**Description:** The "Body of the Ancient Cryptic" passively alters the user’s body, giving them a primal, beast-like appearance combined with ancient, mystical energies. These physical changes not only enhance their combat abilities but also make them appear more formidable and inhuman to those around them.
Visible Changes:
- Beastly Claws: The user's hands and fingers elongate slightly, ending in sharp, retractable claws. These claws appear to be made of a dark, obsidian-like material and can tear through most materials with ease.
- Feral Eyes: Their eyes take on a bestial quality, with slit-like pupils and a glowing, predatory hue—often amber, red, or another unnatural color. These eyes grant heightened vision, especially in darkness.
- Rugged, Enhanced Physique: The user’s muscles are denser, their bones more robust, and their posture slightly hunched, resembling a primal predator. This gives them enhanced strength and agility beyond normal human limits.
- **Roughened Skin:** Their skin takes on a tougher, almost hide-like texture, with patches of scales or hardened ridges in certain areas, providing natural armor.
- Elongated Teeth: The user’s teeth sharpen into fangs, giving them a fearsome grin and enabling them to bite with great force when necessary.
- Beastial Presence: A low growl or snarl might be heard from the user when they are angered or in danger. Their overall demeanor is predatory, making others instinctively sense danger in their presence.
These beastly transformations, combined with ancient, arcane markings and energies, make the user a terrifying force, blending primal strength with cryptic wisdom.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You are permanently and visibly transformed: perfect bodys. You are considered to be a Sapient, Living Creature when targeted. Your Brawn is increased by 1, your Perception is increased by 1, and your Charisma is increased by 1.
You no longer age naturally, and supernatural attempts to age you fail.
Your appendages can reach an additional 30 feet.
Whenever you enter Combat, roll Self-Control. If you fail, you cannot choose which targets to attack and cannot stop fighting until there are no targets remaining.
You cannot speak any coherent verbal language and must resort to other means of communication.
You cannot ignore or decrease the effects of Stress for any Self-Control rolls you make.
The Severity of any Injury caused by Sliver is increased by 2.
Paula has been racing her whole life and when she put on her helmet and gets in the zone nobody can catch her.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are piloting any vehicle.
You receive +2 dice to any rolls to pilot a vehicle.
You also gain the following effects:
Even in human form, the werewolf retains their incredible sense of smell. This helps them track their prey and learn where people and things have been.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your senses are enhanced in the following way.
Through the use of psychic pinging, Sheriff Perkins can keep the minds of any observers distracted, allowing him to proceed through an area unseen and unheard.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You and any clothes or equipment you are wearing are obscured from sight for the next minute. All attempts to detect you via sight fail. Detection attempts via other senses where sight would assist are rolled at a -2 dice penalty.
Entering Combat or being Injured will end the Effect. When the Effect ends, it is disabled for 1 hour.
While this Effect is active, you are at -2 dice to all Actions and cannot Concentrate.
Several animals lick their wounds and the wounds of others to promote healing. This is because their saliva contains both tissue factor, which promotes clotting, and the enzyme lysozyme, which breaks down potentially harmful bacteria in the wound. Charlotte, more in touch with her primal side than ever before, can now utilize this to force smaller wounds into better shape by licking them, and even force larger ones to clot completely so they don’t bleed out or get infected. Well, with anything else than a random form of lycanthropy, which is very transmittable via saliva.
Exert your Mind and spend 15 minutes. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Your target must also Exert their Mind to activate this Effect. Choose a specific Injury on your target that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Dexterity + Medicine at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, the Injury is reduced in Severity by your Outcome. If you reduce its Severity to 0, the Injury is fully healed. Otherwise, it is partially healed and will heal the rest of the way at its natural rate.
This counts as a successful Makeshift Stabilization if the Injury was not already Stabilized; any Battle Scars caused by the Injury will remain.
Blood carries memory, in theory at least. Such is the theory of Smoke as he gorges himself on a feast of blood. Within the essence he finds memories, a name, an identity the blood goes by. Further focus drives him to a scent, movement, prey.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a target Object within arm's reach. You must use up the target's blood in order to activate this Effect. At the end of your investigation, roll Charisma + Investigation at Difficulty 6.
You learn all the following information about your target:
The magician reaches into their hat and focuses. Inside, light wells and flows like a viscous liquid. Then, they withdraws the item of their choosing.
Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute. You must actively and obviously use a top hat to activate this Effect.
Choose an Object which could fit inside a regular backpack (up to 27 liters). It must be Non-Alien and generic. You cannot create explosives. You may create firearms.
Roll Perception + Occult to fabricate your chosen Object. The Difficulty is assigned by the GM and depends on the specificity of your chosen Object. The created item lasts 2 hours.
The ninja does not approve of guns; they prefer using the bow for its stealth and versatility.
You gain the following benefits as long as engaged in combat with wooden longbows.
You receive +2 dice to all rolls using wooden longbows. Reloading is considered a Free Action.
You also gain the following effects:
The detective squints, drawing on years of police experience to find any hidden drugs, weapons, or other illegal objects, no matter how well-hidden.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You automatically detect all illegal materials within 50 feet of you for the next hour. You have a clear sense of both the distance and direction towards any detected items. You do not learn any details about the detected items.
The Toon performs some sort of cartoonish act of violence. This may be handing someone a bomb, hitting someone with a cartoon mallet, burping a burp that is so noxious it melts flesh, or anything else as long as it is cartoonish.
The attack is more of a throwaway gag than a plot element, so any props or properties of the attack are incidental and disappear immediately. Animated mallets evaporate in a puff of smoke, fire does not spread, and electricity cannot power devices.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a target within 45 feet. Roll Charisma + Performance Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling to Dodge or Defend as a Reaction, Difficulty 6.
If the contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 4. Armor is fully effective against this damage.
As long as the ninja is carrying a weapon, their self-defense is almost subconscious. Subtle twitches and lighting-fast feints and parries using sword and scabbard can buy the ninja precious seconds to enact an escape plan or make the kill.
You gain the following benefits at all times. You must actively and obviously be using a sword to gain the benefits of this Effect.
You have 4 Armor, which reduces incoming Damage. Armor from multiple sources does not stack. This Armor cannot be circumvented with Called Shots.
Whenever your Armor reduces incoming Damage, you are immediately made aware of the source of the Damage. You may pinpoint their location for 30 seconds.
Any time your Armor prevents damage, your total Armor rating is temporarily decreased by 1. Whenever you go two Rounds without preventing any damage, it is restored back to its full value.