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Kitten Champion
2014-12-03, 10:09 AM
I'm to run a campaign early next year. It's a fairly mundane setting, the wonders of the world are obscured and for most people they are merely suggested to exist in rumour, song, and legend. The basic outline and aesthetic for it was liberally taken from the Monster Hunter franchise.

What I would like is to find small-ish ways to bring more of a sense of fantasy into this fantasy world without feeling too inconsistent with the general aura of the setting.

To this end, I want to develop an idea taken mostly from Jordan's Wheel of Time series. To have a few characters appear who are not Magic Users but come with some supernatural talent that - while not likely to turn them into a superhero - makes the world seem richer and can be used for some interesting character concepts in themselves.

For instance, in The Wheel of Time, one character has the ability to smell violence as a sort of psychic stain that remains around people and places with a lot of bloodshed. Another can see cryptic oracular images float above people's heads that provide - occasionally ironic - foreshadowing. Some characters can speak telepathically with wolves.

I've got some nascent ideas for a few, but I'd like more to work with since I only want to use very few of such characters and I hope the ones I choose be more memorable than not.

Tarlek Flamehai
2014-12-03, 12:05 PM
Accelerated plant growth/fast healing with wild empathy plants

See a devil tail sprout from anyone who knowingly tells a lie, even in jest.

Personal soundtrack, you get musical cues about what is about to happen to you that no one else can hear.

When you search for something you get a literal warmer/colder sensation.

Runners' trance, after running for a minute you enter a state where you no longer suffer fatigue, have no need to rest, you don't feel hunger or thirst, and you get a +10 to balance. If you live long enough you will eventually forget to come out of your trance and run until you die.

You understand animal calls, you have alertness for free within 60' of a wild animal, you have a +4 to Survival.

Pan's Shadow, you can send your shadow out like an arcane eye. People can notice that your shadow is missing or spot it somewhere is shouldn't be.

You can detect alignment through touch.

Line Dancing, when you start dancing others dance along.

Crystal Singing, when you sing crystals within 60' resonate. Good crystals amplify your song by 10' per pound. Flawed crystals interfere with your song, reducing the effect or range by -1 or -10' per pound.

Eisenheim
2014-12-03, 12:59 PM
The Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card has a wonderful treatment of minor magical powers, and how that sort of thing is integrated into society that is more-or-less like a mundane one. Definitely worth a look if you have the time to read for inspiration.

Red Fel
2014-12-03, 01:17 PM
Well, as has been mentioned, "Talk to X" is a great choice, but feel free to make it more esoteric. Talk to spiders? Sure. Rocks? Why not. But let's keep going - what about talking to handmade wooden furniture? The more ornate, the more eloquent? What about talking to pastries, or cheesecake in particular? What about talking to the Platonic Ideal of Fire, through the medium of any source of fire?

Here's a fun one - mimicry. Something generally within mundane ability, but taken to a whole new level. You can not only accurately reproduce voices or sounds, you can reproduce multiple sounds at once. Open your mouth and a symphony emerges. Recreate the exact sound (and decibel level) of a speeding locomotive.

And here's one I particularly enjoy - acceleration and deceleration. It's a very specific form of telekinesis that only works on objects in motion. (That's relative motion, so no arguments that we're all hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour.) So it can't cause an object to start moving if it isn't already; by the same token, it can't fully stop it, even though it can be slowed to a crawl.

Another option, which tends to trip a bit over the popularity of Avatar and Korra, is augmentation. Not the ability to manifest something on its own, but the ability to augment one's own physical abilities through magical manifestation. Jump higher, punch harder, with a little explosion of some kind of energy as you do. It needn't be fire, or air, it could simply be a shockwave, or crackling magical sparkles or something. A little added firework and a little added punch.

One more of my favorites, and an incredibly subtle one, is True Faith. The character has an unshakeable faith in something, doesn't matter what, which manifests in an almost purely reactive manner. For one thing, supernatural beings find this character to be anathema - the more powerful the being, the more toxic the faith is. For another, they can shake off attempts to manipulate or control their minds better than other characters can. Because it's almost purely reactive, characters can go for an entire story barely aware of the fact that it's supernatural at all; the character can simply come across as strong-willed. (Unless you do something cool like make them radiate golden light.)

Bulhakov
2014-12-03, 01:37 PM
I had a very similar idea a while back and it worked out great. In my longest running Earthdawn campaign (3+ years) I allowed my players to invent some bonus "at will" magical skills to make their characters more unique. The players chose:
- natural pyromancy (the character could produce a candle-sized flame within line of sight, she also had a small bonus to all fire-related magic and resistances)
- frost touch (could "suck" heat out of objects, freeze liquids, it turned out to be a potent close-combat attack in a grapple)
- telepathic empathy (could tell the strongest emotion of the closest person)
- poison neutralization (could "cleanse" his blood at will of all foreign substances, including alcohol, slow-acting poisons and nutrients)
- animal mind borrowing (could jump into the mind of a touched animal, his body fell unconscious and the mind could only get back by touch again)

The magical skills were supposed to be "wild", a bit unpredictable at first, but getting stronger and more controlled as the characters leveled. So the fire/frost effects sometimes manifested randomly (or just much stronger than expected), the emotions read by the empathy skill were sometimes "contagious" and could create a "feedback" loop, the mind borrowing "left" some of the animal's instincts/preferences in the mind of the beastmaster and the poison cleanse made the character constantly hungry and sometimes strangely colored (if an actual poison was removed).

Laughingmanlol
2014-12-03, 03:29 PM
If you want magic and like the Wheel of Time, it might be worth considering ideas from some of Brandon Sanderson's books. In I hate dragons (http://brandonsanderson.com/i-hate-dragons-extended-version/), for instance, the protagonist can hear grammar and spelling, and smells delicious to dragons. Generally, though, his magic systems are probably a bit too systematic to fit the style you seem to be looking for.
As for other quirks, it might be worth seeing if you can find a randon word generator that lets you specify you want it in the format "can [verb] [noun]s" to quickly create some unique possiblilities to choose from.

THEChanger
2014-12-03, 03:41 PM
Danger-Sense, but in the reverse of how it's usually used. Instead of being able to sense when you are in danger, you can sense when you are a danger to someone else.

You tend to make things not work like they're supposed to. Small inconsistencies occur when you touch things, and when you try to use them, failures can go from minor to catastrophic. The more complex the object, the easier it is to "break".

You are late, to everything. You even have a rather disturbing tendency to be late to events that are supposed to kill you. This has left several assassins incredibly frustrated.

You can reverse reflections by a small interval of time, observing whatever the reflective surface showed a few seconds, a few minutes, maybe even more prior. It's very taxing, and not very precise.

You're really good at making people laugh. That's not to say you're funny. Rather, when you tell a joke or make a snide comment, regardless of the actual humor people find themselves guffawing.

You can see the size and shape of people's shoulder-angel and shoulder-devil. The size gives some insights into how developed their conscience is, and the shape reveals a bit of what they think angels and devils should look like.

Upon making physical contact with a person, you learn what the most important decision they have made in their life was. Something like "To keep the money", or "Telling him no". None of the circumstances around that decision.

You can perfectly draw anything you've seen, exactly as you've seen it. This is less supernatural and more extraordinary, as there are people in our own world who can do this, so let's say you also can do it with great speed.

Alberic Strein
2014-12-03, 05:11 PM
To almost all who posted before me > I see what you did there.

Another example from a book, the ability to smell death. It usually smells like Autumn (rotten leaves) and the stronger the stench, the more impending death is. This ability indicates the strength of 'death' but neither its form or who is the target. For example a character can detect this smell, thwart an attack by a misguided villager, realise the attack was of no threat to him, check the waitresses and find that one has a fatal disease that would have killed her if it went unnoticed for a few more hours. Plenty of fun all around.

A particular favorite of mine is the ability to see in 3-D millimetered paper. Basically you have absolute depth perception. Pretty damn useful in many situations and sufficiently mundane to go unnoticed in a, well mundane, setting.

Absolute and utter immunity to booze. The character cannot get wasted. EVER. Even when gulping raisins made of pure undiluted concentrated alcohol. Pretty fun and useful (to a lesser extent) when ingesting toxins. Once again, not particularly showy.

The ability to hear the rain sing. A storm is basically an orchestra for this character. Pretty fun to roleplay, and grants the ability to hear 'wrong notes' aka movement, while it rains.

Limited psychometry. Classic, but still gold.

Oh yeah, unusable for your project but an all time favorite of mine: The sounds of madness. The character can hear voices whispering information to him, often giving him useful advice on how to succeed at a task, even though it looks nigh impossible at first glance. It allows you, as the DM to give the player information, or a random bonus to a task. The catch is, of course, the character is hearing, and acting upon, the advice of disembodied voices who are most likely not real. Requires the character to be insane.

Reversion of probability. May need a lot of nerfs (1/day or 1/week and maybe a 10+ on a D20 to activate at all before it goes on cooldown and one needs to wait one more day/week before being activated again for example) but it grants the ability, for one action, to change an impossibility into a certainty. If the character would need a 20 on a D20 to succeed, upon using this ability he will only fail if he rolls a 1. Likewise, if he had to roll a 15+ to succeed, he would only need to roll a 5+ once this ability has been used. The character still needs to do and be able to conceive the related action. For example, he can't just say 'I destroy the plot/planet/continent' since he can't clearly define what action would be needed to do that. Also, anything not even possible on a nat 20 cannot be affecter by this ability.

Spasm of Fury. The character shakes off one overpowering mental condition, like fear, and becomes immune to it for the rest of the duration. Suddenly becoming free from fear tends to have someone flying into a blind rage. But other conditions, love, sadness, etc, may yield different results. Or the same. The grief from losing someone losing its sadness factor and turning into blind rage.

I'm veering into high fantasy again, so I'll stop here ^^

Ps: I might be completely wrong but if I remember correctly, the abilities granted by the demons of the Ars Goetia tend to be rather subtle and could remain unnoticed. But don't take my word for it.

Kitten Champion
2014-12-03, 09:28 PM
Ps: I might be completely wrong but if I remember correctly, the abilities granted by the demons of the Ars Goetia tend to be rather subtle and could remain unnoticed. But don't take my word for it.

Oh, I hadn't thought of the Ars Goetia. There are quite a few interesting ideas in that.

Tarlek Flamehai
2014-12-03, 09:31 PM
To almost all who posted before me > I see what you did there.




Yep, all but one of mine are taken from a book, anime, manga, comic book, or movie. Mind you, I can't remember where some of them came from...I just have the nagging impression I stole them from somewhere. Line Dancing was inspired by Austin Power btw.

Jeff the Green
2014-12-03, 10:12 PM
There are some fun ones in a Dragon magazine as a sorcerer ACF.

Coins and other small objects crawl around when you're near.
Whenever you enter a room there's a fanfare.
When you touch an object that isn't tougher than leather it starts developing cracks.
When you punch someone you leave a bruise in any shape you want.
You have a poltergeist attached to you that pinches people.


The last two are the best for their comedy functions.

Milodiah
2014-12-06, 04:03 AM
You can reverse reflections by a small interval of time, observing whatever the reflective surface showed a few seconds, a few minutes, maybe even more prior. It's very taxing, and not very precise.

I'm so using this, thanks mate!

runeghost
2014-12-06, 04:39 AM
The Fifth Arudin Grimoire had Rogue Magic - minor innate magical abilities available to non-casters only. A couple of those I remember:

Hot spot - an instant, hand-sized circle is heated to fireball temperatures. Good for setting things on fire or minor damage.
Cold spot - the reverse of Hot spot.
Spark - a mini-lightning bolt that does minor damage and stuns the target.
Push - a Jedi like force-push, good for (say it with me) minor damage or knocking things over.
Light Pulse - not a strobe or flash, but rather a quick illumination that lasted a few seconds, like striking a very bright match.
Blink - a very short duration invisibility
Seal - stops a bleeding wound, does a minor heal
Blast Lock - makes a lock make a Save vs. Crushing Blow (or equivalent)
Dagger - creates a short blade of blazing energy for a couple rounds, that strikes like a magic weapon
Sword - as per Dagger, but lasts 1 more round, and is sword-sized (duh) instead of dagger-sized.

I want to say they did d4 damage, except for the sword which did more, but I'm not certain. Could have been d3 or d6 too. Or maybe it varied by power. I seem to remember thinking that it was worse than magic missile, but nifty for a thief. There were also rules about how often you could use it that I don't remember exactly, but in a modern D&D game I'd be inclined to say a # of times per day equal to Int, Wis, or Cha bonus. The big thing I remember is that while they were definitely magic, the weren't spells and couldn't be taught, learned, researched, etc.You got them at chargen (like 1st Ed psionics) or not at all.

Speaking of which, if you do have access to the 1st edition PHB, you could do worse than to take a look at the psionics section in the back. It had a lot of nifty (and sometimes game-changing) abilities.

Gnoman
2014-12-06, 06:32 AM
You might want to look into the Xanth series as well. All humans in that setting have a magical Talent, which is the only magic they can do. These range from the extremely powerful (talk to all inanimate objects, make the magic of an item or creature cease to exist until you will it to return, cause everything that can go wrong for somebody or something to go wrong) to the trivial (make a spot appear on the wall, change the shape of clouds) to the actively harmful (afraid I can't remember any at this point.)

LibraryOgre
2014-12-06, 08:52 AM
And I was going to toss out Mickey Zucker Reichert's "Nightfall" duology. A very few people (I think it's 1 in 100) have a minor magical talent that they can use; the epymonious Nightfall has the ability to alter his weight, from feather-light to incredibly heavy.

However, about one in 10,000 people is a sorcerer, able to ritually murder and steal the souls of those born with a magical talent, then use their powers by torturing the soul.

Kitten Champion
2014-12-06, 10:47 AM
However, about one in 10,000 people is a sorcerer, able to ritually murder and steal the souls of those born with a magical talent, then use their powers by torturing the soul.

That's an interesting idea. Particularly if at least someone in the party is going to have one of these magical talents, which is probable. I could make a villain like Sylar from Heroes.

I apparently have more reading to do.

NichG
2014-12-06, 12:33 PM
Here's my attempt at a set which are more on the 'subtle and mysterious' side.

- Journal of the Other: This character, whenever they write a journal entry or other record of their life while in a particular intoxicated state of mind, finds that details of it are changed once they have returned to their senses. The narrative is very closely parallel to their actual life, but differs in some details. Sometimes this means that they can use it to learn things they could not have known, because their alternate self went somewhere else or had a different conversation. However, there is always a chance that details do not turn out the same.

- Sharer of Agony: This character, whenever they are injured by another, shares the pain of the injury with the one who inflicted it. This also happens with indirect causation, but is very dilute - if a soldier of an army stabs this character, the regent who commanded the army to go there might feel but an itch. However, the degree of directness is tied to intent - someone who sends an assassin might well feel the full force of the death blow.

- Singer of the Ephemeral Song: Somehow, this character has the blessing and curse that works of art they produce create intense emotional reactions in those who experience them, but are impossible to replicate or remember, even if someone is actively writing things down/trying to copy the work. Whatever copy is made bears absolutely no resemblance to the original. The character themselves cannot perceive their own art, and is constantly trying to figure out how to get others to describe it to them (or perhaps they've moved on past that).

- Knower of the Pilgrim's Trail: This character has the ability to intuit, figure out, or simply outright know where a traveler has come from, to the detail of the sequences of places they've visited on the way. However, this ability is stopped cold by the traveler visiting the place they consider home, or stranger yet, receiving anything from their home that traveled a different path (e.g. a letter or package, a message from a fellow traveler, even a bottle of wine that came from their home region).

- Seeker of the Lost: This character has an instinct for things which have been lost. Upon meeting someone who has lost something, they can receive a flash of vision of the surroundings of the lost object. However, they cannot perceive the object itself in their vision.

- Windscribe: When this character whispers into the wind, he can make his voice heard in the wind anywhere along the down-wind path. He has to have some idea of where those he wants to hear his message are if he wants to make it specific. Over short distances, he can make it so that one person hears him in a crowd. Over long distances, he loses precision, and everyone in the area can hear his whisper. The targeting is done via time, not position, and so he can in principle leave a message circulating in the winds of the world for as long as he chooses, perhaps to be heard a thousand years later.

- Ragesealer: This character can capture and seal up strong emotions directed towards them at a touch, removing them from the person feeling them and storing them within themselves. The person whose emotion was taken becomes unable to feel that emotion at all until it is returned. However, those emotions constantly struggle within the sealer, threatening to break free and take over their actions in incredibly intense flashes. As such, he usually can only store them for a brief time - taking a soldier's fear before a battle, etc.

- Stoneseer: Stone is as glass to this character, though the sense they use is not quite 'vision' so much as a sense of solidity or absence. When placing their body against stone, they can get some idea of what lies past the stone, even fairly deep within it. The size of object they can resolve is roughly proportional to the distance the object is buried within or lies beyond the stone (so e.g. to see an object smaller than 1 meter in size, it must be no deeper than a few meters; but they could see something 1km in diameter through a few kilometers of stone). Their sense extends a short distance into voids within the stone (e.g. they can 'see' into the next room through a stone wall), but very quickly fades and cannot re-enter the stone past a void or go around corners.

- Drinker of Moments: When this character places blood taken from a killing wound upon their brow, they become aware of the greatest secret possessed by the slain individual. The closer the blood is to the very last drop of blood pumped by the person's heart, the more detail they receive.

- Omen: This character has an almost irresistible compulsion to travel to places in which horrible disasters will occur. He tends to arrive within a week of the disaster. Oddly enough, he is never harmed during the disaster, no matter how bad things get - even to the extent where he has tried to take his life during a disaster and found himself unable to wound himself. Once the disaster has concluded the compulsion fades from him, and he once again becomes as vulnerable as anyone else.

Milodiah
2014-12-06, 02:27 PM
The ability to suspend a small object (tennis ball or smaller) in the air for an indefinite amount of time.
The ability to play a stringed or percussion instrument from across the room; other instruments simply don't sound right, since they require more than just the hands.
The ability to hear the thoughts of animals; it should be noted that the thoughts of a creature with 2 or less INT are very simplistic. Things like "FOOD!", "HURT!", "RUN!", etc.
The inability to see through Invisibility. Anything invisible approaching will be a black silhouette instead of blending into the background because the individual can't see "past" it for the senses to fill in what should be there.