Deviance (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

Deviancy: are more radical limitations, both physical and mental. These cannot be considered natural and are usually tied to your Powers. Deviance is so severe that they count as two limitations each.

Addictive

You leave at least some of your victims alive, and to them, your powers are highly erotic and addictive. They seek you out to get more and have a mystic, intuitive sense of how to find you. When they do find you, they usually desire more of your attention. Some may decide that you are a perversion, to evil to exist, but are still be highly attracted to you. They may also lead hunters and other enemies to your door.

Cursed

You are afflicted with one or more Curses. These are long lasting powers that affect your behavior. Having a curse as a part of your concept naturally means it is extra hard to remove, or perhaps you attract a new curse once the old ones are lifted.

Typical curses include the following:

• Barren Seed
• Behavior Chip
• Black Box
• Bug
• Cortex Bomb
• Dark Thoughts
• Overide Plug
• Oathbind
• Quest

Doom

You have a preordained fate. There is some task or confrontation in your future, and try as you might, you cannot avoid this fate. Your exact actions are not predetermined, but you might be forced into a role or position you are uncomfortable with. The GM is free to fudge to bring this outcome apart, doing more and more obvious things the harder you try to fight your fate.

Dormancy

You have some condition that causes enforced sleep. When triggered, should try to seek out a safe place to rest as you will fall asleep within the hour and cannot awaken once you have fallen into dormancy.

The conditions are almost always predictable and regular, something no group of investigators can induce. Vampires commonly have dormancy weakness during the day, ghosts may have a dormancy weakness at all times except the hour after midnight etc. You always know ahead of time that you will become dormant, giving you time to seek shelter.

When forcibly awakened from dormancy (such as by an attack) something snaps inside you and you lose sight of the true objective; once a fight has begun you focus completely on what is directly ahead of you and get a kind of tunnel vision making you unable to react to events around you. This might leave you as the last man around when your friends escape. You are sensitive to your immediate situation and can realize when things turn south for you personally, but you are unable to grasp the overall tactics of a situation once the action starts.

Geas

A geas absolutely prevents you from or forces you into doing certain things. Some vampires cannot enter a dwelling unless invited inside and devils cannot go onto holy ground. A cursed oathbreaker might be geased to seek out those she harmed and take on a mission from each.

It is normally impossible for you to break this geas on your own, but if forced or fooled into breaking your geas, you lose the use of all your Powers until you have somehow atoned or the end of the adventure.

Gore

You cannot contain the corruption within your body. For whatever reason, you leave a disgusting stench and drop off bits of yourself wherever you go. This can be blood, slime, pus, maggots, feces or whatever. The stench can be obvious but temporary, or subtle but lingering.

Gore is not immediately apparent, you don't look disgusting unless you have other flaws as well. It is only the trail you leave that is disgusting. People might not realize this is from you if you are otherwise unremarkable, but they will certainly realize something is amiss. Detectives have a field day with your trail.

Haunt

You are bound to a specific domain or locale, perhaps even a person or item. You cannot go far from your haunt. You cannot move or otherwise directly affect your haunt in any way.

It is absolutely impossible for you to break this haunting on your own, but if forced to break it (if bound and taken away) the haunt is temporarily broken.

Hunt

You have strong hunting instincts that manifest in a particular situation of in the presence of a certain type of victim. A werewolf hunts under the light of the full moon, serial killers have their triggers, and succubi chase priests and virgins.

If you have a very strong reason not to follow your instincts you may make an opposed Mind roll against your potential victim. If this fails you are overcome by instinct and will hunt, no matter the cost.

Hunting always involves conflict and may involve cannibalism, murder, rape, mutilation, or kidnapping.

Incarnate

You are an incarnation of some archetype; generally a common type of monster, but other themes are certainly possible. This can also apply to more narrow magical traditions. All your Powers must relate to this theme, and the theme must be fairly specific.

Incarnate is a build limitation; it does not affect how you in play. Typically an incarnate has access to either a number of Forms equal to their Maximum Value -10. Some characters are limited by technique instead and can use a number of skills equal to half this.

Some incarnates have both forms and skills limited, or even fewer forms or skills available (half of the above, with a minimum of one) - in both cases this is a two-point limitation.

Incommunicado

You have a hard time understanding and communicating with normal people; you are either too strange, too bestial or too stupid to understand human speech and behavior. Powers can be used to communicate with you, and you can talk to other creatures of a similar background - you can speak to others of your kind, but if 'your kind' is common in the campaign, this is not really a flaw at all. Otherwise you are entirely incommunicado. For stunts that rely on language, you have to use your Mind instead of your Charm and Impress skills; if speaking is critical the task automatically fails.

At double the points, you are also unable to read and write.

Dumb and Incommunicado are incompatible as limitations.

Mundane

You cannot use or learn any Powers and cannot have a Tradition. You can sill use Items that confer powers and benefit from powers used by others. If you are so mundane that you cannot even use powers from Items, this limitation is worth 4 points.

Instinctual Fighter

You fight like an animal, using instinctual tactics. You can overcome these limitations if trained and ordered.

• You cannot perform an active defense against an attack from more than Mind meters away.
• You always attack the most obvious threat unless ordered otherwise.
• You have an attack/defense pattern that you follow, which is suitable to your form and powers. Big cats pounce, wolves harry and pursue, sharks circle and brush by, dolphins ram, pack beasts trample or defend their young, and so on.
• You have a fixed relation to prey or predator; you always flee certain foes and consider other creatures prey. You have trouble relating to creatures in neither of these categories, or which behaves inappropriately for its niche.

Paralysis

There is some way to in which you can be paralyzed, totally preventing any action on your part. It is generally quite difficult to achieve, but a Setback on an appropriate stunt will do the trick. Examples include the classic staking of a vampire.

Static

You cannot both move and act on a Basic Action or Limit Break—you have to decide to either act or move. If you chose to move but fail (but do not fumble) a Free Running check, you can still act instead of moving, which can be a second attempt at movement. This is the same as the Static item limitation.

If you cannot move at all and must be carried or use a vehicle to move, this limitation is doubled.

Tool Ignorant

You lack the ability and/or understanding to use human tools, machines, and other devices. It can be a matter of physical form, but also a mindset; technology and magic devices are simply beyond your comprehension. This is especially common among Animals.

Unliving

You are not a living creature with a natural metabolism. You will never recover Wounds naturally, and cannot be healed with Medicine. You do not regain Fortune points in the normal fashion either, instead having some alternate method of restoring Fortune that you somehow manage to use between most sessions. You should specify how you do this; sometimes it might be impossible.

This commonly applies to constructs, Robots and Undead. In order to get the benefits usually associated with a lack of metabolism, get Life Immunity.

Unwieldy

You have a hard time moving about normally. It may be because you are unusually large, heavy, or because your powers have extreme side effects, but whenever you move about things tend to break, doors jam, floors collapse, and people get pushed about.

Typical examples include huge wings, very high density, a destructive and ill-controlled aura, or just too much Body and too little Reflexes.

This can inconvenience you as dictated by the game master during interaction and investigations scenes. In addition, whenever your specific trouble has reason to come into play and whenever you roll snake eyes on you suffer some kind of appropriate Setback.

Weakness

Against certain kinds of attacks and/or stunts, you cannot use any Skill to defend; the difficulty always defaults to the relevant Attribute instead.

This can be triggered either by the type of attack used, by who is using the attack, or by come extraneous circumstance. Examples include:

• One specific Form or Technique.
• Any attack from a specific type of animal or other creature (dog, bird, demon, etc).
• An attack by a specific type of weapon (Sword, Laser)
• A specific interaction (seduction, death-threats)
• Interactions by a specific type of person (blonde women)

Vulnerability

A certain item or material causes additional damage to you. Add an additional of attribute the attacker has to the damage rating, in this order Mind, Body, Reflexes. An attack cannot add the same attribute twice, so an attack that already uses Mind fro damage adds Body and an attack that already uses both Mind and Body adds Reflexes.

if the vulnerability normally does not cause damage, it deals damage equal to the user's Mind +2. If there is no attacker but a natural phenomenon, such as sunlight, the damage value is your Mind +2.

If you are vulnerable to interaction Stunts of a certain kind, any successful interaction of the type you are vulnerable to causes an automatic setback.

Your vulnerability can be to almost anything. Examples follow:

• Holy symbols.
• Some metal (e.g. silver, gold, cold steel).
• Specific flowers or herbs (wolvesbane, garlic).
• Types of wood (ash, jew).
• Certain books (bible, koran, torah, pulp novels).
• Certain weapons.
• Specific words.
• A portrait of an old love.
• The bones of a former victim.
• Direct sunlight.
• Running water.
• Dogs with angel eyes (dark circles around the iris).