There’s something off about this gaggle of rustic peasants. They’re all curly-haired and docile. They seem to stick together like a herd of cattle not a band of people. Some are so hairy that they almost seem to be covered in a thick coat of wool. Not a one of them stands out from the crowd as a leader - yet they move as if led about by an unseen shepherd. Their attitudes and appetites are just a bit off. Oddest of all are their eyes - they all have the unnerving, rectangular pupils of sheep. But they couldn’t actually be sheep, right?

A Flock of Sheeple acts as one character. There are a lot of them (though the exact amount seems to vary from scene to scene) and they contribute about as much as one actual character. They are a bunch of sheep-eyed humans(?) milling about in the back of the scene, doing sheepy things, kind of half-paying attention, and mostly serving as colorful detail.

Starting Equipment: Many small clubs, undyed woolen garments or thick woolly body hair, many pairs of shears.

Starting Skills:

Tailoring and Dairy Farming.

For each template of Flock of Sheeple you have, gain +2 hit points.

A: Herd Mentality, Ruse Uncovered

B: Escape the Pen, Steel Wool

C: Means of Abundance

D: Wake Up, Fecund Flock

Herd Mentality

The Flock of Sheeple has a shared HP pool just like a normal character. Every point of damage causes a single sheeple to die in an inconsequential background sort of way. Area of affect attacks and traps only affect them once. Single-target Save or Die effects instead cause the Flock of Sheeple to lose 1 HP. Other single-target spells usually affect all the sheeple. Mutations might affect all the sheeple or simply fade out as new sheeple rotate in.

Somehow they consume the same ration as one person. Sheeple are vegetarians.

If the Flock of Sheeple is reduced to 0 HP, they become strewn about the place, wounded and moaning, miserable and unable to help anyone until healed. If they are reduced below 0 HP they all die in a suitably tragic and cruel-to-sheep fashion.

The Flock of Sheeple has 5 inventory slots total. They can carry more things but they will inevitably lose, smash, ruin, sell, or eat all but 5 items. Weapons and armor are carried separately and do not occupy inventory slots. In order to gain any benefit from a weapon, armor set, or magic item, The Flock of Sheeple needs 10 copies. Give them 10 swords and they deal sword damage, etc. They spend money collectively and irresponsibly.

If you need to determine exactly how many sheeple are present, roll 1d12+6. This number varies encounter to encounter and even round to round. When performing basic unskilled labor, like digging a trench or carrying buckets, the Flock of Sheeple counts as 10 people for the first hour, 5 people the next hour, and give up after the third hour. They occupy an area 20' square whenever possible, spreading as needed (a 5' wide 80' long line, etc.).

Ruse Uncovered

Whenever a sheeple dies, it is revealed to have been a sheep all along. Until a sheeple dies, there is no way to prove that it is a sheep in disguise. Sheeple harvest the wool of their dead for clothing but vehemently oppose their use for food - such sheep corpses are spirited away quickly by other sheeple after dying.

Escape the Pen

Once per day, the Flock of Sheeple may wander out of the scene and reappear on the other side of a visible barrier. This need only be remotely feasible but takes about a minute. They can use this to bypass fences, gates, castle walls, and other such impediments.

Steel Wool

As long as they are wearing woolen garments or have suitable thick and woolly body hair, sheeple have defense as chain.

Means of Abundance

While it’s impossible to confirm the presence of any sheep, the Flock of Sheeple always seems to have an excess of sheep byproducts available. Each day, roll 1d6. The sheeple can reveal up to that result in sheep milk rations (milk, cheese, curds, etc.) and inventory slots of wool products (clothing, yarn, blankets, etc.) in any combination. They need not reveal them all at once.

Wake Up

You fool. You woke up the sheeple. The Flock of Sheeple is immune to mind control and sees through propaganda. They resent your world for being broken and corrupt and consider martyrdom for their flock to be a double victory. Once per day, the Flock of Sheeple can reduce the damage of any attack to 1. The sheeple that took the attack dies messily.

Fecund Flock

The Flock of Sheeple regenerates 1 hit point every 10 minutes as other members of the herd trickle in to replace the fallen, as long as it has at least 0 hit points.

If the Flock of Sheeple is ever reduced to negative hit points it is no longer destroyed immediately. Instead, all Sheeple present are slain and the Flock must check every 10 minutes on a 1-in-6 to see if it can begin regenerating. It only has 3 such attempts until it is destroyed, but the chance rises to 2-in-6 per check if the nearby terrain is pastureland or a trained shepherd is available to go look for lost sheeple. If it succeeds on one of these checks, the Flock regenerates 1 hit point every 10 minutes, reappearing near the party once it reaches 1 hit point.

Design Notes

This was a fun one. I was actually originally trying to make a sheep-themed Mystic (see the very cool and creepy class by Swords & Scrolls), but I kept getting stuck - the vision I had in my head wasn't translating. On my lunch break, it hit me. I was doing all of this thinking about how I could possibly balance giving a character a whole herd of somehow useful sheep to adventure with, but I hadn't considered an obvious alternative. What if the character was the sheep?

Many Goblins is a hilarious class; I was laughing continually when I read it for the first time, but I also just loved the idea of playing a whole mob of slightly better than useless little dudes. But zany goblin mobs don't fit every game, tonally or species-ally (yikes). The sheeple are a bit more serious - you could probably play them for horror if you wanted, and a bunch of dead sheep is definitely more tragic than a bunch of dead goblins. The Flock of Sheeple is more than just a reskin of Many Goblins though; aside from the Shared Totals/Herd Mentality features they are almost entirely different. Here are some thoughts on that:

1. A Flock of Sheeple is tougher, but Many Goblins are more resilient. Sheeple are not awkwardly capped on their maximum hit points, gain natural armor, and eventually a powerful damage negation ability and "regeneration". Many Goblins have Goblin Warlords, which effectively allow the mob to repeatedly rise from the ashes like a phoenix. Until the 4th template, the Flock of Sheeple is simply destroyed if it falls below 0 hit points.
2. A Flock of Sheeple is utilitarian, but Many Goblins are eccentric. The zany potential of Use Thing and Goblin Warlord are huge, but bypassing obstacles and acquiring food and cloth goods are always useful to adventurers.
3. Each Goblin Warlord is a once per encounter round of Goblin Time Stop. It is action economy. The Flock of Sheeple has nothing close to this, but a lot of nice abilities that have intuitive use cases. Really, I think of the Flock of Sheeple as a more practical and grounded cousin of Many Goblins.

Finally, I like classes that scale. While I'm very happy with the Flock of Sheeple, I'm not honestly sure how they should grow from adventuring in the way other adventurers do (through gear, as even the Many Goblins can do). Perhaps they shouldn't, or perhaps there could be rare crops to feed on or magical breeds of sheep to... well you can't confirm that they breed with them, but that's certainly how sheep might get stronger if the Flock of Sheeple were actually a bunch of sheep in disguise. That's up to the GM to decide though!