By Colin Chapman.
Your 'blood' is foul and harmful to other beings, causing them damage when they wound you with unnarmed attacks. Perhaps your blood is acidic, molten or toxic, or maybe it's full of tiny, flesh-eating maggots.
Whenever you are wounded in hand-to-hand combat by an unarmed opponent, they take damage equal to half of the damage they inflicted on you, rounded down.
By Colin Chapman.
You have an extra pair of arms on your torso for each schtick you spend on this ability.
Each extra pair of arms allows you to perform an extra 3 shot action in that sequence, using that pair of arms.
Each extra 'pair' of arms enables you to attack an extra opponent with no penalty in hand-to-hand combat.
A practical limit of 2 extra pairs of arms has been set. Any more than that would merely obstruct each other or become uncontrollable. Extra arms also have other uses like allowing you to carry more weapons, etc.
By Will Timmins.
Vaguely similar to Transformation, but the new forms are not real, and the Schtick may be used to take any form wished on each use. Using False Images to take a form requires a task check on Creature Power against a difficulty of 8. If the Outcome is negative, this is the number of shots that your Image is in flux until the new Image takes.
Whenever someone viewing the Image has a good reason to be suspicious of it, that person may make a task check vs Creature Power of the user. If this succeeds, the character gets a strong feeling that the Image is false, and a rough feeling (based on the Outcome) of what the real being may look like.
Task check uses: Willpower, Perception, Magic, Sorcery (if has Divination or Summoning schticks).
Skills such as Police, Detective, Journalism, Seduction, and Medicine may be used under the right circumstances.
Sorcery may also be used if the Sorceror is using Influence on the creature. Creature Power may be used if Corruption or Domination is being used on the creature.
The sorcerous special effect of Divination 'Revelation' uses Creature Power as difficulty, but success sees through the Image completely.
Note that False Images does not make the creature any harder to see, and the size of the image must be at least roughly similar to the actual size of the creature (+/- 30%).
Anytime Impairment increases or damage is taken equal to or greater than the user's Creature Power level, another Creature Power task check must be done. If failed, this is the number of shots the Image is somewhat disrupted.
There are always at least three characteristic things wrong with the false image, two picked by the player, one by the GM. Examples include eyes of the original being, hands of the original being, voice of the original being, shadow of the original being, stench of the original being, footsteps are burnt, reflections show original being, moves as original being, ...
If a limitation can be noticed by a character (I.E.: eyes of the original being not covered up by sunglasses), the character gets a task check, at +2, to "see through" the Image. Limitations can be compensated for, somewhat.
With one extra schtick, remove one of the player-chosen limitations. With two, remove both player-chosen limitations. There are no further levels of False Images.
By John Sullivan.
Loyal Horde is a creature power intended to simulate things like that mass of big scary rats Dracula has in some versions of the story and similar things.
I've tried really hard to keep this from being cheesey, and would appreciate opinions as to whether I've succeeded. The horde doesn't do much damage in combat, except with several levels. It's really intended mostly for atmosphere and things like scouting and spying missions, freeing you by chewing through the ropes, distracting spellcasters and getting blasted instead of you, and so on.
In combat, since it does so little real damage, I expect it would mostly be used for taking out unnamed characters, which is good. You don't want the heroes to be too seriously inconvenienced by a bunch of pissed off alley cats.
You have a group of animals of a single type that are permanently and completely loyal to you. Within the limits of their capabilities, the horde (swarm, pack, what have you) will do whatever you ask of them, even if it requires them to sacrifice their lives. Note that this does not give you control over all members of a particular species, only the individual members of your horde. If some or all of those members are destroyed, the horde will be temporarily weakened, but will be back to full strength by the next game session.
You can communicate intuitively with members of the horde while in their presence, but do not have direct control over their actions or the ability to see through their eyes, etc.
The horde will appear when you summon them unless you are in some place they could not possibly reach (GM's discretion, but depending on the type of animal there should be relatively few such places since the animals will do whatever they can to answer the call. Within a high rise building, a swarm of bees might suddenly come pouring through the ventilation shafts, etc.)
In combat the horde can attack using your creature powers score as its AV and doing 3 points of damage per schtick spent on this power. Ordering your horde into battle is a 3 shot action, but these orders can be complex enough to designate everybody on the other side as an enemy, and the horde will then attack any members of the opposing side as opportunities arise without further involvement from you. If you wish to change their orders in mid-combat, to designate a specific target for example, you may do so as another 3 shot action. In the absence of other orders, your horde will automatically attack anybody involved in close combat with you.
The number of creatures in your horde depends on the type of animal, with hordes of larger creatures having correspondingly fewer members. As a rule of thumb, assume that for each schtick spent on this power, your horde has about the same mass as a human body. Thus, if you choose large dogs, your horde might consist of only 2 dogs per schtick, while a horde of cats or large birds might have a dozen members per schtick, rats 25 or 30 per schtick, and a swarm of bees hundreds per schtick. (Two creatures is the minimum number of members of a horde and so you can't choose any creature larger than a good sized dog. No prides of lions, etc.) You can spend a maximum of four schticks on this power.
Transformed animals may also take this schtick, limited to the type of animal they formerly were or are descended from if the GM agrees that a horde of this kind of creature makes sense. (Elephants, or Dragons for example, definitely do not.)
A note on hordes of poisonous creatures: Your horde comes with all the usual capabilities of the creature in question. However, they are not intended to do more damage than the horde schtick would give them. Therefore, if you select a poisonous creature with the ability to seriously injure or kill a person (rattlesnakes, scorpions, etc.) you must also buy one level of the Poison ability for the horde for each level of Loyal Horde.
By Trevor Placker. ("When I say 'hulking henchman,' I mean it.")
You're Really Big. This means you can crush mortals like jelly, shrug off sword blows, and take great lumbering strides, but you're maybe not so good at springing nimbly out of the way of man-pack missiles. Mechanically, each level of Really Big gives you +2 Body (and all secondary attributes of Body), but reduces your Dodge value by 1. Each level also doubles your mass, so if the standard monster is about human-sized (50-100kg), one level makes you 1-200kg, two levels makes you 2-400kg, three level 4-800kg, and four levels (the maximum allowed for PCs) up to 1.6t. This may cause you problems with doorways, floors, furniture, and nutrition, but no one ever said it was easy being a monster.
Optional: for unnamed monsters, each level of Really Big decreaes Dodge by 1, but increases the Outcome needed to take you out by 1.5 (round down, so +1/3/4/6 for 1-4 levels of Really Big).
By Colin Chapman.
You have two heads. This enables you to look in two differnet directions at the same time, and concentrate on two separate tasks with no penalty. You also gain +2 Per, and Continuous actions have no shot cost for you. In addition there is no penalty for using ranged weapons against 2 separate targets simultaneously, providing you can make two such attacks with separate arms.
By Colin Chapman.
You may crawl around walls and ceilings at half your normal Move rate. Perhaps your hands and feet feature a multitude of tiny suction cups, or near-invisible hooks and ridges. You adhere to the surfaces with a Str of 10.
By Colin Chapman.
You can produce webbing from a bodily orifice. The webbing is created in a long thin strand (about as thick as cord). You can produce 1m of webbing per sequence for every schtick you spend in this ability. The webbing has a Str of 10 for purposes of binding, suspending weight, etc.
When you take this schtick you must choose whether the webbing is sticky or dry. Sticky webbing is great for traps and has a glue Str of 8. The creating character is immune to her own glue, but obviously other characters can't use such webbing without being stuck. Dry webbing, on the other hand can be used as a strong silken cord by other characters. Webbing has a vast variety of uses. The creating character can dissolve the webbing at any time by using her saliva.
Last modified: May 31st, 1997; please send comments to durrell@innocence.com.