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GammaFinder

GammaFinder is a post-apocalypse setting for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game by Owen K.C. Stephens. The below is a copy of the content Owen has released thus far on his blog.

Shameless Plug Owen depends greatly on Patreon for income and support. If you find value in his content or videos, he would really appreciate your support. If you can spare a few bucks a month, it’s a huge help. If not, even just sharing and linking to his blogs, videos, and his Patreon is a huge help that just takes a moment of your time.

Boomer Extras

The spectacularly creative Clinton J. Boomer has done some additional material for GammaFinder, and we’re thrilled to link it here for folks who want Moar Weird!

The Unburned World

The world ended. A few times. But for living memory, there were two Great Cities — Alpha, a land of ancient technology and highly-educated people living in a gentle, safe, totalitarian Bubble; and Beta — A huge, sprawling rough-and-tumble metroplex of rivers and bridges and canyons where mutants and rogues lived and traded and taught and sometime killed each other, but were free of most outside influences. Both had occasional visitors from a Third Great City — Gamma — but no one knew where ti was or what it was really like.

The Omega Invasion was unlike anything that had been seen in centuries. New horrors, new machines, new creatures, wiped out Alpha and Beta. The OI seemed poised to wipe out all life… until the Gamma Strike, which wrecked their bases and leaders, and left them in a scattered wreck of damaged robots and crazed ex-soldiers and experiments.

But there are Omega Invasion forces left, and they are trying to rebuild their armies. So heroes must seek out Gamma, and see if it can be convinced to once again save the world of the GammaFinders.

No one is sure what happened to create the GammaFinder World. Some say it was a war, fought with quantum reassignment projectors, x-ray-pumped lasers, and boson bombs. Others think there was a Great Disalignment, when magic flooded into the world, dragons awoke, demons rose, and common citizens turned into trolls, orcs, kasatha, and wizards. Other theories include a genetic virus, the Gray Death, luddite cults, social anarchy, and even a rogue comet. The records of the time of the Burning are muddled, contradictory, and confused, as if a half-dozen worlds got shoved together into a single shared disaster.

Rules

Level

Characters start at 4th level. The GammaFinder World is a harsh place, so we start with more competent characters. And that means you are just one level of a nice ability score bump!

Starships

Not happening, don’t worry about them.

Emphasis

Every character gets an emphasis. There are three available at the moment.

  • Mutations: Select one item of your character level -1, or two of your level -3. You gain the abilities of those items as mutations. If they use batteries or ammo, you can use the ability as often each day as one full load of ammo or batteries. As you gain levels, you can change these items. When you gain levels you can improve your mutations to higher-levels of the same thing, or switch to entirely different items your mutations emulate, to represent ongoing mutation.
  • Relic: Select one item of your character level +1 or less. You have an ancient piece of tech that does what that item does, though you can change its appearance. If it has batteries or ammo, you refill them each time you spend Resolve to regain SP following a 10-minute rest. If your relic is lost or destroyed, you get a replacement when you gain your next level. You can change your relic at each character level, to represent the shifting effects of this ancient technology.
  • Talent: You get one bonus feat at every odd level. You must meet the prerequisites. Alternatively, at each off level you can gain one additional spell slot of the highest-level spell you can cast at that level. If you select this latter choice, you are likely described as a “psionic” or “witch.”

Items

You get one item of your level (Major Item), one of your level -1 (Moderate Item), one of your level -2 (Minor Item), and one of your level -3 (Incidental Item). If it’s a consumable item, you can replace it when used at the beginning of each day (you may be able to make a new one, or find a new one, or have something that produces refills for it once per day).

These items don’t go up in level automatically, and if lost are not replaced.

Level Advancement and Treasure

You gain a level every 12 encounters. Over 6 encounters, you expect (on average) to get one Major, one Moderate, one Minor, and three Incidental items. If you have the ranks in a skill needed to make an item, you can convert an items of the same type into a different item, once. Every time after that you convert and item, it loses one item level.

The Chasm of History

History, in short, has a Chasm. On this side, the GammaFinder World. Before it, the Unburned World. And in the middle… anarchy, pain, horror, and disagreement. What is certain is that before the rise and fall of the great cities of Alpha and Beta, there was a very different place, able to do things no one can conceive of now.

Halidoms

There are… things… left over from the Unburned World. Or at least, from the time of the Chasm, if not the world before. Objects. Strange devices that use super-science, eldritch powers, or some combination of the two to create effects no one in the GammaFinder World can duplicate. They are often the thing that allows a town to survive in a harsh terrain, grant a petty warlord his power of metal men, or make cursed places seen as vaults of wonder and horror.

These are sometimes called relics, fragments, antiquaries, or crytobjects. But for whatever reason, the most common term for these Unburned Icons is “halidoms.”

Appearance

A halidom can look like… anything. Some are straightforward–a sword hilt which can project a sunblade. A vial of liquid you drink. A talking teddy bear which informs you of the ill intent of nearby creatures. Others are obtuse. A cube made of 27 smaller cubes which slide and shift into different configurations. A gnarled knot of roots and vines that are never observed to move, but constantly seem to be in different shapes. A tiny metal sphere with incorporeal lights orbiting it.

The problem is, form does not seem to follow function. A sword hilt may project a sunblade… or it maybe designed to be shoved into a rock that forms a mouth that gives medical advice. A vial of glowing liquid may be meant to be drunk, or it may hold the soul of a cryptowizard that casts one random technomancer spell a day. A spoon may full a bowl with soup, or it may project a sunblade.

A GM wanting a jumping-off point for the appearance of a halidom can roll 1d10 and consult the table below. It’s important to note that players don’t get to know what you rolled–if a haildom looks like a gun, that could be because its a kind of gun and you rolled a 1, or it could be a computer, and you rolled a 5.

  1. Typical appearance for its function (a gun looks like a gun)
  2. Representational appearance for its function (a gun looks like stone with a gun-shaped rune on it)
  3. Appears to be a puzzle with no link to its function
  4. Appears to be a toy
  5. Appears to be a typical appearance for an unrelated function (a gun that looks like a vial of serum)
  6. Appears to be a shifting mass of some specific material (a gun that looks like a ball of wires with tiny lights traveling along them)
  7. Representational appearance unrelated to its function (a gun that looks like a holy symbol)
  8. Appearance of a household object unrelated to its appearance (a gun that looks like spoon).
  9. Appearance of an item of apparel with some hint of its function (a gun that looks like a glove with a barrel on the wrist)
  10. Appearance of an item of apparel with no hint of its function (a gun that looks like a belt)

Most denizens of the GammaFinder World don’t risk trying to determine the function of a halidom once they realize what it is. But PCs are made of sterner (or dumber) stuff. So they tend to… experiment.

Rules

Halidoms are a form of item that come without instructions. The GM can replace 25% of all treasure given out with Halidoms, though they are most common as Moderate and Major items.

The good news for layers is that if you find a Halidom, getting it to work gets you a scaling item. A halidom upgrades itself as you gain levels (normally once every 5 levels, based on when a version of roughly the same item is available with a higher item level). The base news is, you may blow yourself up trying to figure out how to use it.

Halidom Key Skills

Every Halidom has a key skill that is the primary way it was designed to be interfaced with. In 70% of cases this is Computers, Engineering, Life Science, Mysticism, or Physical Science. In 20% of cases, it’s Culture, Diplomacy, Medicine, or Sleight of Hand. And in 10% of cases, it can be literally any other skill. That said, take it easy on Halidoms with Profession as their key skill–there are a lot of different Profession options, and no group can possibly cover them all. On the other hand, a quantum knife that keys of Profession (cook) is both reasonable and, if we are being honest with ourselves, funny. (I like the idea of “Soup’s On!” as a battle cry…)

A GM may pick the skill to match either the form of function of the Halidom, if desired. For example, a laser pistol that takes the form of a small remote control steering wheel (which is used to guide a targeting dot like a flying remote, with a gear shift to fire the weapon) might have Engineering (for the laser weapon aspect), Physical Science (for the general laws dictating how such a device works ), or Piloting (for the actual interaction with the device’s steering mechanism).

On the other hand, it might interact with Culture (to recognize the Unburned World toy name brand and marketing), Acrobatics (because you have to twist and turn the device to make its various functions work), or Bluff (because it constantly asks if you have parental approval to use it without the safety systems engaged).

A GM can also just roll on the table below to determine a Halidom’s Key Skill.

d% Skill

01-14 Computers15-28 Engineering29-42 Life Science43-56 Mysticism57-70 Physical Science71-75 Culture76-80 Diplomacy81-85 Medicine85-90 Sleight of Hand91 Acrobatics92 Athletics93 Bluff94 Disguise95 Intimidate96 Perception97 Piloting98 Profession (Pick one at random)99 Sense Motive100 Survival

Discovery Checks

A Halidom does not come with instructions, and it doesn’t work in a way that is obvious to adventurers of the GammaFinder World. Even if it looks like a gun, acts like a gun, and has a trigger, a Halidom gun may require you to think a mantra in praise to the Saint of Bullets before you pull the trigger, or might have a palmlock that requires you to fake only having 3 fingers, or might only work when held sideways.

And, of course, it might exactly like the serum of healing that requires you to place the gunlike object against your own thigh and pull the trigger.

There were reasons for all these odd things to exist, and they made sense to the society of the Unburned World. But those reasons were based on philosophies and conditions that are in many cases inconceivable to heroes of the world as it exists now, and the factors that caused such unusual designs are long-lost to the Chasm of History.

When a character first encounters a Halidom, they can make skill checks to try to determine its Key Skill. The base DC for any such check is 15 + 1.5x the Halidom’s item level. Any skill that is NOT a Halidom’s key skill has a -5 penalty to all checks regarding the Halidom.

Until a Key Skill is identified, all characters can do it pick a skill, and use it to interact with the Halidom. This can be done once an hour, unless a side effect deactivates the Halidom for a time. You cannot intentionally activate a Halidom until you make enough Identification results to gain that knowledge.

Halidom Interaction Skill Checks

Beat DC by 10. Make a Identification roll.

Beat DC by 5. Identify that if skill being is Key Skill. DC lowered by 1.Meet DC. Identify if skill being used is Key Skill.Fail DC by 4 or less. Minor side-effect.Fail DC by 5 to 9. Minor side-effect. All DCs increase by 1 until Key Skill is identified.Fail DC by 10 or More: Major side-effect.

Identification Rolls

If you get a result you already know, you get the first result of a higher value you haven’t gotten yet.

d4 Result

1. Learn Item Level2. Learn Item Function (Small Arm, Upgrade, Computer, and so on)3. Learn Key Skill’s ability score4. Learn Key Skill. +1 to all future rolls (cumulative with getting this result multiple times)5. Learn a haphazard activation. (Can activate Halidom, but suffer a minor effect when doing so unless you succeed at a Fortitude or Reflex save, DC 10 + Halidom’s item level). +1 to all future rolls (cumulative with getting this result multiple times)6. Halidom mastered, can be used normally.

Minor Side Effects

d6 Side Effect

1. Item changes Key Skill. Any activation is haphazard (as 5, above) until Key Skill is identified.2. Take damage of a random physical type, 1 point per item level.3. Take damage of a random energy type, 2 points per item level.4. Weird discharge. You are sickened for 1 hour per item level.5. Weird discharge. You are confused for 1 round per 2 item levels.6. Discharge. You are targeted by the item for its normal function (if it cannot affect targets, nothing happens).

Major Side Effects

Major side effects function as a wonder grenade, but the area is a radius with a number of feet equal to the Halidom’s item level, rounded down to the nearest 5 feet. If that is less than 5, it only effect’s the triggering character.

The Titans

The GammaFinder World has been rocked by the destruction of the cities of Alpha and Beta by the Omega Invasion, and the mysterious, lost city of Gamma seems to be the only force that can have stopped them.

But there are more mysteries in the World of GammaFinder than just the location of Gamma, or the origin of the forces of Omega. There is what caused the Chasm of History, and what brought an end to the Unburned World.

And then, there are the Titans.

Titans take many forms, and no two have ever been proven to be similar. Some are huge machines, others appear to be breathing statues, writhing tentacles, glowing beasts, or vast fiends of millions of interconnected vermin. What they have in common is that they are immune to any known effect, they don’t normally move (or take any action at all), they never seem to leave or change, they have been in place since the end of the Chasm of History, and no one knows where they come from.

Titans are uncommon, but every major settlement know where there is one within a few weeks travel at the farthest, and in some regions titans are nearly within sight of one another. Because they are among the few unchanging things in the GammaFinder World, they are even used as landmarks on maps, and sometimes as borders between warlords. Maps of Incolnneb always include the Lighthouse Giant at its eastern edge, and the Kithen of the Syckle claim all land within hearing of the RuneSquare Titan’s audible pulsing.

The Titans are believed to be indestructible and immobile. None have ever taken any major action that can be verified by survivors, though when a mountain range explodes in lava or a new continent raises from the seas, the Titans are often credited. or blames. Even during the Omega Invasion, no Titan was damaged, despite powerful energies being directed against a few near the city of Beta, and none took any action. As a result, of course, some are worshiped as gods, or appeased as demons.

But Titans do affect their environments, in ways only the most experienced adventurers or wise sages are aware of, and which none understand.

They attract some creatures, and repel others.

Each Titan has a range of CRs it encourages to stay near it, and any outside that are pushed away. For unthinking or instinctive creatures, it’s a subtle effect. Migration may rotate around a Titan, while predators might avoid crossing into one’s territory. For sapient entities, it’s a slight mental pressure, but also stress, nightmares, and feelings of intense dread when conflicting with the Titan’s influence.

Titans’ territories vary in size from as small as a few city blocks, to as large an area as a rough hundred-mile radius. There is no correlation between the size of a Titan and the area it influences. Creatures not within a titan’s CR range take a -1 penalty to all attacks, saving throws, DC calculations, AC, and skill checks after being in it’s territory for 24 hours. This worsens to -2 after a week, -3 after a month, -4 after a season, and -5 after a year. 1-4 days after leaving the Titan’s territory, these penalties are reduced by one each day.

Similarly, creature’s within a Titan’s CR range that have been there for 24 hours must make a DC 10 Will save to leave it of their own volition. This DC increases by 2 after a week, and again after a month, season, and year. Creatures are not aware they are being encouraged to stay and find other reasons to not leave, though a DC 20 Sense Motive check can reveal their decision-making is being influenced. Once a creature leaves a Titan’s area, it feels no special compunction to return.

Most Titans have a CR range of 4 or 5 (such as, from CR 2 through CR 6, or from CR 5 through CR 11), though some are bigger and some smaller, while a few have CR ranges that vary over time. The Writhing Field in Coldpray used to have a range of just CR 5-8. But it has increased by 1 CR a year for the past 5 years, allowing higher-and-higher-level creatures to move in. Of course most locals jut feel Coldpray has been getting more dangerous over the years, but a few Wasteland Scholars fear it’s Titan is dying, and wonder what that could mean.

Titans also serve as the things that inspire solarians to contemplate the core forces of the universe, or as connection sources for mystics… though no one can say for certain if such power actually flows from the Titans, or if some people convince themselves their own powers somehow came from these unmoving colossi.

Mega-Heroic Moments

GammaFinder, the simple post-apocalypse rules and micro-setting for Starfinder, isn’t just about adventure in the ruined, glowing remains of a once-proud society. It’s also about those mega-heroic moments that all too often come only once every few campaigns. The wondrous, fist-pumping, yahoo-calling, better-than-a-natural-20 things that we all remember for years.

But given how harsh GammaFinder can be, those moments may be too rare. So we’ll cheat. We’ll add a few. (You can port this rule to any other Starfinder-compatible game as well, of course.)

Every character can invoke one mega-heroic moment. If they do so and manage to reach 10th level, they regain the ability to use one mega-heroic moment, but that’s it.

Each mega-heroic moment can be invoked only once per campaign. If you use it, no one else can. Strike it from the list. Otherwise, any character who has a mega-heroic moment still coming to them can use any of the mega-heroic moments.

This is a short initial list of available mega-heroic moments. More may come later.

Do You Want To Live Forever?

When you are about to be knocked unconscious, killed, or made helpless, some unexpected force from your past saves you. Maybe a quantum valkyrie of your lost love deflects the deadly blow. Maybe a witchwarper version of yourself from another reality pushes you out of the way. Maybe ghosts of your fallen allies scream a warning at the last second.

Immediately negate all damage and conditions caused by one attack, trap, hazard, spell, or effect against you. If it is from an ongoing effect, you are immune until the beginning of your next round.

Fly, You Fools!

This is it. The big sacrifice. Everyone lives. You die.

For now.

All your allies in this encounter, living and dead, escape. Those who were dead turn out to be only mostly dead, and are instead unconscious and stable. You stay and hold the line, and die.

But when one of your allies next gains a level? You return, having also gained a level. Maybe you were literally resurrected. maybe it’s a version of your from another reality. Maybe all of reality is a simulation and your return is a glitch in the system. You get to rebuild your character as if you had used a mnemonic editor.

How’d You Get Up There? Wasn’t Easy!

Your allies are shocked at where you suddenly pop up. Perhaps you achieved the ultimate stealth route. Maybe you found a split-second wormhole and used it to your advantage. You might even have just run faster and further than anyone expected. The truth is you’re not 100% sure how you made it there yourself, so you are always going to be vague on the details.

Select any location within line of sight and line of effect of any ally. You are at that location.

I Want To Show You A Trick Mother Showed Me When You Weren’t Around.

It’s a secret you have carried with you until this moment, aware you can only do it once. Maybe you have a weapon from the Unburned World with only a single charge left in it. Maybe a sentient spell was been riding along with you, waiting for the one and only moment when it could be cast. Maybe you have a mutant power that takes 100 years to recharge. Whatever it is, it’s a surprise to everyone else, and it’s about to hurt.

Select one target within line of sight and line of effect. It takes an amount of damage equal to 1d6+4 multiplied by your character level. This may be of any damage type, and bypasses any resistance, immunity, or miss chance.

You Are Already Dead.

It seemed like no more than an ordinary attack, but you know better. You hit a secret pressure point, or slipped a grenade into their shorts, or smeared a single self-replicating nanite flesh-eater into the wound. That extra act has gone unnoticed, until now.

Select one foe, trap, or hazard within line of sight that you injured within the past 10 minutes, or that has an unhealed injury you inflicted on it. The foe must have a CR no greater than your level +1. It dies if living, is destroyed if undead, breaks if inanimate.

GammaFinder Themes

Alphite (+1 Int)

You were born and raised in Alpha, the domed (and doomed) city that was the last bastion of order, technology, and science in the GammaFinder world–until it was destroyed by the Omega Invasion. But while you home was smashed, the broad education and basic understanding of how science and even quantum manipulation (called “magic” by the uneducated) function is still with you. It’s not that you are necessarily a scientist as a focus. It’s that you were raised to understand the power of intellect in all things, and given a firm set of conceptual tools you can apply to most problems.

Theme Knowledge (1st)

You received the benefit of an actual classic education. It wasn’t as broad and complete as it would have been in the Unburned World–too much was lost during the Chasm of History–but it was more complete and involved than is available anywhere else in the world that remains. That gives you a grasp of the scientific method, the psychic basics, and core problem solving. You reduce the DC of any skill check to recall knowledge by 3, and when you take 10 on a skill check, you gain a +1 bonus. Select Mysticism or Physical Science. The selected skill is a class skill for you, though if it is a class skill from the class you take at 1st level, you instead gain a +1 bonus to checks with your chosen skill.

In addition, you gain an ability adjustment of +1 to Intelligence at character creation.

Careful Consideration (6th)

The more time you have to consider how to solve a problem, the better you are at doing so. You gain a +2 bonus to skill checks when you take 20. Additionally, you gain a +2 bonus to your second and subsequent skill checks when trying to understand a Halidom.

Intellectual Dispassion (12th)

Your understanding that everything makes sense if you know enough about it allows you to overcome emotional responses by leaning on your trust of a rational world. When you fail a saving throw against an emotion effect, fear effect, or effect that causes you to be confused, you make expend a Resolve Point as a reaction to immediately reroll the saving throw with a +5 bonus. You take the better of the two save results.

Contemplation (18th)

Sitting back and calmly thinking about your circumstance, your assets, various tactics and methods you can try to overcome your difficulties, and what you know that may assist you in future endeavors calms and centers you, leaving you feeling renewed. Up to twice per day, after you spend at least 10 minutes in deep contemplation (this doesn’t count as resting to regain Stamina Points, and during this time you take a -10 penalty to all Perception checks), you regain 1 Resolve Point.

Brain in a Jar (+1 Wis)

Some of the fun of GammaFinder-style settings is that it lets you play WEIRD characters and they don’t stick out like a sore thumb. If the world has cyberdinosaurs, cryptowizards, and psychic evil plants as part of the standard setting, you can do something a bit weirder than a human alphite and just be part of the quilt of crazy.

You had one really, really bad day. You suffered a serious injury. Kind of the ultimate injury. You lost your body. Everything but your brain, which is now kept alive by a life support system using tech from the Unburned World, which no one really understands or can replicate. Maybe you remember that really bad day, and are driven to seek revenge on those who did this to you. Maybe your yearning to feel the wind on your face again defines your every choice. Or maybe you just came to, a brain in a jar, and this seems entirely normal to you.

You are unlikely to appreciate “jarhead” jokes.

In addition, you gain an ability adjustment of +1 to Wisdom at character creation.

Theme Knowledge (1st)

Although you are a living thing, determining your species is tricky. Because you are just a brain in a jar. Recall knowledge checks to determine anything about your biology other than “you are a brain in a jar” take a -10 penalty.

Note that your jay has mechanical limbs, sensory inputs, mobilizers, speakers, and so on. With the exception of a sense of touch or the ability to determine the ambient temperature, you can do all the things a person with a body can do. Since these systems all interact with your brain and need the basic of biology to keep your brain alive, you are also still subject to things like starvation, suffocation, injected poisons and so on. These systems may extend out from your brain, or even form telescoping armor around you as you move, but when you are stationary or asleep, it all folds back to reveal your brain. In a jar.

Medicine checks made regarding you also take a -10 penalty. However, anything that can normally be done with Medicine can also be done for you using Engineering (at no penalty), and you can benefit from any spell or effect (including healing) that can benefit a construct.

Upgrade (6th, 12th)

Your jar develops an upgrade. You gain one of the following feats as a bonus feat: Accelerated Recovery, Ambush Awareness, Arm Extensions, Blind-Fight, Climbing Master, Diehard, Dire Straights, Disease Rejection, Echolocation Attack, Environmental Adaptation, Fleet, Ground Fighting, Hauler, Improved Initiative, Improved Unarmed Strike, Jet dash, Kip Up, Living Ladder, Lunge, Masked Visage, Memory Access, Nanite Integration, Poison Rejection, Positive Conduit, Protective Fur, Solid Stance, Startled Scream, an Swimming Master.

You do not need to meet this feat’s prerequisites. You gain an additional upgrade at 12th level.

System Check (18th)

You can run an internal diagnostic of your jar, and it’s various functions, to ready yourself for more problems. Up to twice a day you can take one minutes to have anyone (even yourself) make a DC 32 Engineering check to fine-tune your mechanical body extensions. On a successful check, you regain 1 Resolve Point.

Murderous Toy (+1 Dex)

You are a relic of the Unburned World, or at least of a process lost after the Charm of History, You are a heavily modified entity that was turned into a living toy, a literal plaything for the rich and immoral of the world that existed in ancient times. Your species is not changed–if human you are as human as anyone else–but every aspect of your body and appearance was modified, seamlessly, to make you appear to be something fun and innocent. But your mind? Your mind is your own.

You might have been found in your original mint packaging, and only activated once the vault of collectibles you were in was raided. Or you might have had a normal life once, or as normal as life gets in the GammaFinder World, and been transformed by a mad cybersorcerer, DigiDaemons of the Omega Invasion, or a Living Factory-God.

Theme Knowledge (1st)

You are a small, doll-like creature.

You may look like a brand-new Theddi Ruffspin babysit bear (TM), or a worn, barely-together Bharbe Dholl (c), but you are definitely a toy at first glance. Recall knowledge checks to identify anything about you are at a -10 penalty.

The DC of Culture checks regarding toys and toy brands from the Unburnd World are reduced by 5.

You are literally Small. Nothing else about your race changes. If you are a kasatha, you are still a kasatha… but maybe with big bear ears and fuzzy hide and a cute button nose. You also gain the constructed trait, as and android. If you already have it, you instead gain one of the following alternate android traits of your choice you do not already have (without losing a trait): easily augmented, infosphere integration, multilingual, or nanite upgrade.

In addition, you gain an ability adjustment of +1 to Dexterity at character creation.

Accessories (6th, 12th)

You gain additional android traits you do not already have, without losing any you do. You can select from those listed with theme knowledge, or gain exceptional vision, flat affect, or upgrade slot.

Playtime (18th)

You may not like children… but you get a great deal out of playing with them. Up to twice a day you can take 1 minute to play with (innocently and safely) a child, or 10 minutes to meditate on a time when you did so. This cannot overlap with time spent regaining Stamina Points. You regain 1 Resolve Point.

That Boomer Kid

Fist of the Gamma Star

Unarmored & unafraid, you walk the wastelands of a devastated planet.

You are trained in the most esoteric of fighting-arts, ancient even in the long-ago eons of the Unburned World; the impeccable focus of your flawless technique launches your kinetic prowess ever-forward, an avalanche of perfect strikes – rising like the mountain or descending like a stormbolt – to boldly carve your name upon the Wastes & bring order to this lawless stage of history.

Prerequisite(s)Soldier with the Qi Adept Fighting Style; must be selected at character creation.

Benefit: You gain all the benefits of the Hammer Fist Technique from the Armor Storm Fighting Style. If you choose Armor Storm as your Secondary Fighting Style, you treat your Soldier level for purposes of that Style as equal to your Soldier level -4 (rather than -8). 

You must begin play with Heavy Armor of your level (your Major Item) or of your level +1 (your Relic from your Emphasis). This special Heavy armor is spiritual in nature, rather than purely physical, and may only be manipulated while you are in deep meditation: for example, your armor may only be donned, repaired or removed while you are quietly focusing your inner fighting-spirit.

You gain all the normal benefits of your heavy armor’s environmental protections while it is worn, even through you are (to unenlightened eyes) apparently unarmored. You always directly perceive the spiritual armor of other creatures with this ability, with no roll or action required. You recharge your armor automatically while meditating.

Your spiritual armor’s appearance (though invisible and mostly-intangible) is yours to adjust freely, and may also be recognized by any creature using detect magic or any higher-level divination effect.

You may buy and sell Heavy Armor and Powered Armor and/or upgrades for your armor at normal market cost while in an isolated meditative trance: thus, for example, you might expend 850 credits worth of incense – and one hour in meditation – to upgrade your armor from Officer Ceremonial Plate to Enforcer Armor I. Your total item level for this special armor may not exceed your ranks in Mysticism.

Special: If your armor is your Relic, you may instead upgrade it for free each time you gain a level, and your total item level for this special armor may not exceed your ranks in Mysticism +1.

Designer’s Note: This feat is often selected in conjunction with the Priest Theme.

Footprints in the Burning Wasteland

Your gift slaughters the world, offering it up as sacrifice to that majestic occult power which draws you ever onward toward an inhuman godhood.

Each blasphemous caress of your sorcery is, of course, a unique & terrible thing.

Benefit: Whenever you choose to evoke Omegamancy, you may choose – as a free action – to ROLL d20 on the chart below:

  1. You age by (1d20 – 10) years; you cannot become younger than the base starting age of your species by use of this ability. You also become hideously ugly: your body wracked, scarred & deformed by the obscene energies you channel. If you are already marked in this way, the reverse occurs: you instead become inhumanly beautiful, reborn into flesh more perfect than any you could have imagined.
  2. A heavy tremor shakes the earth, displacing stones and dislodging small trees for one hundred miles in every direction; this tremor opens an inch-wide, sixty-foot-long lightning-bolt crack beneath your feet, from which gusts a single hot breath of fetid, rot-thick air. All creatures with fewer Hit Dice than you within a ten mile radius do not heal naturally for one month, and may only be healed by magic. Superficial cuts, abrasions and bruises swiftly add up, dealing one point of damage per day.
  3. Worms, flies, centipedes, spiders and unrecognizable mutations of similar vermin crawl from beneath your feet, falling dead of traumatic total organ failure after traveling no more than a few yards. Corpses within ten miles all claw, cry and twist in their graves – attempting to escape – for one minute as if animated; when they fall still once more, all are facing directly toward you.
  4. A thunderclap is heard from distant mountains, a great bolt of lighting falls from the sky – striking dead a tree within one mile or cracking in-half a boulder within 60 ft. – and the sky turns sullen, ashen grey until the next sunrise.
  5. The temperature drops by ten degrees over the next minute; the wind howls as oily black rain & drifts of eerie white ash fall in a one hundred mile radius for 1d20 hours. Bizarre, flesh-colored lights cascade through in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, creating an effect identical to dazzling flares. These persist for 2d6 rounds. You suffer no penalty from these flares.
  6. Everything grows dark, as if heavy clouds momentarily passed in front of the sun; an unintelligent animal somewhere within earshot speaks the word ‘OMEGA’ aloud and then dies. All electrical equipment, chemical lights, campfires, torches, lanterns, candles and other artificial sources of illumination or warmth gutter and fail – within one hundred miles – until the end of the next round. This does not affect weapons or armor.
  7. All children and animals within one hundred miles howl, scream and crow for a moment before falling eerily silent for one hour. You lose the ability to speak, read or understand any language but Aklo for 1d10 minutes.
  8. A foul liquid composed of blood, feces and more-disturbing bodily fluids seeps from the cracks of every wall, floor and tree in a one-mile radius, leaving terrible stains with indecent shapes. You are nauseated for one round, then vomit forth a fleshworm swarm; you have no control over swarms created in this way.
  9. Long, smooth, razor-sharp blades of salt erupt from the earth in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy. This area becomes difficult terrain, although any creature may choose to move through the area at full speed; creatures who do so suffer 1d8 points of slashing damage (no save). This it treated as damage from an archaic weapon. You cannot be harmed by these blades.
  10. A geyser of foul wind blasts from jagged cracks which rip across the earth, creating an effect identical to a cosmic eddy – centered on you, as cast by you – in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy. This effect deals 2d8 damage (rather than 4d6). You are not harmed or inconvenienced by these winds.
  11. Unnatural, oily slime oozes up from the earth in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, creating an effect identical to the grease spell centered on you, as cast by you. You are immune to the effects of this oil.
  12. Poisonous fumes leak up from the earth in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, creating an effect identical to the miasma spell, centered on you, as cast by you. You are immune to effects cause by these fumes.
  13. Jagged shards of glass detonate upwards from the earth in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, creating an effect identical to a puncture veil spell as cast by you. Only creatures within the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy may be targeted by this spell.
  14. Madness tears through the holes in reality surrounding you, creating an effect identical to a confusion spell as cast by you, centered on you. You are immune to this effect.
  15. Stolen power rips through you; you gain the effects of displacementhaste or prescience (your choice) as cast by you. The earth grows dark and sodden as warm blood bubbles from it in a 30 ft. radius around you; clouds of flies rise from the damp, burbling earth and shadows, forming the image of OMEGA, then scatter.
  16. Dark, honey-sweet whispers of submission & agony sweep through the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, creating an effect identical to a song of the cosmos spell as cast by you.
  17. Time, matter & energy alike sputter & fail catastrophically in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, creating an effect identical to a slice reality spell as cast by you. Only creatures within the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy may be targeted by this spell.
  18. You rend a hole in space-time, calling forth an entity with a CR equal to your level +1. The specific entity is chosen by your GM, and the entity is – at best – neutral toward you; it may be hostile. This entity arrives somewhere in the area afflicted by your use of Omegamancy, as chosen or determined randomly by your GM. This creature is not under your control. This entity remains in our reality for a number of hours secretly determined by your GM (roll 1d20) before vanishing once again.
  19. Roll 3d6 twice on the chart above twice and choose a result.
  20. Roll 3d6 three times on the chart above and choose two results.

You may choose not to roll on the chart above when you evoke Omegamancy, if you so desire.

OMEGAMANCY

… Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

– Ozymandias

The twisted lords of City Omega, it is said, were once served in combat & intrigue alike by vile magicians: depraved & corrupted enchanters who wielded unstoppable sorceries, fell magics that drank deeply from the last flickers of life clinging to our cursed earth.

Where their obscene will was worked, abject destruction savaged the waste.

Although the hideous masters of the Omega Invasion and their deviant catamite-mages have long-since fallen to dust & madness, their blasphemous occult legacy lives on … echoing, growing in the shadowed wilderness like a iridescent, pulsating constellation of tumors.

DEPRAVED & INFECTIOUS KNOWLEDGE

No character may use Omegamancy until she has personally, directly witnessed another creature use Omegamancy.

Once a character has beheld the raw power of Omegamancy, she is forever-after marked, and she may use the abilities below at-will.

Use of Omegamancy is a strongly evil act.

THE MAJESTIC PERVERSION OF OMEGAMANCY

Whenever a mystic or witchwarper casts a spell, she may choose to evoke Omegamancy: scouring the earth around her clean of all natural life.

When she does so, she afflicts an area with a radius of 10 feet per level of the spell cast (5 ft. radius for cantrips): reducing plants & soil-bound microbes to strewn white ash, weakening and killing minor wildlife (creatures too small or insignificant to themselves have statistics), and reducing the rate of live birth among all surviving creatures in the area. If she uses this ability in an area that overlaps a previous use of this power, the radius is drawn from the edge of the previous area.

Omegamancy does not work in utterly barren landscapes, in the void of space, or in other places without enough life-force to steal.

Omegamancy does not kill truly unnatural life. Entities from beyond our understanding of biology are, in many instances, bolstered by the sudden disappearance of their competition: in those scarred places where Omegamancy has been used, forests of alien cartilage & twitching mollusk-flesh often grow, dripping protoplasm evolved under no known stars.

In other places, only dust remains.

An area afflicted by Omegamancy might recover, in time, but if so it has never been observed or recorded.

If she chooses to evoke Omegamancy in this way, she gains one of the following benefits as the spell is cast:

  • She gains a single temporary point of Resolve. Unspent temporary Resolve Points gained in this way disappear at the end of one minute.
  • The range of her spell is doubled.
  • The range of her spell increases from Touch to 30 ft.
  • She may re-roll any number of damage dice dealt by the spell. 1s on this single re-roll are treated as 2s.
  • The spell’s duration is doubled. The spell must have a duration longer than instantaneous.
  • Casting the spell does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
  • She gains the benefits of the Penetrating Spell feat until the end of her round.
  • She generates an effect identical to a Wonder Grenade within the area of the spell’s effect. She rolls twice and chooses one of the two effects.

Choosing to evoke Omegamancy in this way is a free action.

It is not possible to evoke Omegamancy in a subtle way: any creature within the afflicted area is instantly aware of this monstrous power’s evocation, and feels a sharp, agonizing tug at their life-force in the direction of the caster.

Those who survive an encounter with Omegamancy often suffer from Deformities.

DARK MAGIC IN A RUINED WORLD

Everyone hates Omegamancers.

No. Scratch that, actually. Everyone hates witches, and one of the reasons is that backwoods hillbillies who’ve never actually seen Omegamancy at work are just clever enough to err on the side of caution: willing to real-quick beat, string-up & behead anyone who might have the capability to unleash such legendary power at some point in the indeterminate future.

Everyone, after all, knows that Omegamancy is “a thing”.

And even at the best of times, normal people don’t handle magic well.

Uninitiated folks react to seeing sharp-edged proof of [2+2=5] the same way they’d react to a rotting clown-baby bursting into their darkened bedroom screaming, thrashing and vomiting spiders. Witnessing raw sorcery unravel & rewrite reality in-the-flesh activates the fight-or-flight response of a normal person the same way that a loaded pistol pointed directly at your own skull does … while simultaneously pinging the uncanny valley just as hard as the primitive lizard hind-brain can register a sense of wrongness.

Something old – lurking just beneath the tense, stressed-out surface of every hardened apocalypse survivor scraping-together a life in the harsh dust – still believes in magic and monsters; that wide-eyed, blood-caked monkey knows that the best way to deal with wolves, demons & tigers in the dead of night is to wake the tribe with screams, light the big fires and start throwing heavy stones.

Castin’ spells?

They’ll come at you with bare fists & teeth, friend.

You don’t even want to know what they do to people who unleash the true, eldritch power of madness.

OMEGA-CORE SUBSTANCE

If a mystic or witchwarper evokes Omegamancy while holding an item of power constructed of Omega-Core Substance, she gains two of the benefits from the list above rather than one. In addition, all living creatures in the afflicted area – except you, the caster – suffer one hit-point of damage per level of the spell cast (no save). This ability must deal at least one point of damage or the spell fails.

Omega-Core Substance is rare in the extreme, illegal in all settlements, highly radioactive, poisonous, causes unexpected & inexplicable energy-shifts in its surroundings, attracts alien predators and – worst of all – is highly valued by remnants of the Omega Invasion, who possess some unknown means of tracking the material.

Reek of Corrupted Wastelands

There are forbidden occult techniques that may scour all sane life from the world in a tide of living nightmare, unleashing unstoppable sorceries even as they devour the dust of our Annihilated End-Time.

You can smell such secret gifts on the ash-&-aluminum-scented wind.

Prerequisite(s): Direct exposure to use of Omegamancy

Benefit: You gain a supernatural Blindsense (Scent) Special Ability, but only with respect to creatures who have been exposed to the power of Omegamancy.

Note that this would include you; thus, further investigation is traditionally required before you may reasonably kill someone for “smelling wrong”.

You may detect creatures who have been exposed to use of Omegamancy at a range of 30 ft. If the creature has ever evoked the power of Omegamancy, you may instead detect them at a range of 60 ft. If the creature has ever employed Omega-Core Substance when evoking the power of Omegamancy, you may instead detect them at a range of 90 ft.

If you have line-of-effect to a creature who has ever employed Omega-Core Substance and you are within 30 ft. of them, you are also considered to have the Blindsight Special Ability with regards to that creature.

When you detect such a scent, the exact location of the source is not revealed — only its presence somewhere within range. You can take a move action to learn the direction of the scent. When you are within 5 feet of the source, you automatically pinpoint the source’s location.

In addition, you can feel the tug of Omegamancy being evoked within a range of 1 mile per character level you possess; you know the immediate direction to – and the rough distance toward – any creature who evokes the power of Omegamancy within that range.

Once per day, when you consume the still-raw tongue, eyes & fingers of a creature who has evoked the power of Omegamancy, you are able to clearly “see” either the first time – or the most recent time – that your target used Omegamancy. You perceive the circumstances of the moment in question with perfect clarity, as if you were actually there: you possess all of your senses, including the power of sight, hearing, smell, taste and others, including your sense of altitude and balance.