Factotum

     The word "factotum" comes from the 16th century, and refers to an assistant, employee, or official who had a variety of duties and jobs. Today, we just call them 'interns' and don’t give them any money. We might more casually call them a 'gopher,' as in ‘gopher this’ and ‘gopher that.’

     There is a 3.5Ed D&D class called the Factotum; it is a jack-of-all-trades, of course. As a quick recap of the basic D&D classes, the fighter takes and deals damage. [Some classes might call them a meat-shield.] Wizards deal useful spells, and can deal damage to groups of enemies. Clerics heal and provide useful boosting spells to the party. The rogue disarms traps, sneaks around, and has a special sneak attack that can deal massive amounts of damage in the right conditions.

     Then there’s the bard. The bard does a little of everything with charisma and a dose of magic. The bard can heal, though not as well as a cleric, and has music abilities that increase the fighting capabilities of the group; he even has some arcane magic, though not as much or as powerful as a wizard, nor in as great of a variety. The bard is often considered the most social D&D class. They have some combat training like the wizard, and a lot of skill points.

     The factotum does smaller everything with a lot of training and observation skills. The factotum has almost as many skill points as a rogue, and has access to more skills than any other class. All of the skills, actually. They have “inspiration points” which regenerate each combat and allow them to gain intelligence-based bonuses to attacks, damage and skill checks. These points can also be used (as the factotum progresses) to cast spells, power some healing, or gain extra actions. By the time they reach their highest level, they gain a limited amount of ability to mimic other class features.

     I’ve played several different factotums. They have each wound up fulfilling a different role in the game. One was both a fighter and the party rogue. I also took a personality quiz from that color code book, and the result was evenly split between all four colors. Not fitting into archetypes happens to me all the time.

     I just like being able to adapt; I'm often unable to plan ahead as well as others, and being a factotum in games allows me to adapt to the situation. And when a game doesn't have one, I fiddle with the game until it does have one.