HomeCreating Your Character in Tavern Tales
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Creating Your Character in Tavern Tales
by Admin Mon Jun 06, 2016 11:40 pm
Go here for more general rules for Tavern Tales: https://3almigos.forumotion.com/t1-tavern-tales-rules
You start the game with 10 XP and 2 Treasure. You also have an item slot capacity of 5.
To purchase your Stats and Traits, you use XP. The first of anything you purchase for a category (Each individual Stat, Exploration Trait, Interaction Trait, etc) costs 1 XP. The second costs 2 XP, and so on. Treasure is spent much the same way, but for your items, and items have their own set of Traits. You can also use treasure for general purchasing, but most items do not cost any Treasure to purchase.
When you first purchase your Stats, you can choose to lower a Stat below 0, to a max of -2. You gain extra XP equal to the amount you would have spent to make it positive of that value (3 if -2, 1 if -1). To increase these stats later (if you so choose), you must spend XP equal to its negative value to raise it (2 XP to go from -2 to -1).
Treasure is spent much the same way, but it is used to buy traits for your items instead, which have their own list. If something isn't worth what you would think to be $100 (and doesn't have a trait) it costs you 0 Treasure to purchase. You can purchase item traits to apply to your body, instead of applying them to an item. They function the same was as normal traits, but they are permanent and obviously can't be sold.
Normally, an amount of items that can be held in one hand, or otherwise constitutes a handful, counts as 1 Item Slot. Normal clothing does not take up a slot, but clothing with a trait does. Every player can have ordinary backpacks or pouches etc, which themselves do not take up an item slot.
Traits
These are what make your character unique to the world. Traits are left mostly ambiguous, so that players can work with their GM to see how they might work in that particular game's world. They also have some pointers written with them to help you work them out, and roleplay them. These descriptions are only examples. You do not have to adhere to them strictly. Simply ask your GM if you can use them another way.
Themes
Themes are a handy helper to separate traits into certain categories, and give you hints about what kind of a character may have them. In Tavern Tales, there are no classes. You can pick Traits from any Theme you desire. The only thing Themes matter for are re-training, which takes 1 week. You can then replace one trait with other(s) within the same theme.
More in next post.
You start the game with 10 XP and 2 Treasure. You also have an item slot capacity of 5.
To purchase your Stats and Traits, you use XP. The first of anything you purchase for a category (Each individual Stat, Exploration Trait, Interaction Trait, etc) costs 1 XP. The second costs 2 XP, and so on. Treasure is spent much the same way, but for your items, and items have their own set of Traits. You can also use treasure for general purchasing, but most items do not cost any Treasure to purchase.
When you first purchase your Stats, you can choose to lower a Stat below 0, to a max of -2. You gain extra XP equal to the amount you would have spent to make it positive of that value (3 if -2, 1 if -1). To increase these stats later (if you so choose), you must spend XP equal to its negative value to raise it (2 XP to go from -2 to -1).
Treasure is spent much the same way, but it is used to buy traits for your items instead, which have their own list. If something isn't worth what you would think to be $100 (and doesn't have a trait) it costs you 0 Treasure to purchase. You can purchase item traits to apply to your body, instead of applying them to an item. They function the same was as normal traits, but they are permanent and obviously can't be sold.
Normally, an amount of items that can be held in one hand, or otherwise constitutes a handful, counts as 1 Item Slot. Normal clothing does not take up a slot, but clothing with a trait does. Every player can have ordinary backpacks or pouches etc, which themselves do not take up an item slot.
Traits
These are what make your character unique to the world. Traits are left mostly ambiguous, so that players can work with their GM to see how they might work in that particular game's world. They also have some pointers written with them to help you work them out, and roleplay them. These descriptions are only examples. You do not have to adhere to them strictly. Simply ask your GM if you can use them another way.
Themes
Themes are a handy helper to separate traits into certain categories, and give you hints about what kind of a character may have them. In Tavern Tales, there are no classes. You can pick Traits from any Theme you desire. The only thing Themes matter for are re-training, which takes 1 week. You can then replace one trait with other(s) within the same theme.
- General Traits:
- General Traits are special. They represent any type of character, as they are so general. They even have their own Trait category (not falling under Combat, Exploration, or Interaction). So, if you buy a General Trait, no matter what other traits you have, it only costs you 1 XP for the first, then 2 XP for the second, and so on. The following are General Traits:
Authority
You are an authority on a topic of your choice. You have as much authority as the GM to declare things about the game world related to your topic. You can do the following:
• Spend a Neutral Tale to worldbuild something neutral related to your topic.
• Spend a Good Tale to worldbuild something beneficial or positive related to your topic.
• Spend a Good Tale to have the GM honestly answer 3 questions related to your topic.
Describe: Recalling a fact from a book, a story where you learned the fact, making a shrewd observation.Topics: Alchemy, magic, history, politics, religion, geog-raphy, a country, architecture, elves, the sea.
Examples
Loremaster: You’re an authority on legends and history.
Sailed the 7 Seas: You’re an authority on the sea.
Raised by Wolves: You’re an authority on beasts.
Expert
You’re bolstered to do something. Collaborate on what you’re bolstered to do. After you spend your bolster, you regain it when your situation sufficiently changes.
Describe: Drawing from your experience, relying on muscle memory, your natural talent and expertise.
Examples
Beginner’s Luck: You’re bolstered to do something you’ve never done before.
Titan Slayer: You’re bolstered to fight the biggest, scariest opponent.
Charming Smile: You’re bolstered to charm and seduce.
- Alchemy:
COMBAT
Acid
You can dissolve a handheld item or an equivalent amount of material.
Describe: Sizzling chemical, acrid scent, bubbling green liquid, reducing something to frothy sludge.
Biohazard
You can expend a chemical that you did not create to tell a free Good Tale.
Chemicals: Black powder barrel, vial of acid, goo pud-dle, mushrooms, pool of monster blood, thick smoke.
Describe: Causing a chemical reaction, adding a spark to explosives, identifying a chemical’s properties.
Reactions: Explode, catch something on fire, heal some-one, blind, create a thick cloud, poison, create fireworks.
Flashbang
You can create an incredibly bright flash and loud bang in a zone. Creatures in the zone gain the condition “Blind and deaf” until the effects fade.
Describe: Bottled sunlight, sonic crystals, volatile chem-icals, shattering a sun crystal, fireworks, a bright flare.
Healing Potion
You can spend reagents to create a healing potion. Anyone who drinks it heals as if they received 1 day of uninterrupted bed rest and medical attention. Then, they gain the condition “Hungry and tired.”
Describe: A bubbling red liquid, a sweet-tasting potion, medicinal salves, brewing the potion in your lab.
Reagents: Curative herbs, pure water, bottled sunlight, tree sap, crushed fruit seeds, enriched blood, sugar.
Inoculated
Gain the defense “Inoculated ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to chemicals. Also, you’re immune to poison, disease, and related conditions.
Conditions: Disease, poison, venom, parasites, infections, blood curse, forced transformations.
Panacea
You can spend reagents to create a panacea. Anyone who drinks it replaces all conditions related to physical ailments with “Hungry and tired.” Physical ailments include things like poisons, diseases, and curses, not wounds like broken bones or severed arteries.
Describe: Distilled water so pure it washes away any-thing, drink an antitoxin, release cleansing vapors.
Conditions: Disease, poison, venom, parasites, infec-tions, blood curse, forced transformations.
Reagents: Distilled water, bottled cloud, soap, clear parchment pulp, spring water, a new leaf, starlight.
Poisonous
You have a poison. Collaborate on its properties. Creatures you poison gain the condition “Poisoned” and slowly start to suffer symptoms.
Describe: Injecting poison, venomous fangs, a toxic vial, poison-tipped blow darts, venom-coated weapon.
Symptoms: Muscle weakness, nausea, eventual death, paralysis, hallucinations, paranoia, anti-coagulation.
Tranquilizer
You have a tranquilizer. Collaborate on its properties. Creatures you tranquilize gain the condition “Tranquilized” and slowly start to lose faculties.
Describe: Brewing the chemical in your lab, loading it into a delivery system, how their senses go numb.
Faculties: Consciousness, sight, sense of feeling, ability to move, ability to talk, a certain trait, emotions.
EXPLORATION
Adamanthesive
You can adhere two things together. After about 1 minute, they’re permanently bound together. Collaborate on what dissolves the adhesive.
Describe: Alchemical glue, fusing molecules together, never-melting ice, stitching together the fabric of reality.
Dissolves By: Time, extreme heat or cold, a certain chemical, a magic phrase, pure distilled water, starlight.
Field Alchemy
You can harvest rare reagents. When you do, the GM tells you what trait the reagent contains. You can perform alchemy to transform the reagent into an elixir. Anyone who drinks it gains that trait as a temporary trait for several minutes.
Describe: Mixing chemicals in a lab, distilling essence, bubbling liquids, growing magic crystals, mad science.Reagents: Moss, monster blood, powdered monster bone, venom, mushrooms, tree sap, magic crystals.
Mutagen
You can spend reagents to create a mutagen, which can cause any effect imaginable. Collaborate on your mutagen’s effects. For every beneficial effect your mutagen has, the GM gives it a detrimental side-effect.
Describe: Brewing a bubbling potion, harnessing raw chaos, bottling a chain reaction, special lab equipment.
Effects: Reduce a building to acidic sludge, transform someone into a monster, cause a HUGE explosion.Reagents: Unstable chemicals, powerful bases, caustic acids, radioactive metal flakes, mithril flakes.
Side-Effects: It’s highly unstable, its radioactive, you mutate hideously, the fumes are toxic, it drains you.
Oil Slick
You can create an extremely slippery zone.
Describe: Spew oil from a hose, shatter a goo flask, se-crete from oily glands, shatter an oil barrel.
Philosopher’s Stone
You can turn certain materials into treasure. Collaborate on what materials you can transform.
Describe: Changing their chemical structure, reshaping reality, turning lead into gold, rebuilding atoms.
Thermite
You can spend reagents to create thermite. Anyone can spend about 1 minute setting it up to activate it. Once activated, it slowly and continuously burns a one-space tunnel through absolutely anything in whatever direction the user likes for several minutes. Thermite is absolutely unstoppable until it naturally burns out.
Describe: Billowing smoke, choking miasma, chemical fumes, bubbling chemicals, the acrid scent.
Reagents: Metal oxide, rust flakes, copper powder, gun powder, kindling, bottled flame, lamp oil, aluminum
INTERACTION
All-cohol
You can spend reagents to create all-cohol. Anyone who drinks so much as a sip instantly gains the condition “Drunk” and must act accordingly.
Describe: Distilling the alcohol, the fermentation pro-cess, ruddy cheeks and slurred speech, how it tastes.
Reagents: Yeast, barley, pure alcohol, liquor, wheat, hops, grains, distilled water, grapes, ripe fruit.
Drug
You can spend reagents to create an addictive drug. Collaborate on the drug’s properties.
Administered By: Ingestion, inhaling via smoke, injec-tion, inhalation through the nose, skin contact.Describe: Growing special plants, brewing in your lab, wearing a gas mask and gloves, breaking bad.
Properties: Extreme elation, hyperactivity, absolute fearlessness, itchy hives, sleeplessness, the munchies.Reagents: Herbs, roots, crushed leaves, powdered seeds, dissolved tree bark, lizard oil, swamp gas, fumes.
Love Potion
You can spend reagents to create a love potion. Anyone who drinks it gains the condition “Enamored” and falls in love with the next person they see who is of a race and gender they normally find attractive.
Describe: Light and fruity pink liquid, butterflies in their stomach, distilling the essence of desire.
Reagents: Butterfly wings, wine, strawberries, choco-late, hair from a virgin, sugar, sweat, spring water.
Perfume
You can give something an incredibly pleasant or unpleasant scent for about 1 day. If it’s pleasant, creatures are inexplicably drawn to the scent and gain the desire to possess the scent’s source. If it’s repulsive, creature are disgusted by it and don’t want to be near it. This may have the opposite effect on creatures like undead and vermin that are attracted to disgusting smells.
Describe: Heavenly scent, heady aroma, relaxed and pleasant feeling, euphoria, being light headed.
Pheromones
Collaborate on a base emotion or instinct. You can emit pheromones in the air. Anyone who breathes in your pheromones gains the condition “Instinct-Driven” and experiences the selected emotion or instinct with increasing intensity.
Describe: Musky scent, dilated pupils, mixing animal pheromones, working in your lab, altered biochemistry.
Emotions and Instincts: Survive, reproduce, find a pack, lust, fear, rage, hunger, envy, joy, sadness.
Snake Oil Salesman
You have a 50% discount on all purchases, and a 50% markup on all sales.
Describe: Flashing a warm smile, giving a sales pitch, haggling down the price, “But wait, there’s more!”
- Arcane:
COMBAT
Barrier
You can create a wall (max 1) of 20 spaces or less that lasts a few minutes. Shape it however you want, but don’t imprison anyone.
Describe: Creating a wall of force, conjuring a wall of iron, dividing reality with an impenetrable barrier.
Counterspell
Collaborate on how you charge this trait. At any point, spend the charge to make someone’s Tale utterly fail.
Charge: Write runes in your spellbook, enchant your staff with a null-spell, meditate in total silence.
Describe: Turning their power against them, activating a ward, triggering a contingency, casting an anti-spell.
Dispel
You can destroy or suppress magic.
Describe: Stealing magic, purging dark magic, teleport-ing energy, reshaping reality, siphoning magic.
Evocation
You can create an explosion in a zone.
Describe: Explosion of arcane energy, beam of pure en-ergy, cone of force, burst of raw chaos all around you.
Magic Resistance
Gain the defense “Magic Resistance ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to magic. You’re then immune to that specific magic for several minutes.
Describe: Conjuring a spell shield, your magical blood, have a resistant spirit, your spell-ward tattoos.
Magic Missile
You don’t need ammo to make ranged attacks, and your projectiles can turn corners to seek targets.
Describe: Conjuring orbs of energy, shooting blue lights, firing laser beams, creating ammo from the ether.
Metamagic
Collaborate on a resource associated with this trait, and how you acquire that resource. You can have 3 of that resource at a time. Spend 1 resource to choose 1 effect for your action:
• It’s much subtler or flashier.
• Approximately double the range.
• Approximately double the duration.
• Delay it from activating for a few minutes.
Describe: Infusing your spells with mana, activating runes, shouting words of power, using crystals.
Resources: Meditate to gather mana, inscribe symbols in a spellbook, gather energy from magical leylines.
Rewind
You can rewind someone, returning them to their status about 1 minute ago. Then, you can’t use Rewind again for about 1 minute.
Describe: Turning back time, jumping into a worm-hole, reversing time’s flow, casting chrono-magic.Status: Inventory, wounds, location, treasure, tempo-rary conditions, memories, physical condition.
Warp Time
You can accelerate or decelerate someone for a few minutes. Accelerated creatures move about twice as fast as normal. Decelerated creatures move about half as fast as normal.
Describe: Casting a chronomancy spell, reversing the flow of time, opening or closing the time stream.
EXPLORATION
Alter Time
You can alter time. Collaborate on what you do.
Alter Time: Undo an event, slow down time in an area, travel to the far future or distant past, restore youth.
Describe: Changing the flow of times, casting powerful chrono-magic, stepping out of the time stream.
Cantrips
You can perform minor magic tricks. You can do virtually anything with these tricks so long as the effect is comparatively weak.
Describe: Performing sleight of hand, creating a minor illusion, dazzling with showy magic, casting rote spells.
Tricks: Inscribe a permanent glowing rune, make a handheld item vanish or appear, light candles in a room.
Detect Magic
You can experience magic with your normal senses.
Describe: Seeing swirls of magic, how magic sounds, the stench of necromancy, the glow of divine magic.
Illusion
You can create a convincing illusion that lasts for several hours.
Describe: Bending light and shadow, creating a faerie illusion, deceiving their minds, casting twilight magic.
Invisibility
You can touch something to turn it invisible for several hours. Collaborate on what causes the invisibility to flicker, fade, and end.
Describe: Bending light and shadow, creating a faerie illusion, deceiving their minds, casting twilight magic.
Place of Power
Whenever you encounter a place of power, collaborate on what power you can draw from it.
Describe: Pulling forth a geyser of pure energy, devour-ing raw magic, bending energy to your will.
Places: Ley line, magic anomaly, dragon graveyard, pri-meval grove, heart of the mountain, sun temple.
Power: Amplify a trait, gain a temporary trait, deal more damage there, heal more quickly, enhance a stat.
Ritual
Whenever you want, tell the GM a powerful effect you want to achieve. The GM will tell you what you need to do to complete a ritual. If you fulfill the requirements, you achieve the desired effect.
Describe: Performing an ancient ritual, reciting magic phrases, chanting around a glowing circle.
Effects: Eternally seal a creature in a prison, raise a sunken ship, make a magic effect permanent.
Requirements: Visit a special location, sacrifice treasure, chant with other wizards, obtain a special item.
Teleport
You can teleport. Collaborate on what that entails.
Describe: Vanishing in a puff, rearranging spacetime, opening a wormhole, stepping across dimensions.
How it Works: You must have been there before, re-quires line of sight, requires intense concentration.
Wizard Eye
You can create an eye-sized item. You can see, hear, and sense through it whenever you want. It’s permanent and immobile, or it flies wherever you want and lasts for about 1 hour.
Describe: Conjuring a floating disembodied eye, en-chanting a crystal ball, activating a magic drone.
INTERACTION
Apprentice
You can designate 1 of your minions (max 1) as your apprentice. Their disposition toward you significantly improves and the end of their contract becomes “in exchange for guidance and hands-on training.” When you gain XP, your apprentice gains that much XP as well.
Describe: Leading by example, explaining the intrica-cies of your craft, testing their skills, bonding with them.
Familiar
Create a minion with half of your XP and the contract “_______ will loyally serve as your lab assistant, pet, and familiar in exchange for basic necessities.” If lost, collaborate on how you replace it.
Describe: Summoning a familiar, growing it from a drop of your blood, enchanting an animal to serve you.Familiars: Imp, cat, frog, snake, mouse, dog, monkey, small robot, raven, owl, drakeling, mana dragon.
Flawless Logic
You are far more persuasive with logic, reasoning, and evidence. You can sway others in situations when logic would normally fall on deaf ears. Collaborate on how your logical arguments exceed normal limitations.
Describe: Listing the facts, reaching a logical conclu-sion, using your sharp mind, outwitting someone.
Gentleman and a Scholar
When you show someone respect, they will match the amount of respect you show them until you show them disrespect.
Describe: Wearing a monocle, bowing graciously, giv-ing a firm handshake, showing due respect.
Just an Old Man with a Walking Stick
You can make someone grossly underestimate you until they see proof to the contrary.
Describe: Leaning heavily on your cane, acting awk-ward and socially inept, acting naive and harmless.
Mutual Edification
When you honestly reveal information to someone or answer one of their questions, they must share equally important information or answer an equally sensitive question.
Describe: Proposing an exchange, tricking them into talking, showing scholarly respect, educating each other.
Pedantic
You can make people listening to you gain the condition “Bored and Sleepy.”
Describe: Talking in one long incredibly unbroken sen-tence, your monotone voice, droning on and on.Topics: Spore varieties, extended noble lineage, Agazar’s Third Law of Arcano-Kinetics, ancient texts.
Polyglot
Collaborate on which additional languages you know.
Describe: How you learned another language, the lan-guage’s accent, speaking a sentence in the language.
- Artifice:
- COMBAT
Armor Plating
Defenses you gain from armor and shields each grant 1 additional box.
Describe: Steam-powered absorption plates, glowing symbols, thick chainmail, dragon-scale armor plating.
Arsenal
Draw a symbol next to 3 of your inventory slots. Items you place in these slots vanish from reality (but still occupy slots). No one else can access these items. Whenever you want, you can call any of these items to your person, or make them vanish again.
Describe: A sword appearing in your hand, summon-ing your hammer from the heavens, morphin’ time.
Deflect
At any point, you can break one of your weapons, shields, or armor worth at least 1 treasure to completely avoid a Bad Tale related to being attacked.
Describe: Sparks flying when blades clash, your abla-tive armor, taking the hit with your shield.
Dismantle
You can destroy a personal item, such as a weapon or suit of armor.
Describe: Striking a structural weak point, breaking it in half, matching its vibration frequencies.
Enchant
You can give a touched item 1 item trait (max 3) as a temporary trait for several hours.
Describe: Etching runes on its surface, treating it with magic oils, altering its molecular lattice structure.
War Machine
You can spend materials to create a war machine with half your XP. It’s inert without a pilot. The pilot uses the machine’s attributes instead of their own.
Describe: Steam-powered gears, shining metal, smoke billowing from a furnace, blinking lights. a console.
Machines: Power armor, steam-powered catapult, sub-marine, elemental cannon, clockwork steed, spider tank.Materials: Scrap metal, saw blades, shields and armor plating, rubber tubes, copper wires, gears, gizmos.
Warhead
You can spend materials to create a warhead. Once activated, it gathers power for about 1 minute and then explodes, causing massive damage out to a far distance. Only one attempt can be made to disarm it.
Describe: Bundle of explosives, glowing spell-bomb, an-timatter emitter, napalm tank, portable black hole.
Gathers Power: Ominous humming that grows louder, burning fuse, running hourglass, deep rumbling.
Materials: Oil, high explosives, firing pins, wire, metal casing, unstable chemicals, magic runes, gunpowder.
EXPLORATION
Forge
You can spend materials to create a magic item, or improve an existing item. Collaborate on the item’s properties. Stronger materials create more powerful items.
Describe: Hammering metal at a forge, performing the magic item naming ritual, imbuing an item with magic.
Materials: Iron, steel, mithril, metal from a meteorite, glowing crystals, dragon scales, blood oak, demon hide.
Grappling Hook
You can pull yourself to a far object, or pull it to you (whichever is more logical). If you or your target is falling, you can use this instantly.
Describe: Launching a grappling hook, throwing a teth-er, using a web-shooter, firing a magnet gun.
Identify
When you examine a magic item, the GM must tell you all of its properties. Then, collaborate on 1 additional property that you discover or unlock.
Describe: Reading an item’s aura, recalling its history, noticing tiny details that tell a deeper story.
Questions: How is this blade connected to demons? What happens when this shield touches sunlight?
Ingenuity
Your ability to fix, build, and deconstruct exceeds normal limits. Collaborate on what you’re capable of doing.
Describe: Tinkering with gears, your expert craftsman-ship, intuitively understanding how it works.
Mobile Fortress
You can spend materials to make a structure mobile. Collaborate on how it moves.
Describe: Steering the ship, activating a gravity revers-er, fueling the steam engine, triggering magic runes.
Mobility: Floats on water, hovers a few inches off the ground, flies, rolls, teleports to a visible spot at dawn.
Pocket Plane
You have an extradimensional space, which is a miniature universe. Collaborate on its properties. On your turn, you can open or close a portal to it.
Describe: Opening a door in the air, a floating island in space, a featureless room, an empty white nothing.
Properties: Size, temperature, if there’s fresh air, ap-pearance, dangers, flaws, how large the portal is.
Prosthesis
You can create a prosthesis and attach it to someone. Prostheses compensate for physical disabilities and can remove permanent conditions, such as amputations.
Describe: Attaching it through gruesome surgery, build-ing it in a workshop, collaborating with the recipient.Prostheses: Steam-powered arm, goggle eyepatch, go-lem leg, metal skin plates, clockwork heart.
Tool for the Job
You can instantly create an item, which persists as long as it’s in your presence. You have 1 rune to spend as if it’s treasure to buy item traits for these conjured items. You can sacrifice 1 treasure to give this trait +1 rune. Conjured items refund their runes when they expire.
Describe: Conjuring a tool out of nothing, creating a sword out of sunlight, making a shield out of ice.
Items: Sword, shield, suit of armor, candle, rope, chalk, water skin, hammer, nails, crowbar, pouch, hand drill.
X-Ray Vision
You can see through materials. Collaborate on what material you can’t see through.
Can’t See Through: Metal, wood, magic, stone, organic matter, smooth surfaces, things that are green.
Describe: Donning X-ray goggles, emitting X-ray pulses, peering through a magic gem, your eyes changing color.
INTERACTION
A Thing of Beauty
You can make someone obsessed with a visible item worth at least 1 treasure. They gain an overwhelming desire to possess it, or they focus on it while ignoring their surroundings.
Describe: Swinging a hypnotic pocket watch, showing a glittering gemstone, showing how the gears work.
BEHOLD!
You can make everyone believe that an item does something specific, even if it doesn’t. They cease to believe if they closely inspect the item.
Describe: Using words too big for anyone to under-stand, grandiose threats, cackling madly.
Buyer’s Market
In addition to what the GM decides is available at every market, shop, or fence you encounter, you can decide 1 additional thing that’s in stock.
Describe: Having a keen eye, knowing the best markets, tracking down merchants, sending order requests.
Communicator
You can spend materials to create a communicator. Creatures with one of your communicators can communicate with each another.
Describe: Handheld device, resonating sonic crystals, bottled air elementals, gizmos linked by ethereal threads.
Crazy Enough to Work
When you explain a plan that is even theoretically possible, it becomes perfectly feasible. The GM can’t cite logic, physics, or difficulty as reasons to decrease your rolls to enact the plan. Also, you’re bolstered to enact your plan.
Describe: Cackling madly, created absurdly complicat-ed blueprints, using technobabble, showing your math.
Don’t Push that Button!
If you warn somebody not to do something harmless and they do it anyway, tell a free Good Tale about how they made a terrible mistake.
Describe: Using big words to confuse them, implying terrible consequences, acting like you know a secret.
It’s Dangerous to Go Alone, Take This
When you give someone a new or improved item, they’re bolstered to use that item.
Describe: Use small words to explain how it works, giv-ing the right tool at the right moment, enchanting it.
Spark
You can give an item sentience. Collaborate on its personality, and if it can move and communicate. It gains XP equal to half your total XP. Its disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Inscribing a mind rune, enchanting it, giving it a True Name, igniting it with the life spark.
More in next post.
Last edited by Admin on Tue Jun 07, 2016 1:39 pm; edited 3 times in total
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 175
Join date : 2016-06-03 -
Re: Creating Your Character in Tavern Tales
by Admin Mon Jun 06, 2016 11:42 pm
- Bardic Lore:
- COMBAT
Boost Morale
When you rest for the night, you can bolster each of your present allies to do something during the next day. Decide immediately what they’re bolstered to do.
Describe: Exaggerating the day’s adventures, cracking jokes, playing tunes, telling a story, keeping spirits high.
Duel
You can challenge someone to a duel. Others can’t interfere with your duel until one of you wins the duel.
Describe: Telling them to prepare to die, challenging them, clashing swords and grinning at each other.
Feint
You can make someone hesitate, flinch, or suffer a moment of doubt.
Describe: Surprising them with impressive swordplay, insulting their mother, upstaging them, mocking them.
Flair for the Dramatic
Whenever things take a turn for the worse and you’re in serious danger, you’re bolstered.
Describe: Spitting out blood and laughing, showing your fighting spirit, improvising, a last-ditch effort.
Serious Danger: Some of your allies have been defeat-ed, you’re falling to your doom, you’re surrounded.
Inspire
You can bolster an ally to fight.
Describe: Giving a riveting speech, encouraging others, performing, singing a tune, playing an instrument.
Raise Spirits
Alcoholic drinks heal you as if they’re healing potions (refer to the Alchemy theme), except that they give you the condition “Drunk” instead of “Hungry and tired.”
Describe: Drinking to dull the pain, celebrating with a cold one, chugging, being a typical adventurer.Drinks: A bottle of wine, a massive stein of ale, a flask of liquor, a line of shots, a few mixed drinks.
Steal the Spotlight
Collaborate on how you charge this trait. Spend the charge to steal the GM’s Bad Tale and turn it into a Good Tale.
Charge: Do something unnecessarily risky, gain a crowd’s attention, steal all the credit, gain a reputation.
Describe: Shouting over them, doing something dra-matic, countering them in a spectacular display.
Swashbuckler
Gain the defense “Swashbuckler ☐☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while taking unnecessary risks.
Describe: Flair and panache, leaping head-first into danger, your devil-may-care attitude, laughing.Unnecessary Risks: Swinging over a lava pit, fighting on a ledge, insulting a deity, trying to ride a dragon.
EXPLORATION
According to Legend
When you start a quest or enter a new region, tell the GM that according to legend, something powerful exists in the area. The GM will give you a cryptic clue about where to find it. If you find the source of the clue, you locate the legendary power.
Clue: Where two trees intertwine, the deepest and dark-est part of the cave, surrounded by a thousand corpses.
Describe: Sharing a story you heard, mentioning a ru-mor, putting together clues from history books.Power: Lost treasure, magic shrine, portal to another world, underground dungeon, unhatched dragon eggs.
Comedy and Tragedy
Show your gaming group a “Comedy and Tragedy” token. At any point, give it to the GM to tell a free Good Tale; take it from the GM to have the GM tell a free Bad Tale. Start each session with the token in your possession.
Describe: How your fortune turns, an exciting plot twist, a shift in tone, poetic justice, how fate intervenes.
Exploration
Dramatic Entry
When you make a dramatic, flashy, or dangerous entrance you’re bolstered to do anything. If a lot of people watched your entrance, you’re bolstered again.
Describe: Swinging in on a rope, walking out of an ex-plosion, riding in on a unicorn, kicking down the doors.
Jack-of-All-Trades
You can gain any trait as a temporary trait (max 1). Collaborate on how that trait is flawed.
Describe: Pulling an ace out of your sleeve, getting be-ginner’s luck, improvising, seeing your training pay off.Flaws: It’s imprecise and messy, it’s exhausting, it’s less potent, you need a special tool, it’s loud and obvious.
Story Teller
While investigating something, you can announce that you heard an interesting story about it. Everyone at the gaming table quickly decides how much time they want to devote to an interlude (refer to Chapter 6). GM an interlude. Whatever happens in the interlude is what actually happened with whatever you were investigating.
Describe: Telling a story around a campfire, recalling a local legend, telling your friends a tale at a tavern.
INTERACTION
A Night to Forget
Whenever you engage in drunken revelry, you can announce it’s a night to forget. The GM tells you where you wake up and gives you 1 condition. Write on your character sheet that you have 1 fuzzy memory (max 5). Cross off a fuzzy memory to suddenly remember what you did that night, and how your actions that night somehow benefit your current situation.
Describe: Buying drinks for everyone, going bar hop-ping, visiting the brothel, throwing a wild party. Benefits: You’ve been here before, you seduced the evil villain, there’s a magic item in your pocket.
Cameo
When you earn an NPC’s respect and good will, write their name on your character sheet. Cross of their name to have them show up.
Describe: Bumping into them randomly, them saving you in the knick of time, spotting them in a crowd.
Fame and Infamy
Collaborate on a reputation for yourself (it doesn’t have to be true). Whenever you like, others know your reputation, believe at least part of it, and act accordingly.
Describe: Showing a signature scar or tattoo, giving your full name, saying “Don’t you know who I am?”
Reputations: Assassin who never fails, magically cursed, the land’s greatest duelist, a legend in the bedroom.
First Impressions
When you first meet someone, the GM must answer 1 question about them.
Describe: Reading their body language, going with your instincts, getting a general vibe, noticing a detail.
Honeyed Words
You are far more charming and convincing. You can sweet-talk others to do things that they would normally refuse. Collaborate on how your charm exceed normal limitations.
Describe: Giving an impassioned speech, calling in a favor, subtly manipulating someone, being charming.
Rumors
At any point, you can have the GM tell you 2 facts and 1 lie about whatever you’re investigating.
Describe: Overhearing gossip, trading for information, remembering rumors you heard while in town.
Small World
You can recognize an NPC as an old acquaintance. Explain how you know each other and how they feel about you.
Describe: Recognizing your old stomping grounds, looking up an address, hearing so-and-so is in town.Old Acquaintances: Drinking buddy, cousin, former adventuring partner, old flame, business partner.
Wingman
When you enter someone’s good graces, bolster an ally to socialize with that person.
Describe: Chatting up your friend, telling them what to say, lightening the mood, making introductions.
Villainous Monologue
You can make someone start rambling about whatever’s important to them until they reveal too much.
Describe: Letting them think they’ve won, buying them a drink, shouting “You’ll never get away with this!”
- Beast:
COMBAT
Envelop
You can put a smaller creature inside of you. They can’t escape until you’re defeated or you let them, and they gain the condition “Crushed” or “Digested” (your choice) while inside of you. However, physical conditions that they inflict on you are much worse than normal.
Describe: Swallowing someone whole, wrapping with tentacles, constricting them with your snake-body.
Fight or Flight
Collaborate on what constitutes being close to death. When you’re close to death, increase all rolls to fight or flee (choose one) until you’re safe.
Describe: Acting like a cornered beast, running on in-stinct, becoming feral, doing whatever it takes.
Fling
You can fling a creature that’s smaller or lighter than you a close distance.
Describe: Knocking them aside with horns, slamming into them, biting them and flinging them into the air.
Gorgon’s Gaze
You can set someone (max 1) under your gaze. While under your gaze, they move half as fast as normal and have the condition “Turning to Stone.”
Describe: Your serpentine eyes, freezing them with your baleful gaze, poisoning their mind and muscles.
Rend
You can attack someone to give them the condition “Bleeding Out.”
Describe: Going for the jugular, ripping their flesh to shreds, anti-coagulant venom, disemboweling them.
Trample
You can charge more or less in a straight line, moving through other creature’s spaces. Melee attack each creature you move through.
Describe: Crushing them underfoot, bull rushing past them, turning ghostly and ripping through their souls.
Tooth and Nail
Give your body 5 item traits. These don’t affect the cost of future item traits for your body.
Describe: Glossy chitin armor, thick scales, serrated teeth, curved talons, a tail with a barbed stinger.
EXPLORATION
Burrow
You can slowly burrow through the earth. If you like, leave behind a 1-space tunnel.
Describe: Digging with heavy claws, slithering through soil like a worm, pushing apart rock with your mass.
Cheetah’s Swiftness
Collaborate on how you’re much faster than normal, and how quickly traveling like this exhausts you.
Describe: Sprinting at top speed, running in leaps and bounds, charging across the open plains.
Enhanced Senses
Collaborate on an enhanced natural sense that you have.
Describe: Studying others with slitted cat-eyes, sniffing the air or the ground, your ears perking up suddenly.Senses: Bat-like echolocation, wolf-like sense of smell, cat-like night vision, rabbit-like sense of hearing.
Kaiju
Collaborate on how you’re bigger or smaller than normal.
Describe: Tiny frame, high-pitched voice, massive size, shaking the earth with each step, booming voice.
Spin Web
You can produce sticky or non-sticky web strands that are stronger than steel chains. If sticky, they powerfully stick to everything other than you that they touch.
Describe: Spinning a deadly web, dangling strands from the ceiling, platinum strands that glimmer faintly.
Swarm
You can disperse into a swarm or reconstitute around one of your component pieces. At the GM’s discretion, losing parts of your swarm may harm you.
Describe: Falling apart, vanishing in a cloud of crea-tures, scattering into holes and cracks, dispersing.Swarm of: Rats, bats, snakes, ants, bugs, leeches and worms, flies, motes of light, woodland creatures, birds.
Wall Climbing
You can adhere to any solid surface, including ceilings.
Describe: Holding on with powerful claws, adhering with sticky feet, attaching with webbing or sticky goo.
INTERACTION
Awaken Beast
You can give an animal human-like intelligence and the ability to speak. Collaborate on its personality. Its disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Unlocking its mind, giving it a fragment of your consciousness, accelerating its evolution.
Alpha
When you defeat a beast, you can force it to become your minion with the contract, “_______ will loyally serve you in exchange for indulging its instincts.”
Describe: Holding your teeth to their neck, staring them down, integrating them to your pack, a battle of will.
Beast Master
You can communicate with animals.
Describe: Growling and grunting, reading each other’s minds, understanding the animal’s chittering as words.
Call of the Wild
You can cause all animals in the region to follow a basic instinct of your choice.
Describe: Unleashing a primal roar, provoking their in-stinct, starting a stampede, releasing pheromones.Instinct: Stampede, gather around a certain location, calm down, flee the area, protect this territory.
Gift of the Pack
You can give all of your far allies one of your traits (max 1) as a temporary trait for as long as they’re in your presence.
Describe: Leading your pack, spreading a hive mentali-ty, having monkey see monkey do, moving as one.
Hive Mind
Collaborate on which creatures are in your hive mind. Creatures in a hive mind share consciousness; when one learns something, everyone else in the hive learns it as well.
Describe: Sharing your consciousness, ruling as the hive queen/king, forming a primal bond.
Play Possum
You can look convincingly dead for as long as you like.
Describe: Going limp, your skin taking on a ghastly hue, exaggerating your wounds, slowing your heartbeat
- Command:
- COMBAT
Abandon All Hope
When you fight enemies who have seen warnings of your power or ferocity, gain 1-3 Good Tales to show them why they should have heeded your warnings.
1 - Ominous (war drums in the distance)
2 - Obvious (you decapitate their emissary)
3 - Horrific (a pile of corpses with your flag at the top)
Describe: Crushing their hope, spreading fear and men-ace, emboldening your troops while terrifying theirs.Warnings: Roar in the distance, war drums, haka dance, pile of corpses, decapitated heads on pikes.
Banner
You can baptize an item worth at least 1 treasure in the blood of worthy foes (literally or metaphorically). The item becomes your banner (max 1). You and allies each gain the defense “Under a Banner ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to battle while the banner is visible. If it’s lost or destroyed, you and allies gain the condition “Demoralized” until it’s replaced. Banners are inherently flashy and attract enemies’ attention.
Banner: Flag, coat of arms, shield with an emblazoned symbol, glowing arcane symbol, skull on a pike. Describe: Waving a banner, getting inspiration from a greater cause, holding it above the battlefield.
Give Order
You can give your ally an order and your unspent Good Tale. They resolve the Good Tale instead of you, but only if they use the Good Tale to follow your order.
Describe: Shouting a command, warning someone of incoming danger, call for a flanking maneuver.
Shake it Off
You can make someone ignore all conditions that they can logically ignore for about 1 hour. Then, draw a symbol next to those conditions. Those conditions can’t be affected by your Shake it Off again.
Describe: Inspiring them to press on, yelling at them until they stand back up, getting their adrenaline going.
Victory Rush
When you win a fight or overcome a challenge, bolster yourself or an ally to do something of your choice.
Describe: Feeling alive, reveling in your triumphs, standing over your fallen foes, sharing in glory.
War Cry
When you enter combat, bolster one of your allies to fight.
Describe: Giving a riveting speech, throwing back your head and giving a war cry, shouting “CHARGE!”
EXPLORATION
Fortified
Gain the defense “Fortified ☐☐☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while in a fortified location you control. The maximum number of boxes you can mark depends on your fortifications:
☐ - Light fortifications (boarded cabin, bottleneck)
☐☐ - Strong fortifications (keep, cave)
☐☐☐ - Heavy fortifications (castle, fortress)
Describe: Invading neighboring territory, claiming land for yourself, taking the spoils of war, stealing resources.
Just as Planned
You can write down an event that’s out of your control. Seal it in a document with a code name on it and give it (max 5) to the GM. When the event happens, the GM opens the document and reads it. If the GM agrees that you predicted the event, tell as many Good Tales as you like until the odds are significantly in your favor.
Describe: Creating a master plan, building contingencies, creating Plan B, preparing for the future.
Mount
You can gain a minion (max 1) with half of your XP and the contract “_______ will loyally serve as your mount in exchange for basic necessities.”
Describe: Building a mount, calling it from the ether, ordering one from your organization, taming a beast.
Mounts: Horse, unicorn, hippogriff, griffon, manticore, dragon, boar, shark, bear, wolf, lizard, wyvern, spider.
Reinforce
You can spend resources to fortify a location beyond what is normally possible. Collaborate on what fortifications you can provide, and how you achieve them.
Defenses: Walls withstand siege attacks, there’s an an-ti-magic field, your moat attracts magic beasts.
Describe: Buttressing the structure, casting protective wards, consecrating the land, infusing it with magic.
Stronghold
You own a heavily defensible, self-sufficient stronghold. Collaborate on the stronghold’s properties. If you like, it has staff dedicated to upkeep. They’re your minions with the contract “____ will maintain your stronghold in exchange for safely living there.”
Describe: Overseeing your staff and subjects, reinforc-ing walls, securing territory, negotiating with neighbors.
Strongholds: Wizard tower, keep, fortress, cave system, battleship, tree-top fortress, extradimensional castle.
INTERACTION
Basic Training
You can train your minions to give each 1 XP (max 5 XP per minion).
Describe: Commanding your minions, inspiring them with your presence, leading by example, training them.
Call in the Cavalry
You can designate some of your minions as cavalry and send them off to wait and prepare. You can have your cavalry arrive at your location, just in time.
Describe: Blowing a war horn, giving a signal, seeing them over your enemy’s shoulder, shouting “NOW!”
Companion
Gain a minion (max 1) with half your XP and the contract “_______ will loyally serve you in exchange for being treated like a friend or trusted servant.”
Describe: Keeping a squire, teaching an apprentice, keeping a mercenary on retainer, traveling with a friend.
Draft
When you acquire minions, you can acquire twice as many as normal.
Describe: Promising gold and glory, inspiring others to action, leveraging your social connections, paying well.
Fealty
When you achieve glory, minions who shared in your rewards replace the second half of their contracts with “in exchange for nothing.”
Describe: Appealing to their patriotism, building loyal-ty, forging bonds of honor, ruling with an iron fist.
Initiation Vows
Collaborate on a vow. All of your minions follow that vow, no matter the cost.
Describe: Creating a strong culture, forcing them to swear an oath, binding them by blood.
Vows: Never reveal secrets, uphold honor, defend the leader at all costs, fulfill a deity’s dogma, stay hidden.
Marshal Forces
Collaborate on a special type of minion that you can create beyond what is normally possible, and their contracts. Their disposition toward you is significantly improved.
Describe: Turning corpses into zombies, building ro-bots from scrap, laying eggs that hatch into spawn.
- Dragon:
- COMBAT
A Dragon Never Forgets
After someone wrongs you and gets away with it, write their name on your character sheet. Cross off a name to tell a free Good Tale to get revenge.
Describe: Brooding in your lair, plotting vicious re-venge, monologuing, hatred burning in your eyes.
Carnage
Physical conditions you inflict are much worse than normal. Collaborate on what that means.
Describe: Tearing off an arm, burning their skin, break-ing a bone, plucking out an eye, ripping skin to shreds.
Dragon’s Breath
Collaborate on how you charge this trait. Spend the charge to attack all combatants, excluding you.
Describe: Breathing fire, causing an avalanche, roaring so loud their ears bleed, blasting air with your wings.
Like Crushing Insects
Instead of rolling to overcome a risk on your turn, you can gain a free Good Tale to defeat 10 or fewer minions in whatever horrific fashion you please.
Describe: Crushing them underfoot, ripping out their guts, reducing them to ash, flinging them away.
Scales Like Tenfold Shields
Gain the defense “Scales Like Tenfold Shields ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale from a weapon. When you do, that weapon shatters, breaks, or is otherwise rendered temporarily unusable.
Describe: A sword shattering on your hide, knocking away a hammer, igniting a bow in dragonfire.
Stoke the Furnace
You can gather power. When you tell a Good Tale, you can release all of your gathered power to make your Tale more powerful. Collaborate on what that means.
Describe: Fire burning in your throat, glowing eyes, the ground shakes, electricity sparks around you.
Power: An explosion is bigger, break down a wall in-stead of a door, shoot a spell much farther than normal.
EXPLORATION
Gem-Encrusted Hide
You can destroy a magic item to make it permanently part of you, as if you are now the magic item. When you’re slain, the items (or at least the parts necessary to reforge them) can be recovered from your corpse.
Describe: Magic coursing through your veins, feeding on raw energy, storing treasure inside of your body.
Lair
When you sleep in a place that you control, you can designate it as your lair. Gain the defense “Lair ☐☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while in your lair. Alternatively, mark a box to increase a roll related to your lair.
Describe: Shaping the world in your dreams, imposing your will on the terrain, attracting wildlife like you.Lairs: Volcano filled with magma pools, sub-zero gla-cier, humid jungle, fetid swamp, maze-like tunnels.
My Precious
You know the exact location of items worth at least 1 treasure that you’ve touched before. Also, the GM must answer honestly whenever you ask how much something is worth.
Describe: Feeling the pull of gold in your blood, your gold-colored eyes, covetously hoarding treasures.
Smokescreen
You can fill all far spaces with thick, obscuring smoke or fog.
Describe: Stoking the flames, breathing smoke and ash, boiling water into steam with your fire breath.
INTERACTION
Pride
Gain the defense “Pride ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to damaged reputation or social status. Then, gain a free Good Tale to improve your reputation or social status.
Describe: Looking down at your inferiors, your regal bearing, building a fearsome reputation.
Serve or DIE!
Whenever you torture or kill one of your minions, your other minions who watched you change the end of their contract to “in exchange for not being tortured or killed.”
Describe: Devouring a weak link, crushing them like an ant, finding their lack of loyalty disturbing.
Terrifying Glory
You can make everyone stop what they’re doing and give you their undivided attention, even if for just a few moments.
Describe: Bellowing a command, doing something ter-rifying, showcasing your incredible grandeur.
Tribute
After you showcase your incredible power, name a person or organization who knows what you did. They freely offer you a tribute.
Describe: Warning that they’re next if they don’t pay you, terrifying peasants, showcasing your grandeur.Tributes: A seat of honor at a major event, treasure, minions, land, a promise not to enter your territory.
You Are All Beneath Me
Whenever you want, unimportant NPCs instinctively treat you like royalty, showing you incredible respect or terror.
Describe: Looking down at them, intimidating them with your power, threatening their pathetic lives.
- Elements:
- COMBAT
Affinity
Collaborate on a threat you’re completely immune to, and another threat that you’re especially vulnerable to.
Describe: Immunity to flames but weakness to frost, immunity to magic but weakness to physical harm.
Blaze
You can create a damaging zone for several minutes.
Describe: Setting the ground ablaze, growing ra-zor-sharp ice shards, generating a lightning field.
Cataclysm
You can start a natural disaster. Once started, the disaster is out of your control (but you might be able to influence it).
Cataclysms: Tornado, hurricane, earthquake, blizzard, heat wave, dust storm, thunder storm, gale force winds.
Describe: Unleashing raw elemental power, shattering nature’s balance, turning your emotions into magic.
Frostbite
You can freeze less than 1 space of material in ice.
Describe: Locking them in ice, freezing their blood, cov-ering them with frost, surrounding them in earth.
Immolate
You can give something the condition “On Fire.”
Describe: Igniting their clothes, setting their soul ablaze, surrounding them in blue fire, elemental havoc.
Electrocute
You can paralyze someone for a second or two.
Describe: Electricity arcing from person to person, throwing a bolt of lightning like a javelin.
Path of Fire
You can leave behind a trail of harmful elemental fury in all spaces that you vacate. The trail lasts a few minutes.
Describe: Leaving fire in your wake, creating a deadly static field, raising earth spikes, creating frost shards.
EXPLORATION
Control Weather
You can change the weather to anything that the region could reasonably experience this time of year. The weather changes in a few minutes or hours (GM’s choice).
Describe: Changing the air pressure, creating moisture, bringing in a cold front, shaping the clouds.
Clutch of Earth
You can change the effects of gravity in the area.
Describe: Changing magnetic fields, altering earth’s density, enhancing the pull of gravity.
Earth Walk
You can move through stone, metal, and earth as if they have the consistency of mud. You can breathe normally and sense your surroundings while in these materials.
Describe: Changing magnetic fields, altering earth’s density, enhancing the pull of gravity.
Flight
You can fly. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Sprouting wings, running across the air as if it were solid, riding on powerful winds.How it works: You need safe take-off and landing zones, it’s exhausting, you can carry a few others.
Iron Body
You weigh up to 20 times more than normal and can’t be forcibly moved.
Describe: Rocky skin, iron-hard bones, the gravity of earth pulling you, a body made of stone and crystals.
Shape Element
Collaborate on an element. You can create 1 space of that element, or manipulate several spaces of that element.
Describe: Practicing element-bending, extending your hand and commanding the elements to respond.
Terraform
You can reshape the landscape. The terrain changes over the course of days or weeks (GM’s choice).
Describe: Growing a mountain, diverting a river, bur-rowing a cave, opening a chasm, flooding lowlands.
Tremors
You can sense the movements of things touching the earth within about 1 hour’s travel in all direction. Also, you can put your ear to the ground to hear the vibrations of very distant things.
Describe: Feeling the earth tremble beneath your feet, sensing subtle vibrations, hearing the earth rumbling.
Water Breathing
You can breathe water and ignore extreme pressures associated with deep water.
Describe: Growing gills, infusing your body with pri-mal water, creating an air bubble around your head.
INTERACTION
Calm the Storm
You can make others become significantly more passive, calm, and reasonable. This ends if someone acts threateningly toward them.
Describe: Quenching the fires that rage in their hearts, creating a soothing breeze, soothing their inner turmoil.
Fan the Flames
You can significantly intensify whatever emotions creatures are currently feeling.
Describe: Adding fuel to their passions, igniting their souls with elemental energy, sparking their desires.
Port in the Storm
You can find a safe haven that will safely harbor you and your allies for as long as you stay there. The locals will freely offer some sort of aid, or the aid will already be there if the safe haven is unpopulated.
Aid: Food and shelter, fresh weapons or armor, infor-mation, guides, minions, medical attention, potions.
Describe: Sensing a safe area, feeling the air is calmer over there, following a soothing wind, following warmth.
Safe Havens: Hidden cave, a house owned by friends, politically neutral ground, forgotten cabin in the woods.
Still Air
You can give something the condition “Silenced” for several hours. Silenced things can’t make any noise whatsoever.
Describe: Freezing air in place, absorbing sound waves with the earth, keeping the air perfectly still.
Words on Wind
You can name someone and speak a few sentences. They will hear your message after a few moments. Then, they can speak a few sentences; their message returns to you in a similar fashion.
Describe: Projecting your voice through the air, sending a message to the four winds, exhaling an air elemental.
- Faith:
- Please read the rules on creating your own deity for some of these to function.
COMBAT
Bless
You can give someone (max 1) the defense “Blessed ☐” for several hours. They mark it when they suffer a Bad Tale related to harm.
Describe: Praying for divine protection, anointing them with sacred oils, warding them against evil.
Blinding Light
You can give someone the condition “Blind” until their vision clears.
Describe: Emanating divine light, your glowing weap-on, a shaft of golden light, searing sunlight.
Crusade
Whenever you fulfill your deity’s dogma in a meaningful way, you’re bolstered to fight.
Describe: Finding strength through faith, praying for divine strength, cleansing your sins before a fight.
Lay on Hands
You can touch someone to heal 1 of their physical or spiritual conditions. Then, the GM tells them how long they’re immune to your Lay on Hands (the stronger the condition, the longer the immunity).
Describe: Your hands glowing with radiant warmth, pouring your deity’s energy through your body.
Martyr
When you’re physically harmed, bolster one of your allies to avenge you. When you’re physically defeated, bolster all of your allies to avenge you.
Describe: Making a sacrifice for the greater good, in-spiring others through your steadfast faith.
Shield of Faith
Gain the defense “Shield of Faith ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while furthering your deity’s dogma,. Then, gain a free Good Tale related to your deity’s domains.
Describe: Earning your deity’s protection, standing strong in defense of your faith, creating a light shield.
Smite
If you attack someone that your deity despises, destroy them outright. If they’re more powerful than you, give them a crippling condition instead.
Describe: Your sword burning with holy fire, your deity filling you with divine wrath, casting them into hell.
Turn
You can repel far creatures that your deity despises. They can’t approach you, but you can approach them.
Describe: Lifting your holy symbol, shining divine light that burns them, asking your deity to protect you.
EXPLORATION
Consecrate
You can turn a worthy feature of the terrain into a permanent shrine to your deity.
Describe: Anointing the earth with holy oil, a pillar of light illuminating the area, blessing the holy ground.
Worthy Features: Grand church, statue of your deity, heathen’s grave, representation of your deity’s domain.
Light
You can illuminate something in bright light, which lasts for as long as you want. Collaborate on something very general and vague that causes the light to change color or glow more brightly. Also, collaborate on what causes the light to fade.
Changing Light: Someone’s approaching, you have strayed from the path, there’s hidden danger here.
Describe: Your eyes glowing with divine light, seeing the world as your deity sees it, knowing the one truth.
Fade: Time, the light is exposed to something your deity despises, the sun sets, the light can be washed off.
Miracle
When the GM agrees that you significantly advance your deity’s dogma, write on your character sheet that you hold your deity’s favor. Cross it off to perform a powerful miracle that falls under your deity’s domains.
Describe: Praying to your deity for sacred power, serving as a conduit for divine wrath, doing the impossible.Miracles: Resurrect the fallen, receive a vision, know the divine truth, banish a heathen to another realm.
Pilgrimage
When you reach one of your deity’s holy sites, you’re bolstered three times to do anything.
Describe: Using church contacts, receiving a vision on the path to sanctuary, completing a sacred journey.
Sanctuary
When you enter one of your deity’s holy sites, name 1 threat. Until you leave, that threat cannot enter the holy site or harm anything in the holy site.
Describe: Praying for blessed sanctuary, activating holy wards, rebuking foul heathens, finding inner peace.
Scry
You can view and sense distant areas as if you’re standing there. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Receiving a vision, see a distant area in a dream, look down on the area from the heavens.
How it works: You must have been there before, the area must embody your deity or one of its domains.
INTERACTION
Atonement
You can give a defeated creature a quest, which becomes their foremost goal in life. If they complete it, their disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Promising redemption, showing them the one true path, offering mercy and understanding.
Chosen One
Fellow worshipers of your deity regard you as the chosen one, a divine representative of your deity. They treat you accordingly and will go out of their way to help you.
Describe: Declaring yourself a prophet, your divine blood, rising to the highest rank in your religion.
Inquisition
You can force someone to honestly answer 1 question if they’re injured, or all of your questions if they’re defeated.
Describe: Torturing them, intimidating them, breaking their spirit, turning the screws, punching their wound.
Judgment
You can sense sin. Collaborate on what that entails.
Describe: Seeing a dark stain upon their soul, reading your deity’s divine ledger, feeling profane corruption.
Pray
Your deity responds to your prayers (in some form or another). Your deity must reveal their will to you and may also reveal things related to their domains.
Describe: Hearing your deity’s voice, seeing a sign that reveals your deity’s will, feeling the right choice.
Proselytize
You can give someone the immediate urge to fulfill part of your deity’s dogma, or convert to your faith (their choice).
Describe: Preaching, giving a fiery sermon, manipulat-ing their guilt and passion, promising divine rewards.
Rabble Rouser
You can stir up a crowd to become incredibly passionate, motivated, and extremist about something they care about. Unless stopped, their extremism spreads and grows.
Describe: Appealing to their sense of duty, giving them a righteous cause, obligating them through scripture.
Zealotry
Add “or fulfilling your deity’s dogma” to the end of your minions’ contracts.
Describe: Appealing to their sense of duty, giving them a righteous cause, obligating them through scripture.
- Martial Arts:
- COMBAT
Catch Blade
Gain the defense “Catch Blade ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale from something small enough that you can catch with your empty hand. If it’s a weapon, you can take it from the attacker.
Describe: Catching a sword between your hands, grab-bing an arrow before it strikes you, punching a spell.
Crane Stance
If you are not yet attacked in combat and someone charges you, prevent their attack and tell a free Good Tale against them.
Describe: Waiting in a defensive stance, giving them a chance to stand down, being passive like the waves.
Drunken Master
When you’re drunk, you’re bolstered to fight. If you’re extremely drunk, you’re bolstered three times to fight.
Describe: Wobbling in a confusing rhythm, using the alcohol to fuel your energy, hiccuping, ruddy cheeks.
Finisher
You can knock out a creature that isn’t significantly more powerful than you. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Delivering an uppercut, putting them in a sleeper hold, paralyzing them with a special technique.
Fist of the East Star
If a creature you damaged in the last several minutes dies, you can have it remain alive but incapable of fighting. For the next several hours, you have total control over their biology.
Affect their Biology: They explode, their arm breaks, they fall asleep, they’re permanently paralyzed.
Describe: Hitting a pressure point, striking their sacred chakra points, using a forbidden death technique.
Iron Grip
Once you grab something, nothing can forcibly break your grip except amputation or defeat.
Describe: Grabbing on with an iron grip, using a wres-tling move, putting their limbs in a lock, jumping on.
Judo
You can make a creature hit itself.
Describe: Turning back their momentum, using their size and recklessness against them, tripping them.
Pressure Point
When you exploit a creature’s weakness, tell a free Good Tale against it.
Describe: Striking their most vulnerable spots, hitting their chakra points, hurting a nerve cluster.
Stunning Palm
You can make a melee attack that causes the target to skip their next turn. Then, they’re immune to your Stunning Palm for several minutes.
Describe: Stunning them with a blow to the head, incapacitating them with a kidney shot, locking their chakra.
EXPLORATION
Balance
When you experience extreme imbalance, write the imbalance on your character sheet. Cross it off to gain a free Good Tale to balance the scales.
Describe: Pursuing moderation and balance, observing yin and yang, restoring order, seeking true harmony.
Centered Breath
You can hold your breath for about 1 hour, and you only need about 1 hour of sleep instead of the normal amount.
Describe: Meditating quietly, controlling your breath-ing and pulse, benefiting from harsh training.
Enlightenment
You can ask any question, which the GM must answer. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Understanding the inner workings of the uni-verse, achieving true understanding, seeing the truth.
Leaping Tiger
Collaborate on how much higher and farther you can jump than normal. Also, you can wall jump.
Describe: Making great leaps, gliding through the air, jumping from wall to tall, leaping with the wind.
Light Feet
Collaborate on how much farther than normal you can fall without suffering harm. All solids and liquids can support your weight.
Describe: Balancing on a single blade of grass, leaping with the grace of a cat, falling like a feather.
Third Eye
You can perfectly see everything within a far distance, stripped away of all illusion and deception; you see things as they truly are. This functions even if you’re blind.
Describe: Using supernatural senses, seeing things as they truly are, sensing everything within your ki aura.
INTERACTION
Karma
When you perform a sacrificial good act that doesn’t benefit you whatsoever, write on your character sheet that you gain 1 Karma (max 3). Spend 1 Karma to tell a free Good Tale.
Describe: Balancing the cosmic scales, achieving har-mony, completing a karmic cycle, getting a fair reward.
Pacifist
Gain the defense “Pacifist ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while pursuing nonviolence or showing mercy. When you do, name an immediate impending threat; it won’t come to pass, or it will be much less severe if it does come to pass (GM’s choice).
Describe: Extending your hand to an enemy, disarming a foe and leaving them unharmed, seeking peace.
Sensei
When you give someone in-depth and thoughtful advice, they’re bolstered to follow your advice.
Describe: Seeing what they cannot, understanding the bigger picture, telling a fable to convey a lesson.
Training Montage
You can retrain in about 1 hour instead of 1 week. Others who train with you during this time can also retrain.
Describe: Working out, sparring, singing Eye of the Chimera, pushing each other beyond your limits.
- Nature:
- COMBAT
Entangle
You can bind someone to their location until their bindings are destroyed.
Describe: Growing roots to ensnare its feet, wrapping it in vines, lashing it with a thorny vine-whip.
Faerie Fire
You can give someone the condition “Faerie Fire” for several hours. They glow and cannot successfully hide, no matter what. Their silhouette is faintly visible through opaque surfaces.
Describe: Illuminating them in an otherworldly blue glow, surrounding them with buzzing faeries.
Roots
You can root yourself to the ground. You can’t be forcibly moved unless the ground you’re rooted to is moved. While rooted, you have the defense “Rooted ☐☐☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to physical harm.
Describe: Joining with the earth, entrenching into the ground, growing roots and vines that grab on.
Thorns
When someone attacks you skin-to-skin, gain a free Good Tale to harm them. Wearing thick clothes or armor may suppress this effect (GM’s discretion).
Describe: Thorns growing out of your skin, your net-tle-like skin, poisonous toxins oozing from your pores.
Undergrowth
You can create a zone for several minutes. Creatures other than you move through it about half as fast as normal.
Describe: Creating thick underbrush, raising roots to trip feet, growing wooden spikes from the earth.
EXPLORATION
Druidic Stones
You can imbue the terrain with one of your traits. Creatures in the terrain have that trait as a temporary trait.
Describe: Creating standing stones with glowing runes, attracting magic will-o-wisps, empowering nature.
Faerie Ring
You can walk in a circle to create a faerie ring. Collaborate on how everything inside the circle is hidden.
Describe: Casting fey magic, creating a glamour, drap-ing a curtain of light and shadow over the area.
Hidden: Wisps confuse intruders, the contents look like part of nature, a maze-like forest disorients travelers.
Favored Terrain
Collaborate on a biome. Gain the defense “_____ Master ☐☐,” with the name of your biome in the blank. Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that relates to that biome. Alternatively, you can mark it to increase a roll related to your biome.
Biomes: Underground, plains, forest, urban settings, the open sea, jungle, desert, tundra, swamps, mountains.
Describe: Drawing from past experience, knowing how to use the terrain, attuning to nature around you.
Fortress Seed
You can create a fortress seed (max 1). Plant it and name a structure. The seed grows into that structure in a few minutes or hours, depending on size.
Describe: Harnessing nature’s power, causing rampant growth, how vines and roots grow explosively.
Structure: Bridge, building, wall, fortress, door, boat, ladder, stairs, tree, fence, wagon, statue.
Tree Meld
You can move through wood as if it is the consistency of sap. You can breathe normally and sense your surroundings while in wood.
Describe: Turning your skin into wood and vines, melding with the tree, swimming through the wood.
Verdant Growth
You can reshape 1 space of plant matter, or cause far plants to grow as if they had 100 years of uninterrupted growth. You can cause plants to bear fruit in this way.
Describe: Causing vines to twist and grow, shaping wood like clay, creating an explosion of rampant growth.
Wild Step
Rough natural terrain such as mud, thick roots, or snow never hinders your movement. Also, you don’t leave behind any tracks.
Describe: Stepping lightly, running like beasts of the wild, nature changing to accommodate your steps.
Will-o-Wisp
You can create a will-o-wisp, which is a very small but eye-catching guide. Name someone and describe something. The wisp will intelligently guide that person to the closest place that matches your description. It has supernatural knowledge and can locate anything that isn’t hidden. They fulfill their purpose eternally unless you dismiss them or they’re destroyed.
Commands: Bring villagers here, lure bandits to my trap, bring my allies to me, guide me to safety.
Describe: Conjuring a mote of light, following a bird, calling a pixie to serve you, following a shooting star.
INTERACTION
Fey Beauty
You are supernaturally attractive. Others are significantly more inclined to seek your romantic affection. Collaborate on what this entails.
Describe: Flawless skin, deep eyes, lovely curves, pouty lips, flowing hair, strong jawline, high cheekbones.
Awaken
You can animate a plant into a living, thinking, mobile creature. Collaborate on their personality. Their disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Awakening its sleeping soul, accelerating its growth, giving it the primal gift of consciousness.
Commune
You can communicate with nature guardians. Guardians are powerful spirits that represent the biome where they live. They seek to protect their biome and hold incredible power it.
Describe: Performing a tribal dance, burning incense to awaken the spirit, seeing it manifest under starlight.
Guardians: Silver stag in the tundra, lava beast in a volcano, ancient tree in the forest, water spirit in the sea.
Power: Reshape the land, control local animals, know everything that happens within their biome.
Fey Curse
You can relinquish power you have over someone to curse them. The more power you relinquish, the stronger the curse. Collaborate on the curse’s effects and what lifts the curse.
Curses: Sleep until they’re kissed, they can’t leave a for-est, they turn to stone at daytime, they lose their voice.
Describe: Saying a magic poem, casting a powerful enchantment, twisting their fate-strands, hexing them.
Relinquished Power: They break your deal, they grovel at your feet, you hold their most prized possession.
Fairy Gold
You can make an item (max 1) look like 5 treasure for several hours.
Describe: Casting a fey glamour, deceiving with an il-lusion, altering its appearance, enchanting their desires.
Tree Speaker
You can communicate with trees and other large plants.
Describe: Hearing voices in the creaking wood, drawing forth their tree-soul, speaking through the earthmother.
- Occultism:
- Work with the GM to create a patron.
COMBAT
Blood Link
You can link 2 willing creatures, designating one as the giver and the other as the receiver. Any harm the giver suffers is instead transferred to the receiver. The link ends when either person wants it to end. If you link a defeated creature, they don’t have to be willing and the link doesn’t end when they want it to. Collaborate on what ends it.
Describe: Stitching their souls together, creating a thaumaturgic link, altering the strands of destiny.
Blood Sacrifice
You can give yourself a condition and bolster to do anything.
Describe: Sacrificing your blood to your patron, flagel-lating yourself, letting your parasite feed.
Pound of Flesh
You can give someone an exact copy of one of your conditions.
Describe: Making them pay blood for blood, evening the cosmic scale, getting bloody revenge, causing recoil.
Terrify
You can give someone the condition “Terrified.”
Describe: Showing them their worst nightmare, giving them a glimpse of your patron, using dark magic.
Vessel
You can mark a creature you’re touching (max 1) as your vessel. You can use your traits through your vessel as if you’re standing at their location.
Describe: Using blood magic to control its muscles, treating its soul like a puppet, sharing your power.
Marks: A tattoo that glows with hellfire, a scar-rune, a glowing symbol floating above their forehead.
Voodoo
If you destroy or defile something that is important to someone else, gain a free Good Tale to tell against them.
Describe: Creating a voodoo doll, using thaumaturgy magic, corrupting their essence, your dark ritual.
EXPLORATION
Cast into the Void
You can open a 1-space hole to the void for several minutes. The void is in an endless, empty nothing. Anything cast into the void is gone for all eternity.
Describe: Cutting open a bloody wound in the uni-verse, opening a portal, creating a swirling black hole.
Circle of Binding
You can walk in a circle. When you’re finished, create a barrier along the circle. Absolutely nothing can cross the barrier except light and sound. Collaborate on what breaks the circle.
Breaks the Circle: Time passes, an item touches it, you touch the circle, a secret word is spoken, night falls.
Describe: Drawing runes in chalk, lighting candles in a ring, creating a magic circle, using pact magic.
Conjuration
You can link a creature you’re touching with an item you’re touching, or to a new item you create. Whoever holds the item can expend the link to instantly summon the linked creature to the item’s location.
Describe: Pulling on a soul-tether, opening a portal to the destination, conjuring it in a puff of smoke and fire.
Darkness
You can create a zone of pure darkness for about 1 day. No light can enter the zone.
Describe: A swirling black hole, drowning the light, a pulsating black star, shadows spreading like a swarm.
Defile
You can give the terrain a descriptor outside of what is natural for that terrain. Collaborate on how the terrain gradually shifts to match your descriptor.
Describe: Spreading magic, spilling your patron’s blood on the earth, weakening the barrier between realms.
Descriptors: Hellish, web-strewn, rotten, sacred, ver-dant, crawling, swampy, barren, nightmarish.
Portal
You can create a portal (max 5). Anyone who enters one of your portals can emerge at one of your other portals.
Describe: Creating teleportation stones, building way-points, creating a wormhole, opening a portal.
INTERACTION
Binding Contract
If you like, contracts and agreements you sign or mediate are magically enforced. They can’t be violated by any means (Agreeing to the contract “You can’t speak of an event” means you literally lose the ability to speak of it forever). The contract or agreement must mention that the terms are binding.
Describe: Signing a pact in blood, binding their soul to service, write your contract into universal laws.
Blissful Agony
You can make a creature you’re touching experiences any physical sensation you want. This doesn’t cause physical harm.
Describe: Bringing them to the brink of ecstasy, inflict-ing terrible agony, toying with their skin, torture.
Dark Bargain
Your patrons can perform favors for you, but always at a proportional cost. You have a patron, which is a powerful entity that can grant you power, favors, or knowledge, but always at a cost. Collaborate on your patron.
Cost: Sacrifice an innocent in their name, start a cult in their honor, further their goals, offer part of your soul.
Describe: Conjuring them in a summoning circle, drawing them forth from the ether, hearing their voices.Patrons: Demons, angels, otherworldly horrors from beyond the stars, spirits of the land, Death itself.
Deal with the Devil
After talking to someone, you can learn the one thing that they want more than anything else. If you provide them with that thing, you gain complete and total control over them; the GM or player hands control of that character over to you.
Describe: Purchasing their soul, making an offer they can’t refuse, eternally enslaving them to your will.
Shatter Mind
You can give someone a psychological condition.
Describe: Ripping their mind apart, shattering their fragile psyche, giving your patron access to their mind.Psychoses: Schizophrenia, sociopathy, a crippling pho-bia, paranoid delusions, hallucinations, obsessiveness.
Soul Gem
You can transform the souls of dead, worthy creatures into treasure (the GM decides how much).
Describe: Coalescing their soul into a black gem, trap-ping their spirit in a jar, trading souls for favors.
Last edited by Admin on Tue Jun 07, 2016 1:03 am; edited 1 time in total
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 175
Join date : 2016-06-03 -
Re: Creating Your Character in Tavern Tales
by Admin Tue Jun 07, 2016 12:59 am
- Psychic:
- COMBAT
Archon
Whenever you want, you can become completely invulnerable to all harm for a few seconds. Then, the GM gives you a condition. Archon can’t make you immune to conditions you acquire through this trait.
Describe: Your skin taking the color of a starry night, becoming pure energy, showing your true form.
Confusion
You can give someone the condition “Confused” for several minutes. Confused creatures have difficulty distinguishing friend from foe.
Describe: Disrupting their natural brain waves, filling their minds with nightmarish thoughts. Erratic Behavior: Attack an ally, move somewhere dis-advantageous, throw away something valuable.
Force Wave
You can push everyone in a zone a close distance away, or one creature a far distance away.
Describe: Releasing a shock wave, emitting a psi pulse, unleashing an explosion of telekinetic energy.
Lobotomize
You can attack a creature and describe one of its capabilities. If the creature has any traits associated with that capability, they lose 1 of those traits for several hours.
Describe: Suppressing their memories, preventing their mind from acting, locking their abilities with magic
Projection
You can take actions as if you’re standing in any far space.
Describe: Animating your weapon, projecting a psy-chic version of yourself, bending reality with your will.
Reverse Trajectory
Collaborate on how you charge this trait. Spend the charge to send a ranged attack back at the attacker.
Describe: Using telekinesis to send back an arrow, un-leashing psychic recoil, absorbing power to shoot it back.
EXPLORATION
Astral Projection
You can travel to another dimension or plane. You may bring close creatures with you. Collaborate on what other dimensions or planes exist.
Describe: Your spirit leaving your body, going on a dream-quest, stepping into the nonphysical realm.
Planes: Astral Plane, Dreamscape, Shadow Realm, a person’s subconscious mind, heaven, hell, the afterlife.
Perfect Mind
You have a perfect memory, and you can instantly complete complex mental exercises.
Describe: Closing your eyes to think for a moment, copying something into your brain, being a genius.Instantly: Perform a calculation, create an elaborate story, read a book, write a play in your head.
Pre/Postcognition
You can experience the future and/or past. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Receiving a vision, gazing through the time-stream, calculating the sequence of cause and effect.
Sensory Link
You can forge a link with a creature you’re touching. For the next day or so, you can experience the world through their senses whenever you want.
Describe: Your eyes changing to their color, seeing and hearing things that aren’t present, feeling auras.
Telekinesis
You can exert telekinetic force. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Manipulating mass, concentrating intently, exerting force with your mind, changing gravity.How it Works: You can’t lift more than your weight, precision requires intense concentration, it’s exhausting.
INTERACTION
Mind Control
You can control the mind of a visible creature that isn’t significantly more powerful than you. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Overpowering their pathetic will, enslaving their mind, implanting your thoughts and desires.How it Works: They struggle to break free, it gives you a crippling headache, you can’t move while doing it.
Brainwash
You can add or remove a memory or personality trait from someone you’re touching. You can’t make them forget how to do things (talk, read, cast spells, etc).
Describe: Devouring a memory, deleting a brain wave, brainwashing them, cutting out part of their mind.
Read Mind
You can hear visible creatures’ thoughts. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Listening to their thoughts, leeching their brain waves, seeing their dreams, feeling their desires.
Telepathy
You can telepathically communicate with far creatures.
Describe: Sharing a collective consciousness, hearing what each other says, speaking via a shared mind-cord.
Share Memory
You can share memories with creatures you’re touching. They gain any of your memories you like, and you gain any of there memories they like.
Describe: Accessing their subconscious, dreaming their dreams, giving them a vision of what you experienced.
- Savagery:
- COMBAT
Bloodlust
Gain the defense “Bloodlust ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that physically damages you. Then, gain a free Good Tale to make an attack.
Describe: Using the pain to fuel your rage, reveling in glorious bloody combat, returning the favor.
Cleave
You can make a melee attack against as many adjacent creatures as you like.
Describe: Attacking in a flurry, cutting through foes, spinning in a blade tornado, releasing an explosion.
Impale
When you attack someone with a melee or throw weapon, you can give your target the condition “Impaled.”
Describe: Pushing a spear through their stomach, em-bedding your hammer in their armor.
Rage
You can give yourself the condition “Enraged.” While enraged, increase all rolls to destroy.
Describe: Harnessing the pain, entering a primal rage, attacking recklessly, leaving yourself open to attack.
Rampage
When you defeat a worthy foe, gain a free Good Tale.
Describe: Entering a blood-fueled rage, slaughtering foe after foe, standing atop a mountain of corpses.
Sticks and Stones
Every item you hold has the Melee and Thrown item traits for free, as well as 2 other item traits of your choice. They lose these extra traits when they leave your hands.
Describe: Using whatever’s available, clubbing some-one with a femur, beating someone with their own arm.
Unbroken
Collaborate on how you charge this trait. Spend the charge to remove 1 physical condition from yourself that you can logically remove. Then, gain a free Good Tale.
Describe: Breaking free, getting an adrenaline rush, screaming in anger, overcoming with your burning rage.
EXPLORATION
Gut Instinct
At any point, you can have the GM describe your gut reaction, which gives you vague but accurate information about your surroundings.
Describe: Getting a bad feeling, thinking that person is off somehow, feeling the hair on your neck stand up.
Pillage
When you destroy a worthy structure, you can find at least 1 treasure among the rubble.
Describe: Finding gold in the ash and rubble, looting priceless art, taking whatever you want, looting stores.
Siege Breaker
Your ability to destroy the terrain exceeds normal limits. Collaborate on what you can do.
Describe: Shoving someone through a wall, chopping a support beam, kicking down the door, smashing a table.
Superstition
Collaborate on what bring good and bad luck. These superstitions are now true for you and everyone you can see; good luck causes good things to happen, and bad luck causes bad things to happen.
Bad Luck: Washing off the blood of your enemy, fight-ing with a broken weapon, dishonoring the dead.Describe: Following ancient traditions, distrusting modern society, carrying fetishes and good luck charms.
Good Luck: Hunting under a new moon, earning a vir-gin’s kiss, getting punched by a stranger, a foggy dawn.
Vision Quest
When you start a quest, tell the GM something you want to know, understand, or see. The GM will give you a vision, sign, or epiphany that reveals that information to you.
Describe: Receiving a message from your ancestors, having a prophetic dream, speaking to your spirit beast.
What is Best in Life?
Collaborate on 3 things that are best in life. When you complete all 3, you and allies who helped you each gain 1 XP.
Best in Life: Crush your enemies, see them driven be-fore you, hear the lamentations of their loved ones.Describe: Reveling in your successes, reflecting on your triumphs, obtaining glory, amassing power.
INTERACTION
No Escape
When someone flees from you or otherwise tries to avoid your wrath, you can tell a free Good Tale against them.
Describe: Calling them out by name, embarrassing them in front of their peers, mocking their honor.
Instigator
You can choose someone. A fight or conflict breaks out involving them.
Describe: Goading someone into action, spreading ru-mors, starting trouble, shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Intimidating
You are far more intimidating than normal. You can intimidate creatures that would normally wouldn’t flinch at threats. Collaborate on how your intimidation exceed normal limitations.
Describe: Threatening them with violence, torturing them, pushing your weight around, exploiting fear.
Noble Savage
Gain the defense “Noble Savage ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that relates to laws, high culture, and the trappings of civilization. When you do, choose someone; their disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Your simplistic ways, your adorable naiveté, following the laws of nature instead of the laws of man.
Not Getting Paid Enough
Whenever you do something impressive, you can choose a minion who watched you. They immediately abandon their contract.
Describe: Proving that they’re no match for you, ter-rifying them with your might, letting them run away.
To the Victor
When you destroy someone or conquer territory, choose something they had that would normally be difficult for you to obtain. Everyone acknowledges that it’s your now.
Describe: Crushing their hope like you crushed their leader’s skull, making an offer they can’t refuse.Go the Spoils: Their minions, their lovers’ affection, their legal property, their social status.
Warchief
Add “or getting them into a good fight” to the end of your minions’ contracts.
Describe: Indulging their bloodlust, promising them spoils of war, provoking their savage nature.
- Thievery:
- COMBAT
Assassin
You can have the GM tell you all of a visible creature’s weaknesses.
Describe: Learning their habits and routines, finding an exploitable weakness, studying their body language.
Duck
Collaborate on how you charge this trait. Spend the charge to make an attack meant for you hit the next most logical target instead.
Charge: Get safely out of danger, frame someone for your crime, have a drink and talk about your close call.
Describe: Leaping out of the way, pulling an enemy in front of you, ducking and covering your head.
Misdirection
If you like, enemies can’t attack you as long as there are other viable targets.
Describe: Looking nonthreatening, drawing attention to someone else, hiding behind an ally, running away.
Sneak Attack
When you attack an unsuspecting and vulnerable victim, you can defeat them however you want. If they’re significantly more powerful than you, give them a brutal physical condition instead.
Brutal Conditions: Slit throat, broken bone, gouged-out eyes, bloody amputation, severed arteries.Describe: Knocking them over the head, choking them out, stabbing them in the back, slitting their throat.
Tumble
Gain the defense “Tumble ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that you can logically dodge. When you do, remove or temporarily suppress (whichever is more logical) a condition that restricts your movement, and you can immediately move.
Describe: Diving out the way, running for safety, swinging away on a rope or vine, ducking into a ditch.
EXPLORATION
Cloaked in Shadows
Gain the defense “Cloaked in Shadows ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while hidden or obscured. Then, you vanish; not even the GM knows where you are. On your next turn, tell the GM where you’re hiding (though you can stay hidden in your new location if you like).
Describe: Ducking into the shadows, taking a glancing blow from their bad aim, repositioning to a better spot.
Escape
You can escape your current predicament and bring as many others as you like with you. The GM gives you a condition based on how you escaped. You can’t use this again until you lose that condition.
Describe: Vanishing in a cloud of smoke, pulling a lever to reveal an escape tunnel, disappearing in the crowd.
Eye for Treasure
When you find treasure, find 1 extra treasure.
Describe: Finding extra hidden valuables, getting a good price for your treasure, pocketing valuables.
From the Shadows
Once each time while hiding, you can perform an action that would normally break stealth and reveal your location without breaking stealth. Absurdly obvious actions (jumping on a table and yelling) will reveal you as normal.
Describe: Returning to the shadows, doing something before anyone notices, waiting for the perfect moment.
Hideout
You can establish an unpopulated area as your hideout. Your hideout is much harder than normal to locate. Collaborate on why it’s so difficult to locate.
Describe: Establishing a false front, installing a hidden door, hiding it in a hard-to-spot alley or cul-de-sac.
Silence and Shadow
If you like, everything you do is completely noiseless. Also, you can dim or extinguish a visible light source until someone takes the time to rekindle the light. You can’t dim celestial bodies, such as the sun.
Describe: Landing like a cat, snuffing out a candle, us-ing shadow-magic on a torch, spreading gloom.
Stash
When you enter a new region, tell the GM where there’s a hidden stash. If you reach the stash, it has supplies that happen to be useful for your current predicament.
Describe: Digging up buried treasure, looting a secret thieves’ guild stash, hiding away supplies for later.
Trap Finder
Gain the defense “Trap Finder ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to traps. Also, the GM must answer honestly whenever you ask if there’s anything hidden here.
Describe: Searching for hidden panels, relying on your acute sense of touch, listening for a soft “click.”
Without a Trace
If nobody has seen you for several minutes, you can vanish without a trace. Nobody knows where you are (including the GM), so you skip all of your turns. At any point, reappear anywhere that you logically could have reached during that time.
Describe: Throwing down a smoke bomb, disappearing into a forest, emerging when they least expect it.
INTERACTION
Black Market
Whenever you want, you can have safe and discreet access to criminal resources.
Describe: Hearing whispers, reading thieves’ symbols carved into buildings, leveraging back alley contacts.Resources: Fence, lookouts, assassin, thugs for hire, in-formant, smugglers, poisons, controlled substances.
Everything Has a Price
You can spend 1 treasure to gain 1 Good Tale. If there’s no one to pay when you use this, explain how a purchase you made long ago is now paying off.
Describe: Greasing palms, bribing officials, hiring a professional, putting a scheme into motion.
Mastermind
You can orchestrate a grand plan (max 1), giving as many allies as you want a job related to your plan. Write their jobs on your character sheet. When one of them fulfills their job, check their job. Cross off a checked job to gain a free Good Tale toward executing your grand plan.
Describe: Organizing the score of a lifetime, tricking others to do the dirty work, your criminal genius.Jobs: Take out the guards, discover the pass code, steal the gate keys, stand guard, secure an escape route.
Second Identity
Collaborate on a complete second identity for yourself.
Describe: Changing your accent, walking differently, roleplaying a completely different personality.Second Identity: Name, family friends, contacts, pa-perwork, home, reputation, history, wardrobe, job.
Spy Network
You have an extensive spy network. Collaborate on what they’re targeting. Your spy network can provide you with intimate, useful information about their target whenever you want. You can change their target, but it takes time and/or resources.
Describe: Meeting cloaked figures, getting a package from a drop-off zone, and NPC slipping you a letter.Targets: A certain city, politicians and nobles, armies and troops, the elves, pirates, merchants.
Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal
You can reveal that someone who isn’t significantly more powerful than you was secretly your minion all along.
Describe: Giving the secret signal, nodding at your hid-den ally, executing your master plan, shouting “NOW!”
Tamper with Evidence
You can lose all heat you and your allies have for a crime. If you have an item that belongs to someone else, you can convincingly frame that person for the crime or event instead.
Describe: Wiping down finger prints, destroying clues, planting evidence, misleading investigators.
White Lie
You can convince others of lies that would normally be unbelievable. Collaborate on what now constitutes a believable lie for you.
Describe: Telling a white lie, manipulating someone with your wit, leading them to assume the wrong thing.
- Tracking:
- COMBAT
Black Arrow
You don’t need to roll to attack with your very last ammo. If the attack is even theoretically possible, you hit with perfect accuracy and incredible power. Collaborate on what incredible power means.
Describe: Making a desperate shot, putting your hope into your last arrow, drawing a special ammo.Incredible Power: Knock them back, knock something out of their hand, your projectile pierces through.
Called Shot
You can make an attack to inflict a condition on an arm, leg, or similar appendage.
Describe: Aiming for a weak spot, hitting them where it hurts, firing a poisoned arrow, striking true.Conditions: Arrow to the knee, hamstrung, shot through the hand, broken tail, tattered wings.
Cover
When you’re behind cover that you’ve never used with this trait before, gain the defense “Cover ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that can be mitigated by that cover. Moving to sufficiently different cover gives you a new defense with an unmarked box.
Describe: Diving behind a wall, ducking under a bush, crouching behind a cart, hiding in a trench.
Eagle Eye
Collaborate on how the distance of your ranged attacks exceeds normal limitations.
Describe: Arcing your bow for maximum distance, drawing a bead with your rifle, aiming carefully.New Limits: A mile, anything you can see, anything under the open sky, several blocks, the moon.
Favored Enemy
Collaborate on a type of creature. When you spend a Good Tale to harm a creature of that type, gain a second free Good Tale to harm them.
Describe: Training to take down your foe, fighting with pure anger, knowing how to take down that foe.Foes: Dragons, wizards, beasts, citizens of the Golden Kingdom, elves, undead, vampires, aquatic beasts.
Set Trap
You can create a well-hidden trap. It triggers when a creature other than you is close enough to touch it. Collaborate on its effects.
Describe: Hiding a trap under leaves, stringing a trip-wire, digging a hidden pit, placing a bear trap.Effects: Explode, trigger a loud alarm, spew poison, create a pit, catch fire, ensnare them in a net.
Volley
You can make a ranged attack against 2 creatures.
Describe: Launching a volley of arrows, dual wielding pistols, shooting rapid-fire, spraying bullets.
EXPLORATION
Deduce
When you investigate a scene, the GM must describe what happened as if you were there watching it unfold.
Describe: Reading their tracks to determine what hap-pened, following the trail, deciphering the evidence.
Know the Path
You can name a visible creature as your quarry (max 1). The GM must answer honestly whenever you ask where your quarry is. They stop being your quarry when they die or you touch them.
Describe: Reading tracks, following your instincts, us-ing your soul compass, tracking their scent.
Lay of the Land
You can have the GM create a map of the region and show it to you.
Describe: Examining the landscape, scanning from a high vantage point, feeling the earth beneath you.
Reconnaissance
When you extensively observe something, you’re bolstered to confront, overcome, or avoid that thing. The longer you observe, the more bolsters you accrue (max 5). You can report your findings to transfer any of these accrued bolsters to others.
Describe: Following enemy troop movements, scouting ahead, patrolling the wilderness for your prey.
Survival Skills
You can survive indefinitely off the land, no matter how harsh the conditions. You can also provide for about a dozen other people. When you sleep in the wilderness, treat it as comfortable bed rest with medical attention.
Describe: Identifying native species, living off the land, relying on instinct, hunting prey, foraging for food.
Trailblazer
Gain the defense “Trailblazer ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale while exploring. Also, you have a perfect sense of direction.
Describe: Venturing forth into the great unknown, go where no one has gone before, watching your footing.
Vigil
You’re always considered to be watchful and alert, even while asleep. Also, the GM must answer honestly whenever you ask if you’re in impending danger.
Describe: Sleeping with one eye open, watching your surroundings, listening to your instincts.
INTERACTION
Deputy
Collaborate on how you’re a representative of the law, and what special privileges and resources this status grants you.
Describe: Flashing a badge, reciting your official title, showing a warrant, leveraging political connections.Resources and Privileges: You can arrest people, local peace keepers help you, some laws don’t apply to you.
Detective
Three times each quest, you can have the GM give you a clue about whatever you’re currently investigating.
Describe: Watching their eyes, reading their body lan-guage, noticing discrepancies in their stories.
Lone Wolf
You can have others generally ignore you as long as you don’t draw attention to yourself. Afterward, they forget everything about you, vaguely remembering you as just some person.
Describe: Pulling up your hooded cloak, hanging in the shadows, keeping to yourself, giving the cold shoulder.
Perks of the Job
When you accept a quest, explain what extra aid you obtain for free.
Describe: Asking for an advance, attracting aid due to your fame, leveraging your contacts, getting lucky.Aid: Gain part of the reward upfront, learn useful in-formation, attract minions, acquire special tools.
Skeptic
The GM must answer honestly whenever you ask if someone is lying.
Describe: Watching their eyes, reading their body lan-guage, noticing discrepancies in their stories.
Trophy
You can collect 1 trophy from each dead worthy creature. These trophies are worth 1 treasure for every 10 XP the creature had. If the creature was especially well known, the trophy is worth twice as much.
Describe: Wearing the trophy around your neck, hanging it from your belt, mounting it on your wall.
Trophies: Bloody head, your enemy’s shattered weapon, tooth necklace, pelt, skull, patch of tattooed skin.
- Transformation:
- COMBAT
Clone
You can create a clone of yourself that’s a separate character you control. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Splitting in half, popping into existence next to yourself, growing a clone in a tube, self-replicating.How it Works: You have to grow your clones in a lab, they’re treacherous, the process gives you a condition.
Doppelganger
Write your personal XP total on your character sheet. When you kill a creature, you can have the GM give you their character sheet. You become identical to them in every way and use their character sheet. Transfer your gear, personal XP, and this trait to the new character sheet. If your new character sheet has more XP than your personal XP, gain a condition that you can’t remove until you change character sheets. You can return to your original character sheet at any point, but you forever lose the stolen character sheet.
Describe: Stealing their whole identity, changing your form, absorbing their essence, changing skin.
Evolve
When you retrain, you can lose a stat, trait, or upgrade to refund all of the XP you spent to purchase it. Spend that XP however you like.
Describe: Adapting to the environment, growing from your experiences, incorporating foreign DNA.
Mimic
When you see a creature use a trait, you can gain that trait (max 1) as a temporary trait for several hours.
Describe: Copying whatever they do, assimilating their DNA, reactively adapting, evolving, changing your soul.
Morph Item
You can replace 1 item trait on an object you’re touching with a different item trait.
Describe: Adapting to your weapon, bending the wood and metal, transforming it into an entirely new item.
Polymorph
You can change a willing or defeated creature into a different creature. They refund all of their XP, which slowly returns over a few days or weeks. They can spend it however they want to suit their new form.
Describe: Hexing them with dark magic, reshaping skin and bones, mutating them, reweaving their soul.
Regenerate
You heal about twice as fast as normal. Also, you heal things that are otherwise unhealable.
Describe: Wounds spontaneously closing, regrowing an arm, stitching your flesh together, magically healing.Unhealable Things: Amputated hand, lost eye, missing teeth, burn scars, tumorous growths, paralysis.
Shapeshift
Create a second character sheet that always has the same XP as your main character. You can shift forms, changing character sheets in the process. Keep your conditions, marked boxes, and gear. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Twisting and reshaping your skin, rapidly evolving, switching places with your shadow.How it Works: You can’t control when you transform, your alternate form is bloodthirsty, shifting drains you.
EXPLORATION
Alter Size
You can change your size for a few hours. Collaborate on how much you can change your size.
Describe: Warping space around you, accelerating your metabolism, harnessing your titan blood.
Chameleon Skin
If you’re perfectly motionless, you’re invisible.
Describe: Surrounding yourself in an illusion, chang-ing your skin color, becoming transparent.
Chaos Theory
You can do something mundane to begin a chain of events (max 1). Every 30 minutes or so (real-time), the next player to the left rolls to determine how the chain of events escalates. Good Tales make the chain better; Bad Tales make the chain worse. At any point, you can make a final roll to end the chain of events.
Begin the Chain: Pet a dog, give a beggar a gold coin, drop a nail, fire an arrow randomly into the distance.
Describe: Manipulating events, embracing the random chaos of the universe, relying on pure luck.
End the Chain: Help arrives, something explodes, someone dies, a building collapses, a war starts.
Clay Body
Your body can be malleable like clay or rubber.
Describe: Stretching your muscles, popping your bones out of joint, becoming like clay or water, bending.
Things You Can Do: Squeeze through a keyhole, reach a distant item, pull your hands out of manacles.
Perfect Replica
You can spend materials to create a perfect duplicate of an item.
Describe: Casting a flawless illusion, crafting some-thing with pure artistry, creating a magic replica.Materials: Whatever the original item was made of, wood, steel, textiles, earth and stone, magic dust.
Shape Flesh
You can transform into an object or back to your original form. While you’re an object, you retain your senses and you can’t act except to use this trait.
Describe: Morphing, changing your skin, warping real-ity, transferring your soul to a physical vessel.
Transmute
You can change an object’s properties, or change an object into a similar object.
Describe: Morphing, changing physics, warping reali-ty, rearranging molecules, transmuting elements.Properties: Hardness, transparency, weight, density, color, smell, texture, size, conductivity, buoyancy.Similar Objects: Sand into stone, coal into oil, wood into paper, ore into ingots, seawater into fresh water.
INTERACTION
A Thousand Masks
You can change your appearance to another similarly sized creature. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Putting on a perfect disguise, changing bod-ies, morphing your phase, creating an illusion.How it Works: You must have touched them before, you leave a telltale flaw, you can’t sustain it for long.
Change of Heart
You can reverse part of a creature’s personality for several hours.
Describe: Warping their mind, inverting brain waves, reversing the polarity, changing their alignment.Reverses: Trust into mistrust, hate into love, curiosity into disinterest, lawfulness into lawlessness.
Cosmic Trade
You can permanently trade parts of yourself with a willing creature.
Describe: Switching parts of your souls, swapping body parts, changing bodies, reshaping reality.Trade: Faces, bodies, stats, traits, personalities, minds, destinies, traits, conditions, beauty for brains.
Gestalt
You can fuse with other willing creatures and become a single entity with all of your combined strengths and weaknesses. Collaborate on what this entails. This ends when any participant wants out.
Describe: Fusing with gem magic, absorbing their bod-ies, initiating morphing time, forming the head.Entails: Takes less damage, gain access to all traits, grow in size, use the highest stats from each person.
It Was Me All Along!
If nobody knows where you are, you can reveal that an unimportant NPC was secretly you all along.
Describe: Pulling back your hood, taking off your mask, morphing to your true form, staging a grand reveal.
Takes One to Know One
While you are impersonating someone, the GM must answer all of your questions about your role’s mannerisms, habits, and knowledge if the answers would help you perform that role. Explain how you know this information.
Describe: Copying body language perfectly, creating a flawless disguise, studying your mark, acting.
The Curse
Collaborate on how you curse others. When you curse someone, refund half of their XP. Change their aesthetics and spend their XP however you like to make them more like you. Their disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Infecting their bloodstream, hexing them with magic, leaving a mark on their skin, cursing them.Spread By: Draining their blood, biting them, giving them a parasite, performing a tribal ritual.Transform Into: Vampire, werewolf, zombie, ghost, horrific Old One, assimilated insectoid, drone.
Transcendent Voice
You can perfectly replicate any sound you’ve heard before, including volume.
Describe: Perfectly mimicking a sound, recording a sound in you mind, transforming your vocal cords.
- Undeath:
- COMBAT
Dead Nerves
Gain the defense “Dead Nerves ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that an undead creature could ignore. If that Bad Tale gave you a condition, completely ignore all negative effects associated with that condition.
Describe: Ignoring a fatal wound, unnatural resilience, undead anatomy, your rotten organs.Ignore: Your guts spilling out, carry around your de-capitated head, ignore a sword through your heart.
Death Throes
Collaborate on something powerful that happens when you die.
Describe: Your soul exploding, uttering a final curse, completing your most powerful spell, finding vengeance.What Happens: Explode in necrotic energy, take your attacker with you, return as a ghost, curse someone.
Death Watch
Whenever you or one of your closest allies would die, they instead hold onto life for several minutes or hours, depending on the severity of their injuries. During this time, they can be healed as normal to potentially avoid death. Also, the GM must answer honestly whenever you ask how close a creature is to death.
Describe: Hiding them from Death, altering their anat-omy, extending their life with necromancy.
Drain Soul
You can take a dying or recently dead creature’s soul. Write it on your character sheet (max 5). Others can’t interact with the soul (such as to resurrect it or communicate with it) without your consent. Also, you can forever obliterate the soul to temporarily gain some of its power. Collaborate on what that entails.
Describe: Soul strands rising to your clenched fist, cap-turing its spirit in a gem, devouring its essence.
Power: Increase one of your stats, bolster to do what it did well, gain a temporary trait, summon its spirit.
Plaguebearer
Collaborate on a disease that you carry, and how it spreads. You’re immune to it.
Describe: Pallid skin, sunken eyes, pus-filled boils on your skin, black blood, skin covered in a sheen of sweat.
Plague: Virus, bacteria, worm parasites, fungal mush-room spores, dark curse, the seed of a corrupted plant.
Symptoms: Vomit and nausea, painful boils, extreme fever, necrosis, coughing, weakness, eventual death.
Transmitted by: Skin-to-skin contact, damaging some-one, bodily fluids, drawing a rune on their skin.
Reanimate
Collaborate on a death condition and how quickly you reanimate. If you die and your death condition isn’t met, you return to life.
Death Condition: Staked in the heart, decapitated, killed when your phylactery is destroyed, poisoned.
Describe: Crawling out of a shallow grave, coalescing from death, pulling yourself out of the spirit realm.
Touch of Death
You can kill a creature that isn’t significantly more powerful than you. Collaborate on how this trait works.
Describe: Ripping apart their soul, turning their blood to acid, decapitating them, withering their flesh.
How it Works: Lose a fraction of your soul to fuel the spell, they haunt you afterward, you anger Death itself.
EXPLORATION
Bloodseeker
You can hear far heartbeats with perfect accuracy. While focusing on someone, you can sense and understand every part of their physiology as if you’d dissected them and carefully studied every body part.
Describe: Hearing blood course through their veins, noticing subtle changes in their physiology.
Sense: Smell disease, hear a nervous heartbeat, feel the warmth of arousal, see pregnancy, taste their fear.
Despoiler
You can cause far plants and objects to wither and decay.
Describe: Withering plants to dry husks, rusting metal, spoiling food and water, warping wood, cracking stone.
Eternal Hunger
You no longer need to eat or drink. Collaborate on 1 new need that you must fulfill at least once a week or starve. When you excessively indulge this need, you heal as if you received 1 day of bed rest and medical attention, and you’re bolstered to do anything.
Describe: Cold skin, no pulse, you don’t bleed when you’re cut, obsessive desire, growling stomach.
New Needs: Drink blood, eat nightmares, consume souls, feast on fear, absorb magic, devour nightmares.
Haunt
You can awaken the terrain. It becomes sentient and gains XP equal to half of your total XP, which it can spend however it wants. Collaborate on its personality. Its disposition toward you significantly improves.
Describe: Spilling your blood into the earth, binding a spirit to the land, corrupting the area, enchanting it.
Terrain Actions: Open and close doors, attract or repel creatures, alter its geography, a ship sails itself.
Pierce the Veil
You can see the spirit world. Collaborate on what that entails.
Describe: Looking through ghost eyes, shifting your soul, your eyes going black, seeing dead people.
Entails: See recently dead spirits, murderers appear to have blood-stained hands, see where a death occurred.
Unlife and Unlimb
You can attach and reattach your body parts. You control your detached body parts and sense the world through them. You can instantly heal some conditions (such as an amputated arm) in this way.
Describe: Watching through an eyeball, crawling with a hand, pulling your guts back inside yourself.
Wraith
You can become ethereal or return to your normal form. Ethereal things pass through non-ethereal things like a ghost, and vice versa.
Describe: Taking a ghostly form, crossing dimensions, turning to mist, becoming a living shadow.
INTERACTION
Aura of Death
You can give all far creatures the overwhelming desire to leave the area.
Describe: Whispering dark words, creating a sudden chill, giving people an unsettling feeling in their gut.
Banshee’s Wail
You can emit an incredibly loud sound. Far creatures gain the condition “Deaf” until the ringing stops. The sound also shatters glass and shakes structures.
Describe: Screaming the cries of the dead, wailing in agony, speaking with death’s otherworldly voice.
Braaaiins
You can gain some of a dead creature’s knowledge and memories.
Describe: Eating its brains, consuming its soul, enslaving it in the afterlife, absorbing its brain waves.
Charon’s Toll
You can sacrifice 1 treasure to negate 1 Bad Tale.
Describe: Burying coins to pay Death’s toll, turning treasure into ash, giving coins to a shadowy hand.
Medium
You can speak to the dead. You must have access to part of a creature’s body, or something that was important to it in life.
Describe: Opening a door to the afterlife, tugging at a soul strand, sending your voice into the grave world.
Possess
You can vanish and take control of a corpse or vulnerable creature. Use its stats and traits instead of your own, but you retain this trait. If the body you’re possessing has more XP than you, gain a condition you can’t remove until you end the possession. Your host can attempt to rebel against your possession.
Describe: Overpowering its soul, becoming a spirit and moving inside of it, infecting its thoughts.
Revenant
You can return a dead creature to life. Give them a quest. They remain alive as long as they treat that quest as their foremost goal in life. Collaborate on what happens after they complete their quest.
Describe: Giving them a second chance, letting them tie up loose ends, ripping them out of the afterlife.
After the Quest: They can do as they please, they can pursue 1 quest of their own choosing before dying.
- Warfare:
- COMBAT
Disarm
You can disarm someone. They drop a held item, which lands in a close space. If you have a free hand, you can catch the item instead.
Describe: Attacking in a flurry, cutting through foes, spinning in a blade tornado, releasing an explosion.
Every Scar a Lesson
Whenever you’re defeated by a worthy threat, gain the defense “Scarred by _____ ☐.” Write the threat in the blank. Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to that threat.
Describe: Jagged cut, burned skin, crooked finger, miss-ing tooth, glowing rune-scar, dented armor.
Threats: Dragon, bug, beast, sword, trap, soldier from the Southern Kingdom, wizard, rogue, frost, fire, acid.
Guardian
You can intercept attacks if you’re in a position where you can logically do so.
Describe: Interposing yourself, diving in the way, lifting your shield over someone, shoving them behind you.
Kensai
Give one of your weapons a name. It is now a magic item, but only in your hands. Collaborate on its effects. Absolutely nothing can forcibly remove it from you. If lost, it miraculously finds its way back to you in less than a day.
Describe: Performing a sacred blade ritual, carving the weapon’s name into it, baptizing the weapon in blood.Miraculous Return: Trip over it in the woods, find it on the next corpse you loot, find it for sale in a shop.
Shove
You can push someone back as far as you can normally move. Move into the spaces they vacate.
Describe: A powerful bull rush, lowering your shield and charging forward, making them dodge backward.
Tough as Nails
Gain the defense “Tough ☐☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that you can ignore with sheer toughness.
Describe: Scarred skin, thick muscles, shining armor, good old-fashioned grit, raw willpower, magic tattoos.
EXPLORATION
Arena
When you set foot on a battlefield, tell the GM about a strategic asset on that battlefield.
Describe: Examining the field with a tactical eye, noticing an important detail, exploiting the terrain.Assets: A platform that will crumble from a good hit, a hidden trap, ample cover, a bottleneck.
Grit
Your endurance exceeds normal limits. Collaborate on what this entails.
Describe: Setting your jaw and powering through, shrugging it off, ignoring pain and aching muscles.Capabilities: Run a marathon, carry an unconscious ally for hours, ignore your biological needs for a week.
Guard Duty
While you’re paroling, guarding, or escorting, you have a basic understanding of everything that happens in and around whatever you’re protecting. Also, you can completely negate 1 Bad Tale against whatever you’re guarding during this time.
Describe: Keeping an eye out, watching the shadows, establishing lookouts, guarding the area, setting patrols.
High Ground
When you reach an area’s most tactically advantageous position, immediately tell a free Good Tale.
Describe: Using the high ground to cut down foes, get-ting a better vantage point, controlling a bottle neck.
Strong Back
You have +5 inventory slots.
Describe: A huge backpack, strong muscles, broad shoulders, bearing the burden, wearing heavy armor.
Titan’s Strength
Your ability to lift and carry heavy weights exceeds normal limits. Collaborate on what this entails.
Describe: Your veins pulsing, straining your muscles, gritting your teeth, heaving something over your head.
Veteran
You can have the GM tell you what dangers to expect. Explain how you know this information.
Describe: Knowing what to do from past experiences, noticing a tell-tale giveaway, keeping a watchful eye.
INTERACTION
Blood on the Wind
Whenever someone important to you is in danger, you know their exact location and what sort of danger they’re in.
Describe: Feeling it in your gut, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up, getting a dark premonition.
Bushido
When you show an enemy profound mercy or respect, their disposition toward you significantly improves. Also, write on your character sheet that you hold their debt. Cross it off to have them pay off that debt.
Describe: Earning karma, holding others to a high standard, bringing out the best in others.
Cold Read
You can have the GM tell you all of a visible creature’s traits.
Describe: Reading their body language, getting a gut feeling, making guesses based on their equipment.
Enemy of My Enemy
When you harm, hinder, or disrupt an enemy, you can have the GM tell you of one of your enemy’s enemies. Their disposition toward you significantly improves. Explain how you know this information.
Describe: Teaming up, forging an alliance, putting pet-ty grudges aside, using each other towards your goals.
Get Their Attention
You can make everyone present think that you are by far the biggest threat until they see evidence to the contrary.
Describe: Performing a deadly weapon maneuver, looking deadly and intimidating, pissing them off.
Gladiator
After you win a fight, choose someone who watched you fight. Tell the GM how they henceforth feel about you.
Describe: Showboating, an incredible display of power, pleasing the crowd, flexing your muscles
.How they Feel: Don’t cross them, they’re so sexy, I need to befriend them, I never want to fight them.
Iron Sharpens Iron
When you train with others, you can gain 1 of your training partner’s traits (max 1) as a temporary trait for about 1 day. Each of your training partners can similarly gain 1 of your traits (max 1) as a temporary trait for about 1 day.
Describe: Practicing weapon drills, trading war stories, forging spiritual bonds, swearing oaths of loyalty.
No One Left Behind
You can save someone from any threat imaginable. However, your fates are now intertwined until both of you are completely safe and have no conditions. If one of you gains a condition or dies while your fates are intertwined, the other does as well. You can’t use this trait on someone if your fates are already intertwined.
Describe: Leaping to their rescue, dragging your ally to safety, grabbing them as they fall over a cliff ledge.
War Stories
After you defeat a worthy foe or accomplish a worthy deed, write it on your character sheet. Cross it off to share the story with others. Their disposition toward you significantly improves, or they’re intimidated by you and back down (their choice).
Describe: Telling them your body count, explaining what true danger really is, telling tales in a tavern.
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 175
Join date : 2016-06-03 -
Re: Creating Your Character in Tavern Tales
by Admin Tue Jun 07, 2016 1:02 am
ITEM TRAITS
Like character traits, item traits have categories. You spend Treasure instead of XP on your items. Your first Trait of each category on an item costs 1, the second costs 2, etc.
Like character traits, item traits have categories. You spend Treasure instead of XP on your items. Your first Trait of each category on an item costs 1, the second costs 2, etc.
- Combat Traits:
- Defensive
The item grants the defense “Armor ☐.” Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale that armor can logically mitigate. This trait can be applied to armor and shields more than once; each time it is, the item occupies 1 more inventory slot than normal.
Describe: Blocking with a shield, parrying with a sword, deflecting a spell with a runed spell-gauntlet.
Melee
You can make touch melee attacks. If you make a touch attack without this trait, decrease the roll. Also, choose one:
• Heavy: Roll brawn to attack with this weapon.
• Light: Roll finesse to attack with this weapon.
• Enchanted: Roll mind to attack with this weapon.
• Inspiring: Roll spirit to attack with this weapon.
Describe: Cutting with a sword, stabbing with a dagger, bashing with a hammer, thrusting with a spear.
Ranged
If you make a ranged attack without this item trait, decrease the roll. This weapon has 3 ammo. If you have ammo, you can make far ranged attacks. After an encounter when you made a ranged attack, lose 1 ammo. Also, choose one:
• Heavy: Roll brawn to attack with this weapon.
• Light: Roll finesse to attack with this weapon.
• Enchanted: Roll mind to attack with this weapon.
• Inspiring: Roll spirit to attack with this weapon.
Ammo: Arrows, bolts, bullets, magic orbs, black pow-der, alchemical cannisters, psi-crystals, ki runes.
Describe: Firing a bow, shooting a pistol, blasting with a shotgun, hurling fireballs from a wand.
Thrown
The item functions as having the Ranged trait, except that the ammo is the weapon itself. Recover the item to restore the ammo.
Describe: Throwing a spear, hurling an ax, flicking out a few shurikens, throwing a spinning blade.
Reach
Increase the weapon’s range one step, such as from touch to near.
Describe: A long-hafted spear, a sinuous whip, a rifle with a scope, a powerful composite longbow.
- Exploration:
- Camouflage
If you remain perfectly still in an environment that resembles this camouflaged item, increase rolls to hide. This item trait can only be used on clothes and armor.
Describe: Strange patterns, plants stitched into the fab-ric, splotches of color that match the background
Environments: Forest, jungle, frozen wasteland, ocean, desert, mountain, fields, caves.
Convenient
This item occupies 1 fewer inventory slot.
Describe: Lightweight material, convenient travel hook or strap, getting used to its weight, compact size.
Discrete
Increase rolls to hide this item.
Describe: Small and compact size, unique shape that makes it ideal for hiding, dull color, camouflage.
Environmental
Collaborate on a biome. The item grants the defense “____ ☐.” Write the biome into the blank. Mark it when you suffer a Bad Tale related to that environment.
Describe: Fur-lined winter coats, billowy and shaded desert gear, buoyant and sleek swimming equipment.
Floats
This item floats well enough that it can support a person’s weight indefinitely, like a life ring.
Describe: Natural buoyancy, flotation devices, air bub-ble pockets, glowing wind-runes, lightweight material.
Glowing
You can make this item glow like a torch for about 1 hour.
Describe: Glowing fire-runes, a lantern that dangles from a hook, a faint magical glow, a bundle of oily rags.
Sealed
This provides about 10 minutes air. Collaborate on how you refresh the air supply.
Describe: Glowing life-runes or air-runes, an air blad-der, pressured helmet, face mask with tubes.
Useful
This item also functions as a tool.
Describe: Getting extra functionality, using it the item in a clever and unexpected way.Tools: Whip serves as rope, pistol serves as flare gun, ax cuts down trees without dulling or breaking
- Interaction:
- Disguised
This item looks like something else.
Describe: A hidden compartment, a decorative casing that hides what it really is, a misleading paint job.Disguises: Armor resembles normal clothes, sword hid-den in a cane, gun resembles a musical instrument.
Flashy
This item is exceptionally eye-catching and fashionable. People notice it, remember it, and talk about it.
Describe: Beautiful glittering gemstones, terrifying barbs and spikes, glowing arcane runes, shining leather.
Official
This is an official item of a certain organization. Others recognize it as belonging to that organization.
Describe: Tabard, inscribed symbol, official color pat-terns, recognizable craftsmanship, coat of arms.
Ornamental
This looks expensive, tasteful, and valuable. It’s worth much more than normal on the market.
Describe: Socketed gemstones, beautiful filigree, expert craftsmanship, gilded exterior, lovely sheen.
Personalized
Collaborate on special conditions the user has to meet before using the item.
Describe: Saying the secret password, attuning to the item’s spirit, completing the activation sequence.
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 175
Join date : 2016-06-03 -
Similar topics» Character Spreadsheet
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