Arduin started me on this path ages ago, back when I picked up the first little parchment colored books that opened the door to fantasy for me. A core concept was every character was special in some way, even if it wasn't necessarily something beneficial.
That opened a door for me and I've never looked back. One thing I did after a bit of time was to use the concept to pay tribute to past players and events, immortalizing them in a special power so their legacy could live on. When I crafted Arduin Eternal, I put ~150 these in the volume. It was but a small number of the many that have been crafted over the years.
Figured it was time to share a few more.
You can use these a couple of ways. One, pick what you want. Two, roll randomly. Three, cobble together something from them. Of course, ask your GM always. Some flavors might not match the campaign or change its power dynamic.
- Dance of Paper: Transform into a piece of paper about one-tenth your size that is immune to physical damage[1]. It can be shaped however you visualize. However, it is especially vulnerable to elemental attacks. The paper ONLY has a teleporting power. The teleportation can be used every two melee rounds and has a radius of three kilometers. Once you teleport, you return to your original form.
- Any Weapon Works
- You can use literally anything to perform lethal damage. It can be something at hand, as flimsy as a feather or hard as a rock. It can even be the breath from your lungs or sputum from your mouth. It must, however, be directly used by you in some fashion.
- Base HP damage for anything is 1d8.
- Items that are normally lethal and have HP damage inflict double normal dice damage.
- Negative: Any power other than you own skill or talents negates your special ability bonuses, e.g., a +1 sword does only normal damage versus the double dice a regular sword receives. It just “gets in the way” of how your brain works to provide this ability.
- Note: unpowered, e.g., skill or material based bonuses do not count as messing up your talent.
- Blessing of the Faerie Queen of Hounds
- The Faerie Queen of hounds has bequeathed her blessing upon you. No other power less than hers can bend your will (Faerie Prince)
- 1 HP Regeneration in fog, mist or for an hour after dawn.
- Hounds and canines, monstrous or normal, are always friendly on encounter (but will react normally if you attack or are hostile).
- City Pulse (requires a region to be defined)
- Has 15+INT score% chance of hearing about any given plot, scheme or artifice. Check is done per session. Information will be sufficient to provide high level details.
- If YOUR name or description is included, detection chance rises to 100%.
- Can define a single item, object or person to also listen to in this manner (1 x day) instead of listening for your name.
- Personal Incense
- The foods you eat combine to create a scent that can provide an effect that lasts for 24 hours.
- Legendary or Heavenly foods/ingredients cause an instant effect. Lower impacts, no matter how numerous, occur the next day.
- The more powerful or arcane foods you eat design a stronger effect.
- Not a single effect or single food influence, but the combined influence of all foods you consume in a time period.
- Base ratio is 10 of any single tier to upgrade the ingredient effect, e.g., 10 poor tier foods become a single good tier; 10 legendary foods become a heavenly one.
- Begin the game with two effects you design w/the GM.
- Lunar State (requires a moon to be defined)
- You can copy another being's special ability
- The ability to copy does not does mean you know what the other being's special ability (that's what roleplay is for; figure it out or try it blind)
- You must interact with the being in a non-hostile way for a minimum of one minute and using direct contact (arms reach)
- GM is always the final arbritator whether you succeed/met the requirements
- Once copied, it replaces any other special ability (except this one).
- You can change/copy a new ability once per lunar cycle or your WIS score, whichever is shorter (see GM).
- You can only copy a special ability from another being once.
Physical damage immunity means you take no harm, but you still feel the effects. Physical damage with effects (stun, paralyze, slow, etc.) attached won't hurt you either, unless is magic, psychic or similarly performed (then it will). ↩︎