1.0.0 Character Creation

1.1.0 Attributes

A character has six attributes ranging from 3 to 18, reflecting a range from the minimum viable capacity for a playable character to the maximum normal human level.

Three of these attributes are physical.

• Strength, reflecting physical prowess, melee combat, carrying gear, and brute force.
• Dexterity, reflecting speed, evasion, manual dexterity, reaction time, and combat initiative.
• Constitution, reflecting hardiness, enduring injury, and tolerating large amounts of magical healing.

Three are mental attributes.

• Intelligence, reflecting memory, reasoning, technical skills, and general education.
• Wisdom, reflecting noticing things, making judgments, reading situations, and intuition.
• Charisma, reflecting commanding, charming, attracting attention, and being taken seriously.

NPCs do not normally have attributes. If necessary, the GM can choose them as appropriate, but usually they are assumed to have average scores if it’s ever relevant.

1.1.1 Generating Attributes

To generate their six attributes, the player rolls 3d6 in order, once for each attribute. At any point before section 1.5.0 in character creation the player may substitute a score of 14 for one rolled score.

Optionally, a player may choose to assign their stats from the following array of numbers: 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 7, divided up as desired among the attributes. If an array is used a score may not be substituted with a 14 later.

1.1.2 Attribute Modifiers

Each attribute has a modifier, usually ranging from -2 to +2. This modifier is added to skill checks, attack rolls, damage rolls, Shock damage, and the relevant saving throw targets.

An attribute score of 3 has a modifier of -2. A score of 4-7 has a modifier of -1. A score of 8-13 has a modifier of +0. A score of 14-17 has a modifier of +1. A score of 18 has a modifier of +2.

Some Foci and abilities may add bonuses or penalties to an at tribute’s base modifier. Such bonuses or penalties cannot increase the modifier above +2 or below -2 unless explicitly indicated. Some injuries or character advancements may alter an attribute score; this new score may change the attribute’s modifier.

1.2.0 Skills

A character’s skills are the PC’s learned abilities. A newly-created character starts with a few relevant skills and may acquire more as they advance in level. NPCs do not have individual skills, instead relying on their combat stat line’s skill bonus when relevant. See section 2.3.0 for the rules for making skill checks.

1.2.1 Skill Levels

Skills are rated on a scale between level-0 and level-4. A character must reach a certain minimum experience level to develop a skill to level-2 or beyond.

1.2.2 Gaining Skills in Character Creation

Characters gain skills from their Backgrounds as described in the section below and from a single free pick in section 1.7.4. Some Foci also grant particular skills. The first time a skill is picked or given, a character obtains it at level-0. The second time it is picked or given, the skill becomes level-1. The third and further times a skill is picked or given during character creation, the player instead picks any other skill that is not already level-1. No character can begin play with skills above level-1.

1.2.3 The Skill List

The following skills are standard to most fantasy campaigns. GMs may add or subtract from this list for specialized settings. Some skills may overlap at points in their application; the character may use either skill at their discretion.

• Administer: Keep an organization running smoothly, scribe things well, plan out logistics, identify incompetent or treacherous workers, analyze records or archives, or otherwise do things that an executive or middle-manager would need to do.
• Connect: Find or know people who are useful to your purposes, make friendships or social acquaintances, know who to talk to get favors or services, and call on the help or resources of organizations you belong to. Connect covers your PC’s ability to find the people you need, though convincing them to help may require more than this.
• Convince: Persuade a listener that something you are saying is true. Naturally, the more implausible the claim or more emotionally repugnant it is to them, the more difficult it is to persuade them. Furthermore, how they act on their newfound conviction is up to them and their motivations, and may not be perfectly predictable.
• Craft: Craft or repair goods and technology appropriate to the PC’s background and society. The Craft skill can be used for a wide range of artisan pursuits, though a GM is within their rights to keep the PC from building complex things that are too far away from their past background and experience.
• Exert: Run, swim, climb, jump, labor for long periods, throw things, or otherwise exert your physical strength, stamina, and coordination. Even a PC with poor physical attributes might have a good Exert skill reflecting athletic training and expertise in making the most of their available talents.
• Heal: Treat wounds, cure diseases, neutralize poisons, diagnose psychological health issues, and otherwise tend to the wounds of body and mind. The Heal skill cannot cure lost hit points directly, but it’s a vital skill in stabilizing Mortally Wounded allies or ensuring clean recovery.
• Know: Know matters of history, geography, natural science, zoology, and other academic fields appropriate to a sage or scholar. While some sages might specialize in particular fields, most learned men and women in this age have a broad range of understanding, and will rarely be unable to even attempt to answer a question relevant to this skill.
• Lead: Inspire others to follow your lead and believe in your plans and goals. Manage subordinates and keep them focused, loyal, and motivated in the face of danger or failure. A successful leader will keep their subordinate’s faith and confidence even when reason might make the leader’s plan appear questionable at best.
• Magic: Cast or analyze magic and know things about famous mages or notable magical events. Classes that can’t cast spells obtain only intellectual and scholarly benefits from this skill.
• Notice: Notice small details, impending ambushes, hidden features, or concealed objects. Detect subtle smells, sounds, or other sensory input. Notice cannot be used simply to detect a lie, but keen attention can often discern a subject’s emotional state.
• Perform: Sing, act, dance, orate, or otherwise perform impressively for an audience. Compose music, plays, writings, or other works of performance art. Most performers will have a particular field they excel at, though polymaths might exist if the PC’s background is appropriate for such versatility.
• Pray: Perform the clerical rites of your religion, and be familiar with the gods, demons, and taboos of major and minor faiths, and identify iconography and persons of religious importance. Pray also helps you know the state of local faiths and the important persons in their hierarchies.
• Punch: Fight unarmed or with natural body weaponry. Punch, kick, grapple, or otherwise brawl without the benefit of man-made tools. This mode of fighting is inefficient at best without some special Focus to improve it, but it’s reliably non-lethal.
• Ride: Ride an animal, drive a cart or carriage, or otherwise deal with land transportation. This skill also includes competence at mount care and tending, basic cart or carriage repair, judging good horseflesh, and other skills appropriate to a beast-rider of whatever society the PC comes from.
• Sail: Sail or repair a ship, build small craft, navigate by the stars, read sea weather, manage sailors, and otherwise conduct the business of a professional mariner. This skill may apply to more esoteric means of vehicular travel in some societies.
• Shoot: Fire a bow or crossbow or throw a hurled weapon. Maintain ranged weaponry and fletch arrows.
• Sneak: Move silently, hide in shadows, avoid notice, pick pockets, disguise yourself, pick locks, defeat traps, or otherwise overcome security measures.
• Stab: Fight with melee weapons or throw a hurled weapon. Maintain and identify weaponry.
• Survive: Hunt, fish, navigate by the stars, mitigate environmental hazards, identify plants and wildlife, and craft basic survival tools and shelter. A PC’s Survive skill is most pertinent to the environments in their background, but the basic principles can be applied in all but the most alien environments.
• Trade: Buy and sell at a profit, identify the worth of goods or treasures, deal with merchants and traders, find black-market goods and services, and know laws regarding smuggling and contraband.
• Work: This skill is a catch-all for any profession that might not other wise merit its own skill, such as a painter, lawyer, farmer, or herdsman. The precise skill it represents will vary with the PC’s background.

1.3.0 Backgrounds

Every character has a Background, a past reflecting their career before they took up adventuring. A background may be chosen from the list below or a new one made up with GM permission.

1.3.1 Background Skills

When a Background is chosen, a PC immediately gets its free skill at level-0. At that point, the player decides whether to gain further skills randomly or to pick specific choices.

If they choose randomly, they may make three rolls divided be tween the Growth and Learning tables of their background in any way they wish, including taking all three from just one table. If they pick specific choices they can pick any two skills from the Learning table, including picking the same one twice to raise it to level-1. They may not pick the “Any Skill” option, if it exists.

A skill pick of “Any Combat” means the player can pick Shoot, Stab, or Punch. A skill roll of “Any Skill” means they can pick any skill from the list above. Some campaigns may involve special magical or psychic skills; these cannot be chose with the Any Skill pick.

If an attribute bonus is rolled, such as “+2 Physical”, the player may apply it to any physical attribute or split the bonus between two physical attributes. The same principle applies to Mental attribute increases. “Any Stat” increases may be applied to either physical or mental attributes. No attribute can be raised above 18.

1.3.2 New Backgrounds

To create a new background, the player describes it to the GM and picks an existing background table that best fits the concept. Assuming the GM approves it, they may then roll or pick as usual. If no existing background table fits, they may make a new one with the GM’s permission.

1.3.3 Example Backgrounds

The two following backgrounds are examples of those possible for a player, with others to be created as the designer thinks appropriate for their setting. The free granted skill is listed after each background’s name.

1.4.0 Classes

PCs are uncommon in that each of them has a class. A class represents the particular skills, abilities, or talents that make the PC a viable adventurer. NPCs do not normally have classes, though they may have special abilities or powers of their own.

1.4.1 The Three Base Classes

The three base classes are Expert, Mage, and Warrior. Each of these base classes has its own hit die, attack progression, and Focus advancement. PCs use the tables for the class they choose.

1.4.2 Full and Partial Classes

There are two kinds of classes: Full classes and Partial classes. A PC may choose to pick a single Full class, committing completely to that class’ profession, or they may choose to become an Adventurer and pick two Partial classes instead, mixing their abilities.

The Warrior, Expert, High Mage, Necromancer, Invoker, and Elementalist classes may be taken either as a Full class or as a Partial class. In the former case, the PC gains the full range of powers granted to the profession. If taken as a Partial class, a more restricted range of abilities are granted.

The Healer, Vowed, Bard, Thought Noble, Accursed, Wise, Mageslayer, Skinshifter, Duelist, Beastmaster, and Blood Priest can only be taken as Partial classes. These classes are limited in scope, and must be paired with another Partial class.

1.4.3 The Adventurer Class

The Adventurer is a special class that allows the PC to take two Partial classes and mix them together. These may be Partial-only classes, such as a Healer/Vowed, or they may be Partial versions of Warrior, Expert, or Mage classes, such as a Partial Expert/Thought Noble. A dual-specialization spellcaster is also possible by mixing a Partial High Mage/Partial Elementalist together, for example.

1.4.4 Classes and Effort

Some classes have special abilities that are fueled with magical power, inner focus, or some other reserve of energy. This capacity is measured in points of Effort, a resource the PC can commit to activate their abilities.

Every class that uses Effort has its own unique pool: High Mage Effort, Vowed Effort, Healer Effort, and so forth. Adventurers with two Partial classes that use Effort have two separately-tracked pools, one for each class. Points of Effort from one class cannot be used to fuel powers from another.

The maximum Effort of a Full class is equal to 1 plus a relevant skill level and ability modifier given by the class. A Partial class uses the same formula, but with 1 fewer point of Effort, to a minimum of 1.

1.4.4.1 Committing Effort

Most class powers require that Effort be Committed. Committing Effort is done as part of activating a power, and ties up the Effort for a varying amount of time depending on the ability used.

Some powers Commit Effort for the duration. This means the Effort remains Committed as long as the power is active. The PC can reclaim the Committed Effort at any time as an Instant action, deactivating the power.

Some powers Commit Effort for the scene. The Effort remains Committed until the end of the scene, after which it returns to the PC. It cannot be reclaimed earlier, even if the ability it fuels is only good for a single attack or action. A scene usually amounts to a single fight, event, or dungeon turn, almost never lasting more than fifteen minutes. Further specifics are provided in the time section of the game rules.

Some powers Commit Effort for the day. Once Committed, this Effort can be recovered only after a comfortable night’s rest. If the PC is hungry, cold, sick, or sleeping without the benefits of a bedroll or other basic comforts, this Effort cannot be recovered.

Activating a power only ever requires Committing a single point of Effort, unless the power itself says otherwise.

1.5.0 The Class List

The classes that follow are flavor-stripped versions of those found in Worlds Without Number and its supplement, The Atlas of the Latter Earth. While mainstays such as the Warrior, the Expert, or the High Mage are appropriate to almost any fantasy setting, others may not fit specific campaigns. A GM always has the right to omit classes that do not fit the flavor of the game they are running.

1.5.1 The Adventurer

Not every hero is perfectly reflected by one of the three main classes, even with the wide latitude of concepts each one allows. For those heroes that straddle the roles, there remains the class of Adventurer.

An Adventurer picks two classes to reflect their own particular talents. A spell-slinging swordsman might choose to be a Partial Mage/Partial Warrior, while a stealthy assassin might be a Partial Expert/Partial Warrior, and a grifting mountebank-wizard might be a Partial Expert/Partial Mage. The player should pick whichever pairing serves best.

The tables below provide the hit dice, attack bonus, and Foci picks gained by each of the three possible pairings. Thus, a first level Partial Expert/Partial Warrior would roll 1d6+2 for their hit points, have a +1 attack bonus, and pick three Foci: one expert, one warrior, and one free pick.

Adventurers tend to have a wider range of abilities than a more focused PC, and the extra Focus pick can make a significant difference at low levels. The absence of the strongest class abilities of Experts and Warriors make a difference in the longer run, however, and a Partial Mage will never attain the same magical power in their tradition as a focused specialist.

Partial Expert

A Partial Expert is treated just as a full Expert, including gaining the benefits of the Quick Learner ability. They do not have the Masterful Expertise ability, however, as they lack the versatility of a full Expert.

Partial Mage

A Partial Mage is treated as a Mage, and gains the Arcane Tradition ability, allowing them to pick a magical tradition for their powers. That tradition’s abilities will be more limited for Partial Mages, however, as described under each of the paths.

It’s even possible for a PC to pick the Partial Mage class twice for two different magical traditions, gaining portions of both arcane powers. They then use the usual full Mage chart for hit dice, attack bonus, and Foci, and the spellcasting table for dual casters if both partial classes cast spells.

A Partial Mage must adhere to the restrictions and limits of their magical tradition in order to use its abilities, regardless of whatever other partial class they may have.

Partial Warrior

A Partial Warrior gains certain of the benefits of a full Warrior, including the improved hit die and a somewhat improved attack bonus. They do not have the Veteran’s Luck special ability or the Killing Blow power, however, and must trust to their own talents to land blows and crush their enemies.

Partial Expert/Partial Warrior

Partial Expert/Partial Mage

Partial Mage/Partial Warrior

1.5.2 The Accursed

The Accursed are those men and women who have made pacts with otherworldly beings, intentionally or otherwise, and gained powers from that bond.

Benefits Of The Accursed

The Accursed is a partial Mage class that must be joined with a second partial class by an Adventurer. A Partial Warrior/Accursed might be a grim demonic warrior, a Partial Expert/Accursed might be a sinister tempter, while a Partial Mage/Accursed could be a sorcerer willing to pact with foul creatures for their powers.

All Accursed gain Magic-0 during character creation. Even those who are not spellcasters must understand the ways of eldritch beings and the subtleties of sorcery.

While the arts of Accursed Blade and Accursed Bolt use Magic as their combat skill, Foci that normally apply to mundane weapons such as Armsmaster or Deadeye also benefit their relevant melee or ranged attacks. For these Foci, read “Magic” in place of “Shoot” or “Stab” when gaining their benefits, including the granted skill and the stacking damage bonus that the first level of the Focus may grant.

1.5.2.1 Accursed Arts

An Accursed has an Effort score equal to their Magic skill level plus their Intelligence or Charisma modifier, to a minimum of one point. Every Accursed gains either Accursed Bolt or Accursed Blade as a starting art, plus one more of their choice. Accursed arts may be used in or out of armor.

• Accursed Blade: As an On Turn action, manifest an occult melee weapon as a one-handed 1d8 weapon or a two-handed 2d weapon. Both add your Magic skill to the damage roll, have a Shock rating of 2/15, and use Magic as the attack skill and the best of Str, Dex, Int, or Cha as its modifying attribute.
• Accursed Bolt: As Accursed Blade, but you launch blasts of occult force instead of meleeing. Their damage is 1d8 plus your Magic skill, their range is 200’, and the bolts can be thrown in melee at a -4 penalty to hit. These bolts need both hands free to hurl them.
• Bewitching Distraction: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action when talking to an intelligent target when not in combat. They must make a Mental save or become dazed, oblivious to their surroundings and forgetting you and all else that happened in that scene. Danger ends the daze but not the forgetting.
• Compelling Shriek: Once per scene, Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and shout a command of no more than seven words. Chosen targets who hear and understand must make a Mental save or perform that action for one round, provided it is not totally contrary to their character.
• Devil’s Bargain: As a Main Action, consecrate a deal you’ve made with an uncoerced person. If they violate the deal or its spirit, you know instantly and may inflict 1d6 damage per level on them if desired.
• Dire Pact: Foes suffer a penalty equal to your Magic skill on all saves versus your Accursed arts. If they succeed, however, you gain one System Strain.
• Lying Face: Commit Effort as a Main Action; while it remains Committed, you can disguise yourself as any humanoid of the same general size, including clothing, scent, and voice.
• Night-Black Eyes: You can see clearly in perfect darkness. As a Main Action, focus on a particular visible object, person, or lo cation; you can tell if it is enchanted, though no details about the magic are seen.
• Pacted Protection: Choose a type of harmful energy: fire, frost, acid, electricity, or the like. You become immune to natural degrees of this energy and take half damage from magical attacks involving it.
• Rob Vitality: Once per scene, as an On Turn action, Commit Effort for the scene and target a visible foe. They must make a Physical save or lose their next Main Action, which you immediately gain instead.
• Scourging Curse: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action and target a visible foe. Your curse inflicts a -1 penalty to their hit, damage, and saving throw rolls for one round per level. At 4th level this penalty becomes -2, and at 9th it becomes -3. Only one such curse can be active at a given time.
• Shadowed Steps: As a Move Action, Commit Effort for the scene and teleport up to your Move distance. You cannot bypass walls or physical obstacles, but you can teleport vertically or into high places.
• Snaring Speech: Once per round as an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day when failing a skill check to persuade or tempt someone. They must make a Mental save or agree with your proposal if it’s something they would normally consider doing. Gain one System Strain when using this art.
• Sorcerous Battery: Once per day, as an On Turn action, Commit Effort for the day. You or a visible ally refresh the spell slot of a spell that has been cast since the start of the prior round. Gain one System Strain.
• Soul Consumption: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day when you fell an intelligent target with Accursed Bolt or Accursed Blade. They die instantly. You heal 1d6 hit points plus your level and lose one accumulated System Strain.
• Tendrils of Night: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. While Committed, you exude numerous tentacles or eldritch arms that can manipulate objects with your strength up to 20’ away. You gain no bonus actions, but the arms can melee at range. These arms have your AC, and you are damaged if they are hurt.
• Unseen Steps: As an On Turn action, Commit Effort for the day to turn invisible for 1d6 rounds plus your level. This invisibility breaks before you attack, cast spells, or perform other vigorous or violent actions.
• Weight of Sin: As a Main Action, Commit Effort for the day and target a visible foe. They must make a Physical save or lose their Move action for 1d6 rounds plus your level.
• Weeping Wounds: Once per round, Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when a visible enemy takes damage. They must make a Physical save or suffer 1d6 damage per round for one round per level. They cannot heal or regenerate any hit point damage during this effect. This art does not stack.

Partial Expert/Accursed

Partial Mage/Accursed

Partial Warrior/Accursed

1.5.3 The Bard

Bards are those who have an uncanny ability to move others through the power of their performance.

Benefits Of The Bard

The Bard is a partial Expert class that must be joined with a second partial class by an Adventurer. A Partial Warrior/Bard might be a martial skald, a Partial Expert/Bard might be a light-fingered troubadour, while a Partial Mage/Bard might mix true magic in with their artful performances.

All Bards gain Perform-0 during character creation. Their abilities hinge on their power to move a listener, whether that is by song, musicianship, or stirring oratory.

Unlike the normal Partial Expert class, Bards do not get a bonus non-combat Focus at first level, nor do they get a Partial Expert’s bonus skill point when advancing a character level. One who takes the standard Partial Expert for their other class gains these things normally.

1.5.2.1 Bard Arts

A Bard has an Effort score equal to their Perform skill level plus their Charisma modifier, to a minimum of one point. Bard arts may be used in or out of armor, and do not count as magical effects for the purposes of abilities that counter or detect magic. Unless specified otherwise, their range is out to normal unaided voice range.

Every Bard gains A Thousand Tongues as a starting art, plus one more of their choice. As they advance in levels, they can pick additional arts.

• A Thousand Tongues: Your arts that require communication are intuitively understood by all intelligent creatures, whether or not you speak their language. You can learn a new language with no more than a week of study with a native speaker.
• Battle Cry: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action to bolster your allies. They gain +1 to hit, saving throws, and damage, including Shock, for one round per level. At 4th level this bonus increases to +2, and at 9th, to +3.
• Cursed Tune: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action while targeting an intelligent creature. Your imprecations cause them to falter, inflicting a -1 penalty to their hit, damage, and saving throw rolls for one round per level. At 4th level this penalty becomes -2, and at 9th it becomes -3.
• Deft Fingers: You’re accustomed to juggling your belongings while holding an instrument. Your maximum Readied item count increases by two.
• Entangle Incantation: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when an foe within 60’ incants a spell. Your voice tangles with their words, forcing them to make an opposed Int/Magic vs Cha/Perform skill check against you, with a +2 bonus to your roll. If you tie or succeed, the spell fizzles and is wasted. This art can be used only once per round.
• Evoke Emotion: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action while performing. You evoke a desired emotion in listeners, whether intelligent or animal, granting a +1 bonus to relevant social skill checks for the scene for you and your allies. If desired, you can force a new Reaction Roll, taking it if it’s more favorable than the original. This art does not work in combat and can be used only once per scene.
• Inspire Dread: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action when your enemies are forced to make a Morale check. You goad their fears, forcing them to make two Morale checks instead of one. Those who succeed on both must still make an Instinct check immediately after.
• Keen Senses: This art gives you the equivalent of sight out to 60’ even if blinded. You cannot distinguish colors, but you can perceive physical details as readily as if with your eyes. Physically-invisible creatures and objects are obvious to you.
• Liberating Song: You are immune to mind- or emotion-controlling effects. You can Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action to grant any ally in range a Mental saving throw to throw off such effects, assuming they allowed a save to begin with. If the second save is failed, this art cannot help them.
• Rally: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action to exhort a wounded or fallen ally, removing any Frailty. The target regains 2d6 plus your level in hit points, but you incur one System Strain.
• Soothe the Savage: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action. For as long as you keep spending a Main Action performing each round, animals and other living bestial creatures will not attack you or your allies unless commanded by their masters or threatened by the party. This art can’t be triggered once actual combat has begun.
• Soothing Graces: Your arts restore and hearten those with you. You and your allies lose an extra point of System Strain after each night’s comfortable rest. This does not stack with similar rest-aiding powers.
• Swift Misdirection: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action and target one intelligent creature within earshot. Tell them something in no more than one sentence; unless what you say is physically impossible or emotionally unendurable, they must make a Mental save or believe it for one round. After that, they can judge your words with their normal reason. This art can affect a creature only once per scene.

Partial Expert / Bard

Partial Mage / Bard

Partial Warrior / Bard

Bard Art Progression

1.5.4 The Beastmaster

Beastmasters are those PCs with an unnatural ability to control and influence animals. For some, these abilities are the fruit of rigorous magical study, while others obtain them from cultural practices, a feral upbringing, or natural aptitude.

Beastmaster Benefits

The Beastmaster exists only as a partial Mage class, meant to be taken by an Adventurer along with another partial class. A Partial Warrior/Beastmaster may be a savage barbarian or wood-wise ranger, while a Partial Expert/Beastmaster might be a masterful hunter or zoologist.

All Beastmasters get Survive as a bonus skill at level-0, or at level-1 if they already have it at level-0. The amount of time they spend in the wilderness learning of its ways can’t help but teach them how to survive in hard conditions and navigate the perils of an untamed land.

Beastmaster Companions

Many Beastmaster arts apply to the PC’s animal companion. There are a few basic guidelines for such companions that a GM should keep in mind during play.

A companion animal cannot have a number of hit dice greater than the Beastmaster’s level plus one. Thus a 2 hit die wolf is an acceptable companion for a first-level Beastmaster, but a 5 hit die tentacular horror is too potent to be bound to service.

A companion animal cannot have human levels of intelligence. It must be more-or-less animal in its thought patterns, though it can be a magical beast or supernatural entity of some kind.

A Beastmaster can normally have only one companion animal at a time. They can leave an animal behind in any terrain suitable for its survival and expect it to be in the same vicinity later if they choose to return for it and no one has killed it in the meanwhile. Released creatures are usually friendly to the Beastmaster still, unless they have been mistreated or are exceptionally savage.

A companion animal functions as an independent allied creature. It will obey commands from the Beastmaster that are not contrary to its own nature or beyond its intellect, but it will fight, move, check Instinct and Morale as normal, and act independently in combat. If the creature is mistreated or used as mere cannon fodder, it can flee or turn on its former master.

A companion animal must be given a name by the Beastmaster. Without a name to focus the PC’s arts, the creature cannot be controlled.

The Chosen Friend

Some Beastmasters form a lifelong bond with a single dear companion. If a PC chooses this option, they can only ever Bind one companion, but it gains the benefit of the Shared Vitality and Mind Call arts automatically. So long as the Beastmaster lives, this chosen friend cannot truly die; if reduced to zero hit points, it disappears, but will manifest again at the Beastmaster’s side the following dawn with its full hit points. Of course, the master is expected to treat this companion as the beloved friend it is, and not as mere battle-fodder.

1.5.4.1 Beastmaster Arts

Beastmaster Effort is calculated with Survive, and is equal to the PC’s Survive skill level plus the higher of their Wisdom or Charisma modifiers, to a minimum of one point. All Beastmasters start play with the Bind Companion art and one more of their choosing. They learn additional arts as they gain experience. Unlike some Mage traditions, Beastmasters can use their arts normally while armored.

• Bind Companion: With a day’s work in a location you can find and bind a suitable animal companion. If looking for a particular type of companion, it must be found in the area and may require a Wis/Survive skill check at a difficulty of 10 or more if it’s a particularly rare creature. If you encounter a suitable animal on an adventure, you may bind it as a Main Action, with the creature allowed a Mental saving throw to resist and become impervious to your powers. You may release a companion as a Main Action if you no longer wish its service or want to bind a different beast.

Other Beastmaster

• Arts Beast Ward: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. So long as the Effort remains Committed, the Beastmaster will not be attacked by unintelligent beasts unless the beast is commanded to do so by its master, the beast is starving, or the Beastmaster or their allies per forms some hostile act against it. Once the ward ends or is broken, it cannot be re-established in the same scene. Magical beasts and those trained specifically as guardians of an area get a Mental save to resist this power.
• Eyes of the Beast: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action. For the rest of the scene, you can share the senses of your companion. Neither of you can be surprised unless both are surprised.
• Feral Toughness: Your maximum hit point total is increased by the natural, unmodified hit dice of your companion; thus, a 5 hit die companion increases your maximum hit points by 5. You are impervious to normal outdoor extremes of heat or cold. Your base Armor Class is equal to 13 plus half your level, rounded up. This AC can be modified by shields or Dexterity modifiers, but not by armor.
• Howl of Distant Summons: You can call former animal companions to your side by Committing Effort for the day as a Main Action. The howl extends through time as well as space, and the subject will have received the message in time to reach your side within five minutes after you call for it. Once summoned, you may bind it again if you have no current companion. If the journey is exceptionally dangerous, difficult, or long, you’ll need to make a Cha/Survive skill check against a difficulty of 10 or more; on a failure, the beast could not make the journey and cannot be called by this power for another week.
• Know the Weak Spot: Whenever inflicting damage on a beast with a weapon or physical attack, roll the damage twice and take the higher score. Optionally, Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when an ally within earshot hits a beast; your shouted advice or distracting help allows them to roll damage twice and take the better result as well.
• Mind Call: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action. For the rest of the scene you forge a telepathic bond with your animal companion. You can give it orders and receive information from the creature, at least insofar as its limited intellect allows.
• Natural Weaponry: You may have physically grown fangs and claws, or it may be that you just intuitively absorbed effective unarmed fighting techniques from your animal companions. When unarmed, your attacks count as weapons that use either Str or Dex as their modifier, use Punch or Stab as the skill, do 1d8 damage, and have a Shock value of 2/AC 13. These unarmed attacks can harm even creatures immune to non-magical weapons. The damage and Shock of these weapons gains a +1 bonus at level 3, a + bonus at level 6, and a +3 bonus at level 9.
• Savage Senses: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action. For the remainder of the scene you are capable of seeing clearly even in pitch blackness, can scent out trails and belongings as perfectly as a wolf could, and gain a +2 bonus on all Notice skill checks involving sight, sound, or smell.
• Shared Vitality: The animal companions you bind have hit dice no lower than your level, even if they normally have far fewer. Thus, a 2 hit die beast bound by a 7th level Beastmaster would have 7 hit dice while it remained bound. Its hit bonus can’t be less than half its hit dice, rounded up. A Beastmaster can stabilize a Mortally Wounded companion by Committing Effort for the scene as an Instant action.
• Swift Healing: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action to heal 1d6 damage per character level to a wounded companion. This healing can be extended only once per scene or fifteen minutes.
• Tongue of the Beasts: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. While the Effort remains committed, you can speak with any animal that has fur, feathers, scales, or skin. This art allows them to temporarily speak as if they had human intellect, though their interests, knowledge, and desires do not change.

Partial Expert/Beastmaster

Partial Mage/Beastmaster

Partial Warrior/Beastmaster

Partial Beastmaster

1.5.5 The Blood Priest

As the devotee of a sanguinary god, a blood priest has magical powers for strengthening and supporting their allies.

Blood Priest Benefits

The Blood Priest exists only as a partial Mage class, to be taken by an Adventurer alongside another partial class. A Partial Warrior/ Blood Priest might be a crusader for their god, wielding steel and terror against the evils of this world. A Partial Expert/Blood Priest might be an inquisitor, investigating dubious figures and sifting out the truth of mysterious events.

All Blood Priests gain Pray as a bonus skill, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if they already have it at level-0. Even a “Blood Priest” who has only learned their abilities through study of their scriptures must master a wide variety of ecclesiastical rites and rituals in order to activate their powers.

1.5.5.1 Blood Priest Arts

Blood Priest Effort is calculated with Pray, with their total maximum Effort being equal to their Pray skill plus the higher of their Wisdom or Charisma modifiers, to a minimum of one point.

At first level, the Blood Priest may choose two of the following miracles to master, and gain more as they advance in levels. Once chosen, a miracle pick is permanent and cannot be changed later. Miracles are not hindered by the wearing of armor and require no gestures or free hand to employ, though usually a prayer must be vocalized as part of the action.

• A Thousand Tongues: Commit Effort as an On Turn action; while it remains Committed, you can speak with and understand any sentient creature with a language of their own. To any listener, it will seem as if you are perfectly fluent in their own language, even as you speak in your own native tongue. This ability does not allow you to read or write unknown languages.
• Armor of God: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. While the Effort remains Committed, you have a natural Armor Class of 15 plus half your level, rounded down. This AC can be modified by shields or your Dexterity modifier, but not by other worn armor.
• Divine Guidance: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and meditate upon a choice or potential action before you. The GM will tell you whether the likely outcome of that choice is weal, woe, a mix of both, or nothing significant, using their own best estimation. This insight cannot perceive likely outcomes more than an hour or so into the future.
• Fear No Flame: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action while nominating a visible target. For the rest of the scene, they are immune to non-magical flame, smoke, or explosive damage, and decrease any sources of such magical damage they take by five points per level of Pray you have.
• God Wills It: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action and loudly call down your god’s blessing on your comrades. For the rest of the scene, up to six allies per character level in earshot gain an effective Morale of 12 and a +1 bonus to hit and damage rolls, including any Shock that may be inflicted. At fifth level this becomes a +2 bonus, and at tenth level it becomes a +3 bonus.
• Merciful Healing: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and touch a target within melee range. The target receives 1d6+2 points of magical healing. If done in combat or used to revive a Mortally Wounded subject, the rushed haste of the healing adds 1 System Strain to the target, but no System Strain is added if it is applied outside of combat. At fourth level the healing done increases to 2d6+4 and at eighth level it becomes 4d6+8.
• Sanctified Ward: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. While the Effort is maintained and until you take some hostile action against a creature, you are immune to Shock damage and gain a +4 bonus to your Armor Class and all saving throws. Enemies must pass an Instinct check each round to target you with attacks; on a failure, they may take some other action instead. Once this art is ended it cannot be reactivated for the rest of the scene. Healing and other indirect support of fighting comrades does not count as a hostile action.
• Smite the Wicked: Commit Effort for the day as a On Turn action whenever you attack or take some damaging action toward a single target. You gain a +4 bonus to any hit roll, you inflict your character level as automatic damage, and you can roll any damage dice twice and take the higher result. This ability can only be used once per scene on a given target.
• The Light of Faith: Commit Effort as an On Turn action; while it re mains Committed, you can cast a clear, bright radiance that extends up to thirty feet away from you. At your discretion, this light is visible only to you and your comrades, including up to a dozen allies.
• Transubstantiation: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action to transform up to a gallon of any liquid into sacred blood. A draught of this holy liquid is sufficient to sustain a drinker for a day without further food or drink and will heal 1d6 plus the user’s Pray skill in lost hit points. A gallon of blood is sufficient to help a half-dozen people. The benefits of this art can be enjoyed only once per day, and any undrunk blood sublimates away within a minute.
• Turn False Life: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and make the sign of your god before one or more visible targets within sixty feet. Roll 2d6 and add your character level; that many hit dice of undead, automatons, or other synthetic, extraplanar, or unnatural life forms must make Mental saving throws or cower for the rest of the scene or until they or their comrades are attacked. Cowering enemies will take no hostile action and may flee unless bound to their location. This power does not affect foes with twice as many hit dice as the blood priest has levels. If the rolled hit die total isn’t enough to fully affect a creature, it is unaffected.
• Words of Mercy: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to reroll any failed social skill check related to maintaining peace, granting help, or encouraging virtuous acts of compassion, mercy, or truthfulness. This art can be used only once on any given skill check.
• Wrath of the Most High: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action while you rebuke a visible target. The first time the target takes damage before the end of the next round, it suffers automatic additional damage equal to 1d8 plus your level.

Partial Expert/Blood Priest

Partial Mage/Blood Priest

Partial Warrior/Blood Priest

Blood Priest Arts

1.5.6 The Duelist

Some warriors indulge in unique training methods that draw on arcane forces to enhance their speed and agility.

Duelist Benefits

The Duelist is a partial Mage class, meant to be taken by an Adventurer in conjunction with another partial class. Partial Warrior/ Duelist is the most common pairing, for a skilled light-armor combatant with high mobility and a number of useful combat techniques. Partial Expert/Duelist might represent an assassin who relies on stealth as much as steel, while a rare few Mage/Duelist combinations speak of adventuring wizards who perhaps have more talent for the sword than for the spell.

All Duelists gain Stab as a bonus skill. No Duelist worth the name is entirely incapable of effective use of melee weapons, though the style lends itself heavily to specialization.

The Flaw Of Fragility

While the canons of the duelist make for an excellent one-on-one combatant, their practitioners spend much less time at raw physical conditioning than their more traditional warrior peers. The techniques they use are swift and lethal, but they aren’t as generally applicable to enduring harm as are standard training methods.

As such, Partial Warriors/Partial Duelists use 1d6 for their hit dice, rather than the Partial Warrior’s usual 1d6+2. Other partial class mixes are unaffected by this flaw.

1.5.6.1 Duelist Arts

Duelist Effort is based on Stab, and is equal to the PC’s Stab skill plus the highest of their Dexterity or Intelligence modifiers, to a minimum of one point. All Duelists begin with the Favored Weapon art and one more of their choice. Additional arts are learned as the PC advances in experience.

The arts of the Duelist require agility and free motion. The Duelist cannot benefit from any art of this class while wearing medium or heavy armor or carrying a large shield. Dual-wielding is practiced by some Duelists, but most prefer the defensive advantages of a small offhand shield.

• Favored Weapon: Choose one specific type of non-unarmed me lee weapon. You begin play with such a weapon, and when using this type you may use the Favored Weapon attack bonus column on the Duelist table to determine your base hit bonus, unless it’s already better for some other reason. If your second partial class is Partial Warrior, your class’ base hit bonus with the weapon is instead equal to your level. You cannot apply this or other Duelist arts to thrown weapons.

Other Duelist Arts

• Blood for Blood: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when an enemy hits you with a physical attack. If you attack that enemy with your favored weapon before the end of the next round, the first blow hits automatically and can do no less damage than was done to you, up to the weapon’s maximum.
• Burst of Speed: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action. You may move your full normal movement rate as an On Turn action. This art can be used only once per round.
• Code Duello: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action when engaged with a single foe. So long as no other combatant attacks either your target or you, and you attack no one but your target, you gain a +4 bonus to your Armor Class and can roll your hit rolls twice, taking the better result. Once the Code Duello has been disrupted or ended, it cannot be invoked again during that scene.
• Crushing Superiority: Your favored weapon gains the Less Lethal quality if it doesn’t already have it. Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when you hit a target; they must immediately make an Instinct check. This ability can be used only once per scene on any given target.
• Dauntless Step: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action. The Move actions you make for the rest of the round can cross vertical surfaces or difficult terrain at your full normal movement rate, provided you end the round standing upright on a surface that can bear your weight.
• Dodge Doom: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action when caught in some explosion or other burst effect. You take half dam age, or no damage if the effect allows a save and you succeed at it. You can move yourself up to ten feet away from your original location, provided the new location is behind cover or away from the blast’s point of origin.
• Forced Engagement: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when making an attack with your favored weapon; you may ignore one foe’s Screen Ally action for that attack.
• Gentleman’s Withdrawal: Commit Effort for the scene as a Move action. As part of this, you may move at your full movement rate without being hindered by armed foes unless they completely block your path. You count as having made a Fighting Withdrawal against any enemies engaged with you at the time.
• Graceful Leap: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action to immediately leap up to ten feet horizontally or vertically, counting it as a Fighting Withdrawal. You can’t use this art more than once per round or after you’ve attacked. You are immune to falling damage from plunges of less than 30 feet.
• Lightning Draw: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action at the start of hostilities; you win initiative against anyone without a similar ability to act first and may ready a Stowed favored weapon Instantly.
• Piercing Strike: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action and choose a visible target. For the rest of the scene, their AC is treated as 10 for purposes of resisting the Shock of your favored weapon.
• Spiritual Weapon: You are able to translate examples of your favored weapon into a spiritual template that you may manifest as you wish. Any favored weapon can be turned into such a template, including a magical weapon, but the process destroys the object’s physical form. To manifest a template, Commit Effort as an Instant action; a ghostly copy of the weapon appears Readied in hand for you until you release the Effort or stop touching the weapon. Dual-wielders can summon the same weapon into both hands with one use of this art.
• Unbindable: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action when ever you wish to escape chains, grapples, shackles, ropes, or even a magical spell of physical binding. You automatically wriggle free from mundane restraints and gain an Evasion saving throw to instantly end a physical magical binding of some sort. You can use this art only once per round.
• Unworthy Rabble: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action. For the rest of the scene, when using your favored weapon, reroll any failed hit roll against foes with one hit die. At eighth level, this ability applies to foes with two hit dice.
• Whirling Evasion: Your base Armor Class becomes equal to 13 plus half your level, rounded up. This AC can be modified by small shields and your Dexterity modifier, but not by armor or large shields.

Partial Expert/Duelist

Partial Mage/Duelist

Partial Warrior/Duelist

Duelist Arts and Favored Weapon Bonus

1.5.7 The Elementalist

Elementalists are spellcasting Mages who focus on the manipulation of the material world around them. While they are capable of using High Magic, their specialist spells focus chiefly on wielding the classical elements of fire, air, water, and earth.

Elementalist Benefits

All Elementalists gain Magic as a bonus skill, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if was already level-0.

Elementalists can prepare and cast High Magic spells in addition to the spells specific to Elementalists. As usual for spellcasters, Elementalists can’t cast spells or use arts while armored or holding a shield.

Elementalists are not as talented at general High Magic research as High Mages are, but their studies still bear fruit in time. Each time they advance a level, they can pick a new High Magic spell or an Elementalist spell to add to their spellbook. They must be able to cast the spell to add it to their selection.

Elementalists gain the Elemental Resilience and Elemental Sparks arts as part of their basic training, and may pick one additional art from the list below. Further arts are learned as they advance in character level, as given in the tables below. Once chosen, an art cannot be changed.

1.5.7.1 Elementalist Arts

Elementalist Effort is calculated as usual, with each PC’s maximum being equal to one plus their Magic skill level plus the better of their Intelligence or Charisma modifiers. Partial Elementalists have a score one point lower than this, albeit not less than one.

• Elemental Resilience: You are unharmed by mundane extremes of cold or by heat less than that of a furnace. You suffer only half damage from magical or extremely intense flame or frost attacks.
• Elemental Sparks: You can conjure petty amounts of flame, water, ice, stone, or wind, sufficient to do small tricks, chill drinks, light candles, or do other minor things. Conjured substances last no longer than a scene, and conjured water cannot lastingly quench thirst. This art cannot actually be useful in solving a problem or overcoming a challenge more than once per game session.

Other Elementalist Arts

• Beckoned Deluge: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action to conjure a considerable amount of water at a visible point with in fifty feet per caster level. This water is sufficient to drench one 10-foot cube of matter per character level, making non-magical bowstrings useless, extinguishing flames, and inflicting 1d6 dam age per caster level on fiery supernatural creatures. This water persists indefinitely after its conjuration and is sufficient to hydrate ten people per caster level.
• Earthsight: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action. For the rest of the scene, you can see the outlines of solid objects even in perfect darkness, and can peer through a number of feet of earth or stone equal to your character level.
• Elemental Blast: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action to hurl a blast of some elemental force at a visible target within fifty feet per character level. The attack is made with Magic as the combat skill, Int, Cha, or Dex as the attribute, and a bonus to hit equal to your character level. It is not hindered by melee foes. On a hit, the attack does 1d6 damage plus your character level and attribute mod. The blast may have collateral effects on objects in the case of hurled fire or a torrent of pressurized water, but any conjured matter vanishes at the end of the round.
• Flamesight: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. While the Effort remains Committed, you can see thermal gradients sufficient to distinguish surfaces and living creatures, even in perfect darkness. Optionally, you may cause your own eyes to cast a light sufficient to illuminate your surroundings clearly out to a range of 30 feet.
• Pavis of Elements: Commit Effort as an On Turn action to conjure an elemental barrier around yourself. The barrier improves your Armor Class by +4 and remains as long as the Effort remains Committed. This bonus stacks with other effects, but cannot increase AC above 18, regardless of the combinations.
• Petrifying Stare: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and target a visible creature. The creature must make a Physical save or become partially petrified, losing its Move action for a number of rounds equal to half your caster level, rounded up. Flying creatures are forced to land by this art and swimming creatures will inevitably sink to the bottom.
• Rune of Destruction: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and target an adjacent solid surface. A glowing rune the size of a handprint forms on the surface and persists for one hour per caster level. Any creature who gets within two feet of the rune will trigger it, causing it to explode in a five-foot radius with an elemental force of your choice and suffering 2d6 damage plus your caster level. Creatures already within five feet of the rune when it is laid will not trigger it until they re-enter the area, nor will the caster trigger their own runes. Runes cannot overlap their areas of effect.
• Steps of Air: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action and target a visible ally; for one round per caster level, the target can fly at their usual movement rate. If the art ends while they are still in the air, they descend harmlessly to the ground. This art may also be used as an Instant action to negate falling damage for any single target.
• Stunning Shock: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action and target a visible creature within fifty feet per caster level. The target creature must be wearing or holding at least a pound worth of conductive metal or be considerably dampened. An electrical bolt leaps from the caster to stun the target, causing them to lose their next Main Action. A Physical saving throw can mitigate the effect, causing the target to lose their Move action instead of their Main. A creature can be targeted only once per scene by this.
• Thermal Shield: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action to immediately negate one instance of fire or frost damage to any single visible ally or object. This defense lasts only long enough to nullify the single instance of damage.

Full Elementalist

Full Elementalist Arts And Spells

Partial Elementalist Arts And Spells

Partial Expert/Elementalist

Partial Other Mage/Elementalist

Partial Warrior/Elementalist

1.5.8 The Expert

Your hero is an expert at some useful skill. Thieves, diplomats, healers, scholars, explorers, artisans, and other such heroes should pick the Expert class if they wish to focus on developing their special skills and performing tremendous feats of mastery with them. Experts gain the widest variety of non-combat skills and are the quickest to learn more of them.

An Expert has an uncanny knack for wielding their skills success fully at a crucial moment, whether or not it’s a skill they’ve taken for their specialty. Once per scene, the Expert can reroll a failed non-combat skill check, gaining a second chance to yank victory from the jaws of otherwise certain failure. Their natural focus on personal development and determined refinement of their skills bleeds through even into those talents they don’t make their special domain.

Experts are also capable combatants, fully able to hold their own in the midst of a murderous fray. It’s not unknown for some Experts to specialize in professions related to martial pursuits, such as an assassin who relies heavily on their superb powers of stealth and deception to reach their unwary foes.

Class Ability: Masterful Expertise

Once per scene, a Full Expert may reroll any non-combat skill check as an Instant action. This allows the Expert to make a roll and then immediately use this ability if the resulting total isn’t good enough to succeed. In cases where it matters, the better of the two rolls may be used.

Note that the typical ten-minute dungeon exploration turn generally counts as a scene, allowing the Full Expert to use this ability every turn if they so wish.

Partial Experts do not receive this ability.

Class Ability: Quick Learner

When you advance a character level, you gain an extra skill point which may only be spent on gaining or improving non-combat skills or raising attributes. You may save this point to spend later if you wish.

Partial Experts do receive this ability.

Full Expert

Partial Mage/Partial Expert

Partial Warrior/Partial Expert

1.5.9 The Healer

The Healer is a partial Mage class that does not use spells. Instead, they gain specific arts that allow them to mend wounds, cure illnesses, and otherwise sustain their allies.

Healer Benefits

The Healer class exists only as a partial Mage class, to be taken by an Adventurer along with another partial class. Thus, a Partial Warrior/Partial Healer might be a grizzled combat medic, a Partial Expert/Partial Healer might be an erudite physician gifted in both mundane and magical healing methods, and a Partial Necromancer/Partial Healer might be an adept of life and death.

All Healers gain Heal as a bonus skill, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if they already have it at level-0. A basic grounding in mundane healing techniques is necessary in order to learn their more sophisticated magical arts.

Healers do not learn how to cast spells. Instead, they focus on their special arcane healing arts. Wielding these arts usually requires nothing more than touching the target and concentrating on the desired effect, and the process is direct and simple enough to perform even when burdened by armor or carrying a shield.

These arts are usually quite subtle, and don’t produce visible or audible indications of their use.

At first level, a Healer gains the Healing Touch art and can pick one more of their choice. As they advance in levels afterwards, they can learn new arts. Once chosen, an art is permanent and cannot be exchanged.

1.5.9.1 Healer Arts

Healer Effort is calculated with Heal rather than Magic, with each PC’s maximum being equal to their Heal skill level plus the better of their Intelligence or Charisma modifiers, to a minimum of one point.

All Healers are trained in the Healing Touch art, but may develop other techniques with time.

• Healing Touch: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action; for the rest of the scene, you may heal 2d6 damage plus your Heal skill to a touched ally as a Main Action. This healing adds 1 System Strain to the target each time it is applied.

Other Healer Arts

• Empowered Healer: Your Healing Touch becomes more powerful, adding your level to any healing.
• Facile Healer: Your Healing Touch ability is improved;, and you no longer need to Commit Effort to activate it.
• Far Healer: Your Healing Touch ability is improved, and may be used on a visible target within ten feet per character level.
• Final Repose: Target a visible living creature and Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action. For the rest of the scene, they take a Physical saving throw penalty equal to your Heal skill. If they are reduced to zero hit points before the end of the scene, they die with no chance for stabilization or revival.
• Healer’s Eye: Commit Effort as an On Turn action; while the Effort remains committed, you can use a Main Action to visually detect diseases and poisons, diagnose creatures flawlessly, perceive their physiology, and learn their current hit point totals. As a side effect, you can detect living creatures by sight regardless of available light or obscuring mists.
• Limb Restoration: Only expert healers can master this art, which cannot be learned earlier than 8th level. You must Commit all remaining Effort for the day, a minimum of one point, to regenerate a missing limb or organ for a target you are touching, or efface some dramatic scar or other physical debility. The target’s System Strain is automatically maximized.
• Purge Ailment: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action. An ally you are touching is cured of one poison or disease. Creatures killed by poison can be revived by this art if it is used within six minutes of death. Magical poisons and diseases may require a Wis/Heal or Cha/Heal skill check against a difficulty of 8 or more. At seventh level, you need only Commit Effort for the scene to use this ability.
• Refined Restoration: You and up to a dozen allies you tend be fore they sleep will all lose 2 System Strain from a good night’s rest instead of 1.
• Revive the Fallen: Only expert healers are capable of mastering this art, which cannot be learned earlier than 8th level. Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action to revive a recently-slain living creature that you are touching. This ability must be used on a target within one minute per caster level of their death, and will not work on a corpse that has been dismembered, incinerated, or otherwise disjected. The target’s System Strain is automatically maximized and they’ll be unconscious for twenty-four hours after their restoration before awakening with 1 hit point.
• Swift Healer: Your Healing Touch ability is improved, and may be used as an On Turn action once per day per character level, though not more than once per round on any given target.
• The Healer’s Knife: Your Healing Touch ability is altered, and may be used to inflict damage to a living target instead of healing it. The damage done is equivalent to the healing that would normally be done, albeit you receive 1 System Strain instead of the target. Using this power in melee requires a successful Punch attack with a hit bonus equal to your Heal skill, with the damage added to any done by the blow, or simply touching an unwary target. Ranged use with Far Healer is impossible with this art.
• Tireless Vigor: Commit Effort; while it remains Committed your need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep does not grow further. You may exert yourself tirelessly and regenerate 1 lost hit point per hour.
• Vital Furnace: Your tremendous life energy can be used to instantly regenerate any non-mortal wound you have received. Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to negate the damage from an injury you just received that did not reduce you to zero hit points. Aside from this ability, you automatically stabilize if reduced to zero hit points and awaken ten minutes later with 1 hit point. This ability cannot undo damage you intentionally inflict on yourself via some power or magical exchange.

Partial Expert/Healer

Partial Mage/Healer

Partial Warrior/Healer

Healer Arts

1.5.10 The High Mage

High Mages represent the default spellcaster in most campaigns. Their spells tend to be generalist in nature rather than focusing on particular specific themes, but their arts make them extremely skilled at manipulating and augmenting the magics they use.

High Mage Benefits

All High Mages gain Magic as a bonus skill, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if was already level-0. Every High Mage is well-educated in the principles of magic as understood by the sorcerers of this world.

High Mages can prepare and cast High Magic spells, and have a number of arts dedicated to improving their use of these incantations. As usual for spellcasters, they cannot wear bulky clothing or armor while casting or using arts, nor use shields. Mages who have trained to overcome these limits with the Armored Magic Focus have more latitude.

High Mages conduct extensive experimentation and study as part of their daily activities. Each time they advance a level, they may pick two High Magic spells from the list in this book to add to their repertoire. These spells must be of a level they can cast.

High Mages also gain arts specific to their tradition. At first level, a full High Mage picks two arts and a partial High Mage picks one. As they gain levels and experience, they’ll learn additional arts from the adjacent list. Once picked, an art cannot be changed.

1.5.10.1 High Mage Arts

High Mage Effort is calculated as usual, with each PC’s maximum being equal to one plus their Magic skill level plus the better of their Intelligence or Charisma modifiers. Partial High Mages have a score one point lower than this, albeit not less than one.

• Arcane Lexicon: Commit Effort for the scene. For the rest of the scene, you can read any script that was not intentionally obfuscated or encoded by its writer. Extremely esoteric or nonhuman scripts may not be comprehensible this way; the “plain meaning” of the text might be utterly foreign to human logic.
• Counter Magic: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action when a visible enemy mage casts a spell. Both of you make op posed Int/Magic or Cha/Magic skill checks; if you win, their spell fizzles and is wasted. This art only works on actual spellcasters and not creatures that merely activate magical powers. You can use this art no more than once per round.
• Empowered Sorcery: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to re-roll any variable die roll associated with a spell’s effects, such as a damage roll; take the roll you prefer.
• Hang Sorcery: Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action when casting a spell. The spell does not go off, but remains “hung” and waiting to be triggered as an On Turn action, with details of targeting and effect determined at that time. Damage does not disrupt a hung spell, but no additional spells can be cast until the hung spell is released or allowed to dissipate.
• Inexorable Effect: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to force an enemy to re-roll a successful saving throw and take the worse result. You may use this art only once per scene.
• Iron Resolution: Commit Effort for the day when injured or disturbed in combat; you may make a Physical saving throw to resist spell disruption and ignore the damage for purposes of spellcasting.
• Preparatory Countermagic: Commit Effort for the scene when you are affected by a spell you have prepared, including when you are standing in the area of effect of one of your own damaging spells. You are unaffected by the spell’s direct effects.
• Psychic Conversion: Once per day as an On Turn action, expend one casting slot to remove one point of accrued System Strain and heal 2 hit points per level.
• Restrained Casting: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action when casting a High Magic spell. You may do so in perfect silence and without need for somatic gestures, though damage will still disrupt the casting.
• Retain Sorcery: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action after casting a spell; it does not count against your casting limits for the day. You can use this art no more than once per day, and the stress of using it prevents you from casting another spell before the end of your next turn.
• Sense Magic: Commit Effort as an Instant action; while it remains committed, you can visually perceive magical energy and get a one-sentence description of the effect of any standing magics or magical items you inspect. The ambient magical energies in most areas allow you to see clearly even in conditions of perfect darkness.
• Suppress Magic: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action and target a visible or known magical effect within one hundred feet. The effect is suppressed as if by the Extirpate Arcana spell for 1d6 rounds plus the caster’s character level. Spells cast by more powerful casters may not be successfully suppressed, as noted in the spell description. The caster can attempt to suppress an effect only once.
• Swift Casting: Once per scene, you may Commit Effort for the day to turn a spell that normally requires a Main Action to cast into an On Turn action. You can cast no other spell this round and you can’t use this art if you’ve already cast a spell this round or been injured or otherwise disqualified from casting.
• Ward Allies: Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to omit up to six allies from the effects of an area-effect spell you cast, allowing them to avoid any damage or other negative effect that would be directly produced by the spell. This does not protect them from indirect consequences, however, such as destroying the building they are standing in.
• Wizard’s Grandeur: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. As long as it remains Committed, you will not become dirty, sweaty, stained, or rumpled regardless of the circumstances. Noxious substances will slide off you without staining and you will remain comfortable regard less of your attire in any normal climate. You may sleep comfortably without shelter or bedding as per the privation rules.

Full High Mage

Full High Mage Arts And Spells

Partial High Mage Arts And Spells

Partial Expert/High Mage

Partial Other Mage/High Mage

Partial Warrior/High Mage

1.5.11 The Invoker

The Invoker is an optional spellcasting Mage class that allows a caster to gain flexibility in casting weaker spells. In exchange, an Invoker sacrifices arts and finds more powerful spells to be more draining to cast.

Invoker Benefits

All Invokers gain Magic as a bonus skill, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if was already level-0. Their arcane versatility requires a thorough grounding in theory.

Invokers can learn and prepare spells of the High Magic tradition, and have the same limits on casting in armor as they do. Each Invoker can prepare a number of known spells as indicated by the table each day, plus their Intelligence modifier.

Each Invoker has a number of spell points based on their level, to which is added their Intelligence modifier. When they cast the spell, they subtract its level from their available spell points for the day. So long as they have sufficient spell points left, they can cast the same spell repeatedly. Spell points refresh each morning.

Invokers do not normally gain arts; their versatility requires complete focus, barring those who take the Invoker-specific Traditional Education Focus. While it’s possible to be a Partial Invoker, this partial class may not be mixed with another partial spellcasting class.

Invokers begin play knowing four first level High Magic spells, or two if a partial class. When they advance a level, they learn two more of any level or tradition from which they can cast, or one if a partial Invoker.

Focus: Traditional Education

Your Invoker has received a great deal of education in a specialist arcane spellcasting tradition such as High Magic arts, Elementalism or Necromancy. Only Invokers can take this Focus, and it can only be taken once.

Level 1: You may learn and prepare spells of your chosen tradition as well as those of High Magic. You gain arts as if a first level practitioner of that tradition, full or partial based on whether you’re a full or partial Invoker, and your maximum Effort score is equal to your Magic skill, to a minimum of 1. You cannot gain further arts from this tradition.

Partial Invoker Hit Dice And Attack Bonuses

Partial Invokers use the High Mage partial-class tables for hit dice and attack bonuses when blending with other classes.

Full Invoker

Full Invoker Spells

Partial Invoker Spells

1.5.12 The Mage

The Mage class is a general header under which all heroes with fundamentally supernatural powers or spellcasting ability are place. Once this class is chosen, the PC must choose a specific arcane tradition to follow; one is a High Mage, or a Vowed, or an Elementalist, for example.

Not all magical traditions necessarily involve classical spell-flinging and conjury. Some traditions are much more physical in nature, granting the practitioners remarkable bodily prowess or unique magical gifts they can exercise. Some Mage traditions involve no spellcasting at all, restricting their focus entirely to the strange arcane gifts their forebears have developed.

While these spells and occult powers are impressive, they tend to come at a cost. A Mage must spend so much time focused on their studies and training that they have little time to master any other art. Most are notably weak combatants with little ability to survive hardships that would merely wound or weary a Warrior.

In addition to this, many traditions have their own specific limits on practitioners. Initiates of the High Mage tradition, for example, cannot cast their spells while wearing anything heavier than normal clothing, thus making it impossible for them to wear armor and still wield their spells. The hindrances of some traditions extend beyond physical limitations to social penalties or difficulties in dealing with mundane humanity; a necromancer may have impressive powers of magic, but they are often unwelcome in civilized lands and are sometimes subject to the panicked justice of frightened locals and their lords.

The ways of magic tend to be specific to settings in a way that swordplay or skillful arts are not. Your GM may disallow certain Mage traditions or partial classes based on the particulars of their own campaign world or the specific sort of game they want to play. Some campaigns set in historical periods or very low-magic worlds might not include Mages at all, leaving heroes reliant on the strength of their own arms and the cunning of their own native wits.

Whatever the setting, Mage heroes need to rely on careful planning and a cooperative party to get the most from their abilities. While potent, the spells they wield are few in number and usually narrow in effect; even the mightiest sorcerer is just not going to be as effective as their Warrior peers in slaying fearsome enemies or their Expert companions in carrying out the mundane activities of stealth, persuasion, or investigation. Instead, Mages excel at providing carefully-planned impossibilities, those selective defiances of reality that allow their teammates to pull off incredible schemes or overcome otherwise insurmountable odds.

Class Ability: Arcane Tradition

The Mage may pick one magical tradition to represent their occult powers, as listed in this section. This tradition may give them a number of additional benefits and restrictions.

1.5.13 The Mageslayer

Mageslayers are those specialist combatants who trade a more general proficiency in battle for certain special arts that make them exceptionally lethal against spellcasters.

Benefits Of The Mageslayer

The Mageslayer is a partial Warrior class that must be joined with a second partial class by an Adventurer. As no Mage class is allowed to pair with this profession, this usually means a Partial Warrior/ Mageslayer or Partial Expert/Mageslayer.

Unlike the normal Partial Warrior class, Mageslayers do not get a bonus combat Focus at first level, nor do they grant a Partial Warrior’s +2 hit points per hit die. If their other Partial class is Warrior, they gain these benefits normally.

All Mageslayers gain Magic-0 during character creation. While it cannot be used for item creation or other magical pursuits, it allows them an intellectual understanding of their prey’s abilities. Mageslayers gain special arts at first level and as they advance.

Spellcasters And Spells

Many Of These Arts Refer To “Casters” And “Spells”. Each Of These Terms Has a Specific Definition For Mageslayers.

A “spell” is learned power that a creature casts with the usual spellcasting rules or an art used by a Mage class. Magical effects created by portable magic items also count as spells, such as a wand that hurls fiery bolts, or an amulet that conjures impenetrable barriers.

Passive magical qualities, like the hit bonus of a magic sword, do not count as spells, nor do magical effects created by Workings or other large-scale edifices. Neither are a magical creature’s innate supernatural powers or magical abilities that mimic specific spells.

A “caster” is any creature that is capable of casting spells using the usual spellcasting rules or triggering Mage class arts, whatever their brand of magic may be.

Potent as the Mageslayer’s arts may be, they are not strong enough to negate magic generated by gods, demi-divinities, or other quasi-divine entities.

1.5.13.1 Mageslayer Arts

A Mageslayer has an Effort score equal to their Magic skill level plus their highest attribute modifier among Intelligence and Constitution, to a minimum of one point. Mageslayer arts may be used in or out of armor, and require no free hands, incantations, or other overt actions, though some sects have favored prayers or oaths.

A Mageslayer gains their arts at a set rate, beginning with Antimage and Magebane at first level, and acquiring other talents as they gain experience.

• Absolute Negation: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day when you are about to be affected or impeded by an unwanted spell or a standing magical effect created by a spell. You may ignore the magic.
• Antimage: Get one level of the Nullifier Focus for free, or a free Focus if you somehow have both levels.
• Dispel Enchantment: As a Main Action, touch an ally and Commit Effort for the day. Your touch acts as an Extirpate Arcana spell. This art can only be applied to creatures, not objects, and can be applied to yourself or a given target only once per day.
• Disrupt Sorcery: As an On Turn action, Commit Effort for the scene. The next attack you make that round will leave the target unable to cast spells or trigger Mage arts for the rest of the round, even if the attack misses. Currently-active arts are not disrupted. If the attack is successfully Screened by an ally, however, the target is unaffected.
• Immaculate Body: Magical transformations, curses, or lingering negative magical penalties last a maximum of one scene on you. Such malisons cannot kill you, reducing you to 1 HP at worst. This applies to all magical effects, and not only to hostile spells.
• Immaculate Mind: You are impervious to unwanted mind-affecting or mind-reading spells or magical effects, and you automatically see through illusions and magical invisibility. Note that this applies to all such magical effects, not merely spells.
• Know Your Prey: Your Magic skill is treated as one point higher than it is, up to a maximum of level-4 skill. This benefit adds to your Effort as usual, and may allow you to have a higher Magic skill than your character level would usually allow.
• Magebane: You add half your level, rounded up, to all damage you inflict on casters from any source, be it by weapon, Shock, or violent action. This does not stack with a Warrior’s Killing Blow class ability.
• Share the Pain: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day when you are targeted by a hostile spell or are in its area of effect. Make a Mental saving throw; on a success, the spell’s caster is treated as also having affected by the spell that just targeted you. This art can be used only once per round.
• Spellshield: When a spell inflicts hit point damage on you, it’s automatically halved, rounded down, before any saves or resistances are applied.
• Ward Ally: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the scene when an ally within thirty feet is affected by a spell; you are affected by the spell in place of your ally. If you are both in the same area of effect, the spell hits you twice. Any defenses or arts you have against sorcery may be applied as usual to this transferred effect.
• Witchfinder: As a Main Action, Commit Effort for the scene. For the rest of the scene, you gain the benefits of the Apprehend the Arcane Form spell, except for the spell’s dark-vision ability.

Partial Expert/Mageslayer

Partial Warrior/Mageslayer

Mageslayer Art Progression

1.5.14 The Necromancer

Necromancers are those spellcasting Mages who deal with the energies of life and death.

Necromancer Benefits

All Necromancers gain Magic as a bonus skill, acquiring it at Level-0, or Level-1 if was already Level-0.

Necromancers can prepare and cast High Magic spells in addition to the spells specific to Necromancers. Some of the latter are given on the following pages, but others doubtless exist. As usual for spellcasters, Necromancers can’t cast spells or use arts while armored or holding a shield.

Necromancers are not as talented at general High Magic re search as High Mages are, but their studies still bear fruit in time. Each time they advance a level, they can pick a new High Magic spell or a Necromancer spell to add to their spellbook. They must be able to cast the spell to add it to their selection.

Necromancers can pick an art specific to their tradition from the adjacent list. Further arts are learned as they advance in character level, as given in the tables below. Once chosen, an art cannot be changed.

1.5.14.1 Necromancer Arts

Necromancer Effort is calculated as usual, with each PC’s maximum being equal to one plus their Magic skill level plus the better of their Intelligence or Charisma modifiers. Partial Necromancers have a score one point lower than this, albeit not less than one.

• Bonetalker: You can see and communicate with any undead creature, regardless of a shared language or the creature’s natural state of invisibility. By Committing Effort for the scene you can sense the surface thoughts of any visible undead, including an impression of any commands or behavior it has been ordered to carry out. Unintelligent undead will not attack you or your companions unless specifically compelled to do so by a command or a master. Even intelligent undead will generally pause at least for an initial parley before attacking.
• Cold Flesh: You no longer require sleep and feel pain only in an abstract sense. You can suffer no more than 2 points of damage from any given instance of Shock and you have a natural Armor Class equal to 12 plus half your level, rounded down. Consume Life Energy: By making a Punch attack or using a melee weapon you have spent at least an hour properly consecrating, you can absorb a portion of the damage you inflict on others as healing to yourself. For each successful attack you make with such implements, you heal 1d6 damage, up to a maximum of the damage done by the attack. You cannot drain more life than the target has remaining hit points.
• False Death: Commit Effort as an Instant action; while it remains Committed you appear dead to all mundane examination. You lose your Main Actions while “dead”, but can move and perceive normally and do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or perform other bodily functions. Poisons and diseases do not progress in you while you are “dead”. You can maintain this state of death for up to one day per level before needing at least an hour to recover.
• Gravesight: Commit Effort as an On Turn action; while it remains Committed, you can see the life energies of living creatures around you as various glowing patterns, regardless of the mundane illumination available. You can perceive sicknesses, poisons, and other physical qualities on sight. As a side effect of this ability, you can see normally even in perfect blackness.
• Keeper of the Gate: At your discretion, creatures within twenty feet of you per character level that are Mortally Wounded will die instantly and cannot be revived by magic or medicine. Conversely, you can Commit Effort for the day to automatically stabilize any or all within that range, increasing their System Strain by 1 point. This benefit cannot aid creatures that have been dismembered, shredded, or otherwise suffered unsurvivable injuries.
• Life Bridge: You can transfer life force between willing or helpless participants. Commit Effort for the day; for the rest of the scene, you can shift hit points from one willing or helpless target no smaller than a dog to another as a Main Action, provided you are touching both. You can shift enough hit points to Mortally Wound a donor, but you can’t give more to the recipient than would refresh their maximum allowed hit points.
• Master of Bones: Undead must roll twice to save versus your abilities or spells and take the worse roll. You may Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action to negate any single attack, magical power or spell an undead uses against you. Undead with more than twice as many hit dice as you have levels cannot be foiled this way.
• Red Harvest: You are empowered by death. As an Instant action, whenever an intelligent living creature with at least one hit die perishes within fifty feet of you, Commit Effort for the day to either heal 1d6 plus your level in lost hit points or gain a +4 bonus on your next hit roll this scene. This art cannot be stacked, and it can be used only once per round.
• Unaging: You no longer naturally age, and will remain perfectly hale and vigorous up to your species’ natural maximum age plus 20% per character level, after which you will collapse into dust and decay. Immortality beyond this point is possible, but generally re quires consistent supplies of life energy, occult materials, or other difficult-to-acquire or morally questionable materials. You also become immune to poisons and diseases.
• Uncanny Ichor: Your blood is not like the blood of normal beings. Predators find it nauseating and will not bite you unless provoked. Unintelligent predators will not consider you edible. This ichor is reluctant to leave your body, and stabbing or puncture injuries can Mortally Wound you but cannot result in your death unless you are entirely pincushioned by your foes or suffer catastrophic physical damage.
• Unliving Persistence: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action to automatically stabilize when Mortally Wounded. You may use this ability to benefit others if you are able to touch them. This ability cannot save a subject that has experienced dismemberment or other extremely final deaths.

Full Necromancer

Full Necromancer Arts And Spells

Partial Necromancer Arts And Spells

Partial Expert/Necromancer

Partial Other Mage/Necromancer

Partial Warrior/Necromancer

1.5.15 The Skinshifter

The Skinshifter is a partial Mage class that grants the user shapeshifting abilities, whether to adopt the form of beasts or configurations of their own devising.

Skinshifter Benefits

Skinshifter is a partial Mage class, meant to be taken by an Adventurer in conjunction with another partial class. A partial Warrior/Skinshifter might be a shapeshifting assassin or feral savage warrior, while a Partial Expert/Skinshifter could be an undetectable impostor or con artist.

All Skinshifters gain Survive-0 as a bonus skill, or Survive-1 if they already have Survive-0 as a skill.

Skinshifter Forms

The Arts Of a Skinshifter Revolve Around Improving Or Adjusting Their Alternate Forms. These Alternate Forms Have a Few Basic Rules That Apply To All Their Permutations.

A Skinshifter can master one alternate form per character level. A Skinshifter who wants to change a form selection can do so with a day of careful practice and adjustment. Skinshifter PCs should note down the special powers or traits of their alternate forms and keep in mind which of them they have available at any one time.

A Skinshifter’s alternate forms use the same hit points, character attributes, and movement speed as their normal form, unless modified by particular arts. Thus, a Skinshifter shifted into a wolf’s shape would do no more damage with its bite than the human’s unarmed attack would do without some augmenting art. Alternate forms do grant a minimum level of combat competence, however, and so the “Form Bonus” hit bonus is used in place of the PC’s basic class hit bonus when in a non-humanoid shape, assuming they don’t already have a better basic bonus from their other partial class.

Arts that improve the alternate forms can apply their benefits even if the creature’s natural shape wouldn’t normally grant it. Thus, a Skinshifter with the Manifest Wings art could have a wolf-form that had wings and a flying speed if they wished. A given form can have no more than three arts applied to it.

A Skinshifter’s alternate forms can be any size between a horse and a kitten, barring modification by some art. They do not need to emulate a specific type of creature; a Skinshifter could have a clawed and winged humanoid form as an alternate shape, or a dog with the head of a man, or a cat with razor-sharp mandibles.

The belongings carried by a Skinshifter meld into any new form unless the PC decides otherwise, granting any benefit to Armor Class or other worn advantage they may normally give. Melded objects can be manifested and dropped as an On Turn action, but cannot be re-melded again unless the PC changes form with them again.

Skinshifter forms cannot perfectly duplicate another individual creature without an appropriate art.

1.5.15.1 Skinshifter Arts

Skinshifter Effort is based on Survive, and is equal to the PC’s Survive skill level plus the highest of their Constitution or Charisma modifiers, to a minimum of one point. All Skinshifters begin play with the Change Form art and one more of their choice. Additional arts are learned as the PC advances in experience.

• Change Form: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action to transform into an available Alternate form. This shift persists until you die, shift to a new form, or end the transformation as an On Turn action. Your hit points, System Strain, and other scores remain the same in any new form, but in a non-humanoid form your class’ base attack bonus can be no worse than the one listed on the table. If your shape is quadrupedal, its Move is 10’ faster than your base.

Other Skinshifter Arts

• Eyes Of The Hawk: This Shape Has Remarkably Acute Senses. You Can Scent Trails And Objects Like a Dog, Hear Very Faint Noises, See Objects Clearly Enough To Identify Faces At a Thousand Feet Of Distance, And See Clearly In Anything Short Of Complete Darkness. You Gain a +2 bonus on all sensory Notice checks.
• Feline Leap: This form can vault great distances. You can jump your full Move rating as a Move action, crossing the full distance horizontally or up to half the distance vertically. You subtract your Move rating from fall distance for damage calculations.
• Feral Prowess: This form has an augmented degree of speed, strength, or hardiness. For this form, pick either Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution; that attribute modifier is improved by +1 in this form, to a maximum of +2. These alterations are obvious and extreme; it is impossible to masquerade as a normal baseline human if using this art. Hit points gained from Con improvements are lost when shifting back.
• Intrinsic Armor: This shape has tough scales, hide, shell, or other defensive integuments. Your base Armor Class is 14 plus half your character level, rounded down. This AC can be modified by your Dexterity modifier, and by shields if the shape can hold one.
• Manifest Wings: This shape can form usable wings. You can’t effectively attack while concentrating on remaining aloft, but you can fly at your normal movement rate +10’ per action. If unhindered and flying overland you can travel up to ten miles an hour and fly up to five hours a day.
• Octopus’ Embrace: This shape can have more than four usable limbs. These additional tentacles, arms, legs, or grippers can hold and manipulate things; up to four Stowed objects can be held Ready by these limbs without counting against your Readied Encumbrance limit. These extra limbs cannot effectively employ extra shields, perform additional attacks or actions, or do other things that require significant focus beyond your current action.
• Perfect Mimicry: This alternate form can exactly duplicate another creature, provided you either have a lock of their hair, a still-liquid drop of their blood, or ten minutes of observation of them from within five feet. Once learned, you need no further samples.
• Pliant Flesh: You’ve mastered your shapeshifting skills, and Change Form can be used as an On Turn action, albeit only once per round. Alternately, it can take as long as a minute but cost no Effort. When ever you spend Effort to shift shape, you heal lost hit points equal to 1d6 plus your level; this does not apply when merely reverting a form’s change. This art is intrinsic to you, and doesn’t count against the total number of arts allowed to apply to a form.
• Savage Talons: This shape has extremely dangerous claws, fangs, pincers, or other body weapons. At first level these weapons do 1d8 damage, use either Str or Dex as the modifying attribute, Punch as the combat skill, and have a Shock value of 2/AC 13. At level 3 the damage and Shock increase by +1, at level 6 they increase to +2, and at level 9 they increase to +3. These weapons can harm even creatures immune to non-magical weaponry.
• Sculptor’s Beauty: You’ve developed a refined aesthetic sense that can directly appeal to the subconscious beauty preferences of viewers. This shape improves your Charisma modifier by +1, to a maximum of +2. There is always something alien about this beauty, and such forms can never be mistaken for an entirely normal human or animal, though they may be taken for some exotic demihuman or altered baseline.
• Serpent’s Kiss: This shape can exude a venom on its claws or fangs. Successful hits allow you to Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action to inflict an additional 1d8 damage plus your Survive skill. You can elect to make the toxin paralytic rather than fatal; foes reduced to zero hit points by such a blow are paralyzed and helpless for an hour rather than mortally wounded.
• The Monkey’s Road: This shape has an arboreal agility when it comes to climbing. You can travel up sheer surfaces at your usual movement rate provided at least three limbs are available for use and the surface is not glassily smooth. If you fall, you can halt your plunge without damage so long as a serviceable surface to cling to is within ten feet of you.
• Warform: You gain a flat +2 bonus to all melee hit rolls in this shape and can use your form hit bonus even in a humanoid body. This shape is blatantly martial in appearance, however, and cannot pass as anything harmless or wholly human.
• Wisdom of Fin and Scale: This shape can breathe water, swim at double your usual Move rate, and is impervious to any normal climatic extreme of cold or undersea pressure. It can see up to sixty feet while underwater even in the absence of normal light.

Partial Expert/Skinshifter

Partial Other Mage/Skinshifter

Partial Warrior/Skinshifter

Skinshifter Arts and Form Bonus

1.5.16 The Thought Noble

This partial Mage class allows a PC to subtly manipulate the thoughts of others and control their own mind and body’s operation.

Thought Noble Benefits

A Thought Noble Exists Only As a Partial Mage Class, To Be Taken By An Adventurer Alongside Another Partial Class. A Partial Warrior/Thought Noble Might Be a Cunning Duelist Who Chooses His Enemies With Uncanny Foreknowledge, While a Partial High Mage/ Thought Noble might be an arcanist who has managed to unearth the secrets of these psychic arts in the course of their own studies.

All Thought Nobles gain Notice as a bonus skill, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if they already have it at level-0. An ability to clearly sense perceptual inputs is fundamental to a Thought Noble’s training, and it is all but impossible to make sense of foreign mental inputs without a disciplined and trained sensorium.

Thought Nobles do not cast spells. Instead, they develop various cognitive and telepathic abilities based on the focus of their studies.

1.5.16.1 Thought Noble Arts

Thought Noble Effort is calculated with Notice rather than Magic, with each PC’s maximum being equal to their Notice skill level plus the better of their Intelligence or Wisdom modifiers, to a minimum of one point.

All Thought Nobles are trained in the Open Mind art, but may develop other techniques with time. If an art allows a saving throw to resist it, success renders the target immune to that art for the rest of the scene. Thought Noble arts are all entirely invisible to any but magical senses and provide no hint as to who is using them, even on a successful Mental saving throw.

• Open Mind: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. While Effort remains Committed, you may detect the current emotional state of a visible living creature as a Main Action. This discernment isn’t fine enough to identify the object of their emotions unless it’s obvious from the context.

Other Thought Noble Arts

• Block Memory: Target a Visible Living Creature And Commit Effort For The Day As a Main Action While Specifying a Particular Event Or Situation That Didn’t Extend Longer Than a Scene. The Target Gets a Mental Saving Throw; On a Failure, They Simply Cannot Remember The Event And Will Construct a Plausible False Memory To Paper Over The Gap. The Memory Can Be Restored By Use Of This Power Once More Or a Magical Dispelling Ability, But Detecting The Alteration Is Difficult; any power that detects enchantments on a target does so with a +2 difficulty penalty to any skill check made to discern the ban.
• Elicitation of Truth: This art can only be taken by those who have mastered Surface Apprehension. It can only be used on a helpless or cooperative target; the Thought Noble may Commit Effort for the day and ask the target a question that takes no more than two sentences to ask. If the target fails a Mental saving throw, they must fully and completely answer the question. They need not exercise any personal judgment or speculation, but they must answer directly and without conscious deception.
• Facile Speech: An improvement to the Far Speech art, you may now nominate up to a half-dozen companions to be favored targets for Far Speech. You may link with a favored target as an On Turn action without Committing Effort. The range to contact a favored target is one mile per Thought Noble level. You can change your nominated companions with an hour’s meditation in the new companion’s presence.
• Far Speech: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action and target an intelligent creature known to you that is within two hundred feet per level. If they consent, you forge a telepathic link with them that can convey thoughts, speech, and images even without a common language. The link lasts for the rest of the scene. While linked with someone, both of you may reroll failed Mental saving throws and neither of you can be surprised unless both are.
• Hypercognition: You can drive your mind to tremendous feats of calculation, estimation, and recall. You have an eidetic memory and can perform extremely advanced calculations in your head. As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day and reroll any failed Int-based skill check. This ability can be used only once on any given check.
• Iconograph: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action and tar get a visible written text, piece of sculpture, iconographic symbol, or other visible artifact. You receive a short description of the message or idea the maker was trying to convey with the object. Optionally, you may use this art when making a sigil, art object, or text of your own; any valid target will automatically understand your intended message when they see the item. You may restrict your audience to particular people or types if you wish.
• Impress Imperative: Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action while targeting a visible living creature. You may give it an over whelming urge to perform some action that takes no longer than a round and is not completely contrary to its nature or wishes. It can make a Mental save to resist, but on a failure it spends its next action carrying out the imperative.
• Mind Light: Your Open Mind art is enhanced. While active, you become aware of the location of all living minds within sixty feet of you provided there isn’t a physical barrier between you and the subject and they are not actively hiding from you. You can identify the species of these minds, if the species is known to you, any strong emotional states, and can recognize known individuals. While Open Mind is active you cannot be surprised by a living creature.
• Mind Over Matter: Your mental control over your physical process es is considerable. Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to gain one of the following benefits: automatically stabilize if Mortally Wounded, go without sleep for twenty-four hours, heal 1d6 hit points of damage you’ve suffered, or completely ignore normal climatic extremes of heat or cold for one day. Similar tricks of bodily control may be allowed at the GM’s discretion.
• Mirror Mask: You become instantly aware of any mind-affecting power directed at you and can identify the user if they’re within your current sensory range. You may reroll any Mental saving throw the attacking ability allows you; if it doesn’t allow a save, you get a single Mental save to resist anyway. If you succeed, you may Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to give the power false information of your choice or a false impression of success.
• Positive Association: As a Main Action, Commit Effort for the day and target a visible sentient creature. It gets a Mental saving throw to resist; on a failure, any thought of you or your actions is suffused by a glow of benign happiness and admiration. They will treat you as an admired friend and find all your actions to be eminently reasonable and wise until you or your allies attack them, bring harm to something they love, or leave their presence for more than an hour. Affected creatures that were not misused are unlikely to think themselves bespelled when this power ends unless given reason to. This ability can affect only one target at a time.
• Read Intent: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the scene and target a visible living creature. It gets a Mental saving throw to resist; on a failure, the GM will tell you exactly what it is currently intending to do on its next turn, or its next relevant action if used out of combat. If you perform a Total Defense action this round, your insight into its motions ensures that no attack it makes that you could theoretically physically avoid can hit you for the rest of the round.
• Surface Apprehension: Commit Effort for the scene as a Main Action while targeting a visible living creature. If it fails a Mental saving throw, you become aware of its immediate surface thoughts for the rest of the round. If you ask specific questions of the creature during this round it will instinctively think of the answers, though the detail of these surface thoughts is generally limited to one or two sentences of information.
• Thoughts Like Razors: As a Main Action, Commit Effort for the day to launch a psychic assault on any visible living creature within sixty feet. The target gets a Mental saving throw to resist; on a failure, it takes 1d8 damage per level of the Thought Noble. The damage can knock it unconscious but cannot kill. On a successful save, the Thought Noble is stunned by the backlash, taking one quarter of the damage, rounded down, and losing their next turn’s actions. This ability can be used only once per scene.
• Unthinkable Thought: Target a visible living creature and Commit Effort for the day as a Main Action while specifying a particular person, object, or situation that is currently ongoing in their presence. The target may make a Mental save to resist; on a failure, they simply cannot consciously acknowledge the existence of the subject or its actions unless ignoring it would obviously put their life at risk. This forced ignorance lasts for up to a scene; at its end, the target will have no memory of the subject.

Partial Expert/Thought Noble

Partial Other Mage/Thought Noble

Partial Warrior/Thought Noble

Thought Noble Arts

1.5.17 The Vowed

Adepts of fist and bodily discipline, the Vowed are a partial Mage class dedicated to unarmed combat, physical training, and mental discipline.

Vowed Benefits

The Vowed Class Exists Only As a Partial Mage Class, To Be Taken By An Adventurer Along With Another Partial Class. Thus, a Partial Warrior/Partial Vowed Might Be a Hardened Temple Warrior-Monk, a Partial Expert/Partial Vowed Might Be a Sage Teacher Of Religious Or Philosophical Truths, And a Partial Elementalist/Partial Vowed Might Be a Mountain Sage Who Wields The Elemental Forces Of Nature. Regardless of classes, a Vowed’s hit dice can’t be worse than 1d6 per level thanks to Martial Style.

All Vowed gain a non-combat bonus skill appropriate to their order, acquiring it at level-0, or level-1 if they already have it at level-0. Orders that focus on physical training might grant Exert, while scholarly ones might give Know, religious ones Pray, or occult sects grant Magic. You may pick whatever non-combat skill suits your order, assuming the GM finds it reasonable.

Vowed do not learn how to cast spells. Instead, they refine their inner powers and physical capabilities. These arts are too precise and delicate to bear the encumbrance of heavy clothing, armor, or shields, and cannot be used when so burdened. The Armored Magic Focus can mitigate this, but Vowed are all trained in effective unarmored defense techniques.

At first level, a Vowed gains the Martial Style, Unarmed Might, and Unarmored Defense arts, in addition to one more art of their choice as given on the adjacent list. Further advancement will grant additional arts.

1.5.17.1 Vowed Arts

Vowed Effort is based on the skill they chose to represent their order’s main focus of study, whether Exert, Know, Magic, Pray, or some more esoteric skill.

Their maximum Vowed Effort is equal to this skill level plus their best attribute modifier, whatever it may be, to a minimum of one point. All Vowed automatically gain the Martial Style, Unarmed Might, and Unarmored Defense arts as part of their training.

• Martial Style: Regardless of class, your hit die can’t be worse than 1d6 per level. When attacking with the Punch skill, your class hit bonus can be no worse than that of an Expert of your same char acter level. At third level, any attack using the Punch skill counts as a magic weapon.
• Unarmed Might: Your unarmed attack damage increases as you gain levels, as noted on the chart. You may add your Punch skill to the damage done by these attacks as usual, but Foci such as Unarmed Combatant that replace or improve your usual Punch damage do not apply to you.
• Unarmored Defense: When not wearing armor or using a shield, your base Armor Class is equal to 13 plus half your character level, rounded down.

Other Vowed Arts

• Brutal Counter: Commit Effort For The Scene As An Instant Action After Resolving An Enemy Melee Attack Against You, Whether It Hits Or Misses. You May Make a Free Physical Attack Against Your Assailant, Using Either a Normal Attack Or Some Other Offensive Ability That takes no more than one Main Action to execute. You cannot use this art more than once per any given attack, but you may use it while performing a Total Defense.
• Faultless Awareness: Your awareness is such that you cannot be surprised, and will even wake from a sound sleep in time to respond normally to some imminent peril.
• Hurling Throw: After you make a successful attack, you may Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action. The target must make a Physical saving throw or be thrown up to ten feet in any direction, falling prone on landing and suffering the damage rolled for your attack. If the Physical save is successful, the target simply takes damage as normal. This art can be used only once per round on any given target, and the target must be no larger than an ox.
• The Inward Eye: Commit Effort as an On Turn action. For as long as it remains Committed, you are mystically aware of your surroundings with a sense equivalent to normal eyesight regardless of darkness, obscuring mists, or your actual eyes being closed or blinded.
• Leap of the Heavens: Commit Effort for the scene as a Move action to leap up to your full Move action horizontally or half that vertically. You may also Commit Effort for the scene as an Instant action to negate falling damage, no matter the distance.
• Master’s Vigor: Your body retains its vigor and youthful vitality to the full normal span of your life. You regain two lost hit points per hour due to your natural restorative powers.
• Mob Justice: As an Instant action, Commit Effort for the day to be come impervious to the Make a Swarm Attack maneuver. Your assailants cannot use this maneuver against you for the rest of the scene, and you become immune to Shock as long as you remain in melee with at least two foes. Making use of this benefit disrupts any spell casting you may attempt, however, due to the violent motion required.
• Nimble Ascent: Commit Effort for the scene as an On Turn action. For the remainder of the scene you may move up vertical and over hanging surfaces and across difficult terrain at your full movement rate with no chance of slipping or falling, provided the surface is not glass-smooth or enchanted. You require only one free hand to cling to a wall or ceiling.
• Purified Body: You may Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to cure any disease or poison currently affecting you, or instead to negate any need for sleep, food, water, or air for the next 24 hours.
• Revivifying Breath: Commit Effort for the day as an On Turn action to heal yourself for 1d6 hit points plus your level. This healing does not increase System Strain. This ability may be used on your turn even when you are at zero hit points, but in such a case it Commits all your remaining Effort for the day. This art can be used once per scene.
• Shattering Strike: Commit Effort for the day and take a full round of motionlessness to prepare. On the next round, as a Main Action, your unarmed attack can shatter a wooden door, wooden wall, or other similar object up to a depth of one foot per level and a width sufficient to allow a man-sized creature to pass through. At fourth level this ability improves to affect even a stone wall and at seventh it can affect even a metal wall or solid iron door. The blow is useless against a target that can move, but against an immobilized creature the attack does 1d12 damage per character level.
• Style Weaponry: Pick three general classes of weapons, such as “swords”, “bows”, “axes”, “daggers”, or the like. When using weapons of those classes, you may use Punch for hit rolls instead of Stab or Shoot. Your Punch skill does not add to the damage done by these weapons, however, though the benefits of Martial Style apply to their hit rolls.
• Unobtrusive Step: You not only possess a considerable skill for disguise and obfuscation, you can become extremely hard to detect. Once per scene, you may Commit Effort for the day as an Instant action to reroll a failed Sneak skill check or skill check related to impersonating someone else.

Partial Expert/Vowed

Partial Other Mage/Vowed

Partial Warrior/Vowed

Vowed Arts and Unarmed Abilities

1.5.18 The Warrior

The Warrior is a hero born to the blade, a man or woman gifted with a superb capacity for physical violence. Savage barbarians, hardened mercenaries, courageous young farm boys, and ordinary laborers who just happen to have an undiscovered capacity for massive bloodshed all might qualify as Warriors.

Warriors aren’t all formal soldiers or recognized veterans of the blade. Any adventurer who excels in dealing with their problems through violence might qualify as a Warrior, however peaceful their background. It’s possible that their very talent for killing was what forced them out of their old life after some terrible event or awful encounter compelled them to recognize their gifts.

Warriors have more hit points than heroes of other class, and are capable of surviving wounds and hardships that would kill an ordinary man. They’re also gifted with a superior attack bonus, and a native ability to inflict more damage than other PCs. Full Warriors even have the ability to ensure a hit or force a miss by an enemy once per scene, making them lethal foes to common combatants.

Class Ability: Killing Blow

Whenever a Warrior Inflicts Damage With Any Attack, Spell, Or Special Ability They May Add Half Their Character Level, Rounded Up, To The Damage Done. This Damage Is Also Added To Any Shock They May Inflict.

Combined with Foci meant to improve Shock attacks such as Armsmaster, Close Combatant, or Shocking Assault, this ability ensures that an experienced Warrior will almost always kill any ordinary human soldier or minor monster, regardless of their attack roll result. Partial Warriors do not get this ability.

Class Ability: Veteran’s Luck

Once per scene, as an instant action, the warrior may turn a missed attack they have made into a hit. Alternately, they may turn a successful attack against them into a miss, also as an instant action. This ability is particularly lethal when used with the Make a Snap Attack action and leveled against weaker monsters or ordinary human warriors.

Only one exercise of this ability is possible in a scene, either to force a miss or ensure a hit on a foe; both options may not be employed in the same fight.

A Warrior may use this ability with crew-served weapons they are assisting in firing. This ability cannot be used to negate environmental damage or damage done to a vehicle or mount they are riding.

Partial Warriors do not get this ability.

Full Warrior

Partial Mage/Partial Warrior

Partial Warrior/Partial Expert

1.5.19 The Wise

Some low-magic settings have a particular place for concepts that aren’t exactly magical, but have some special place in society. Whether a mundane priest of the dominant faith, a feared forest warlock, or a sacred oracle of the gods, these Wise have a special role to fill.

Some of these Wise may have very minor or subtle magical powers suitable to a low-magic campaign setting.

In general, the Wise class is usually only viable in a low- or no-magic setting where their limited powers are still more than almost anyone else has access to. If standard magic exists in your campaign the Wise may not offer enough to appeal to players.

Benefits Of The Wise

The Wise is a partial expert class that must be taken by an adventurer with another partial class. It’s generally suited for low-magic campaigns, but strictly mundane versions of it may pass muster for a no-magic setting.

While the Wise count as a partial Expert class for other purposes, they do not gain the advantage of the partial Expert’s Quick Learner class ability or the bonus non-combat Focus that a partial Expert normally gets at first level. An Adventurer who is a standard partial Expert/partial Wise does get these perks, however.

All Wise gain level-0 in a bonus skill appropriate to their concept, be it Pray, Know, Magic, Survive, or some other skill that makes sense to the GM.

The Wise do not use Effort. All of their arts are either constantly in effect or can be used under particular circumstances or a particular number of times each day.

The arts the Wise learn are generally fixed by their concept and role. A mundane priest will learn certain arts as they advance in level, while a witch or an oracular seer will learn others. At some levels, the Wise might have a choice; they can pick whichever art they wish, but most arts can be taken only once.

The example tables here provide progression patterns for a non-magical priest of a faith, a witch with minor magical powers of cursing and foresight, and an oracle with limited powers of divination. For GMs that wish to allow player-made concepts, the Esoteric column can be used, or a specific progression can be worked up in cooperation with the player.

1.5.19.1 Wise Arts

General Arts

• Dread Awe: Your Kind Are Figures Of Fear And Mistrust. Gain a +1 bonus on all skill checks related to intimidation or threat. You can spend a Main Action cursing your foes in battle; those who hear suffer a -1 penalty to their next Morale check. You can do this only once per scene.
• Elite Ties: You have ties with figures of societal importance. You can get audiences with them with minimal effort. Once per game session, get a favor from them that would not particularly inconvenience them to grant.
• Erudite: You are uncommonly learned. Once per day, reroll a failed skill check related to intellectual pursuits or things a scholar would know about.
• Folk-Friend: Commoners and other lower-class natives consider you a useful healer and helper. Once per day, get a modest favor from a commoner who doesn’t hate you in exchange for a blessing or bit of advice.
• Healer: You are a trained and capable healer. Gain a +1 on all Heal skill checks; once per day, as an On Turn action, automatically succeed at a skill check to stabilize a Mortally Wounded subject.
• Holy Sanctity: You are honored and respected by most in this region. Gain a +1 bonus on social skill checks with locals who are not naturally opposed to your religion or social institution.
• Personal Impunity: You bear signs of sanctity, and physically harming you is considered taboo in this region. Only the most vicious or desperate humans will initiate violence against you, though any will fight if you attack them. Hostile groups will hesitate to attack your companions unless provoked.
• Skilled: Gain three skill points to spend on any non-combat skills, up to the maximum skill level allowed by your character level. This art may be taken more than once.

Divination Arts

• Compel Truth: The Diviner Compels a Person To Drink a Particular Brew, Participate In a Specific Ritual, Or Otherwise Undergo a Scene Long Ordeal. Afterwards, The Diviner May Ask The Target a Single Question And The Gm Secretly Rolls a Cha/Magic Skill Check Against a Difficulty Of The Target’s Morale+1, Or Level+6 For PCs. On a Success, The Subject Must Answer The Question Truthfully And Fully. On a Failure, They May Give Any Answer They Wish. The Same Or Substantially Same Question May Not Be Asked Twice With This Art.
• Deliver Oracle: A petitioner asks about the outcome of a particular course of action. The diviner then spends a day in various rituals, seeking an oracular answer. At the end, the GM makes a secret Wis/ Magic skill check. If the skill check beats difficulty 8, an oracular sentence with some truth in it is produced. If the skill check beats difficulty 12, a direct and obvious oracle is produced. If the skill check is 7 or less, a hopelessly ambiguous oracle is produced, and if the dice roll a natural 2 an intentionally misleading oracle is delivered. Oracles are usually delivered as metaphors, poetry, or visions. The GM should ensure that some element of a true oracle actually does come to pass.
• Find Object: The diviner spends a scene performing a ritual to locate a particular animal, object or type of substance known to them, be it gold, water, or a specific stolen cow. People cannot be found with this art. The GM makes a secret Wis/Magic skill check against a difficulty of 8 to 11, depending on how close the nearest suitable object is; something in the same village is 8, something a mile or more away is 11, and something more than five miles away is undetectable. If the check is successful, the diviner gets an impression of the direction the object is in. On a failure, roll 1d12 and use it as a clock face to give a random direction. This art can be used once per day.
• Read Omens: A petitioner proposes a course of action to the PC. After a scene-long ritual involving at least 10 sp worth of livestock or sacrificial material, the GM makes a secret Wis/Magic skill check against difficulty 10. On a success, the PC gets an impression of whether the course of action will lead to success or failure, as the GM thinks most likely. On a failure, the GM gives a random result. Multiplying the ritual costs by 10 adds +1 to the skill check, thus, a sacrifice of 1,000 sp worth of livestock gets a +2 on the check. The same course of action cannot be divined more than once a month.

Curses And Blessings

The Bringing Of Fortune Or Ill Fate Is Not a Trivial Thing. A Given Creature Can Be Cursed Or Blessed By One Of These Arts Only Once a Day.

• Auspicious Undertaking: As a Main Action, bless a particular plan or undertaking currently sought by the target. During the plan’s execution or while seeking the desired end, the blessed subject can reroll one failed skill check or one missed hit roll. The blessing lasts until it is used, the plan is finished, or one day per caster level has passed. Only one plan can be blessed at a time.
• Evil Eye: This art improves your curse and blessing arts. You can now use these arts as an Instant action, albeit still only one such art per round, and you need do no more than look at the target rather than vocalizing any particular curse or blessing.
• Ill Fate: As a Main Action, curse a visible target. You may specify a particular kind of undertaking or apply the curse to anything they may do. The next pertinent skill check they make is made at a -1 penalty. If their raw die roll is equal or less than the PC’s Magic skill plus one their effort goes disastrously wrong. The curse lasts until the next relevant skill check.
• Luck Blessing: As a Main Action, confer a blessing on a visible target. The next skill check they make that day will have a +1 bonus. Only one luck blessing can be in place for a creature at a time.
• War Curse: As a Main Action, curse a visible enemy. They suffer a -2 penalty to hit rolls, damage rolls, and Shock damage for the rest of the scene. If they miss an attack with a raw to-hit die roll less than the Wise’s Magic skill, they accidentally hurt themselves for normal damage. Only one war curse can be applied at a time.

Partial Expert/Wise

Partial Mage/Wise

Partial Warrior/Wise

Example Art Progressions For Different Types Of Wise

1.6.0 Foci

Foci are special talents that a PC can possess. They aren’t as powerful as Edges, but a PC will develop more of them over time. Any PC can select any Focus, barring a few with specific requirements; they do not need to fit the class they selected. So long as the player can explain how or why they acquired the talent they can have it.

Foci usually come in two levels, though some have only one. The first time a Focus is chosen, the benefits of the first level are gained. The second time it’s chosen, the benefits of the second level are added to those of the first.

A new character may choose one Focus of any kind. Warriors and Partial Warriors may select another combat-related Focus, and Experts and Partial Experts may select another non-combat-related Focus. If a Focus is ambiguous, the GM decides whether or not it falls into a particular category for the PC.

1.6.1 Focus List

The Foci below are common to most fantasy settings. Others might be added to support particular campaigns.

Alert

You are keenly aware of your surroundings and virtually impossible to take unaware.

Level 1: Gain Notice as a bonus skill. You cannot be surprised, nor can others use the Execution Attack option on you. If the GM rolls initiative by sides, you can add a +1 bonus to your side’s initiative roll, though multiple Alert PCs don’t stack this bonus. If you roll initiative individually, you can roll it twice and take the better result.

Level 2: You always act first in a combat round unless someone else involved is also this Alert.

Armored Magic

Usable only by mage heroes who would otherwise be prevented from casting spells or using arts while armored, this focus reflects special training in channeling magic through the hindering materials of conventional armor.

Level 1: You can cast spells or use arts while wearing armor that has an Encumbrance value of no more than two. You can use a shield while casting, provided your other hand is empty for gesturing.

Level 2: You can cast spells while wearing armor of any Encumbrance. You’ve also learned to cast spells while both your hands are full, though not bound.

Armsmaster

You have an unusual competence with thrown weapons and melee attacks. This focus’ benefits do not apply to unarmed attacks or non thrown projectile weapons. This focus’ bonuses also don’t stack with deadeye or other foci that add a skill’s level to your damage or shock.

Level 1: Gain Stab as a bonus skill. You can Ready a Stowed melee or thrown weapon as an Instant action. You may add your Stab skill level to a melee or thrown weapon’s damage roll or Shock damage, assuming it has any to begin with.

Level 2: The Shock from your melee attacks always treats the target as if they have AC 10. Gain a +1 bonus to hit with all thrown or melee attacks.

Artisan

You have remarkable gifts as a crafter and can often improvise techniques even in fields unrelated to your usual background. You are able to create mods for equipment even if you are not an expert.

Level 1: Gain Craft as a bonus skill. Your Craft skill is treated as one level higher, up to a maximum of 5, for purposes of crafting and maintaining mods. Mods you build require one fewer unit of arcane salvage, down to a minimum of one. Your Craft skill is applicable to any normal crafting profession’s work, allowing you to fashion their wares without penalty.

Level 2: The first mod you add to an item requires no Maintenance and only half the silver piece cost usually required. This benefit is in addition to the benefits of installing a mod in masterwork gear you build. You automatically succeed at any attempt to build masterwork gear, and once per month you can reduce a created mod’s salvage cost by one further unit, down to a minimum of zero.

Assassin

You Are Practiced At Sudden Murder, And Have Certain Advantages In Carrying Out An Execution Attack.

Level 1: Gain Sneak as a bonus skill. You can conceal an object no larger than a knife from anything less invasive than a strip search. You can draw or produce this object as an On Turn action, and your point-blank thrown or melee attacks made during a surprise round with it cannot miss the target.

Level 2: You can take a Move action on the same round as you make an Execution Attack, closing rapidly with a target before you attack. You may split this Move action when making an Execution Attack, taking part of it before you murder your target and part of it afterwards. This movement happens too quickly to alert a victim or to be hindered by bodyguards.

Authority

You Have An Uncanny Kind Of Charisma About You, One That Makes Others Instinctively Follow Your Instructions And Further Your Causes. At level 1, this is a knack of charm and personal magnetism, while level 2 might suggest latent magical powers or an ancient bloodline of sorcerous rule. Where this Focus refers to followers, it means NPCs who have voluntarily chosen to be in your service. PCs never count as followers.

Level 1: Gain Lead as a bonus skill. Once per day, you can make a request from an NPC who is not openly hostile to you, rolling a Cha/Lead skill check at a difficulty of the NPC’s Morale score. If you succeed, they will comply with the request, provided it is not significantly harmful or extremely uncharacteristic.

Level 2: Those who follow you are fired with confidence. Any NPC being directly led by you gains a Morale and hit roll bonus equal to your Lead skill and a +1 bonus on all skill checks. Your followers and henchmen will not act against your interests unless under extreme pressure.

Close Combatant

You’ve had all too much practice at close-in fighting and desperate struggles with drawn blades. You’re extremely skilled at avoiding injury in melee combat, and at level 2 you can dodge through a melee scrum without fear of being knifed in passing.

Level 1: Gain any combat skill as a bonus skill. You can use knife sized thrown weapons in melee without suffering penalties for the proximity of melee attackers. You ignore Shock damage from melee assailants, even if you’re unarmored at the time, but invoking this benefit disrupts any spellcasting you might do that round due to the need for violently active evasion.

Level 2: The Shock damage from your melee attacks treats all targets as if they were AC 10. The Fighting Withdrawal combat action is treated as an On Turn action for you and can be performed freely.

Connected

You’re remarkably gifted at making friends and forging ties with the people around you. Wherever you go, you always seem to know somebody useful to your ends.

Level 1: Gain Connect as a bonus skill. If you’ve spent at least a week in a not-entirely-hostile location, you’ll have built a web of contacts willing to do favors for you that are no more than mildly illegal. You can call on one favor per game day and the GM decides how far they’ll go for you.

Level 2: Once per game session, if it’s not entirely implausible, you meet someone you know who is willing to do modest favors for you. You can decide when and where you want to meet this person, but the GM decides who they are and what they can do for you.

Cultured Through

Wide travel, careful observation, or extensive study, you’ve obtained a wide experience of the cultures of your region and an ability to navigate their customs, laws, and languages. You know what to do and say to impress others with the reasonableness of your wishes.

Level 1: Gain Connect as a bonus skill. You can fluently speak all the common languages of your native region and convey at least basic information in the uncommon or esoteric ones. You can learn a new language with only a week’s practice with a native speaker. Once per game day, your polished ways automatically gain a minor favor from an NPC that would not put them to significant expense or risk, assuming the NPC isn’t hostile to you.

Level 2: Once per game session, reroll a failed social skill check as you use your cultural knowledge to push your interlocutor toward the desired result.

Die Hard

You are surprisingly hard to kill. You can survive injuries or bear up under stresses that would incapacitate a less determined hero.

Level 1: You gain an extra 2 maximum hit points per level. This bonus applies retroactively if you take this Focus after first level. You automatically stabilize if Mortally Wounded, provided you have not been incinerated, dismembered, or otherwise torn apart.

Level 2: The first time each day that you are reduced to zero hit points by an injury, you instead survive with one hit point remaining. This ability can’t save you from large-scale, instantly-lethal trauma.

Deadeye

You have a gift with ranged weapons. While this talent most commonly applies to bows, it is also applicable to thrown weapons or other ranged weapons that can be used with the shoot skill. For thrown weapons, you can’t use the benefits of the armsmaster focus at the same time as deadeye.

Level 1: Gain Shoot as a bonus skill. You can Ready a Stowed ranged weapon as an Instant action. You may use a bow or two-handed ranged weapon even when an enemy is within melee range, albeit at a -4 hit penalty. You may add your Shoot skill level to a ranged weapon’s damage roll.

Level 2: You can reload crossbows or other slow-loading weapons as an On Turn action, provided they don’t take more than a round to reload. You can use ranged weapons of any size in melee without penalty. Once per scene, as an On Turn action when target shooting at an inanimate, non-creature target, you automatically hit unless you roll a 2 on your Shoot skill check or the shot is physically impossible.

Dealmaker

You have an uncanny ability to sniff out traders and find good deals, licit or otherwise. Even those who might not normally be disposed to bargain with you can sometimes be persuaded to pause and negotiate, if you have something they want.

Level 1: Gain Trade as a bonus skill. With a half hour of effort you can find a buyer or seller for any good or service that can be traded in the community, legal or otherwise. Finding a marginally possible service, like an assassin willing and able to target a king, or some specific precious ancient artifact, may require an adventure if the GM allows it at all.

Level 2: Once per session, target a sentient who is not just then trying to kill you or your allies and make a request of it that it can comprehend. If it’s at all plausible for it to make such terms, it will do so for a price or favor it thinks you can grant, though the price for significant favors might be dear.

Developed Attribute

Your hero has a remarkable degree of development to one or more of their attributes. This may be derived from an eldritch bloodline, native brilliance, or sheer, stubborn determination. This focus cannot be taken by heroes with the mage or partial mage classes.

Level 1: Choose an attribute; its modifier is increased by +1, up to a maximum of +3. The actual score does not change, but the modifier increases, and may increase again if later advancement improves the attribute enough. You can choose this Focus more than once to improve different attributes.

Diplomatic Grace

Your skill at personal negotiations is enormous and uncanny. Some might even think it supernatural in nature.

Level 1: Gain Convince as a bonus skill. You speak all the languages common to your region of the world and can learn new ones to a workable level in a week, becoming fluent in a month. Reroll 1s on any skill check dice related to negotiation or diplomacy.

Level 2: Once per day, silently consecrate a bargain; the target must make a Mental save to break the deal unless their life or something they love as much is imperiled by it. Most NPCs won’t even try to break it. The deal must be for something specific and time-limited, and not an open-ended bargain.

Gifted Chirurgeon

You have an unusual gift for saving mortally wounded allies and quickening the natural recovery of the wounded in your care.

Level 1: Gain Heal as a bonus skill. You may attempt to stabilize one Mortally Wounded adjacent person per round as an On Turn action. When rolling Heal skill checks, roll 3d6 and drop the lowest die. You heal twice as many hit points as usual when applying first aid after a battle.

Level 2: Your curative gifts count as magical healing. You can heal 1d6+Heal skill in damage to an adjacent wounded ally as a Main Action, potentially reviving them without any lingering Frailty. Each such application of healing adds 1 System Strain to the target, and the gift cannot be used on targets already at their maximum System Strain.

Henchkeeper

You have a distinct knack for picking up lost souls who willingly do your bidding. You might induce them with promises of money, power, excitement, sex, or some other prize that you may or may not eventually grant. A henchman obtained with this focus will serve in loyal fashion until clearly betrayed or placed in unacceptable danger. Henchmen are not “important” people in their society, and are usually marginal sorts, outcasts, the desperate, or other persons with few options.

You can use more conventional pay or inducements to acquire additional henchmen, but these extra hirelings are no more loyal or competent than your pay and treatment can purchase.

Level 1: Gain Lead as a bonus skill. You can acquire henchmen within 24 hours of arriving in a community, assuming anyone is suitable hench material. These henchmen will not fight except to save their own lives, but will escort you on adventures and risk great danger to help you. Most henchmen will have the combat statistics of a normal adult from their culture. You can have one henchmen at a time for every three character levels you have, rounded up. You can release henchmen with no hard feelings at any plausible time and pick them back up later should you be without a current henchman.

Level 2: Your henchmen are remarkably loyal and determined, and will fight for you against anything but clearly overwhelming odds. Whether through natural competence or their devotion to you, they’re treated as 2 HD combatants from their culture. You can make faithful henchmen out of skilled and highly-capable NPCs, but this requires that you actually have done them some favor or help that would reasonably earn such fierce loyalty.

Impervious Defense

Whether through uncanny reflexes, remarkable luck, supernatural heritage, or magical talent, you have natural defenses equivalent to high-quality armor. The benefits of this focus don’t stack with armor, though dexterity or shield modifiers apply.

Level 1: You have an innate Armor Class of 15 plus half your char acter level, rounded up.

Level 2: Once per day, as an Instant action, you can shrug off any single weapon attack or physical trauma inflicted by a foe. Environmental damage, falling damage, or other harm that couldn’t be forfended by strong armor cannot be resisted this way.

Impostor

You are exceedingly skilled at presenting yourself as something you are not, including disguises, voice mimicry, and lightning-fast ward robe changes. Some impostors rely on the acting skills of perform, while others lean more to the nefarious tricks of sneak.

Level 1: Gain Perform or Sneak as a bonus skill. Once per scene, reroll any failed skill check or saving throw related to maintaining an imposture or disguise. Create one false identity of no great social importance; you can flawlessly pretend to be that person, such that only extremely persuasive proof can connect you with it. You can change this identity with a week’s worth of effort in building a new one.

Level 2: You can alter your clothing and armor such that a single Main Action lets you swap between any of three chosen appearances. In addition to your original false identity, you can establish a new false identity in each city or significant community you spend at least a day in.

Lucky

Some fund of remarkable luck has preserved your life at least once in the past, and continues to give you an edge in otherwise hopeless situations. This luck does not favor the already-blessed; this focus can only be taken by a PC with at least one attribute modifier of -1 or less.

Level 1: Once per week, a blow or effect that would otherwise have left you killed, mortally wounded, or rendered helpless somehow fails to connect or affect you. You make any rolls related to games of chance twice, taking the better roll.

Level 2: Once per session, in a situation of need or peril, you can trust to your luck and roll 1d6. On a 2 or more, something fortunate will happen to further your goal, provide an escape from immediate peril, or otherwise give you an advantage you need, if not immediate victory. On a 1, the situation will immediately grow much worse, as the GM sees fit.

Nullifier

Something about your hero interferes with easy use of magic on them. It may be a strangely powerful birth blessing, a particular supernatural bloodline, or simple occult incompatibility. This Focus cannot be taken by Mages or Partial Mages.

Level 1: You and all allies within twenty feet gain a +2 bonus to all saving throws against magical effects. As an On Turn action, you can feel the presence or use of magic within twenty feet of you, though you can’t discern details about it or the specific source. The first failed saving throw against a magical effect you suffer in a day is turned into a success.

Level 2: Once per day, as an Instant action, you are simply not affected by an unwanted magical effect or supernatural monstrous ability, even if it wouldn’t normally allow a saving throw. Immunity to a persistent effect lasts for the rest of the scene.

Poisoner

You are a skilled poisoner, capable of compounding toxins out of readily-available flora and minerals. It takes an hour to brew a poison, and you can keep as many doses fresh as you have levels. Blade venoms take a Main Action to apply and last for ten minutes or until a hit or shock is inflicted, whichever comes first. Detecting poisoned food is a Wis/Notice Skill Check against 10, or 12 if the diner’s not a noble or otherwise normally wary of poison. One dose can poison up to a half-dozen diners.

Level 1: Gain Heal as a bonus skill. Gain a reroll on any failed saving throw versus poison. Your toxins inflict 2d6 damage plus your level on a hit or Shock, with a Physical save for half. Your incapacitating or hallucinogenic toxins do the same, but those reduced to zero hit points are simply incapacitated for an hour.

Level 2: You are immune to poison and can apply a universal antidote to any poisoned ally as a Main Action. Any attempt to detect or save against your poisons takes a penalty equal to your Heal skill. Your ingested poisons count as an Execution Attack against unsuspecting targets, with Heal used for the Physical saving throw penalty and 1d6 damage per level done on a success. Such poisons can be non-lethal at your discretion.

Polymath

You have a passing acquaintance with a vast variety of practical skills and pastimes, and can make a modest attempt at almost any exercise of skill or artisanry. Note that the phantom skill levels granted by this focus don’t stack with normal skill levels or give a skill purchase discount. Only experts or partial experts can take this focus.

Level 1: Gain any one bonus skill. You treat all non-combat skills as if they were at least level-0 for purposes of skill checks, even if you lack them entirely.

Level 2: You treat all non-combat skills as if they were at least level-1 for purposes of skill checks.

Rider

Anyone with any level of ride skill can fight competently on horseback or keep their mount healthy. You have an almost supernatural bond with your steeds, however, and can push them beyond normal limits.

Level 1: Gain Ride as a bonus skill. Your steeds all count as Morale 12 in battle, use your AC if it’s higher than theirs, and can travel 50% further in a day than normal for their kind. You can intuitively communicate with riding beasts, gaining as much information from it as its intellect can convey.

Level 2: Once per scene, negate a successful attack against your steed as an Instant action. Once per scene, reroll any failed Ride skill check. You can telepathically send and receive simple warnings, thoughts, and commands to and from your steed so long as it’s within two hundred feet. You can so bond with one steed at a time, taking an hour to do so.

Shocking Assault

You’re extremely dangerous to enemies around you. The ferocity of your melee attacks stresses and distracts enemies even when your blows don’t draw blood.

Level 1: Gain Punch or Stab as a bonus skill. The Shock damage of your weapon treats all targets as if they were AC 10, assuming your weapon is capable of harming the target in the first place and the target is not immune to Shock.

Level 2: In addition, you gain a +2 bonus to the Shock damage rating of all melee weapons and unarmed attacks that do Shock. As usual, regular hits never do less damage than this Shock would do on a miss.

Sniper’s Eye

You are an expert at placing a thrown knife or arrow on an unsuspecting target. These special benefits only apply when making an execution attack with a bow, hurlant, or thrown weapon.

Level 1: Gain Shoot as a bonus skill. When making a skill check for a ranged Execution Attack or target shooting, roll 3d6 and drop the lowest die.

Level 2: You don’t miss ranged Execution Attacks. A target hit by one takes a -4 penalty on the Physical saving throw to avoid immediate mortal injury. Even if the save is successful, the target takes double the normal damage inflicted by the attack.

Special Origin

Heroes in this game are assumed to be human, or close enough as to make no real difference. PCs who want to belong to some more exotic species or demihuman kind can pick the origin focus appropriate to their chosen species, such as those given in the bestiary chapter for different types of creatures.

The availability of these special origins will depend on the campaign and the GM’s permission. Even if elves and dwarves do exist in the campaign world, the GM is not obliged to let players use them as PCs if that choice doesn’t fit the tone or location being used.

Note also that a PC who just wants to be different without asking for any special mechanical benefits does not need to buy any special Focus. If their particular demihuman or alien has no real advantages over a human, then they can just proclaim their nature as such, assuming the GM allows such beings in their campaign.

Specialist

You are remarkably talented at a particular skill. whether a marvelous cat burglar, a famed athlete, a brilliant scholar, or some other savant, your expertise is extremely reliable. You may take this focus more than once for different skills.

Level 1: Gain any skill as a bonus, except for Magic, Stab, Shoot, or Punch. Roll 3d6 and drop the lowest die for all skill checks in this skill.

Level 2: Roll 4d6 and drop the two lowest dice for all skill checks in this skill.

Spirit Familiar

You have a minor spirit, devil, construct, magical beast, or other creature as a devoted companion. While its abilities are limited, it is absolutely loyal to you.

Level 1: Choose a form for your familiar no smaller than a cat nor larger than a human. It has the traits and abilities of an entity created by Calculation of the Evoked Servitor but may be summoned or dismissed as a Main Action, appearing within melee range of its owner. It cannot carry objects with it during its vanishment aside from the clothing natural to its shape. It has no need for food, water, or sleep. If killed, it vanishes and cannot be re-summoned for 24 hours. Once per day, it can refresh one point of Committed Effort for you.

Level 2: Pick two benefits from the list below for your familiar. This level may be taken more than once, adding two additional options each time. - It has hit points equal to three times your level - It gains the ability to attack with a hit bonus equal to half your level, rounded up, doing 1d8 damage on a hit with no Shock - It gains a +1 skill check bonus and can apply it to a range of situations equivalent to one normal human background - It gains another shape of your choice which it can adopt or discard as an On Turn action - It can hover or fly at its usual movement rate - It can communicate freely with others in any language you know

Trapmaster

You have uncommon expertise in handling traps and snares, both mundane ones and the magical perils sometimes found in dungeons or the lairs of sorcerers. You know how to improvise traps with materials you easily carry.

Level 1: Gain Notice as a bonus skill. Once per scene, reroll any failed saving throw or skill check related to traps or snares. Given five minutes of work you can trap a portal, container, passageway, or other relatively narrow space with foot snares, caltrops, toxic needles, or other hazards. Non-lethal traps cause the first victim to trigger it to lose a round of actions while dangerous ones inflict 1d6 damage plus twice the character’s level, with an appropriate saving throw for half. Only one such improvised trap can be maintained at a time. More fearsome traps may be laid with congenial circumstances and the GM’s permission.

Level 2: You know secrets for unraveling even magical traps or arcane hazards that would normally require a wizard to dispel them. Once per scene, your efforts count as an Extirpate Arcana spell against the trap or hazard, cast as if a Mage of twice your level, with any relevant skill check being Int/Notice or Dex/Notice. This ability can be used against any stationary magical effect that’s susceptible to being dispelled by Extirpate Arcana.

Unarmed Combatant

Your empty hands are more dangerous than swords in the grip of the less gifted. Your unarmed attacks are counted as melee weapons when it comes to binding up opponents wielding bows and similar ranged long arms, though you need at least one hand free to do so.

Level 1: Gain Punch as a bonus skill. Your unarmed attacks become more dangerous as your Punch skill increases. At level-0, they do 1d6 damage. At level-1, they do 1d8 damage. At level-2 they do 1d10, level-3 does 1d12, and level-4 does 1d12+1. At Punch-1 or better, they have the Shock quality equal to your Punch skill against AC 15 or less.

Level 2: Even on a miss with a Punch attack, you do an unmodified 1d6 damage, plus any Shock that the blow might inflict on the target.

Unique Gift

Your hero has some unusual ability or magical knack that can’t be adequately described by an existing focus. This choice is a catch all meant to represent a special power that’s in some way worth a Focus pick.

The exact effect of the ability should be defined by the player and the GM together, working out some result that seems fair and reasonable. This will vary from table to table and from campaign to campaign; an innate ability to breathe water is little more than a novelty in a desert setting, while a campaign based on piracy in an endless archipelago might make it far more significant.

As with any power, the group should be willing to reconsider the gift if it turns out to be exceptionally weak in play or a stronger power than was anticipated.

Valiant Defender

You are a bodyguard, shieldbearer, or other gifted defender of others, accustomed to the roil of bloody battle and desperate struggle. You have an exceptional ability to shield your allies from the attacks of those who would slay them.

Level 1: Gain Stab or Punch as a bonus skill. Gain a +2 on all skill checks for the Screen Ally combat action. You can screen against one more attacker per round than your skill would normally allow. Once per round, you can Screen Ally against even intangible spells or magical attacks or bodily shield them from an area-effect explosion or magic. Such attempts require the usual successful opposing skill check, with the assailant using their Magic skill.

Level 2: The first Screen Ally skill check you make in a round is always successful. Gain +2 AC while screening someone. You can screen against foes as large as ogres or oxen.

Well Met

You have a striking ability to charm and pacify people and creatures you’ve just met. Once they get to know you, however, their opinions are more likely to be based on experience; this focus works only once on a target.

Level 1: Reaction rolls made by those the party meets are given a +1 bonus so long as you are present, whether or not you do the talking. Even hostile encountered beings will usually give the party a round to parley before attacking unless they’re in ambush or have a clear reason for immediate violence.

Level 2: Once per game session, when a reaction roll is made, cause the subject to be as friendly and helpful to you and your party as it’s plausibly possible for them to be. It’s up to the GM to decide why the creature becomes so; it might be mistaken about your nature, or find you hilarious, or perhaps want a favor from you and your allies.

Whirlwind Assault

You are a frenzy of bloody havoc in melee combat, and can hack down numerous lesser foes in close combat… assuming you survive being surrounded.

Level 1: Gain Stab as a bonus skill. Once per scene, as an On Turn action, apply your Shock damage to all foes within melee range, assuming they’re susceptible to your Shock.

Level 2: The first time you kill someone in a round with a normal at tack, either with its rolled damage on a hit or with the Shock damage it inflicts, instantly gain a second attack on any target within range using any Ready weapon you have.

Xenoblooded

You have been both blessed and cursed by some exotic supernatural or alien bloodline.

Level 1: Choose one set of benefits from the list below to reflect your alien heritage. Other gifts may exist. - You are immune to heat damage and can breathe and see through smoke without hindrance. - You are water-adapted and can breathe water and see through it up to 120’ regardless of light. You swim at double your normal Move rate. - You were built to heavier or lighter gravity conditions; gain a +1 to either your Strength or Dexterity modifiers, to a maximum of +3, and a -1 penalty to the modifier of the other attribute. - You are nourished by invisible radiations and need neither eat, sleep, nor breathe. You can see clearly even in the absence of any light.

1.7.0 Final Character Creation Steps

The player now records their character’s final statistics and chooses their name and current goal.

1.7.1 Record Maximum Hit Points

Your character’s hit points measure their distance from defeat or death. If your character is reduced to zero hit points, they are either dying or incapacitated based on the nature of the injury.

A new character rolls the hit die for their class, adding their Constitution modifier to it. If they have chosen the Die Hard Focus they may add +2 to the roll. The final value for a given die cannot be less than 1 hit point.

A character gains hit points as they advance in character level, rerolling their prior levels and taking the new score if it’s higher, as explained in the rules section.

1.7.2 Record Attack Bonus

Your character has a certain degree of basic combat competence based on their class. This bonus increases as you advance in character levels and is added to your attack roll.

A new character’s attack bonus is usually +0, though Full Warriors start with a +1 base attack bonus.

1.7.3 Record Saving Throws

When faced with unusual dangers such as fireball explosions, toxic darts, pit traps, or magical curses, the character may need to make a saving throw to resist or mitigate the peril. Saving throws are rolled on a d20 and are explained in the rules section.

Physical saving throws are used to resist exhaustion, disease, poison, or other biological harms. A new character’s Physical save target is equal to 15 minus the better of their Strength or Constitution modifiers.

Evasion saving throws are used to avoid explosions, traps, or other dangers requiring fast reactions. A new character’s Evasion save target is equal to 15 minus the better of their Intelligence or Dexterity modifiers.

Mental saving throws are used to resist intangible spells, mental attacks, or other tests of willpower or self-control. A new character’s Mental save target is equal to 15 minus the better of their Wisdom or Charisma modifiers.

Luck saving throws are rolled when facing a danger that only blind chance can spare them from, such as landslide, bridge collapse, or a sniper’s random choice of victims. A new character’s Luck save target is always 15.

A character’s save targets all decrease by 1 point each time they advance an experience level.

1.7.4 Pick a Free Skill

Your character has developed some side interest that may be unrelated to your background or class. You can pick any one skill of your choice. This skill pick is gained at level-0, or level-1 if it’s already level-0. You cannot pick a skill that is already at level-1.

1.7.5 Mages Choose Starting Spells

Spellcasting full Mages begin play knowing four first-level spells and partial Mages begin play knowing two. Adventurers with two partial spellcasting Mage classes, such as a partial Necromancer/partial High Mage know four. These spells may be chosen from any spell list available to them. A novice High Mage, for example, would pick first-level spells from the High Magic spell list, while a new Elementalist could pick them from either the High Magic or Elementalist spells.

1.7.6 Choose Starting Languages

Your PC begins play speaking the lingua franca of the campaign’s current city along with their native tongue if it happens to be different. They also have fluency in additional languages based on their Know or Connect skills. Either skill at level-0 grants one extra language, or two extra if it’s at level-1. Thus, a PC with both Know-1 and Connect-1 skills could pick four additional languages.

PCs can learn additional languages to a conversational level by spending a few months immersed in it or studying it diligently during downtime. Obtaining native fluency is at the GM’s discretion.

1.7.7 Choose Starting Gear

You can either pick a starting equipment package provided by your GM, or roll 3d6 x 10 to find out your starting silver pieces to spend on gear or keep in your pocket. The starting packages will generally give you more equipment than the random roll would, but items can be swapped at the GM’s discretion.

1.7.8 Record Weapon and Armor Statistics

Now that you know what kind of weaponry or armor your hero has, take a moment to record the total hit bonus for your weaponry. This is equal to your base attack bonus plus your relevant Stab, Shoot, or Punch skill, and the relevant attribute modifier for the weapon given on the weapon table. If two attributes are listed for a weapon, use whichever is better for you. If you lack even level-0 skill in the weapon, take a -2 hit penalty with it.

For each weapon’s damage and Shock, note down the information from the table. You add your attribute modifier to both damage rolls and Shock. Punch weapons or unarmed attacks can also add your Punch skill.

For your PC’s Armor Class, record the AC of the armor you usually wear. Unarmored humans have an AC of 10. Armor Class is modified by your Dexterity modifier.

1.7.9 Choose a Name and Goal

As final step, the player should pick a name and initial goal for the PC. This goal can be anything so long as it gives a compelling reason for the PC to be seeking perilous adventure and associating with suspicious fellows. The player must make up a good reason for the PC to be associating with the other players; it is not the GM’s job to justify the party’s existence, and if the player decides that their PC can’t reasonably run with the other party members it’s up to them to create a new character who can.