Blood
Written by pkfan 2004, Edited by Zenoseiya
People with the Blood subversion gain the ability to control and manipulate their blood flow, levels and even PH concentration. They can make it weep openly from their pores to scare people, build up pressure to launch a burst of coagulated spikes or even supercharge their blood pressure to defensively spray anyone that injures them.
Blood is life. Blood is important. Wielding the powers of an abberation of life at your fingertips for the purpose of offense and defense in a horrific manner is ALSO what the game's about.
The cells and plasma of the Infected work overtime and their blood pressure skyrockets, living in a state of extreme hypertension. Blood flows freely as if the Infected is a walking hose, and even the smallest cut seems to take forever to coagulate and clot. However, despite appearances, the Infected has perfect control over their precious fluids, able to contain the excess pints without bloating or appearing too odd.
● Red Scare
The Infected can force excess blood to bleed through the pores of their face, hands or body, leaving pools and messy trails in their wake and coating their body in blood. While not necessarily beneficial, the Infected realize exactly how horrific and disturbing this visage is to their enemies, using it as a demoralizing and intimidating tactic.
Cost: 1 ATP
Dice Pool: Presence + Resonance + Blood vs. victim’s Composure + Resolve
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Infected’s ploy backfires: not only is the victim not shaken, but the amount of blood required for the ability affects the Infected, causing one point of Lethal damage and losing the ATP spent.
Failure: The blood flows, but the enemy isn’t dissuaded.
Success: The Infected scores more successes and enemy is shaken heavily, suffering a −2 to all rolls made against the bleeding target.
Exceptional Success: The scare tactic works well, amazingly well. The same roll hindrance applies, but the victim is also compelled to flee combat as soon as they can.
●● Bloody Mess
The Infected spends the points in advance, building up their blood pressure to insane levels. When faced with Bashing damage, they launch a gout of their own blood directly from their mouths at their attacker. When struck with Lethal damage, the wound erupts in a defensive spray, drenching their enemy. This applies only once in combat; any other attacks don’t cause such an explosive reaction.
Cost: 2 ATP per spray
Dice Pool: —
Action: Reflexive
The enemy must make a Dodge or Defense roll to avoid getting splattered. If unsuccessful, the enemy ends up becoming blinded, suffering −4 to all attack rolls unless they spend a turn taking the time to wipe their faces clean. Bystanders (not including the spraying target) must make a Composure or Resolve roll to avoid being shaken or shocked by the sight.
●●● Bloody Stream
The Infected transforms a portion of his own blood into a wicked instrument of punishment. For each dot that the character possesses in Blood, he may create a stinging whip of blood with which to scourge his foes. An attack with the weapon has a dice pool equal to the character’s Strength + Weaponry + the number of lashes created (Blood Dots), and inflicts lethal damage. The Bloody Stream lasts a number of turns equal to the player’s success on the activation roll. At the end of that time, the whips dissolve.
A character can invoke Bloody Stream only once until its duration expires. He may thereafter invoke another whip, however. A character may voluntarily terminate a Bloody Stream if he does not want to keep it for the full duration of the Subversion.
Cost: 1 ATP
Dice Pool: Strength + Resonance + Blood
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Infected’s blood backfires, causing one point of Lethal damage.
Failure: The whips fail to form.
Success: The whips are created successfully, but the character suffers one point of lethal when they burst out.
Exceptional Success: The whips deal +2 Lethal.
●●●● Plasma Burns
The Infected focuses long and hard, causing the PH of their blood to either plummet or skyrocket to insane degrees. As a result, highly basic or acidic blood courses through their veins until its release, transforming the Infected into a walking cannon of caustic liquid.
Cost: 5 ATP, spent over at least four rounds of preparation before it can be used.
Dice Pool: Stamina + Resonance + Blood
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Infected is unable to control the enhanced blood, and all internal containment systems fail. Not only does the Infected lose their ATP and use of the attack, but they also suffer 1 horrific Aggravated Wound internally from their own blood.
Failure: The jet of blood misses the target, the blood dissolving or burning the target's nearby surroundings.
Success: The blood strikes the target, doling out 1 point of Aggravated Wound for every success, often resulting in long-lasting or gruesome scars on the target should they survive.
Exceptional Success: Maybe it's the arc of the blood, the cone of the spray, the sheer PH, the affected area, or any combination of the four. The fact of the matter is that the attack is overwhelming, doling out six points of Aggravated Damage on the target. Should they be lucky enough to survive the chemical bath, they'll have to live with being permanently disfigured.
●●●●● Slime Body
The body is filled with cells, each with their own duty and task. The body, however, remembers a time before tasks, before duties, when all was as one. With mastery of Blood, then energy produced can be directed to call the cells to remember this time, devolving the body into a form that once was the rule, both in evolution and the development of the body. The body breaks down into individual cells, becoming a mass of protozoan sludge that slithers and crawls over the ground. The character can slip through cracks, between bars, under doors, and so on with ease. The character can also climb up walls at normal speed, and make related skill checks as normal.
Cost: 1 ATP
Dice Pool: —
Action: Instant
The Host becomes a mass of sticky goo. Reversing the process also costs 1 ATP, and 2 ATP to revert in the same action. The Host could, for example, spend a total of 3 ATP and one action to walk through a jail cell door by turning into slime and re-incorporating himself on the other side. Characters in slime form are immune to physical attacks — laughing off machine guns, being run over by a truck, and grenades — but not mystical or energy-based attacks (like fire or electricity). A Host in this state can form pseudopods to strike for bashing damage by spending 1 point of ATP each round he maintains the blunt instrument. Characters using this power cannot pick up or carry objects. A Host in slime form can use most powers except for things like self-targeted Bone powers and the Mutation Subversion.
Bone
Written by Thaxton and pkfan 2004, Edited by Zenoseiya
The body is held together by a scaffold of bone. Thick calcium deposits anchor muscles and tissue, providing a frame for the body. In youth, its directed growth gives a human being its form, and the adult is the sum of its leadership. Infection warps the tissue, and in so doing, the bone must also be warped.
● Thicken
With Thicken, the host's bones grow denser and hardier, withstanding more punishment and holding the body up.
Cost: 1 ATP per scene
Dice Pool: —
Action: Reflexive
While this power is active, the character suffers only bashing damage from firearms and blunt trauma of any sort, such as being run over by vehicles and falling from great heights.
●● Knuckle-Dusters
The Infected transforms the phalanges of their hands into a jagged collection of sharp bone and calcium (knuckles sprout vicious, shredding pieces of hard bone and ossified deposits, fingernails sharpen and become thick, randomly diverting spikes), giving an extra bit of brutality to their unarmed blows.
Cost: 1 ATP per scene
Dice Pool: —
Action: Reflexive
While this power is active, the character can deal lethal damage with Brawling attacks.
●●● Bone Body
Much more dramatic than Knuckle-Dusters, this power does not harm another; instead, it allows the infected to cause her bones to twist and grow in frightening new ways.
Cost: 3 ATP per roll
Dice Pool: Stamina + Resonance + Bone
Action: Extended
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The infected suffers three points of bashing damage and loses the ATP spent.
Failure: Nothing happens, and the infected probably feels like he has a small willy.
Success: The infected can split up successes among features gained through the use of this subversion. The subversion last for a number of turns equal to the character's Stamina + Resonance. Afterwards, the character must spend 1 ATP per turn to keep up the changes.
Exceptional Success: The infected gains no benefit other than more successes to throw around.
Exoskeleton (2 successes): The infected grows a carapace of strange, bony armor that provides 1/1 protection. For each additional success spent, the host can increase this armor by either +1/+0 or +0/+1.
Bone-sword (2 successes): The infected grows a thick, serrated blade of bone from his or her arms that deals +2 lethal damage. The infected attacks with this bone blade using Weaponry + Strength. She suffers a −2 penalty on actions requiring the use of that hand.
Spines (1 success): Sharp, thin spines appear all over the character's body. Spines inflict two points of lethal damage per turn during a grapple, or one point of lethal damage to anyone making a barehanded attack on the character.
Stake (3 successes): One huge, thick spike growing as an extension of the arm that can be used to impale enemies. The attempt requires a Brawl + Strength roll at −4. If three or more successes are achieved, the stake is driven through a vital organ such as the heart, killing even most supernatural targets instantly
●●●● Pressure Spikes
The Infected launches an explosive volley of razor-tipped spears made of bone all around them. The weapons dissolve almost instantly after they come to rest, but they deal 3 points of Lethal damage for every successful strike.
Cost: 3 ATP, spent over at least two rounds of preparation.
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Resonance + Blood − Enemy’s Defense − Range Penalties
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only does the attack miss, but the attack is especially draining, inflicting 3 Lethal damage back onto the Infected.
Failure: The attacks miss and the ATP and turn are spent.
Success: Each spike deals 3 Lethal damage to each enemy within the ranges of a standard pistol.
Exceptional Success: The Infected can focus their onslaught at one person, sending any successful attacks directly at them instead of injuring all enemies. This, as one can imagine, is most likely fatal.
●●●●● Aztec Surprise
The Infected takes a moment to focus their power and control over their medium, launching a number of serrated bone limbs through their torso directly at their target to restrain and injure. Once attached, the limbs fly into a violent frenzy, attempting to carve open their subject and shatter their ribs and spine forward.
This works like being grappled by a merciless torture machine: either you're hacked to bits or you manage to withstand/escape punishment. This has the propensity to deliver an amazing amount of pain as a result of a grapple roll, or a few nasty cuts before they break free, but it has the benefit of providing a bloody massacre through bone-limb dissection sprouting from ragged holes in the Infected's chest.
Cost: 5 ATP per scene
Dice Pool: No roll, but the infected must maintain a grapple in order to affect a target. The infected adds their Bone as a bonus to begin the grapple, while the victim suffers a penalty equal to Bone on attempts to break free.
Action: Instant
The “bone thresher” inflicts three automatic points of aggravated damage per turn during the grapple.
Flesh
Written by pkfan 2004, Edited by Zenoseiya
The host is made of flesh. Flesh is easily subverted and controlled, changed and mutated. Cambions know that the shaping of flesh causes unsettling images in the minds of enemies, be it the change of the self or the change of the victim.
● Gruesome Visage
The Infected warps and stretches the skin and muscles of their face in any manner they see fit, from cartoonish to nightmarish through either force of will or their hands: the flesh could rearrange like a Picasso painting, twirls itself inward, mouth and everything; perhaps the skin gets pulled back on the skull ("Is this better?"), or the jaw pulled down to reveal various types of teeth; or the face splits and opens up to reveal the horrific insides. Their face is twisted enough to terrify even the most stalwart foe, resembling more freak than man.
Cost: 1 ATP
Dice Pool: Presence + Resonance + Flesh vs. victim’s Composure + Resolve
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: Not only is the enemy unaffected by the sight of the Infected's face, the process of transformation takes more of a toll than expected. Spent ATP is not returned, and the Infected receives three Bashing Damage from the trauma of having to re-arrange their face.
Failure: The Infected succeeds in warping their face, but their enemy isn't fazed.
Success: The enemy is successfully scared by the horrific face of the Infected and is shaken, resulting in a -4 penalty for all attacks against that Infected.
Exceptional Success: The ploy works, but the enemy isn’t the only one traumatized. In addition to the target, all other enemies within sight range are affected with the -4 penalty, heavily disturbed by what they see.
●● Human Wrecking Ball
The Infected is able to channel and re-direct body mass directly into their extremities, causing their arms or legs to swell grotesquely with muscle, fat and weight. This often causes the Infected to become top-heavy or gain an uneven, loping or shambling gait, but the modified limbs are heavy-hitting weapons that require little skill to master.
** Cost:** Varies.
Dice Pool: —
Action: Reflexive, the Infected can manifest their enhanced limbs at the start of combat.
The Infected gains bonuses based on ATP spent per round to maintain this form; 1 ATP spent means the Infected gains 1 extra Bashing damage towards Brawling attacks. Every three points of ATP become 1 point of Lethal instead.
●●● Wall of Flesh
The Infected are also capable of re-directing their mass inwards to protect their head, torso and chest, becoming bloated objects of impenetrable meat. As a result, limbs wither and become limp while the head often disappears under a protective layer of skin, the Infected becoming completely immobile by their own means while in this form. As a bonus, their corpulent form provides ample cover and protection for their allies to hide behind, should they need to.
Cost: 1 to 4 ATP per round.
Dice Pool: —
Action: Reflexive
The Infected gain bonuses based on ATP spent per round to maintain this form; their skin becomes thick and protective in the process, and 1 point of ATP spent grants the Infected 2 B/1 L Armor, to a max of 8 B/4 L armor.
●●●● Ravenous Reconstruction
An Infected with the Flesh subversion doesn’t always need to seek out a doctor after taking damage. By absorbing the body mass of any fresh corpse (through either eating or patching their wounds with flesh torn from the corpse), the Infected is capable of integrating the incoming meat to heal themselves.
Cost: 3 ATP, one corpse.
Dice Pool: Stamina + Resonance + Flesh
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The Infected’s body violently rejects the consumed meat or transplant, inflicting one point of Lethal damage in addition to losing spent ATP.
Failure: The Infected doesn’t manage to heal themselves but the ATP is regained through energy absorbed from the corpse.
Success: The Infected is able to heal two point of Bashing or one point of Lethal damage for every heath dot the corpse possessed.
Exceptional Success: The Infected can heal one point of Aggravated damage for every heath dot the corpse possessed.
●●●●● Body Wrap
The Infected can affect more than themselves with their abilities. When performing a Body Wrap, the Infected attempts to manually wrestle their opponent into a state of submission. From there, the Infected can re-direct their mass into their arms, forcibly ensnaring the enemy in a tight cocoon made of the Infected’s skin. As a note, once the cocooning process is complete, the Infected is allowed to release the flesh-bag.
Cost: 5 ATP, which may be spent incrementally while the victim is being cocooned.
Dice Pool: No roll, but the Infected must achieve a grapple and maintain it for at least number of rounds equal to the victim's size.
Action: Instant
Once entombed in the sack, the captured opponent faces an extended challenge to escape. They have to achieve a number of successes equal to the Infected's Stamina + Flesh in order to escape, in an amount of rounds equal to their Stamina + 1. Should they succeed, the enemy is able to resume combat. Should they fail, the enemy must keep making Stamina rolls until freed or face suffocation.