Gifts

The following gifts are special abilities which champions and a few followers are capable of. Prerequisites are mentioned in parentheses. Benefits of multiple gifts do not stack and you cannot combine them. For example, the immaculate theft will not reduce penalties for an impossible theft. You may not take an ability more than once unless stated otherwise.

Combat
Inhuman Strength: By focusing your spirit, your strength is doubled.. All difficulties for lifting or moving objects are halved for you when taking a full minute to lift.

Strength of an Archon: (Requires inhuman strength) There is no limit to how much you can focus your strength. You continue to build up strength as you strain to move something until it moves. For every minute that passes, your strength doubles until finally something breaks or moves, at which point your strength is sufficient to keep moving it until you stop, at which point it resets to normal. You can lift boats and push over walls, even carry the whole world if given the opportunity.

Incredible Speed: You run incredibly fast. When moving as a move action or sprinting as a standard action, move an extra zone.

Inhuman Speed: (Requires Incredible Speed) You run fast as the wind. When moving as a move action or sprinting as a standard action, move two extra zones.

Speed of an Archon: (Requires Inhuman Speed) Blink and you're gone. When moving as a move action or sprinting as a standard action, move four extra zones.

Regeneration: You heal yourself. Add the regeneration skill under Combat at rank 1, though you can spend more skill points to upgrade it. You may roll combat plus regeneration as a free action as if it were the heal spell, and restore health accordingly.

Sniper: Your projectiles fly twice as far. Count successes twice for the purposes of determining how far away you can shoot.

Deadly: You deal an additional point of damage for ranged and melee for every two extra successes you get, not 3.

Deadly as an Archon: (Requires Deadly) You deal damage in ranged and melee equal to successes rolled more than your opponent's defense.

Jump Good: You can soar through the air and land with grace, jumping to incredible heights and across great chasms. Halve the penalties for jumping with the move skill due to height and length of jump, but not for precision needed. You can also fall from any height without taking damage.

Flight: (Requires Jump Good) You may fly, using the move skill to soar through the air, though not any faster than you can run. This eliminates most movement penalties.

Force of Body / Force of Mind: Resist magic is a combat skill for you, not a lore skill.

Unnatural Resilience: You can never take more than 1 damage from any attack. But pick a weakness, and you take double damage from that weakness. Good examples of weaknesses include fire or silver.

Frightening Visage: Intimidate is treated as a combat skill for you, not charisma.

Self-Sufficient: You have no need to breathe, eat, or sleep.

Bodyguard: You may pick one person in the same zone as you and roll defense on behalf of the target any time said target is attacked. If you succeed the target is safe and if you fail you take the hit instead of the target.

I Fight Alone: In combat, if you are the only follower of your archon fighting, you get an extra standard action.

Amphibious: You never take a penalty to any action for being underwater, and you can breathe underwater indefinitely and swim to great depths.

Monk's Vow: You get +2 to all combat skills but may not use any tools in conjuction with those skills. You fight unarmed and unarmored.

Mount: You can carry one other on your back without penalty, and may pass certain rolls on behalf of your rider, like move or skulk.

Berserker: You may choose to berserk as a standard action at a level up to your melee skill. For instance, if your melee skill is 5 you may summon insanity and hatred from the depths of your soul to berserk at 5 or less. Your berserk level acts as a bonus to all physical actions that would benefit from greatly enhanced speed and strength but that wouldn't be too inhibited by rage. All combat actions gain this benefit and all defensive actions, as do jumping, running, swimming, smithing, and other similar actions. Each round you lose one level of berserk, which means the benefit reduces. Once you reach 0 levels of berserk you are perfectly calm and unable to fight or get upset for the remainder of the scene. While still berserk, you automatically ignore any social skills or mind control effects that would curb your rage, although you can be affected by mind-altering effects that enhance or redirect your violent energies. As long as you are berserking you must fight or go about accomplishing the task you attempted. If you finish the task or have defeated all enemies, you must proceed to kill the nearest target regardless of any moral qualms you would have had in your sane state. You are berserk; you must kill.

Berserkergang: (requires berserker) Whenever you berserk, anyone under your command can gain the benefits of the berserker ability if they wish.

Extra Appendages: You have tentacles sprouting out of your back, prehensile hair, additional small arms, a tail that can grab things, or something else of the sort. Gain +2 to climbing, grappling, escape artist, entertaining, melee, and anything else that would benefit from the appendages.

One-Man-Army: When fighting factions they get no benefit from superior numbers.

Exceptional Ammunition: You carry around a great variety of ammunition that you can throw or shoot as suits your needs. You are assumed to have a good variety of each of the following, and don't run out except in extraordinary circumstances. You may choose a number of these ammo types equal to your archon's labor aspect to be available to you. Plentiful Ammunition: (Requires Exceptional Ammunition) You can have all the types of ammunition listed above.
 * Deadly Ammo: This deals +1 damage, possibly from poison, possibly from elemental enhancement.
 * Range Ammo: This is able to travel two zones farther than it normally should be able to.
 * Accurate Ammo: This has +2 to hit.
 * Trap Ammo: This acts as if it were a grapple attempt, blocking the target from moving. It has +2 to do so.
 * Grabbing Ammo: This grabs a specific item and returns it to you, act as if ranged were the steal skill.
 * Disabling Ammo: This gets +2 to blind, injure, or in other way act as an interfere action.

Healing Hands: While you are touching someone, no injury of theirs will worsen, no disease will spread, and no poison will cause any worse effects. You get +2 to all medicine rolls and may prevent people from dying in this way. This does not allow you to heal yourself any better, nor can you touch yourself to keep your condition from worsening. This also doesn't prevent someone from adding new injuries, say by stabbing your patient.

Stealth
Assassin: When you are concealed, ranged and melee are considered stealth skills for you and may be used without expending shadow and by rolling stealth plus the skill.

Truesight: Halve all penalties to seeing due to darkness, fog, distance, illusion, camouflage, and so on. You can pick a sense like heat vision, sonar, or something similar and assume this explains it, or you may simply assume you are so aligned with the truth that this automatically happens. You cannot ignore penalties due to the target being well hidden or stealthy. You may spend a point of vim to see through anything in the zone and an adjacent zone however, including through doors, solid walls, and the earth itself. In that case, assume you automatically see anyone trying to hide and ignore all illusions. The effect lasts a few seconds.

Shadow Weaver:  Halve all penalties due to stealth if there are shadows nearby or it is completely dark, and ignore any penalties to see due to darkness.

Immaculate Theft: Difficulty factors for stealing are halved for you, when you take five minutes to prepare the theft. You can steal someone's pants without them noticing.

Impossible Theft: (Requires Immaculate Theft) You can steal the words out of someone's mouth, their heart, their mojo, and other metaphorical things.

Huntsman: You may declare a target your quarry. You get +2 to capture, conquer, or kill your quarry and any actions leading to one of those outcomes. If you change quarries without first capturing, conquering or killing your previous quarry, you may never take the previous quarry as a quarry again. The exception is if you are pursuing the new quarry as a part of your attempt to get the old. Examples include tracking down someone who knows where your bounty is in order to get closer to your bounty or hunting a dangerous beast that is threatening the woman you want to fall for you. Watcher Initiate: (not available to humans and not needed by watchers) You are not a human, but you are accepted among the watchers. You can use birds for communication and prayer.

Full Watcher: (requires watcher initiate) You get +1 to all stealth skills and are a full member of the watchers.

Untraceable: You leave no evidence behind. You cannot be tracked.

Charisma
Perfect Beauty: You get +1 to all social skills used against targets who might be sexually attracted to you.

Sharp Tongue:  Like with damage in combat, for every 3 extra successes you cause, you cause an extra point of social pressure.

Renown:  If this ability is taken by a non-champion, they have a reputation as if they were a champion. (Champions are the celebrities of their day). If a champion takes it, they have a reputation that exceeds all other champions. Wherever champions of renown go, they are known and treated favorably if their reputation would cause that. People will be able to recognize them instantly and will be inclined to take orders from that person. You should define the reputation and what you are well known for, which will likely be shaped in part by your gifts.

Bland: Champions can take this to remove their celebrity status, gaining +1 to all stealth actions in a crowd and being difficult to describe and remember. "The man was kind of average looking, brown hair, and he sounded like he maybe had an accent, I guess." If you take this and renown, you can switch between two personas with a costume change, like a hero masquerading as a commoner. It is also possible to take shapeshifting abilities and attach renown to one form and bland to another. Note that the bland and perfect beauty create a similar situation.

King of Memes: Things you write stick in people's minds. They copy and transcribe them, spreading your ideas across the known world. Quippy quotes become graffitied onto buildings, people can remember poems you've written, and your books are read by almost every literate person.

Mockery: In combat, you may, once per turn, make a social attack as a free action if you make a physical attack in the same turn.

Squad Leader: When you lead a squad it gets +1 to all rolls.

Sidekick: Treat one of your followers as a sidekick. It gets +1 to all actions. If the follower dies or leaves your service you may exchange this gift for something else or get a new sidekick.

Lovers: Choose another champion. Both of you must take this, and when either of you supports the other, add an extra 2 dice to the players' pool.

Friend to Animals: You get along with natural animals and may not cause them harm, but they automatically are friendly toward you. This has no effect on your dealings with archon-created monsters and minimal on your dealings with great animals.

Speak with Animals: You may converse with any animal or monster, but this does not mean they are capable of human-level intelligence or they automatically do what you want. This gives you +1 to social interactions with great animals and halves difficulty factors for using taming on any other animals.

Powerful Art: As a work action, you can create art rolling artisan to create a drawing, painting, mural, or other some such visual art. Choose what effect it would have, comparable to any social skill, and it can be a different effect for every piece of art. Everyone who experiences it for the first time, even for a second, has to roll determination higher than the successes you rolled when creating the art or else take a point of social pressure to act in a way that the art compels them.

Creative: You can once per session (more often by expending vim each time) create an image by rolling artisan or perform. This image is so vivid it turns into a real object. Treat this as if you cast the conjure spell.

Rivalry: Choose another player character as a rival. You get +1 to any attempt to show up that rival.

Mediator to Archons: Your speech can even affect archons. You may roll a social skill against an archon that it resists by rolling charisma + lore to resist. If you succeed, the archon must either do as you ask or give a point of connection from them to the archon you serve.

Determined: Gain your level as a bonus to resist all social skills.

Resounding Voice: Your voice can be heard for miles if you so desire. Halve all penalties to social skills due to distance.

Divine Pact: You may write contracts or make spoken agreements with people so long as they know that the bargain is supernaturally binding. If all parties agree, the agreement can be modified or dispelled. Parties are held to the spirit of the agreement. In the event of a dispute of the bargain's meaning, the GM is the arbiter unless another character is stated to be an arbiter of the bargain.

Diabolic Pact: You make make contracts with others, and they must be written out and signed with all parties' consent. Parties are held to the literal word-for-word meaning of the contract, not the spirit, and the contract cannot be modified even if all parties agree. It is only ended when all parties have fulfilled their bargain. If the contract included "I swear on..." the thing sweared upon gets a -1 to all actions if the contract is broken and the party has the right to swear on that thing. Followers of an archon may swear on that archon, and if the archon does not judge the individual, the archon takes the penalty. If the party swears on his own life, breaking the contract is lethal.

Master of Disguise: You may go offscreen, not actively playing the character. You may then later declare that any unnamed character who came onscreen after your character left is actually your character in disguise.

Labor
Investment: Gain 3 additional treasure resource each session due to you receiving money somehow. If you have investment and generous, you may instead say that all champions you wish gain 1 additional treasure, yourself included. (When you take this gift, it can be 3 of a different type of resource instead, specify when chosen.)

Generous: Anyone else may roll your lore plus stock to equip themselves if you permit them to do so, even if your character is not present but would conceivably have given them the item.

Masterwork: You can create your best item ever. This item has a rating equal to your create tool skill, and if the skill rating increases so does the item rating. (But the item rating does not normally decrease if your skill decreases).

Personal Hall: You can create a building of incomparable majesty. After you have created a structure, add +2 to its rating, and that +2 does not count against the difficulty to upgrade it.

Personal Demesne: You have a small area that you own, a pocket dimension, portal to a small heaven, or something else that allows you storage space the size of a single zone. The build structure skill is excellent for developing said zone. You may control who enters and exits this zone so long as you possess the talisman that acts as its gateway. If you enter your personal demesne, the talisman remains where you last left it. The nature of the personal demesne is up to you, but once set, cannot be changed on a whim, only with character's action.

Celestial Crafting: You may create an item or structure once per session. Instead of paying the resources cost, the item is made of celestial matter, which is shinier but operates mostly the same.

Multitasking: You may work on two projects at once.

Pack Mule: You can carry 2 extra tools.

Lore
Studious: You have learned all sorts of facts. Halve all penalties to research rolls due to obscurity of knowledge.

Innate Spell: You know an additional spell that does not count against the difficulty of learning spells.

Priest: Once per scene, when the archon your champion follows does a miracle in the same zone as the champion, the miracle's cost is reduced by 1.

Graceful Mage: Whenever you cast a spell on someone, friend or foe, they get +2 to their next action.

Baleful Mage: Whenever you cast a spell on someone, friend or foe, they get -2 to their next action.

Spell Focus: Gain +1 to all spells that center around a specific theme, such as plants or fire. Themes like "good" or "the 4 elements" are too broad.

Power Return: Whenever you fail a spell, it does not count as a use of that spell.

Magic Controller: You may use counterspell as often as you want without penalty or use limit.

Aura Reading: You can see the flow of magic and sense magical energy, allowing you to see auras, spells, and other magical effects. This ability halves your perceive skill (round up) when active for normal sight, but allows you to use the full value of your perceive skill for magical perceptions. Elemental Guardian: Pick an energy such as fire, lightning, cold, light, sound, or something similar. You are immune to damage from that element and may actually consume it as if it were food. You also get +1 to hit with that element and may spend a point of vim to control it, snuffing out a group of torches for example. This should be comparable to the effects of a spell. Controlling earth or water is not recommended, and being an earth guardian would not make you immune to metal weapons. Being a metal guardian is just about impossible. For roleplaying purposes, you probably have an opposing element that you dislike. A fire guardian can wear a coat in the middle of the desert without being overheated, but would get cold very easily.

Forsaken: You are anathema. You may not use any magic, nor may you be affected directly by any spell. Any any archon attempting a miracle in the same zone as you must spend an extra point of connection. You may spend a point of vim to deactivate a gift of someone else to do anything supernatural, although if it is entirely explicable through natural means this ability has no effect on it. The deactivation lasts for a scene. You may also roll resist magic to resist any supernatural ability or spell cast within the same zone as you.

Uncategorized
Legendary Skill: You get +3 to a specific skill. You may take this up to 3 times, each time for a different skill.

Pluralist: You may take this multiple times, each time for a different archon. You are counted as a follower of that archon in addition to your own. You may learn spells from either archon and may use one of that archon's aspects for yourself as a champion or follower.

Master of Poisons: You get +2 to all interactions with poisons and poison knowledge, and may halve or double the time it takes for any poison you know of to affect a target.

Poison Collector: Need to write rules for weird poisons.

Coexist: When you take this gift, choose two other gifts where neither is a prerequisite of the other. You may take advantage of both gifts simultaneously without penalty.

Shapeshift
Change Form: You can take a second form. Your appearance in this other form is different and you may define up to 10 skill points worth of skills that are different between forms. You can change in one scene and remain in that form until the end of the next scene. You may not change back sooner or later.

Change Gifts: (Requires Change Form) While transformed, choose two gifts you had in your original form that are now a different two in your second form. You may only change one if you wish. This stacks with change form.

Complete Shift: (Requires Change Form) Your second form can have a completely different listing of skills from your original, or you can change fewer, but you have the same number in each form.

Other Form: (Requires Change Form) Add in a third form (or fourth or fifth or more for each time you take this). This form gets all the benefits of any other shapeshift abilities you have.

Amorphous: You can shift your appearance in superficial ways, but not change your size or basic abilities in any important ways. You may gain tentacles but not the coordination the extra appendages gift gives you to control them enough to get a bonus. You may grow wings but not fly. Naturally, if you have the gift that would allow you to do any of these things, taking amorphous won't hurt that in any way. This gift halves penalties to deceive for disguise or camouflage or for lying about your identity when your physical form is currently helping you. Changing your shape requires a deceive roll and a single action, if you want your appearance to look realistic.

Legendary Blade
All of these gifts are imbued in a weapon you possess, a sword, axe, spear, bow, javelin, or some other such weapon. They are all automatically compatible if used in the same item, and so you don't have to take coexist to have them available at the same time. Any object that has at least one of these abilities is indestructible by all but the most extreme means, and even direct intervention by an archon is unlikely to harm the weapon. Some of these may even be appropriate for non-combat items.

True Ownership: The blade belongs to you, and it is written in the laws of the universe as surely as the sun rises and sets and that heavy objects sink beneath the waves. If the blade leaves your hands, no being or force on earth may move it, not even an archon. You may spend a point of vim to recall the weapon to your hands, even if you are in different realities.

Slayer: If the blade hits the target, the target takes damage. Period. Even a tie on an attack roll deals a point of damage. The blade is capable of damaging spirits and monsters that should be immune to normal weapons. Even archons can lose a point of labor, combat, or stealth if they are hit by the blade.

Sacred Purpose: The blade has some sort of purpose. Gain +2 to all rolls that advance that purpose while using the weapon, but take a -2 penalty to all rolls that work against that purpose, even if not holding the blade.

Masterful Item: The blade has a tool rating equal to 2 plus your archon's combat aspect. Or 2 plus the lore aspect if it's a magical staff or some such spellcasting talisman.

Juggernaut Strike: Once per session, you may make an unstoppable strike, with +2 to hit. If it connects, the target takes a number of points of damage equal to your archon's combat aspect, on top of what damage would normally be dealt. The juggernaut strike cuts through stone and metal as easily as air.