Special Abilities

The special abilities on this page are divided up according to the five Attributes. This isn’t a commentary on what kind of characters can obtain those abilities, though. It’s just a handy way to organise them.

Grace Abilities

Backstab: You get +1d when attacking a completely unaware enemy. If successful, automatically inflict the maximum damage for your weapon.

Daredevil: When performing a feat of acrobatics, the risk of falling or hurting yourself adds an extra +1d to your roll.

Dead Eye: When you’re firing into the fray, the risk of accidentally hitting an ally adds an extra +1d to your roll.

Escape Artist: You get +1d when rolling to escape bonds, wriggle free from someone’s grasp, or squeeze through a tight gap.

Sharp: When there’s a question about who goes first or who gets the spotlight, the answer is always you.

Prowess Abilities

Bloodlust: When you engage in physical violence, you always get +1d. Regardless of the outcome, the resulting conflict will be messy, brutal and excessively noisy.

Grit: Once per battle, you may resist physical harm without spending any Luck.

Iron Palm: Your unarmed strike can splinter wood, dent metal, and even crack stone. If you have plenty of time to prepare your mind, this technique never fails and never injures you.

Martial Arts: When you face an armed opponent, being unarmed yourself doesn’t put you at a disadvantage. Your unarmed attacks inflict the damage of a club.

Martial Trance: You can spend Luck to increase your damage in combat (before rolling). Each point of Luck you spend adds 2 to the damage roll.

Strong Back: You can carry 15 significant items without becoming encumbered, and you get increased effect when lifting, hauling or pushing something.

Whirlwind Style: For the purposes of being outnumbered or overwhelmed, you fight like three people. For example, you can contend with three opponents at once without worse risk or reduced effect.

Resolve Abilities

Gut Feeling: If you’re very close with someone, like a family member or a comrade, you immediately know when they’re in trouble.

Inspire: You can play an inspiring ballad that uplifts any friendly creatures that can hear and understand you. Roll against the risk that you can’t capture the muse. As long as you succeed, this counts as a setup action for as long as you keep playing. Your music can also counter the effects of magical songs and poetry.

Leader: When you coordinate a group action, every member of the group other than you gets +1d to their roll. When leading or commanding a group of NPCs to do something, the effective Tier of the group is increased by 1.

Pet: You have a loyal and unusually clever animal companion that follows you everywhere; decide with the GM what kind of animal it is. They know one appropriate trick, decided by you. Each time you complete an adventure, they learn one more.

Cunning Abilities

Insightful: When you encounter a new person, a tense situation, or something you’ve never seen before, you may watch quietly for a while and then ask one question. If there’s any way you could possibly intuit the answer, the GM will answer honestly. If not, they will tell you what hidden detail you do perceive, instead.

Keen: You have an exceptionally acute sense of sight, smell and hearing. It’s difficult to sneak up on you, and you notice things that others wouldn’t.

Nondescript: You tend to blend in. You get +1d when rolling to avoid drawing attention to yourself, and others get +1d when rolling to distract from you.

Rumour Monger: After you spend 24 hours in a settlement, you can immediately produce an answer to any question that would be considered “common knowledge” by the people who live there.

Well Prepared: You can spend Supply to produce items that cost more than 1 coin, as long as you pay the difference out of pocket. You can also spend a point of Luck to gain a point of Supply.

Insight Abilities

Beast Lore: When you encounter a creature you’ve never seen before, you can ask the GM to tell you one of its weaknesses, defenses, or special powers.

Polymath: As long as Insight is the relevant Attribute, you never receive penalties for making an untrained roll. Even if the action would normally be impossible without a relevant skill, you can still make an attempt.

Tinkerer: When you start working on a project to invent something, you gain access to an experimental prototype or unstable version with an extra flaw or drawback as soon as you mark the first tick of the clock. When you finish the project, the flaw is removed. If you abandon the project, you lose access to the prototype (the device breaks down, you forget how to make the ritual work, etc).

Weird Abilities

Mystic: You can commune with the minor elementals that fill the land and sea, allowing you speak with places as though they were people. They can answer questions about an area and its past, though the things they consider notable may differ from you.

Salt Speech: When you tell the unvarnished truth, there can be no doubt in those who hear you tell it. When you swear an oath, there can be no question that you will be compelled to fulfil it.

Seer: You can use your Second Sight skill to see the auras and images that gather around living beings, reflecting their past or their inner nature and allowing you to glean insights about them.

Soother: You have the knack for talking to animals, allowing you to converse with them as easily as with people. You’ll never change a beast’s essential nature, but they will generally hear you out, at least.

Sundered: You cannot age, or drown, or starve, or grow ill. Denied both comfort and pain, your body is always cold and empty. You have a “tell” that gives your undead nature away: something like an absent reflection, a too-perfect stillness, or veins that bleed mangrove sap.