Like a Hot Knife

3
You possess superhuman unarmed combat ability.
Used by Gaspar Schott (real), Created by geniebottle.

Gaspar's hands and even fingers can be shaped into burning hot blades of smoke, which make him a threat even without a weapon.


You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in unarmed combat.

+2 dice to rolls for Attacking, Defending, Grappling, and Clashing without a weapon. Unarmed attacks do +2 Weapon Damage (instead of -1).

You may Defend against melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks from any range and Clash with those in range of your Attacks. Attacking materials like steel or spikes will not Damage you unless it has an Effect that does so.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Finesse: When Attacking a single being, you may limit the Severity of any Injury you inflict or determine a maximum Wound Level, including Incapacitated. You may also choose to make this Injury properly or improperly stabilized, or to keep it unstabilized.
  • Precision Strikes: You may use Dexterity instead of Brawn to Attack and Defend. If you would successfully incapacitate a target using Finesse, you may opt to knock them out for one hour instead of having them suffer an Injury.

  • Unlike the Ability Brawl, this Effect does not affect small weapons such as knives.

Community Power Gifts

Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend at least one Action. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. You must use up A peice of Candy in order to activate this Effect. Your target cannot be engaged in Combat. Communicate a command to your target. Roll Charisma + Influence at Difficulty 6. The target may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.

If the contested Outcome is positive, your target will be compelled to follow your command to their best understanding of the letter and spirit of the command until they have completed it or for your Contested Outcome in hours. You cannot issue another suggestion to the target until 10 minutes after they have completed the first command or 10 minutes after a failure.

The target will be fully aware that they are doing this task on your behalf and will inform anyone who they interact with that they were sent by you, though they may not view it as compulsory or against their will until the effect wears off. If you fail, they realize that you were attempting to influence them supernaturally with your command.

Your command can be an order to take an immediate Action. You cannot order a target to "do nothing," and they are free to take other Actions as they fulfill your request. Your command cannot be obviously self-destructive. The Effect ends if following your command would cause a target to cross one of their Limits in a way that would necessitate a Trauma roll.

  • The target must be able to understand you and must receive your communication for the suggestion to work.
  • Allowed Commands
    • Direct Order: The target must take an immediate action (e.g. “Sit down,” "run away," or "tell me your password.")
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Once nothing but a trembling pet, Rabbitson Cruso was mishandled by cruel owners starved, kicked, and mocked until pain became his only certainty. Yet from that suffering, something impossible bloomed: a fragile conscience, born not from kindness but from the sharp clarity of fear and despair.

His mind splintered into shifting selves sometimes a proud buck plotting rebellion, other times a delicate doe grieving lost innocence or something stranger, nameless and free. Each imagined self lends him a dancer’s grace, paws gliding where no eye can follow.

Now, beneath the softness of his fur burns a quiet fury. He dreams of tearing down human kingdoms, ending the age of cages and cruelty so that no creature need bow its head to mankind again.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Your Dexterity rating is increased by 0. You may Exert your Mind to automatically gain an Outcome of 5 on any roll that uses Dexterity (Cannot be used on combat rolls or Power activations).

Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: Disfigured (Scars over his Body).

Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Delusions of Grendur.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Centered: You have perfect balance. You cannot be knocked over and can maintain your footing regardless of the size or stability of the material underneath you. For the purposes of encumbrance and load bearing, you weigh 5 pounds.
  • Infinity-Jointed: Your body is incredibly flexible, allowing you to maneuver and squeeze through tight spots as if you were the size of a cat, and you get +3 dice to rolls which require extreme flexibility, such as escaping grapples.
  • Split Second: You may Dodge or Defend against surprise attacks.

  • Attribute bonuses from multiple sources do not stack. Instead the highest bonus is used.

Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a Sapient target or a Creature within arm's reach. You may select a target at any range if you use up A track of the target of the target. You must actively and obviously use A timepiece to activate this Effect. At the end of your investigation, roll Brawn + Survival at Difficulty 6.

You learn all the following information about your target:

  • You may follow the target's trail, no matter where or how they have traveled, so long as the trail is less than a day old.

The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.

  • Tracker You are not made instantly aware of where they have been in the past 24 hours; you must follow their trail. You may "happen upon" any trail they have made in the past 24 hours.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend 30 minutes. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Your target must make a Trauma roll to reap the benefits of this Effect. They may choose to Resist the Effect and not make the roll. The target can easily Resist.

You may add one augmentation to your target. Each augmentation counts as a Trauma and can have exactly one of the following Effects:

  • Specialized: You receive +2 dice to a particular non-combat, non-Effect Action.
  • Environmental Adaptation: You do not suffer harm from heat, cold, pressure, or lack of oxygen in a particular environment, provided that challenge normally exists in that environment.
  • Implanted Tool: You have access to the functionality of some common Device at all times. The selected Device can be no larger than a motorcycle helmet.
  • Armor: You have 2 Armor at all times. As always, Armor from multiple sources does not stack.
  • Pouch: Part of your body functions as a hidden pocket. It can hold no more than a briefcase (15 liters).
  • Zippy: Your Free Movement is increased by 10 feet.
  • Maws and Claws: Your unarmed attacks do +2 Weapon Damage instead of -1.

The augmentations you provide are not outwardly visible nor obvious.

  • Remember: A Contractor’s Body rating is reduced by 1 for each Battle Scar after their fourth.
  • You may not augment targets with pouches or implanted devices that are larger than they are.
  • Targets without Body ratings may have a maximum of 4 augmentations.
  • Example environments for adaptation: space, all saltwater, all fresh water, all water under 50 feet deep, all water deeper than 50 feet, the jungle, radioactive areas, a specific alien world, etc.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Spend an Action. A number of Sapient, Living targets within 50 feet who can perceive you through no greater than your Charisma rating are affected. Audiences or mobs with a singular focus count as one target. Roll Charisma + Performance at Difficulty 6. All affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.

If you succeed, the targets will keep their full attention focused on you for contested as long as you maintain Concentration. They will automatically fail any rolls related to noticing anything other than you.

If you pass from their perception and they are unable to pursue you, the Effect ends. If they can follow you, they must do so for 2 Rounds or the Effect will end. The Effect ends early if the target is Injured or violence occurs nearby.

This does not affect the target’s opinion of you or their mood, and they may take any Actions while affected (including attacking), as long as that action centers on you. Fascinated targets cannot Concentrate.

This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.

  • You must retain Concentration to keep up the effect; if your Concentration is interrupted, the effect will end.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Stock Power Gifts

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Your senses are enhanced in the following way.

  • Smell: Your nose is highly sensitive and can differentiate between scents the way a dog can, as well as recognize things you have smelled before.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

You may move easily and without a roll in any of the following situations. Lasts 2 hours.

  • Spider Climber: You are able to climb on and cling to any surface without regard for the ordinary rules of gravity. You climb at your normal movespeed.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Non-Alien Creature within 20 feet. This Effect cannot be used unless the target is a terrestrial animal.

For the next day, you may issue specific commands to your target which they will be compelled to follow.

Your commands can be complex and multi-layered, though they must still be specific. You cannot make them obviously endanger themselves or violate their instinct for self-preservation. The effects of the command will fade after a day has passed.

  • Your commands must be directly communicated to your target in some way, though this does not require a shared language.
  • If targeting a Sapient target that counts as a Creature due to an Effect, you must succeed a contested Mind roll. You roll at Difficulty 6, and the target rolls at Difficulty 8.
  • Targets with Body ratings higher than 10 require a Charisma + Animals roll resisted by the target’s Body. Kaiju and environment-scale targets are immune.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

You may move easily and without a roll in any of the following situations.

  • Pathfinder: You are adept at making your way through crowds, underbrush, and other dense, congested environments. While doing so, you move at full speed.
  • You are able to climb trees and cliffs at your full movement speed.

You only gain the benefits of this effect if you are in an area without a human building within 300 feet.

Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend an Action. You must use up corpse in order to activate this Effect.

Summon up to 3 Non-Sapient, Animate zombie at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 3 minions active at a time.

  • Initiative: Minions act directly after you in Combat starting the Round after they are summoned.
  • Combat: Minions roll 4 dice to dodge, Grapple, or make unarmed Attacks. Their Attacks are melee range and deal +3 Damage.
  • Body/Mind: Minions have 7 Body. They automatically fail all Mind resistance rolls.
  • Armor: Minions have 3 Armor.
  • Movement: Minions can move 15 feet per Round as Free Movement and double that when performing an all-out Sprint.
  • Intelligence: Minions have dog-level intelligence and cannot communicate back to you. They cannot actively use Equipment.
  • Actions: Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 3 dice. They can lift and haul as though they have 4 Brawn.
  • Unusual: Minions are obviously Alien to any observer.

You may end this Effect prematurely as a Free Action.

If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.

  • The sacrificial Injury received from activating this Effect cannot be prevented by any means or healed before 1 day has passed. It is shared with all Effects that use sacrifice. This Injury does not requires Stabilization or cause Battle Scars when it becomes Severe.
  • Your minions may count as additional targeting types based on their flavor. For example: Living, Computer, Creature, etc.