Freak People (Gateway GLOG)

Now that I'm headed down the road of "running" "a campaign" again, I returned to Gateway, my scheme for a pick-up game to play with the one or two people who are guaranteed to show up when the rest of my players flake. 

While poking at it I realized - what's the point of an overly-colorful, largely non-serious Fantasy Setting™ without the opportunity to play as some variety of nonhuman weirdo? I normally lean towards all-human settings, but Gateway is, as much as it's anything, a winking revival of the way I wrote in 2017; powered purely by half-memories of 3.5e homebrew websites.

And thus - freak people.

1. Human
They sure are.

Reroll nothing.

Benefit: keep a 2nd item between sessions.

that's it. i don't know what to tell you. go get a job.

2. Ogre
Some say every ogre is the reincarnation of a saint from ages past.

Reroll STR and take the higher.

Benefit: put a * next to your STR score. Roll checks with it only for superhuman tasks (picking a guy up and hucking him like a catapult, benchpressing a car, crashing through a stone wall).

Drawback: you must fail a STR check to not immediately destroy pathetic human items (doors, levers, tools, pets) when interacting with them. Your soul is immense - you glow like the sun to anyone who can see them.

3. Millisecond Dragon
Each of the 23 hours of the day has a grand dragon for a living avatar - and it continues downward, with dragons of half-hours and minutes and seconds and tenths-of-a-second and so forth becoming more humanoid as their domains shorten.

Reroll DEX and take the higher.

Benefit: once a session, shoot a 3d6 damage cone of either ice (for the pinkish-orange brood of the dragons of the Dawn), fire (for the sky-blue brood of the dragons of Noon) or lightning (for the purple brood of the Dusk). Probably best used to melt through steel, make ice platforms, or do some other OSR puzzle gibberish.

Drawback: save or pick up shiny objects.

4. Cultivator
Bug-men of the prismatic wastelands to the west of Gateway, emerging from their holes to see what all the fuss is about.

Reroll CON and take the higher.

Benefit: burrow through soil as fast as a person walks, climb walls at running speed.

Drawback: bright light provokes a save vs. fear.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1d9X - yes this is the same picture i used for cultivators in 2018 we already agreed that i get to be lazy with gateway

5. Elf
Immortal(?), meditative wanderers of the desert of ice.

Reroll INT and take the higher.

Benefit: around your neck is an amulet, holding the soul of a parent, a favored aunt, a friend from the army, or so on. As long as you wear it, you can speak with the dead. If you shatter it, the soul within possesses a target of your choice, then escapes to the afterlife. You could still speak with the dead - but all they would do is howl.

Drawback: dogs and other domesticated animals attack you on sight.

6. Visitor
Honestly, nobody knows what your deal is. Worshipers of living iron stars, they say. 5 feet tall and stick-thin, covered in multicolored scale-petals and ridged patterns.

Reroll WIS and take the higher.

Benefit: once per session, release petal-dust that forces all nearby to Save versus murderous wrath.
 
Drawback: when startled, save versus doing the aforementioned. (doesn't count towards your limit, at least)

7. Myconid
A statuesque social form of the Motherland, sent to aid that vast fungus's geopolitical ambitions.

Reroll CHA and take the higher.

Benefit: your mycelial form is silent when walking or falling. You never make any sound you did not intend.

Drawback: once, when it is least convenient, your sleeper agent programming will switch on.

End-of-Year Slushpost

I wrote it, and now you're stuck reading it.

Sewer Rats Epithets

Every two years I seem to doodle with another pick-up game to never use. Gateway this year, Orbiters Local 519 in 2022, and Sewer Rats back in 2020. While digging through my drafts from back when I used GMBinder, a HTML editor for making "things that kind of look like 5e trade dress if you squint", I found these four levelless non-classes for Tim B.'s Squires Errant. They're... four? years old, if I had to guess.

(S) is a spell that can only be used once, (E) is an item you can lose, anything else is just a skill. 2024-Archon's notes in italics.

Veteran - Survivor of the newest of the City’s expansionist wars, now haunted by their violence.

Paranoia: when you enter a room, you suspect three objects within are traps. If there is a trap, it will be one of those three. (Can you imagine playing a game with this? It'd take forever!)     

Surplus Arquebus (E): a heavy rifle (2d8 damage, 1d6 ammunition, two-handed, loud).    

Your Friend's Ghost (S): cut down in the war, now whispering constantly of better times. It can be sent to attempt to haunt a target - they must Save, taking 1d12 damage on a failure and being possessed on a success. (The effect-on-passed-save is a nice trick, I think.)

Vermin Druid - Even in the core of the City, there is still life: fleas, spiders, and rats.

Rat Form (S): become a rat for 1d6 Exploration Turns.    

Swarming Insects (S): a room fills with flying, stinging insects for 1d4 Combat Rounds. Everyone except for you is either blinded or takes 1d4 damage per Combat Round.    

Polluted Blood: you are immune to poison, and your blood burns things who come in contact with it. Melee attackers take 1d4 damage after they hit you.

Urchin - Abandoned by the world, you march into the sewers out of desperation.

Pickpocket: if someone isn't paying attention to you, you can steal anything they aren't holding without a roll.    

Escape Artist: you can fit through any space larger than your head at normal speed, and escape grapples or being tied up in one Combat Round without a roll.    

Inconspicuous: even if a fight has broken out, you won't be attacked as long as you hide, cringe, and otherwise appear to be harmless. (Should be "are attacked last", probably.)

Gutter Alchemist - description not found.

Waxy Green Brick (E): when consumed, sends the afflicted into a nerve-deadened frenzy. For 2d6 Combat Rounds they can act twice per Round, and damage done to them is ignored until the effect ends. After the effect ends, they are disoriented (check penalty placeholder thanks, past archon) for the same duration.     

Neon Blue Vial (E): when consumed, the drinker becomes invisible for 1d4 Exploration Turns. After the effect ends, they are blinded for the same duration. 

Pink Bottle (E): when poured on to a person or object, it becomes weightless for 1d6 Exploration Turns. At the end of the duration, it becomes twice as heavy for the same duration. This will, generally, immobilize people.

Purifier Novitiate - your creed is to protect the City from sin: monsters, strong drink, foreigners, and so on.       

Smite (S): As part of a melee attack, your crown of fire flares, and you add 1d12 to your damage. This can also be used to destroy anything not bigger than a car and not stronger than steel. 

Imperious Visage: you may reroll Reaction Rolls, but positive results on Reaction Rolls are terrified instead of friendly. If given a chance, they will run or betray you. (I'm stealing this later.)

The third Purifier Novitiate ability is missing, and the sixth class just has the words "bear trap" on an empty page.

GLOG Class: Psychopomp

A: Never Spoke in Prose, Smoke Cloud
B: Pennies for Charon, Prophetic
C: Empty Eye Sockets
D: Undying

Never Spoke in Prose
The Flame (different from a flame, though you wouldn't expect others to understand) instructs you - there are those who have escaped their destined fate. The Flame is meant to seek only the undead, but it is tired, and the divine laws are long. For each person you kill that it asked you to, you get enough goodwill to make up an excuse for why someone you want dead has cheated the wheel.

The Flame knows where your target lives. It grants you Advantage on your first to-hit and damage rolls against them.

Smoke Cloud
Turn into a black mist to zoop through vents and other narrow openings. You, importantly, can't fly - the smoke is too heavy to just hover into the air.

Pennies for Charon
Whenever you kill someone, you find a pair of coins behind their eyes. You can give these to the Flame, and for each 3 pairs it hands you a gun, 1d4x10 rounds of ammunition, or a grenade.

Prophetic
The Flame gives you 1 piece of information about your target when you begin seeking them - perhaps it tells you that they tend to leave their back door unlocked, or that they keep an antique machine gun in their basement.

Empty Eye Sockets
You can see without issue in the dark.

Undying
You do not need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe. Spend your free time watching grass grow, or listen to a calming symphony.

GLOG Class (Fragment): Antipaladin

Sometimes you want "deep worldbuilding", "complex sociology", "multifaceted problems", and other things of that ilk. Other times you just want to stick your players in front of a guy in armor with spikes on it.

A: Asymptomatic Carrier, +1 Attack

B: Contact Outsider

C: Shrike Ideology, Smite

D: Scatter the Chaff

i forgot what these abilities were. such is life.

Five Dungeon Concepts for Gateway

1. Out in the frozen desert sulks a ruin built by the Elfs and their armies of the living dead in past ages. Seek souls bound in iron, wands (a forgotten Elfish invention) of Bones to Dust, and sealed great evils of past ages, but beware refracted laser-traps, prismatic spirits, and sealed great evils of past ages.
2. As a show of force, the Imperial army burned a district of the city to the ground, then wandered off (much to the chagrin of the city's governor). If you wait, on moonless nights, you can still see part of it - a single tenement spun from gleaming silver. Seek liquid memories, items that can touch dreams, and the treasured possessions of the missing, but beware Imperial traps, false floors, and the dawn.
   
3. An abandoned Imperial cathedral has pride of place in the richest quarter of Gateway, untouched for fear of divine or legal reprisal. Seek its bell (rumored to be a casting-bell keyed to Earthquake), armor of imperial paladins, and huge piles of sanctified platinum, but beware anchorites in the walls, bell-armed gargoyles, and direct contact with the Imperial god.
   
4. Optimists and fools say Imbril:Grove:Acosta:Aelrue, a Gestalt of four, retreated into his buried sanctum to plan a terrible revenge on Imperial governance. You don't care, you just want to root through his wine cellar. Seek the aforementioned wine, abundant spell scrolls, and the thrice-real-size golden statue of himself I:G:A:A conjured as a joke, and beware the 8 MD wizard who stuffed so much spiritual mass into a single body he leaves afterimages whenever he moves, the thrice-real-size golden statue of himself, and more than a few of those abundant spell scrolls.
5. The governor's family lives in a many-roomed mansion out on the edge of town. Now, the mansion itself is impregnable - but in the basement (sealed to the guards and almost always unoccupied) one could seek occult blackmail, daemonic heirlooms, and the family tutelary spirit (one of the few to survive the executions) - but beware geases, curses, and the unexpected appearance of the rich and powerful.

GLOG Class: Demonologist
A: Familiar, +1 MD
B: Advisor, +1 MD
C: Talents, +1 MD
D: Multitasking, +1 MD

a hideous abomination

Familiar: after six years of study in the demonological arts, and weeks of blood, sweat and tears (mostly blood, and not all of it yours) you have summoned it - a horrible creature, a wide-eyed round head with sticklike limbs. It peeps and wheedles, pulling on your sleeve to beg for crumbs of magic. It is intangible, and imperceptible to all but you.

It cannot be separated from you - if you are ever more than ten feet away, the familiar is dragged to you by an irresistible force.

It is, to put it nicely, "charmingly incapable" - apt to become distracted, sleepy, confused, or bored unless watched over.

MD can be fed to the creature to:
- make one of its limbs twist into the real world, letting it pull levers, push buttons, or start poking people. 4 MD thus means four limbs, providing the familiar the ability to interact with the world as a human does.
- make the familiar perceptible to others with one sense (sight, sound, et cetera) - more MD move it up the scale from "weird little guy" to "baron of Hell".
- allow the creature to move 10 [meters/tens of meters/hundreds of meters/kilometers] away from you

Advisor
The familiar can, with MD payment, answer questions on matters of natural philosophy, botany, and rhetoric. The more MD expended, the more useful the answer.

Talents
The familiar gains a skill, as a PC would have. In matters related to this skill it is reliable, focused, and capable.

Multitasking
You wake up one day to find *two* of these things. You definitely didn't summon that second one. Hm.

The Short-Lived Book (GLOG Spells)

I was born with my siblings in the spring, when the frost left, and our seeds sprouted. The rest of us howled and shouted, and shook our thorns - but I was weak, and thus fearful. I fled, out among the plants-who-stay-still, and the graves of our forefathers. 

There is where it spoke to me - the shapeless shape, the rattling sound in the voices of the leaves. And it said: your stem is soft and thin - your thorns unsharpened. I offer you a guide. An angel. You are doomed by birth, you will live only a year - but I can show you the way to life eternal.

It asked no price of me. It lied.

But I was lost, and couldn't understand - so I leapt at the offer. The voice raised a hand, and my many-legged angel took its first breath.

Invent Wasp

A hand-sized wasp-shape (1 HP, no AC, flies) crawls out from the earth. It loves you like a dog - you can give it scritches, if you so desire. After [worst] hours, it vanishes. For every MD invested in the spell, choose two details:

• A crop in the manner of the Masarinae - it can carry your pollen messages.
• Great size, equal to yours - it can be ridden, with care.
• A terrible venom, in the manner of the Pompilidae - insects are paralyzed, and men are stricken with agony.
• Production of honey, in the manner of the Brachygastra.
• Grinding mandibles (grinds wood to paper, attacks plants as a light weapon), in the manner of the Polistinae - beware, for these are killing weapons, and marks of a cruel familiar.
• Striking coloration, in the manner of the Chrysididae. 
• Skill in pottery, in the manner of the Eumeninae. 
• The ability to communicate with you, in taps and scents. Through this detail, I learned that it is the same wasp that is summoned, every time the spell is cast.
• Proficiency in the works of the mine, in the manner of the Sphecidae.
  
• Bringing with it a fig, in the manner of the Agaonidae.
  
• Parasitism, in the manner of the Ichneumonidae - anything the wasp can fit its legs around vanishes with it when the duration ends.
  
• A warm, soft coat of fur, in the manner of the Mutillidae.
  

Months passed, and summer came. But my angel could not guide me home - in fact, I began to suspect it meant to point me away. When I stopped drinking, and reached the dark, it spoke to me again, in the patterns of the flowers. Fear not, ever - for I can show you how to be alone.

Bitterness

For [sum] minutes, you are shrouded. When cast with one MD, people will avoid you out of politeness. With two, they avoid you out of fear. With three, anyone approaching you must save or take [best] damage and be turned away. With four, you are invisible for the duration.

Autumn came, and my wings grew. Then, they fell out - a nutritional deficiency, perhaps, as I had been far from good soil or water. As I clutched them and wept, the voice returned. Are you still so fragile? So weak? Take the lesson of the tree - there is no virtue greater than resilience.

I took my wings in hand, and stripped trees of their bark with my thorns.

Needle and Thread

Sow a piece of a plant to another - the larger part must Save (with a +[dice] bonus) or die.  

By the time of the snows, I was prepared. I was taller than my lost siblings, I was surrounded by angels, and my gaze turned animals away. But no strong stem could turn away death, and I felt its hands at my back.

When I laid down, ready for it to take me, the voice screamed in the wind. You have done my will. For it lied when it said there was no price. The snow covered me. I give you what I promised.

Secret Hollow

Cover yourself in snow, sand, or soil. For [sum] months, time does not pass inside the hollow.

Life eternal. 

All Roads Lead to Molont (Encounter Tables)

While my Lanthanide Horizon campaign grinds up to speed, I am haunted by entirely unrelated things - in particular, Skerples's Bosola, a 14th-century near-Italy that is certainly having... a time of it. The Archpriest Simon II rules from the city of Molont, while the other Archpriest, Ignatius I, is hosted by the wealthy nation of Pellamy.

To the surprise of no one, they do not like each other very much.

While Bosola is, in theory, united by their support for Simon II, the peninsula's many cities are too busy knifing each other to... do anything for him. The Church's funds, split between the warring Archpriests, are used to bid for the same foreign mercenaries that the cities seek.

Everything is on fire. Cities are spasming in revolution, or up for sale, or besieged. Mercenary companies (such as the PCs'!) march from town to town, working for Simon II one day, the city of Arda the next, and the nearly powerless Emperor of Grept (technically, legally, owner of all the parts of Bosola that aren't personal property of the Archpriest) on the third.

Skerples's wonderful pointcrawl map

This is, secretly, a GLOGtober post; random encounters on ancient roads - older than the Archpriests, they say. 1d6 for encounter type, 1d6 for encounter.

1. Mercenary Encounters

1. Six soldiers from the Sable Company trudge down roads and through fields, dragging a cannon behind them. They are terribly lost, and there's a decent chance they'll get their cannon stuck in a ditch before they find their way back.
   
2. The foreign Company of Saint Beria, hired by Pellamy and the Archpriest Ignatius I. Only around two hundred of them are left - and nobody's paying them to kill you.
3. An exceptionally foreign mercenary company of unknown name and unknown tactics, five dozen strong.
   
4. Two dozen more members of the Sable Company, who haven't been paid in months. They aren't "sliding into" brigandage, they're reveling in brigandage.
   
5. The core one hundred soldiers of the Company of Sunrise, along with their leader Azzone of Verrino, heading to a city to camp. It is said that Azzone has the patronage of a demon, who predicts the future for him - but only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (Saturday and Sunday are the days of the Saints and the Authority, respectively, so no demon could issue predictions related to them. The lack of Friday, however, has no precedent.)
   
6. The entire 1000 man Peerless Company, along with a village worth of camp followers. May as well be a town on the move. Last hired by the Archpriest Simon II, and now returning to Molont.
   

2. Papal Encounters

1. A bishop rides down the road in a large carriage, surrounded by servants and guards. Get out of the way.
2. A papal messenger, running their horses ragged. They will pay you handsomely for yours (if you have any), and then return to their frantic sprint. Their letter concerns the current and future positions of the Peerless Company - and would be worth so, so much money to the forces of Ignatius I.
3. A menagerie of lions, leopards, elephants, peacocks, falcons, and some kind of terribly tall, long-necked camel, herded down the road to be given to the Archpriest.
   
4. A crowd of runaway monks, who have no idea what to do now. Attaching themselves to a mercenary company wouldn't be so bad...
   
5. Fifty members of the Archpriest's (50/50 chance which) personal soldiers. Impeccable, imperious, impervious. They're even taller than you.
   
6. An absurd spectacle. A twelve-wheeled, two-story carriage, flanked by hundreds of mounted people. The Archpriest Simon II, out of Molont and on the road... or so it seems. In truth, this is a body double, sent on some kind of convoluted mission. On the other hand, a copy of the Archpriest may be worth just as much as the real thing.
   

3. Civilian Encounters

1. A merchant caravan, loaded with grain, gold, and armed guards.
   
2. A small hunting party from a local village.
   
3. A princeling of some city or another, blessed with a complete lack of self-preservation and, to balance it out, an immense sense of self-importance.
   
4. Four pilgrims, headed to some tiny shrine nestled in the absolute middle of nowhere.
   
5. A gang of bandits, who only realize how large a group the PCs travel with after jumping out at them.
6. A crowd of refugees - their town has just been sacked by mercenaries. They don't know why. They don't know who.
   

18th century engraving of mercenary company leader Luchino Visconti, by, as far as I know, an anonymous artist

 

4. Villages & Buildings

1. A small village, currently in the midst of their spring festival. They absolutely do not, even slightly, want a mercenary company rolling into town, but they can't do much of anything about it.
   
2. A looming castle-tower on a rock outcropping. Still occupied, and subservient to the nearest city on the point map.
   
3. A looming castle-tower on a rock outcropping. Still occupied - the home of a cackling, theatrical Sorcerer. Powerful, independent, and unpredictable. If you're lucky, they'll think you're amusing.
   
4. A very, very old church, now in ruins. There is a relic inside, of some near-forgotten saint. Unfortunately, you'll be struck by lightning if you steal it.
   
5. A town with a large portion of the underfunded, poorly-managed, and generally kind of incompetent Sable Company parked in front of the gate. They would, of course, like to come in. The town would, of course, prefer if they did not.
   
6. An orchard!
   

5. Wild Things

1. A swarm of some kind of small songbird blots out the sun - then descends to steal food, hide in places, peck ineffectually at people, and carry off anything they can use for nests.
2. Someone, somewhere, lost track of a flock of sheep. Now they're yours.
3. Back away slowly - your horse, or your foot, just about trod on a snake.
   
4. A tree, bearing golden fruit. Each and every fruit is electrified at all times.
   
5. A herd of wild boars. Probably not the best thing to interact with.
   
6. Some kind of awful chimera - the head of a bull, the legs of an ant, the arms of a man.
   

6. Encounters with the Supernatural

1. A demon, sent from below to tempt the souls of humankind. Do you want gold? Health? To know the secret language of the birds? All is yours - just sign here.
   
2. A walking dead man, an agent of the terrible Necromancer, about whom little is known. The dead man cannot be killed again, but he can be dismantled.
   
3. A Sorcerer, riding a mount of blown glass they projected from their mind.
   
4. Ghostly fires and the sound of distant music. The lights are coming over the hill - they are getting closer.
   
5. A circle of standing stones, crackling with static at all times of day and night. Step through and find yourself in the same place, but a distant time.
   
6. A crowd of runaway monks - secretly scholars of occult forces. Might be able to lay down curses with a set of secret hand-signs, or might not; but I wouldn't risk it, personally.
   

How to Fight Ghosts, and Yourself, and Everyone Else (GLOG Duelist Subclasses)

    Like every glog-type individual, I can't stop myself from making a new fighter every few months. Also like every glog-type individual, I can't stop myself from immediately doing anything a blog post tells me to - so when Locheil's fighter Legally Required anyone reading it to make more subclass variations for it, I did, dooming it to an eternity shackled to me.

    Ha.

Ψ - Assured

A method developed by, and for, Clockwork Men. It expects that your skin is proof against blades, but even tiny weak flesh-creatures may find it of some use.

You may have learned it from a retired Clockwork Man, or from a recovered punchcard.

1. Technique: Splintering

    When you could riposte, you can instead catch the attacking weapon between two fingers and snap it like a twig. Assuming you remain adjacent to humanity, you take 1d4 damage.

2. Stance: Sunderer

    Swords you hold count as sledgehammers when used against inanimate objects.

3. Stance: Pristine

    As long as you are at full HP, your attacks deal +2 damage.

4. Technique: Caught in the Gears

    When you make two successful attacks on the same target, you may immediately grapple them. According to doctrine, you should then crush their head like a grape in your huge metal hands, but I expect you don't have huge metal hands. Pathetic.

Ψ - Zoanthropy

A "style" of screaming, biting, and bleeding. 

You may have learned it from observing one of its practitioners, or by spending days in a strobe-lit room while being beaten with sticks.

1. Technique: Frenzy

    You may make as many bonus melee attacks as you want, but your target gets to make just as many against you.

2. Stance: No Idle Hands

    Weapons you have built yourself, from scratch ("I mined this iron ore and smelted it in a furnace I built myself" scratch) have their damage die increased by one step. (Bone, stone, and wooden weapons shatter into splinters when they roll their maximum damage.)

3. Technique: Taste of the Blood

    You may replace one of your melee attacks each round with a 1 damage bite. If this kills the target (and unlike other Duelist abilities, this kills the target, no question) you regain all your spent attacks.

4. Stance: Deadened Nerves

    For every point of damage you take, your attacks do +1 damage until the end of your next round. 

Ψ - Carceral

Developed and maintained by the ranks of the Knight-Exorcists in the eight cities of the dead.

You may have learned it as an initiate in their order, or through messages in your dreams.

Source

1. Stance: Open Eye

   A careful pattern of acupuncture needles seats your soul strongly in your body, and sets your eyes firmly on the material world. You can parry spiritual attacks, mental intrusions, and heretical speeches.

2. Stance: Closed Eye

    Your attacks and your body count as magic for the purposes of attacking gargoyles, ghosts, and other such things. Your vision becomes blurry and grey, but with ten minutes of focus you can look into someone, at the shape and movement of the soul through their body.

3. Technique: Expose

    You may replace one of your melee attacks with a deeply uncomfortable poke directly at the target's spirit. Most people must Save or be knocked prone - those who are possessed must Save or fall unconscious as the possessor is flung from the body. Of course, many possessive spirits survive perfectly well in the open air...

4. Technique: Ingrained Response

    Some tricks meant to disperse the holy dead work just as well on tomb-robbers and vagabonds. If you miss with a melee attack, you may immediately throw an item held in your off-hand: piles of salt and iron nails are stereotypical, but sometimes a grenade works even better.

Ψ - Solipsism

A method developed by you.

You always knew it.

1. Technique: You Are Me

    When someone you can see makes an attack, you can decide they will roll with your current attack bonus and deal damage based on what you are holding.

2. Stance: You Are Not Real

    You are not affected by injuries of any kind until they kill you. Look down at your broken legs and declare that it is a trick - I feel nothing.

3. Technique: You Are Here

    Instantaneously switch places with anyone you can see - after all, they're just another piece of you.

4. Technique: You Are Not Safe

    You can make melee attacks against anyone you can see, at any distance. To onlookers, it seems as if you are hacking at yourself.

I Caught You (GLOG Class: Revenant)

(another draft trade/theft, this time from EosOfDawn - any non-Archonful decisions in formatting or design are probably because of them)    

Maybe you deserved it - the bullet over the poker table, the knife in the alleyway. Or maybe no one deserves anything. 

Skills: 1. Cattle Herding 2. Cattle Rustling 3. Knotwork

Items: Light Accursed Six-Shooter, Medium Blackened Levergun, all-black concealing outfit, 40ft. of hangman’s rope, 20 bullets, 2 Devil’s Gifts.

A: Dead//Quick, Contract, +1 to-hit

B: The Knight, Extra Attack

Dead//Quick

Dead: you do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. You are, in the literal sense, unkillable - while you can be maimed to immobility or nonfunction, you cannot die, and any injuries short of a lost limb repair themselves in the next new moon. In the presence of your Vendetta, that hated rival who killed you, and who you now live to kill, this flips to Quick.

Quick: you can die now, I’m sorry to say, but you lose that skeletal shamble and come back to life, almost - and you can move a lot faster when there’s no biology telling you what to do. You win initiative automatically.

Contract

Once your Vendetta, whether that’s one person or a dozen-man posse, are all in the ground, your time is up. One last choice - let your soul return to Judgment, dissolving to dust (and allowing you, the player, to make a new character already at template B, or template C if you have the B template in Revenant), or serve the Devil eternally as his Right Hand - no longer needing food or drink and always winning Initiative, but no longer regenerating and subject to repossession if your body is damaged beyond use. And, of course, the Devil has uses for an agent on Earth.

The Knight

It can be lonely, with only the desert to listen to. Whenever the sun does not shine, you can bring a horse, or something close to it, to you - an assemblage of bones and burning embers, as fast as any horse but never tiring.

And, by now, you’re starting to understand your situation. When your Vendetta dies, you don’t need to surrender, not to Heaven nor Hell - all you really need is another target. As long as you’re able to chain together new Vendettas with people who have greatly harmed you, you don’t need to rest. Your work is not yet done.

Devil’s Gifts

1. A second light Accursed Six-Shooter - anyone killed by it is sent directly to Hell, and its damage dice explode in a flare of hellfire. 

2. Three sticks of dynamite - each one detonates completely silently and with a bitter green light. 

3. Light bowie knife - in its reflection, everyone is a corpse, except you - you haven’t looked that healthy a day in your life.

4. Bullet with your own name on it. Whenever it’s fired, it comes right back to you, perfectly intact and ready to be recased - even if it has to go around corners or through walls to do it.

5. Holes in your own skeletal arm - you can whistle through them, and when you do everyone in earshot hears Absolutely Nothing.

6. Turquoise poker chip, theoretically worth $5,000.

7. Deck of 52 cards, all marked - no matter what, any game you play with them you lose. Pull ten of them and they’ll murmur about your future, then turn to ash. The two left over, I’ve heard, tell you if you’ll get into Heaven.

8. Midnight Brandy - smells unnervingly of meat. Whoever drinks it vomits up a near-mummified rattlesnake; it’ll follow your directions until the next dawn, at which point it will turn to dust.

9. An entire crew-served gatling gun, complete with 100 rounds of ammunition. Impossible to move without a horse, deeply illegal, generally inconvenient, but it’ll turn 25 rounds into a 3d6 damage hail in a 100’ cone.

10. Your own coffin, chained to your ankle. Takes up 5 slots when you carry it on your back but can store an extra 10 slots without encumbering you. The chain is exactly 6 cubits long (about 9 feet) and you get a bad feeling about breaking it.

Musing on the Wreck (GLOG Class: Attainder)

This is a draft trade from Locheil, itself set in deus ex parabola's Unfinished World. As such, its format, layout, and general Vibe is deeply influenced by them both.

The Attainder is a practitioner of Destruction - inheritor of a shrouded history of witch-work, a forgotten, unloved Art passed down in the lands of Man by isolated monasteries run by the foolish and the bitter. Up North, in the lands of the wise, noble Monkeys, it’s said that this work takes on a brighter tone - but here, further from the sun, all is rot.

—

Perks: You get Advantage on saves against poisons - you’re more hostile than they could ever be.

Drawback: People who see you doing Destruction things will probably shit themselves and cry. You smell like embalming fluid or oxtongue mushrooms. 

—

Skills: 1. Anatomy 2. Poisons 3. Chemistry 

Starting Equipment: Heavy Robe, Jeweler’s Loupe, light scalpel, 2 Pieces of Attainder’s Kit

A - Avizandum, +1MD

B - Deodand, +1MD

C - Res Ipsa Loquitur, +1MD 

D - Repugnancy, Mala Fide, +1MD

You know one Technique, determined by rolling 1d8. Others may be found in foul scrolls of strange witchery, or learned from other Attainders. 

An Attainder in a delightful hat, by Locheil

Avizandum

Your eyes are trained, looking beyond what is to the forms that must be - the true core of the objects around you. These cores have the four following Properties, which are easily visible to you:

• Purpose - what is the object meant to do? An axe cleaves, a shovel digs.
• Material - what is the object made of, truly? Not necessarily the majority composition, but the most fundamental composition - an axe may have more handle than head, but to the eyes of the Attainder it is made of steel.
• Scale - how large is the object, roughly? 
• Blessedness - is the object worked by magic? Accursed? 

 Living creatures have a Scale and a Purpose, but instead of a Material they have an Element (one of “Hot Metal”, “Ice”, “Lightning”, “Rot”, and “Force”) and instead of blessedness you can view their karmic burden. 

Deodand

The unguarded touch of your hands rots and rusts - through an inch of wood or half an inch of stone or nonmagical metal per minute. It does not affect living animals, but you can’t make it stop. Silk and lead are immune to this; the former for its purity, the latter for its baseness.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

The true cores move, and you know why - when you use Avizandum to focus on an object and learn its Properties, you can ask it questions about them - when was the last time you performed your Purpose, sword? Who made you this way, magic ring?

Repugnancy

Notoriety follows you! Level 1 apprentice Attainder, and 4-in-6 chance of people going AAAAAAAAAAA in fear when you announce your name. 

Mala Fide

Your spells and abilities can now target yourself - change your Purpose, your Scale, hide away your burdens in others. There is no law where you step.

Techniques:

Consumption

R: Stomach. T: Anything you can swallow. D: Instant.

You can eat (and safely digest) one remotely organic item of up to [dice] slots’ size. This counts as [sum] days’ worth rations. This obliterates whatever you consume, in totality. 

Tenancy 

R: Touch. T: A wall, ceiling or floor. D: [sum] hours.  

Physically meld yourself with a sturdy physical surface, leaving behind nothing but a stain. While Tenant, you are inaccessible, invulnerable, blind and deaf. 

You can choose to end the Technique at any point during the duration, at which point, you slither out from where you went in. If the surface is anything less durable than adamant, you damage and disfigure it as you leave. 

Acquisition 

R: Touch. T: A person. D: [sum] hours. 

You may graft up to [dice] loose organic body parts (i.e., arms, legs, ears) to a target, and have them function for the duration. Unwilling targets may save. Afterwards, the target takes [lowest] non-lethal damage for each grafted part, as they rot into muck. 

Cessavit

R: Touch T: An object taking up [dice] or less slots. D: [sum] hours.

You obliterate the target object, extracting one of its properties. You may then impart this extracted property to something you touch within the next minute. The change lasts [sum] hours.

When cast with 4 dice, you may instead transform the extracted property into a small, gallstone-like chunk, which allows you to indefinitely store properties for use with this Technique.  

Joinder

R:[dice]*5 feet. T: Up to [dice]+1 animals. D:[sum] hours. 

You combine the target animals into a monstrous Chimaera.

The Chimaera gains an extra [dice]HD for the duration, and will follow the spirit of your orders, albeit perhaps with some extra collateral damage and clumsiness. When the duration ends, the Chimaera will die, and collapse, immediately decaying into a toxic fungal bloom. 

Suo Motu

R: Touch T: [dice] consenting individuals and [dice] objects D:[dice]*10 minutes

The target individuals become erased, their properties placed into the target objects for the duration, allowing them to move and otherwise manipulate the object until they pop out of it. Fit your allies into a rock and throw them through a window, turn them into curtains so they can spy on people, hide backup in a pocket.

Tithe

R: Touch T: Something living. D: [sum] minutes. 

You can steal a total of [sum] points worth of stats from the target. Unwilling creatures may save. This deals [dice] damage to the target, and bolsters your capabilities for the duration. 

Lacuna 

R: 60 feet T: A location D: Instant

Destroy, in a sense, the distance between you and your target location to arrive there instantaneously. The target location must be reachable by both sight and air in a straight line from you - you could blink through a net, but not a pane of glass.

Grievous Bodily Harm 

R: Touch. T: Anything. D: Instant.

The Art of Destruction can do so much more than its namesake. On the other hand, it’s not an unearned moniker. 

A target you touch with your left hand suffers [sum + dice] damage - living things may save for half. The target’s surface takes on the texture of anything it’s touching, and if this kills a living creature, they immediately collapse into a bloom of fungi. 

Excambion

R: 60 feet. T: Any two objects. D: [sum] minutes. 

You may select up to [dice] properties, and swap them between the objects targeted - give a house the Purpose of a sword to turn it into a death trap, and the sword into a birdhouse.

Chance Medley 

R: 15 feet. T: a 10’ radius circle D: [sum] minutes

One of the feared Signature Techniques of the Attainders. 

Spreading outwards from you, the borders between things begin to break down, transforming into inchoate slime, a matrix of colors and angles. Anything nonhuman touched by the Medley dissolves into more of it. Living humans can walk on the Medley without issue, though their equipment will dissolve. It’s like walking on a water balloon full of Legos. 

The Medley expands at a rate of one foot every minute until its duration runs out, or until you shut it down intentionally. If you roll a Mishap while using this Technique, you cannot turn it off until it reaches its end, and if you roll a Doom while using this Technique, you instantly dissolve into Medley instead of your target location.

Ultimus Haeres 

R: 60 feet. T: Yourself and a creature of [dice] or less HD. D: n/a

One of the feared Signature Techniques of the Attainders. 

If your target fails a save, you both die. [sum] minutes later, you arise as a new creature with as many total HD as the both of you had, a mixture of your physical features, and a combination of your personalities and memories - these skewed in favour of the Attainder. 

If your halves were fighting when the Technique was used, you may suffer a serious existential crisis in your first hours of new life. 

A Man owns many pairs of shoes over his life. From this, we conclude that Man is immortal.

Mishaps of the Attainder:

1. For the next [sum] days, you loudly vomit spores whenever you roll a 6 on an MD.
2. You take 1d6 damage and go blind for [sum] minutes.
3. Your feet sink a foot into whatever you’re standing on, and your body takes on [dice] properties of whatever you just destroyed. This lasts for [sum] rounds.
4. You destroy your outer layer with the nearby air, and catch fire.  
5. You did something wrong. A choking cloud of greyish dust explodes out from you. Everyone nearby saves versus disease. 
6. The Technique doubles in strength, but you lose the use of [dice] eyes, limbs, ears or organs, your choice, for [sum] days. 

Dooms of the Attainder: 

1. Patches of your skin, especially on your throat and stomach, blotch, split, and turn foul. The pain is constant, but manageable. 
2. Your sclerae fill with blood, your gums pull back from your teeth, your hands blacken, and your fingernails fall out. Thick fingers of fungal matter grow from your skin, unless you scrape yourself regularly. The agony is quite severe, and quite unceasing.
3. You die, and rot. Mercifully, the pain subsides. Your body no longer heals naturally, and must be repaired with needle and thread. You no longer need to sleep. If you are caught by the Sun, your body will dissolve, and the character will no longer be playable.

Attainder’s Kit: 

1. Vial of Cheap Poison - causes vomiting and on a failed CON save the loss of 1d4 points of Max HP for a number of days equal to the number of lost HP
2. 5 Embalmed Rats 
3. Kukri, Wickedly Curved - a light weapon with exploding damage dice, though it’s mostly used to cut plants
4. Cursed Ring - every night, when you sleep, the finger this ring is worn on rolls off to cause mischief 
5. Sneezing Powder - 3 doses
6. Vodka - 3 doses
7. Book on Arelian Interparty Politics OR Pulp Adventure Story, your choice. 
8. Jar of potted meat in butter
9. Perfume (plum-scented), six doses
10. Broad rainproof hat, absolutely awful pastel fish patterns
11. Trained falcon and glove
12. Lead lockbox, no key and impervious to Deodand. Probably filled with dust and pennies, but at least you can hit people with it.
13. Cane sword, Medium, pommel decorated with a round grinning face
14. Silk glove, singular
15. Backgammon set - the board is broken in half, but you can’t bear to part with it
16. Sledgehammer, 3 slots - technically a Massive weapon, but good luck hitting anyone with it unless they’re unconscious or something
17. Needle and thread
18. Bottle of Dr. McIntyre’s Wholesome Patent Medicine - mostly laudanum and whatever weeds were growing at the back of the factory this week. 3 doses. 
19. Lantern of blue glass, that burns a cold white. 
20. A Curio! 

1. A tattered boot - when turned upside-down, pours out somewhat slimy, probably nonpotable water. Contains, somehow, ten gallons of water and refills every day.  
2. Miniscule dried mushroom, a lurid red. Anyone who eats the mushroom explodes ten days later - dead, no save. Unfortunately, crushing the mushroom or introducing it to water also causes it to explode, so you might have a hard time hiding it in the Governor’s soup.
3. Platinum-iridium rod, exactly one meter long. Exactly one meter - before it ended up in your hands, it was in an Imperial weights and measures office.
4. Piece of paper recording the recipe for Red Powder - a black powder equivalent that burns silently, smokelessly, and with a bright red flash. Gives a -2 to gun damage, but more than makes up for it.
5. A Manufactory’s… something - a clockwork contraption that takes coal in one end and drops foil throwing stars (1 damage, throw 30 feet) out the other. A dial could be set to increasingly large weapons, but it’s jammed
6. Vial of sand from the furthest reaches of the North - when broken, the sand follows one spoken instruction to the best of its ability, and then collapses. If you collect the sand in another vial, you can use it again - so be careful around wind.

See It Descend Into - Premise & Classes

See It Descend Into is a megadungeon campaign I am, in theory, going to write and run.

Maybe.

Perhaps.

Eventually.

The players are citizens of a nation undergoing colonization by the foreign Pentarchy, and attempt to recover and record archaeological information of the ancient stepwell-palace known as the Inverted Pyramid before the Pentarchy sends their own teams to strip it of anything of value and send it back to their capital to rot in a warehouse.

The Inverted Pyramid is filled with writing in the now-lost Dead Language, and decorated with murals, sculptures, and other artwork. XP comes not from the value of treasures looted from the Pyramid, but instead from analysis, with bonuses for taking photographs, translating inscriptions, and recording the context of the artifact. 

the stepwell Chand Baori, in Rajasthan

Classes

See It Descend Into is using a GLOG variation too generic to post here, and so far 4 classes - a Fighter (quite overtuned, as an experiment in hyper-specialized classes), an Explorer (a form of Thief entirely about trap management), a Quartermaster (general-purpose support class), and the Translator I posted last year.

One mechanical note is the prevalence of a damaged keyword - items can be damaged through strenuous or nonstandard uses (beating a door down with a crowbar, etc). Once damaged, they can be used once more before they break, but can be repaired in town or by Quartermasters.

The Fighter (stolen from deus ex parabola and Vayra)

The Fighter A: Subclass, Expertise, +1 to hit and damage B: Extra Attack, +1 to hit and damage C: Subclass II, +1 to hit and damage D: Extra Attack, +1 to hit and damage Δ: A Heavy, Iron Hand Subclass Choose between The Foreign Method and The Native Method. Gain its first bonus now, and its second at template C. The Foreign Method An altered form of the Pentarchy’s martial practices, taken up by rebels in the places that would not be Provinces. 1: You can damage a weapon to reroll its damage dice. 2: Stolen power from the Pentarchy’s divine bureaucracy lets you name a single specific action (attacking with swords, walking East) Illegal during combat. Everyone understands this declaration, even if they do not speak your, or any, language. You must immediately make a free attack against anyone committing an Illegal act - these attacks ignore maximum ranges. If you commit an Illegal act, you die instantly. The Native Method Once common, now rarely mastered in a world dominated by firearms and switchblades. With a few changes of your own, however, it still holds on. 1: You may fill up to [templates] inventory slots with muscle (+1 STR), sinew (+1 DEX) or fat (1 point of damage reduction), through a day of focused effort per slot filled, emptied, or changed. 2: You can take 1d4 damage and burn away one of your filled slots to: leap 20’ horizontally, make a pair of unarmed attacks immediately after another attack, throw a grappled target ten feet, and perform other feats. Expertise Whenever you hit someone with an attack, you can attempt a combat maneuver against them for free. Δ: A Heavy, Iron Hand Kill two foes with a single strike. All damage dice on all your weapons explode on their highest result. 1d6 wayward students will soon approach you, pledging their service in exchange for your teachings.

The Explorer (stolen from deus ex parabola and Michael)

A: Skilled, Click

B: Stay Away

C: Under Tension

D: Experienced

Δ: Steady Hands

Skilled

Given a few minutes, you have a [templates]-in-6 chance to succeed at any of your Skills (any 2 of Climb Sheer Surfaces, Hear Noises, Hide in Shadows, Move Silently, and Pick Locks), in addition to normal resolution rules. 

Click

If you set off a trap, you get to act before it goes off, but before it reveals what it does. Guessing a safe option (ducking under the hammer trap) protects you, guessing the wrong option (ducking into the spike pit) does not. Shoving another party member in the path of the trap is always an option.

Stay Away

You can invert your Skills, letting you roll to Render Walls Impassible, Move Silently, See in the Dark, Hear Noises, and Sabotage Doors.

Under Tension

If you already know there is a trap before you set it off (finding the pressure plate, but not knowing what it will do), you can make a Save - on a success, it doesn’t go off, but you know exactly what it would’ve done if it had. On a failure, you can still react with Click.

Experienced

Choose another 2 skills out of the earlier list or these: Leaping Gaps, Running Away, Attacking Someone Who Can’t See You, Intuiting Thoughts, and Finding a Friend. These do not invert.

Δ: Steady Hands

Kill an enemy with a trap you built.

Once you have determined the presence of a trap, either using Under Tension or good gameplay, you can spend an Exploration Turn to completely extract it, so you can set it up elsewhere.

A stepwell in Karnataka

The Quartermaster (stolen from Skerples, Lexi, and Lexi again.)

A: Evaluate, Boarding School Education, +1 Inventory Slot

B: Prominence, Smithing, +1 Inventory Slot

C: Hidden Market, +1 Inventory Slot 

D: Craftsman, +1 Inventory Slot

Δ: Baron

Evaluate

You know the market value of any mundane item on sight. Unique items like ancient pottery require an Intelligence check to evaluate, and some magical items cannot be evaluated.

Boarding School Education

You know the language of the Pentarchy, letting you easily communicate with guards, foreign merchants, and colonial officials. You gain either +1 or +INT bonus, whichever is higher, to reaction rolls with these groups - they are delighted to see their “””civilizing influence”””.

Prominence

When you meet someone, you can choose to be the most prominent person in the group or the least obvious person in the group. This doesn’t give you a mechanical bonus to stealth.

Smithing

You can repair a simple item, including melee weapons, for free during a Rest.

Hidden Market

Items the colonial government has deemed illegal (firearms, drugs, etc.) can still be found and purchased. Roll 1d6 - on a 6, you find exactly what you want. On a 3-5, the item has an issue or condition (works poorly, the original owner wants it back, it’s twice as expensive, etc). On a 1-2, you find nothing.

Craftsman

You can repair up to three items during a Rest, including complex objects like firearms. 

Simple items repaired and upgraded by you get a bonus that lasts a day: armor gets +1 AC, weapons get +1 on attack rolls, lamps last an extra Turn, et cetera.

Δ: Baron

Invest 2,000 Notes into a piece of property to turn it into a successful business of your own.

Gain your choice of 100 Notes or a hireling (up to 3 at a time) each day. Expect insincere invitations to formal events, patronizing interviews from Pentarchy journalists, and near-constant attempts to buy your business out from under you for 1,000 Notes.

Brain-to-Brain Communication (GLOG Class: Psychic)

This was a collaboration with chloe, creator of Buckets of Blood. It was really nice to work with them.

What made you the way you are? Were you turned into something else as a child? Was it a joint at a party, laced with something that triggered a dormant gene in the back of your brain to give you a glimpse of what lies beyond the black rainbow? Or were you just born to destroy, plain and simple?

A: Eleven Percent of your Brain, Encoded Instructions, +1 Psychic Ability

B: Maelstrom, +1 Psychic Ability

C: Derangement of the Synapses, +1 Psychic Ability

D: Journey to the Center of the Mind, +1 Psychic Ability

Eleven Percent of your Brain

As everybody knows, it is a scientific fact that regular people only use ten percent of their brains. This is completely true and any reputable neuroscientist will confirm it for you, when asked.

You use eleven percent.

The government wants you dead or vivisected. The scum of the nation want to control you and turn your power toward their own ends. The everyday folks hate and fear you. Many times they have come for you, and even though you drive them away screaming and clutching their bleeding heads (if you let them live at all), you have never found anywhere safe.

You are also surrounded by small, coincidental phenomena, usually electronic in nature, well-attuned to your emotional outbursts. Radios and televisions flip channels and buzz with static, lightbulbs dim or burst, the lightning storm draws ever closer. It's out of your control.

Encoded Instructions

Roll 1d6 to determine your Instruction, and another d6 to determine who placed it inside of you. If you break your Instruction, it is replaced with a new commandment- “do as thou wilt”- and you lose all your current Sanity.

Encoder

1. the CIA, as part of their attempt to induce psychic powers in you

2. an alien, as a side effect of their probes

3. the Devil, in exchange for a single copper penny

4. an unknowable superintelligence; simply meeting its gaze turned you into this

5. scientists, researching human happiness

6. something you met during a really bad trip

Instruction

1. You must never commit an act of violence unless physically provoked.

2. You must never speak to someone without knowing their name.

3. You cannot use your psychic powers unless supervised by someone you trust.

4. You must not lie to people you know hold authority over you.

5. You must avoid water, though you can drink things that have water in them.

6. You cannot willingly touch metal.

Maelstrom

[templates] times per day, in a time of panic, you can release your psychic energies. Telekinetic force throws chairs, tables, and people. The wind picks up, then becomes a cyclone. TV screens and lightbulbs shatter. Everyone within [templates]x40 feet of you takes 1d4 damage and is stunned, knocked prone, and otherwise made unable to act for [templates] rounds, or until damaged again.

Derangement of the Synapses

[templates] times per day, you can force your neurons to rewrite themselves, creating new knowledge from scratch. This allows you to use a Psychic Ability you haven't unlocked. 

Journey to the Center of the Mind

With intense focus, you can enter another person's deepest consciousness. Inside, you can find and edit them completely - painting over the exhibits of the Memory Room, fiddling the dials in the Emotional Core, pulling out wires of the Ideals Matrix. However, if the other person attempts to stop you, you must fight them inside of their own mind - both sides roll 1d20+Weird+[Psychic templates], and the lowest dies or is knocked unconscious, winner’s choice. You can roll with Advantage by weakening the other person's mind or strengthening your own (dosing them with LSD, etc.). If you kill someone inside of their mind, their head explodes, killing them instantly. If they defeat you, the reverse happens. 

Psychic Abilities

Fix your target in your mind's eye. Imagine your hands cradling it as gently as you could manage. And then, reach out to it with that tiny and unknown piece of your brain, as simply as moving one of the muscles in your body, and then - a tiny, mental flex.

All of these abilities can be used at will on anything within your line of sight. Each has four 'levels' that dictate how effective their influence is; Psychics are classified according to what level of an ability they can use safely. At any time, a Psychic can use an ability they know at any level; however, if the level is higher than their number of Psychic templates, they must immediately take Xd10 damage (where X= Ability's level - Psychic templates) in cranial hemorrhaging as blood pours from their nose, ears, and eyes.

d20 Psychic Abilities

1. Grab an object using telekinesis. For every [level], the object can weigh 10 pounds, and you are treated as having one hand (so at level 2, you can lift a 20 pound object and have two "hands") 

2. Set a fire. For every [level], the fire grows in size (1: a candle, 2: a torch, 3: a campfire, 4: a house fire), and you can start it another 10 feet away.

3. Manipulate a mechanical object, controlling it or destroying it. For every [level], your range increases by 10 feet.

4. Charm a person into liking you for [level] minutes; they won't realize you're influencing them.

5. Suggest that a person carry out a command [level] words long; they will know they are being controlled. They won't do anything suicidal, but they are otherwise powerless against you.

6. Read a person's mind. At level-1, you learn their current emotions, level-2 their current surface thoughts, level-3 you can search through their memories, and level-4 you can see everything they've seen for the last day, even if they don't remember it.

7. Astrally project up to [level]x10 feet; you can fly through walls, but cannot touch anything.

8. Wipe someone's memory - at level-1 you remove the last 4 seconds, at level-2 the last four minutes, level-3 the last four hours or memories of any single subject (you, for instance), level-4 the last 4 days or any single memory from any point in their life.

9. Freeze a person or object in place for [level] rounds, with a weight limit of [level]x100 pounds.

10. Witness the future: at level-1 you always know what will happen 4 seconds into the future, and cannot be surprised. At level-2 you can ask the GM what will happen if you do something (what will happen if I open this door) and they must answer truthfully. At level-3 you always know what the GM rolls when they roll on a table, and can ask long-term questions (is this person going to be OK). At level-4, you can have your ultimate vision and rifle through the GM's notes for five minutes once, ever.

11. Stun [level] people within your line of sight for [level] minutes each by manipulating the signals in their brain.

12. Focus telekinetic energy on an object to shatter it. Increasing level lets you target objects of increasing size. At level-1, a mug or book. At level-2, a rifle or a sword. At level-3, a door. At level-4, a car.

13. Electrify an object you're touching. Electronics and other powered objects will begin to function. Using this as an attack deals [level] damage.

14. Send messages [level]x2 words long into someone's head. If [level] is 3 or more, they can respond.

15. Impart an emotion on someone. At level-1, a nervous feeling or vague annoyance. At level-2, a shouting anger or persistent fear. At level-3, a vicious rage or fleeing terror. At level-4, a killing coldness or unending abject horror.

16. A more imprecise telekinesis. For every [level], the object can weigh 100 pounds, but you move them slowly, and cannot do anything more precise than you could do with a forklift.

17. You can absorb the stress from a willing subject, placing them in a calm, meditative state. For every [level] Sanity you restore to them, you lose 1 Sanity (at level-1 you lose Sanity every 1 Sanity restored, at level-2 you lose Sanity every 2 Sanity restored, etc.)

18. By staring at a point within [level]*10 feet of you and crossing your eyes, you can teleport there. This works on line of sight, so you can teleport through walls if you can see through them. Doing it too quickly starts to make you feel queasy, but that’s not a big deal.

19. You can make up to [level] people at a time see you as someone else. Specifically, all the people affected see you as the same person.

20. Form shimmering telekinetic barriers [level]*10 square feet (at level one, you could make a one by ten, two by five, or 3-ish by 3-ish barrier, for example). At level-1, they stop punches. At level-2, bullets. By level-3, grenade explosions. By level-4, semi trucks.