — a lock, a forged seal, a person’s tell, a page of unfamiliar script. You gain advantage on the check to interpret, appraise, or read it, and can identify whether it was shaped by a Working (and its discipline) with a successful DC 10 + Tier Intelligence (Arcana) check.
Quick Read (2nd). As a bonus action, spend no Thread to glance a single creature’s stance, breathing, and eyes; you learn whether it currently has an active Working, a woven construct of its own, or an elevated Strain/Fray total (numbers hidden, thresholds only).
Woven Reserve (5th). Whenever you roll your Faith Die twice for a cast dead-center of your Tenet and take the higher, you also regain 1 spent Thread.
Deep Cipher (7th). Your Filaments may now encode a full sentence or gesture-sequence rather than a single fact or face, and you may weave one at range (30 ft.) instead of by touch.
Stolen Pages (7th). Every discipline is a language, and you have learned that all languages leak. Choose one Working from any other discipline — Order or Chaos — that you have personally witnessed cast with your own eyes. Over downtime, you decode it into your Codex (the usual transcription: 2 hours and 10 seals of inks per Tier) as a Knowing-approximation: not the thing itself, but a cipher of it, reconstructed from pattern alone. You may prepare and cast it as if it were a Working of the Knowing, except it costs +1 Fray above its Tier — a borrowed shape never sits quite right in the channel. Your eyes still flash magenta; the stolen page does not change what you are. At 13th level you may decode a second such Working. A stolen page, once transcribed, is yours forever — but it can never be woven through Ritual Weaving; approximations demand your full attention.
Braided Thread (9th). Once per turn, you may spend 2 Threads instead of 1 to weave two different Filaments as a single bonus action.
Cascade (11th). Once per long rest, for 1 minute, you may hold Filaments beyond your Intelligence-modifier limit (up to +2) without the Concentration/Faith Die penalty.
Severed Pattern (13th). As a reaction when you see a creature within 60 feet cast a Working or trigger a woven construct, spend 3 Threads to force an Intelligence saving throw (DC 8 + proficiency bonus + Intelligence modifier); on a failure the effect fizzles or the construct unravels.
Unbreakable Cipher (15th). Your Filaments can’t be dispelled or unwoven by anything below Tier 5. Additionally, you may choose to let your eye-flash lie: enemies attempting to read your magenta flash via Insight now suffer disadvantage instead of gaining advantage.
Master Weaver (17th). Once per short rest, weave two Filaments for the cost of one.
Thread Beyond Sight (18th). For +1 Thread, you may weave a Filament targeting any creature or place you have physically touched or previously cast a Knowing Working on, with no line of sight required, anywhere on the same plane.
The Unwritten Page (20th, capstone). Once per long rest, cast a Working of the Knowing spending only Threads (1 Thread per Tier, no Fray) and treat your Faith Die roll as if you’d rolled it twice and taken the higher, even if the cast isn’t dead-center of your Tenet.
The Three Lexicons
Section titled “The Three Lexicons”The Veilwright — illusion and disguise
Section titled “The Veilwright — illusion and disguise”3rd — Second Skin. Your appearance-altering Filaments also plant a false but coherent memory of the interaction in one creature affected (Wisdom save negates, DC = your Working save DC). 6th — Woven Ambush. The first time each turn you hit a creature currently fooled by your Filament or a Knowing illusion, add your Intelligence modifier as extra damage. 10th — Full Cipher-Cloak. Once per long rest, weave a 10-foot-radius illusion (sight and sound) without spending a Thread. 14th — Unseen Author. Your illusions resist detection by Insight or any sense below Tier 5; a creature you choose who knows the illusion is false can still act through it as if it were real to others.
The Analyst — divination, pattern-reading, counter-magic
Section titled “The Analyst — divination, pattern-reading, counter-magic”3rd — Pattern Sight. As a reaction, spend 1 Thread when you see a Working cast to learn its discipline and Tier and gain advantage on any save against it. 6th — Counter-Cipher. You gain an early, cheaper Severed Pattern: as a reaction, spend 2 Threads (instead of 3, and before 13th level) to force the save described in Severed Pattern. 10th — Read the Weave. After studying a creature for 1 minute, you sense whether its Strain, Fray, or Conviction is elevated (thresholds only, not exact numbers). 14th — Perfect Deduction. Once per long rest, automatically succeed on an Intelligence check to solve a puzzle, cipher, or identify a Working’s true nature.
The Thoughtplayer — attention-riding, the witch’s Knowing
Section titled “The Thoughtplayer — attention-riding, the witch’s Knowing”The Lexicon the academies do not teach. Thoughtplaying is a family-private lineage of the Knowing — trained at home, usually mother to daughter, never written down, and outlawed: the OCTA flags and hunts discovered thoughtplayers. Its law is absolute and older than any charter: the mind you touch always feels the touch. A thoughtplayer does not read minds unseen; they ride attention, and the ridden always know a rider is there — the art is in what you do with the moment after they feel you.
3rd — Attention-Riding. Spend 1 Thread and fix your eyes on a creature within 60 feet: you ride its attention for up to 1 minute, perceiving what it perceives and the surface current of its thought (impressions, not sentences). The target immediately feels the touch — always, no exceptions — and may make a Wisdom save at the end of each of its turns to throw you off. While riding, you have advantage on Insight checks against the target and know when it lies. 6th — Shared Sight. Weave a Filament to a willing creature: for 1 hour you and they may see through each other’s eyes at will. As a reaction while sharing, you may lend your vantage — grant them advantage on one attack roll or check you could plausibly inform. 10th — The Played Thought. As a bonus action against a creature you are riding, place one clear thought in its mind. It knows the thought is not its own — that is the terror of it — but must make a Wisdom save or act on a one-sentence suggestion (nothing directly self-harming) on its next turn. 14th — The Long Ride. Once per long rest, ride deep: over one minute of unbroken eye contact (willing, restrained, or unaware you began), descend past attention into memory. Ask the GM three questions about the target’s memories or intentions; they are answered truthfully. The cost is the lineage’s oldest warning: the ride runs both ways — the target learns one true thing about you, chosen by the GM, and knows exactly who was in their mind.