Fendojon Part 1: Races and Broad Strokes

Last week (was it last week?) I spoke about some rough ideas I had for a campaign with my 5th Edition group. I'd like to continue that with some more ideas. They may be a little different than some of the things I spoke of last week here on the blog. At one point I had a name I like for this campaign/continent, but then I forgot it. The new name is Fendojon (fend-oh-jon). Like many of the things in my campaign world, the name has meaning. Raise your hand if you remember why Hekinoe is called Hekinoe. Forget? Never knew? It's because the folder I was originally throwing things into on my computer as I was building this campaign world was called Heck If I Know. Moving along.

The history of this little continent gets interesting around what those of us from The Known World would call 8000 DK. At this time, Fendojon would be around late Stone Age/early Bronze Age level societies. It's a relatively small and flat continent almost cut in half by a large mountain range. There are forests and lakes and rivers and so on. The main races of this time are the Humans and the Buillon. At this time there is no magic whatsoever in Fendojon.

At this point I'm going to switch away from the 8000 DK (8000 years since the destruction of Kalesmar) time stamp and switch to the 0 CN (0 years since the coming of the Numen) time stamp. This is because at 0 SK the Sorcerer Kings come to Fendojon. Legends speak of great upheaval across the land, but centered mostly in the northeast of the continent. A decades long summer heat scorches the land into desert and wasteland, the earth cracks, lava surges up from the ground to form sharp edged mountains in the northeast. During this time tribes of Buillon and Humans flee to the southwest through the mountains in the middle of the continent.

With them they bring tales of the nine Numen kings and their iron keeps, their twenty-seven lords and ladies, and their eighteen knights. They collect and share these tales and form a tapestry of words about a mythic time of immortal creatures, mighty iron fortresses, and powers that twist and warp the landscape and elements. The Buillon and the various human tribes settle in the southwest chunk of the continent, expand, and proliferate. Eventually the nine Sorcerer Kings become known: Rakios Blackheart, Sokenvel Oakbow, Vargath Firetusk, Kelliel of the Bloody Grin, Quickhatch,Yellow Eyed Skathis, Blacktooth the Thirsty, Calien the Weeper, and Howling Strigi.

Over several hundred years everything settles the fuck down on Fendojon and the Human and Buillon tribes shape themselves into kingdoms and inch into the iron age while all the craziness settles down in the northwest. Over the next few hundred years the northwest seems to reshape itself into something similar to what it used to look like, mostly flat, forests, planes, rivers, lakes, no crazy volcanic formations, etc. The nine Numen remain remote and unapproachable but their knights, lords, and ladies make their presence known, as does their magic. The magic of the Numen seems to flow out across the landscape. It reshapes it, soaks into plants and animals and people.

It gets really really bad. It's hard to cut down a forest that is encroaching on your village if that forest is the most powerful Druid on the continent. A pack of super big wolves whose howls can shatter the earth with sonic force can't be fought. Anyway. The land ends up getting blanketed in magical energy and it looks like everything but the Buillon and Humans can use it. It gets really hard to survive in this supernaturally fecund continent. Pacts are made. Eighteen of the most powerful human tribal leaders make overtures of fealty and loyalty to the Numen and their agents. They become the Sorcerer Kings and build mighty keeps of iron and stone in the mountains bisecting he continent. With the power of the Numen infusing them, they eventually found ways to confine all this magical energy to the northeastern portion of Fendojon with artifacts called Iron Obelisks. This spikes drew the magical energy of the Numen up into the mountains, decreasing the amount that flowed into the the southwestern portion of the continent.

We fast forward to 2000 CN. The Sorcerer Kings have been long dead, their keeps abandoned and empty. The Numen still remain remote, the lords and ladies less so, and the knights less so. The northeast portion of the continent is a wild place of storms and violently magical energies and creatures.

In the southwest we have four human kingdoms, one major Buillon kingdom. In the inhospitable mountains in between we have ancient keeps full of magic and loot. We've reached Medieval Age technology and whatnot. Humans have developed the ability to interact with and command the magical energy that leaks into the southwest. Buillon have been found to be completely unable to do so. This is about races, so lets discuss races.

Humans in his campaign will all use the variant human from the PHB. They gain a feat, a skill proficiency, and +1 to two different ability scores. I may decide that one of those ability bonus will depend on the nation they are affiliated with. So like the warrior culture nation has one as a +1 Strength bonus, the educated nation has one of them as a +1 to Intelligence, etc. The broad strokes for the nations are a warrior culture nation, a rich merchant nation, a freedom loving border nation back right up against the middle mountains, and a magocracy type nation. The Buillon are going to be Goliaths, but replace their natural athlete, stone's endurance, and mountain born racial traits with advantage on all saving throws vs. magic. They are also completely unable to use magic. Like they can carry and wield magic items that don't require magical ability to use, but they can't ever cast spells or use magical abilities like a Druid's ability to shapeshift. I guess they could take levels in those classes, but it seems like it would be rather on the stupid side to do so.

So that's some rough outlines of the races and a little bit of historical set up for this campaign setting. I'll probably continue with some other stuff on the blog here to help me organize my thoughts. We'll see.

Running Campaigns

One of the things I do is game every other Saturday with some guys that I know through a guy through work. At this point I consider them friends, so I game with a group of friends every other Saturday. We currently play 5th Edition DnD. There are two DMs in this group: Kyle and Kevin. They've both run a few campaigns and one shots and such in the time I've been gaming with them, which is probably approaching a year or so now. With the crashing and burning of my Pathfinder campaign, I've been kind of wanting to show my appreciation for them by DMing something for the group. Kind of give them both a break and get myself back into the role of running games. Something relatively short, definitely not a three year long campaign, but something more than a one shot or multi-session dungeon.

I also want to run it as a sort of palette cleanser after the Pathfinder campaign. Not because it left a bad taste in my mouth. I liked that campaign and am curious how it would have all ended (which is now up to Eric to decide). What I mean is that I've been running campaigns for the same group of friends, for the most part, for 21 years and ran a campaign for three years with guys who were adjacent to that group of friends. Shawn was part of that original group and he introduced me to Lance, who introduced me to Jason, who introduced me to Cary. I've grown accustomed to these guys and their friends and their various idiosyncrasies. I feel like it would be beneficial for me as a GM to run things for a different group of people. A group of people that grew up on different games and versions of DnD than we did. Doing the same things over and over again and running games geared towards the same set of expectations and whatnot leads to stagnation. Because of the my experience as a GM and because of my experience with my core group of players, I've very rarely had to plan any alternative routes for task completion in my scenarios over the past three years. I almost instinctively know what they're going to do, how to get them to do what I want, and what is going to interest and bore them. This isn't a criticism of any of us. We're all just accustomed to each other's tastes and quirks. For the most part.

This is more about me expanding my horizons and seeing what other people have to say about me as a GM and what they have to say about Hekinoe. I dunno. These guys are cool. I think it'd be fun to plop them down in Hekinoe and see what they do with it. So I've decided to do this. The first step is figuring out what I want to do. The first step of that is determining system.

My heart always flies like an arrow to GURPS for representing Hekinoe, but that's not exactly ethical in my opinion. I don't really feel right demanding they all buy new books and stuff, especially when both of the core GURPS books are fifty bucks each. I also don't really feel right giving them all free pdfs because I like GURPS and want to support the game. Anyway, long story short: I've opted to go with 5th Edition for this campaign, but significantly modified. As I've said many a time before, various versions of DnD don't really work with Hekinoe, also DnD is stupid.

So the main point of this post is to establish how much I need to modify 5th Edition to fit it into Hekinoe. Just like other 3.X Edition versions of Hekinoe, some things will get handwaved because game. I want to tweak it to make it fit, but I don't really want to overdo it. So we need to first establish a little bit about this continent I plan on setting this campaign on and how it different from The Known World and go from there into modification of rules and mechanics.

The first difference is that it will have its own set of races, and there will only be four races. The Buillon, the Gobeneru, the Halflings, and Humans. The Gobeneru are of the Goebleen/Ethryll/Hulderfolk lineage and Humans will be the same type of stock as Uncout, so there will be some familiar/common races. The second difference is that magic is more stable and does not cause mutations and magic items don't eventually explode when used. However, magic is also weaker. Because background, this continent will have the lowest risk of misfire of any of the continents in Hekinoe. The third difference is that the tech level of this continent is more along the lines of normal DnD, rather than the Wild West era technology of The Known World or the Iron Age era technology of Orcunraytrel. Steel is a thing, but guns and steam engines are not. This continent also has no Elduman, so there are no psionics on it.

So how is this continent different from DnD? This question kind of shows what the necessary modifications to 5th Edition's rules will be. This will keep me from going hog wild and doing things like converting armor to damage reduction, making massive reductions in hit points to everything, etc, etc, etc. There will be plenty of modifications. No need to add more nonsense onto what has to be there. There's a fine line between needing to modify a system and needing to use a completely different system. If I just end up hacking apart 5th Edition to be more GURPS like, rather than to fit Hekinoe, it might be more appropriate to use GURPS in the first place.

Anyway, Hekinoe is different from the core DnD world described in the Player's Handbook. Let's talk about that.

Races. Hekinoe has no Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, etc, etc, etc. It's all my own races. You could, like Lance, be an idiot and say that the Sereth and Vyanth are just Elves because pointed ears (nevermind that they're actually an offshoot of Uncout, but whatever) or that Greenskin Abraxens are Orcs, but that's not true. Some of the races of Hekinoe resemble common DnD races, and that may be intentional on my part, but they are not those races. What this means is that I need to stat up the Buillon, Gobeneru, Halflings, and Humans. Not too difficult. It's actually be pretty easy to make them work, Buillon will be a modified Goliath race, Gobeneru will be a modified Halfling or Goblin race, Humans will be Humans. Halflings will actually be something I have to write up from scratch.

No gods. Hekinoe has a decent share of powerful supernatural entities. Primarily members of the Nel race, but there are others. However, these are not gods in the traditional sense. Gods, in DnD, are creatures powered by the faith of their followers, they have ideologies they want followed, they exist on planes that are fairly mutable to their whims, and command legions of planar entities like angels or demons. They are also to a certain extent omnipotent and omniscient, at least in areas related directly to their followers and their areas of control. The supernatural entities of Hekinoe have none of these capabilities. It may seem like they do, but they do not. This means Cleric, Druid, and Paladin are outright gone from the class options. Ranger may stay, but will lose its spellcasting abilities. Can't have divine magic without divine creatures to give the characters magic.

No planes. Hekinoe has no planar cosmology. The only plane is the real world. This means several things. Spells involving planar travel need to be modified or removed. Spells that pull things from other planes need to be altered or removed. Creatures native to other planes, such as angels and demons, do not exist in Hekinoe. There are small sort of demiplanes that I for some reason decided to call adjacent realms, places like The Shadowwlands, the Hound's midnight forest, Nel holdings, and various little sorcerous apartment complexes built by various hermit beard wearing Wizards. Mostly this amounts to some spell alteration and a little bit of outright removal.

Magic. Magic is going to be a big sticking point and will require heavy modification. In Hekinoe there are three types of magic type stuff: magic, the psionics of the Elduman, and the Gifts of the Nel. Each of them have their own unique rules. The two present in this 5th Edition campaign will be magic and Gifts. Magic in Hekinoe is an external energy source that spellcasters shape through symbolic incantations, gestures, and raw willpower. It's a large and chaotic energy source separated from, but always seeking entry into, the physical world. I've described sorcerous energy as an endless sea of power shaped like a funnel with a magic user at the bottom of the funnel. Gifts are an internal energy source, they're the lifeforce of a Nel. Both are powerful, but both have some a variety of limitations and restrictions on their use.

In DnD, magic is an internal force, otherwise the Wizard ability known as arcane replenishment could not exist. How else could you replenish arcane energy to restore spell slots if it didn't come from within you? It's also an external energy source? Or something. It's super dumb. None of the rules about magic mean anything in DnD. How do Clerics gain more spells per day if they don't do stuff that furthers their deity's goals or rise in their church hierarchy if the power comes from their god and not them? Clerics, as non divine beings, have no divine energy. It comes from elsewhere. Their level and ability scores should have no impact on their spells, as all that power comes from their god. Anyway.

Basically we have three magic classes: Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Warlocks make pacts with Nel for power, Sorcerer's can only be the Halfling race because they use Gifts from an ancestor who was invested with Gifts by a Nel, and Wizards cast spells using the ambient magical energy from the world around them. The first problem here is casting ability scores. Warlocks use Charisma, and they get their power from a patron they persuade or make a deal with to gain it, so Charisma is fine for them. Since Sorcerer's use internal magic energy that is at least partially their lifeforce, they use Constitution instead of Charisma (which is idiotic even in normal DnD). Wizards do learn certain forms of spells and incantations, but spellcasting in Hekinoe is more about forcing the energy of magic into a certain shape with your willpower, so Wizards use Wisdom instead of Intelligence.

Because there are no Old Ones, demons, or fey in Hekinoe, Warlocks will need a different set of pacts and stuff. Since magic is much less narrowly focused in Hekinoe than in DnD, we'll need to modify spell lists to incorporate all the spells that don't directly reference divine might into the spell selections for the classes. The spells that directly reference divine might will need to go or be altered to fit the Warlock list. Because Sorcerers have bloodlines and traits related to their ancestors who were shaped by the Nel that gave them power, we'll need a different set of sorcerous origins for sorcerers. Wizards will also need some specialty options for Druid and Bard type stuff to go along with their options for specialty school. 

So that's kind of the broad strokes about what I'll need to be doing for this 5th Edition campaign. I may or may not get into the mechanical modifications to magic on the blog here. We'll see. 

Shadowrunning

For those of you that don't know, I currently play in a Shadowrun campaign run by Lance every other Monday night (usually). Shadowrun is a cyberpunk RPG set in 2070. I am a big fan of the cyberpunk genre. When I say cyberpunk, I mean the actual meaning of the word. Characters that are typically working in the shadows or outside the bounds of normal society struggling against a dystopian government or mainstream culture and featuring things like cybernetics and hacking. In the case of Shadowrun, you're shadowrunners, mercenaries with no identities doing espionage for or against the big corporations that refuse to become wageslaves. Shadowrun is special because it injects fantasy into this genre. So you have megacorps being owned by dragons and a crew of shadowrunners composed of magic wielding elves, chromed out trolls, physical adept (magic using monk types) dwarves, as well as hackers and drone users of various races, and so on. It kind of seems a little kitchen sink-like, but it works.

Shadowrun has been around for a while. The first edition came out in 1989. Lance and I and our group play the 5th Edition of the game that came out in 2013. There have been several video games as well. The current crop (Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, and Hong Kong are quite good. There's also Boston Lockdown, but I can't speak to its quality. So it's not DnD with a pedigree going back to the seventies, but it has been around a while. I've gotten my hands on copies of previous editions, but only for the purposes of the lore, so in this post if I refer to mechanics I am speaking only of the 5th Edition of the game.

The game is a skill based classless system similar to GURPS in that you invest far more time in character creation than you do in leveling and your increase in abilities is rather slow and it is skill based and classless and has positive and negative qualities you can add to your character for a points cost. The main mechanic is rolling d6s attempting to achieve a certain number of hits to be considered a success (opening a lock) or meeting or exceeding an opposed roll's number of hits (attacking an enemy and comparing your roll with their defense roll). Hits are a result of 5 or 6 on the d6s. The number of d6s you roll is determined by your skill level, relevant attribute, and gear or qualities you may have that augment it. Your characters and some gear (mainly weapons) also have inherent limits to them. When attacking, your number of hits can't exceed a weapon's accuracy. Certain skills and such can't exceed your physical limit (a calculation based on your physical attributes), mental limit (based on mental attributes), or your social limit (your social attributes). Your attributes are Agility, Body, Strength, Logic, Intuition, Reaction, Willpower, Charisma, Magic, Essence, Edge, and Initiative.

The first thing I want to say is that I have been enjoying playing it with Lance and his associates. Good people and Lance is a good GM. The second thing I want to say is that this system is one of the clunkiest most unnecessarily over complicated rulesets I have encountered in my primarily d20 system focused gaming history. This, coupled with the third thing I want to say, makes it a very frustrating game to play. Oh. The third thing. The rulebooks are some of the most poorly designed I have every fucking encountered in terms of layout, rules clarity, and the separation of background material and rules.

I'm not going to speak about my dislikes of the system, as they could just as easily be my personal likes and dislikes and my d20 system Stockholming coming to the fore, but I would like to talk about a few things I like about the system.

The first is the concept of Essence is it relates to social interaction and cybernetics. Essence is part of the calculation of your social limit. Did I say that already? It tends to stay at 6 or go down and it represents your metahumanity. It's also tied to your Magic attribute, if you have one. One of the primary things that decreases essence is chrome, cyberware. There are high quality versions of cyberware that reduce it less, and there is bioware as well which tends to reduce essence by a smaller amount than its cybernetic equivalent but tends to be vastly more fucking expensive. The gist of this mechanic is that when you replace your skeleton with titanium bones or implant kevlar into your skin or replace your fingernails with razors blades, you lose something of yourself, something hard to define. Something just begins to seem off and inhuman about you and others react to this offness. Thus the impact of Essence on your social limit. If it wasn't obvious, a really shitty social limit is going to prevent you from being an effective talky character. If you can only get one or two hits tops due to your social limit, it doesn't really matter how many handfuls of d6s you are tossing onto the table. 

This makes a lot of sense to me. If your bones are titanium, you're going to move and carry your weight differently. You're not going to react to physical pressures on your body in the same way. You won't be easily shoved and surfaces are going to respond differently to your weight on them than they would flesh and blood bodies. If your eyes are implants, you're not going to need to blink to keep them moist or squint in the sun. If your skin is made of kevlar, it's not going to itch or cause you to slap at mosquitoes and bugs on it. A completely cybernetic limb isn't going to twitch or shift to find a comfortable position because it's asleep and you won't crack your knuckles as a nervous tic. As you pile on the chrome, the comforting little tics and idiosyncrasies of flesh and blood that we rarely notice are going to fade away and since we rarely notice them consciously, we'll just have an indefinable sense of something being off. You might say that having kevlar skin or metal limbs is fairly obvious, but in a cyberpunk setting the chrome itself is not unnatural or weird. It's no different than wearing glasses or walking with a cane would be in our society. Maybe I'm over analyzing it or attributing more to the mechanic of Essence and social limit than the designers were, but it makes a lot of sense to me and it's kind of an elegant way of showing what replacing your flesh with chrome does to you.

The second thing I like is the damage tracks. There are two, physical and stun. Physical is lethal physical damage based on your Body attribute and stun is nonlethal and mental damage based on your Willpower attribute. Shadowrun recognizes that there is a sort of mental hit point value for your character. Both damage tracks have negative effects they inflict on your character as they decrease as well. Which is a big beef I have about DnD. There's no difference in the effectiveness of a character with 1 hit point and one with 100. Shadowrun also doesn't go for overblown hit point sacks. My character, Marius the Elf Street Samurai, only has like nine boxes on his physical damage track. Damage is figured out by the damage value of a weapon and the target making a roll of their Body + their armor's rating. That's a slight simplification, but the gist is that if your weapon's damage exceeds the target's roll, you start marking off boxes.

The third thing I like is the concept of racial minimums and maximums for attributes. This is something I liked about 2nd Edition AD&D as well. The attribute range for humans is 1 to 6. During character creation you start at the minimum for your races and use your attribute points to increase from the minimum. Elves are faster and prettier than humans so that have a range of 2 to 7 for their agility and 3 to 8 for their Charisma. Trolls and orks are big and tough so their racial minimums and maximums are higher for Strength and Body than a human's. This doesn't mean all orks and trolls are tougher and stronger than all humans. But the troll that is a street samurai using melee weapons is probably going to be stronger and tougher than the human or elf street samurai that uses melee weapons. This makes sense. Orks and trolls are big, they can physically support more muscle mass and whatnot than a human or elf can. Elves are slender and graceful, their bodies are naturally able to achieve more agility than a humans, the same way cats are naturally more agile than a cow or dog. Halfling characters in DnD could have a Strength far surpassing that of the average human, even just at character creation, even though they are skinny and half as tall as the average human.

Next up on my list is how Shadowrun does initiative. Just like DnD, initiative is a measure of turn order in combat. It's your Intuition + Reaction +1d6. There are things that can increase your bonus dice and whatnot. The first thing I like is that initiative is based on a physical attribute (your reaction speeds) and a mental attribute (your awareness of your surroundings). I find it odd that Reaction is not folded into Agility like it is in other games, but whatever. So I think it's really neat that the majority of your initiative in Shadowrun is static with only a minor amount of variation. It makes sense, people who react quickly and pay attention to their surroundings and are experienced with seeing when people are ready to kill would statistically, probably maybe, be quicker to react and be ready than people who are not those things. Anyway. So one interesting thing Shadowrun does with initiative is that everyone takes their turn, then they subtract 10 (I think) from their initiative and anyone with an initiative above 0 gets to go again. So instead of gaining additional attacks because class feature or attack bonus, you gain additional attacks and actions for being super fast and stuff. I dig it. Additionally, there are some forms of attack and defense and some special actions you can take that cost you initiative. It's kinda neat. I like it. It makes combat a little bit more fluid and interactive and that sort of thing. 

So. Last thing, the priority system. Originally I found this system incredibly confusing and clunky, but it's actually kind of neat. There are five priorities: A, B, C, D, and E. During character creation you choose your metahuman type (race), magic (which determines your magician type and spells and magic skills), skills, attributes, and resources (cash). You choose things by assigning them a priority. So if you want to have a lot of cash, you assign your resources priority 4 (400,000 nuyen). I tend to like Elf characters because I am partial to brutally quick little characters. Elves are only an option if you choose metatype priority as A, B, C, or D. Elves at priority A are noted as Elf (8), elves at priority D are Elf (0). The number after the parentheses are points you can use to increase your Edge (which is basically luck), Magic, or Resonance. So you can choose a "weaker" race, but augment it with other features. Anyway. It's an interesting system that's less complicated than completely constructing characters from scratch via points values, but is much more reasonable than just mandating all races and classes are equal in power. 

So yeah, there's some stuff I like about Shadowrun and stuff. 

GURPS Hekinoe Races: Elduman

Next up in our list of races are the Elduman. The totally innocuous and benign not overlords of The Known World.

Let's start with the easy stuff, their crystalline flesh and faux-skin. The crystalline flesh is flesh-like, and though it is not truly any tougher than muscle and bone, it is somewhat more resilient to heat temperatures. This gives them Temperature Tolerance 2 (Cold 1/Hot 1). Unfortunately, despite its flexibility and living nature, the crystalline flesh and bone of Elduman is brittle and prone to shattering like normal crystal. This gives the Elduman Fragile (Brittle) and means their limbs just break off and the Elduman shatter if they fail HT checks at negative hit points.

The Elduman crystalline flesh is psionically active, and one of their most well know uses of this ability is to dump psionic energy into their flesh to bind it more tightly together, hardening it and making the Elduman resistant to incoming blows. This looks like Damage Reduction 5 (Biokinesis, -5%; Active Defense Roll, -40%; Costs 1 FP/Use, -10%; Requires Attribute Roll: Will, -5%). So this means that as long as an Elduman is aware of an attack, he can try to activate his Elduman Resilience before it hits. This is kind of a clunky ability, as he needs to make a DX/2 + 3 roll (Biokinesis Talent applies here) to activate it quickly enough, then he needs to make a Will check (Biokinesis Talent applies here too) to actually marshal his psionic power and bind the molecules of his crystalline flesh together. The optional Elduman traits will offer a passive form of Elduman Resilience that keeps the Elduman Resilience on at all times, but this requires more effort and psionic energy and has a reduced effect. This looks like Damage Resistance 2 - 4 (Biokinesis, -5%) [10 - 20].

Oh, Elduman don't have sensitive external genitalia, so they get Injury Tolerance (No Groin) and they're immortal or whatever, so they get Unaging.

Elduman are psionic so we given them Energy Reserve 3 (Psionic) to pay for activating any of their psionics powers and whatnot. We also add a feature that says that they can create, purchase, and use psionic powers and whatnot. 

As crystalline creatures, Elduman are somewhat more vulnerable to sonic energies, so they get Vulnerability (Occasional Substance: Sonic Damage; Multiplier, x2). Speaking of vulnerabilities and weaknesses, the Elduman are a little inconvenienced by Gifts. This comes out as Revulsion (Occasional Substance: Gifts). Because they're made of psionic crystalline material, Elduman also have Unusual Biochemistry. 

Elduman are sustained by their psionic power, among other things, so they have Doesn't Eat or Drink. They also require less sleep than other creatures, so they have Less Sleep 4. 

And I think that about does it for Elduman. Excluding the near infinite number and variety of psionic powers they could posses.

Elduman

0 points

Mandatory Traits

Basic Attribute Ranges At Character Creation

• ST 8 - 14
• DX 8 - 14
• IQ 8 - 14
• HT 7 - 13

Secondary Characteristic Ranges At Character Creation

• Will 9 - 15
• Per 9 - 15
• SM +0 (5' 6" - 6' 6")

Advantages [46]

• Alternative Sustenance: Doesn't Eat or Drink [10]
• Crystalline Flesh: Temperature Tolerance 2 (Cold 1/Hot 1) [2]
• Elduman Resilience: Damage Reduction 5 (Biokinesis, -5%; Active Defense Roll, -40%; Costs 1 FP/Use, -10%; Requires Attribute Roll: Will, -5%) [10]
• Groinless: Injury Tolerance (No Groin) [2]
• Immortal: Unaging [5]
• Psionic: Energy Reserve 3 (Psionic) [9]
• Reduced Sleep: Less Sleep 4 [8]

Disadvantages [-45]

• Crystalline Flesh: Fragile (Brittle) [-15]
• Shatter Prone: Vulnerability (Occasional Substance: Sonic Damage; Damage Multiplier x2) [-20] 
• Strange Biology: Unusual Biochemistry [-5]
• Vulnerable To Gifts: Revulsion (Occasional Substance: Gifts) [-5]

Quirks [-1]

• Sexless: Sexless [-1]

Optional Traits

Secondary Characteristics

• Will+1 [5]
• Per+1 [5]

Advantages

• Enhanced Elduman Resilience [+2/1 DR]: The Elduman may increase their Elduman Resilience up to Damage Resistance 15 and may do so at any time.   
• Passive Resilience [10 - 30]: Some Elduman possess a passive form of Elduman Resilience that functions at all times, this form of passive ability replaces the active ability and because it requires more effort and psionic energy to maintain, it is weaker. Passive Elduman Resilience is purchased as Damage Reduction 2 - 6 (Biokinesis, -5%).

Feature: Elduman are psionic creatures and may use all five types of psionics and may purchase a great variety of advantages as psionic powers.
Feature: Elduman cannot purchase any sorcerous advantages or abilities and cannot access ambient sorcerous energy in any way. 

GURPS Hekinoe Races: Dwenoren

Next up in our alphabet of races from Hekinoe are the Dwenoren. The Dwenoren are a subterranean race living within labyrinthine tunnels and cave cities beneath the mountains of Whurent. And, you know, on every other continent on Hekinoe. 

So what are the defining physical/biological characteristics of the Dwenoren? The first and foremost is that they are blind. They use a sort of sonar/echolocation type thing to "see" their surroundings. They also have frills of sensory spines along their chin and jaw, this spines are stiff and fibers and are extremely sensitive to changes in air movement. They also help the Dwenoren to "see" their surroundings. The Dwenoren also have very large and complex ears to hear better. They are hairless, but their pores secrete a oily substance that serves to insulate them against the cold of the deep tunnels of Whurent. They've also evolved to require less oxygen than other races, kind of similar to what serious mountain climbers train for to acclimate to higher altitudes with less oxygen. They also have no real visible reproductive or sexual characteristics. 

So let's start with their basic attributes and secondary characteristics. They're a little short, but not tiny, so they have a SM of 0. The underground regions of Hekinoe tend to be harsh environments due to scarcity of resources and cold, so they're hardy little fuckers so their HT range is 9 - 15 and in their optional traits they'll get HT+1. They are blind and rely entirely on their sensory spines and echolocation to get around, but they're very aware of their vulnerabilities, so they tend to be perceptive within the narrow confines of their senses and their Per range is 9 - 15 and their optional traits have a Per+1. 

Dwenoren have no eyes, as I've said, so they have Blindness. A side effect of their lack of eyes is Injury Tolerance (No Eyes). Their sensory spines are treated as Vibration Sense. It functions in both air and water so it gets Universal, +50%. Unfortunately, it is limited by the direction their sensory spines are facing, so we apply Limited Effect: Front 120 Degree Arc, -30%. Their echolocation is represented as Scanning Sense (Sonar) with Extended Arc: 240 Degrees, +75%;  Targeting, +20%; and Increased Range: 2x, +10% (which means it is effective to about 40 yards through air). The echolocation of the Dwenoren also confers Ultrasonic Speech, which means they can converse in frequencies above 20 kHz. In the optional traits for Dwenoren, they'll have an option to change the Increased Range modifier of their Scanning Sense (Sonar) from 2x to 5x. 

The huge ears of the Dwenoren can perceive their echolocation, so obviously they also have Ultrahearing, which allows them to perceive frequencies of sound above 20 kHz. They also grant them very good hearing, so the Dwenoren have Acute Senses 1 (Hearing). Dwenoren also gain a feature that states that they may but the Acute Senses advantage for their Scanning Sense (Sonar) and their Vibration Sense.

The skin oils of the Dwenoren are represented with Temperature Tolerance 1 (Cold) and Slippery 1.

And with that, I think we're done. So here are the Dwenoren:

Dwenoren

22 points

Mandatory Traits

Basic Attribute Ranges At Character Creation

• ST 8 - 14
• DX 8 - 14
• IQ 8 - 14
• HT 9 - 15

Secondary Characteristic Ranges At Character Creation

• Will 8 - 14
• Per 9 - 15
• SM +0 (4' 6" - 5')

Advantages [73]

• Ears: Acute Senses 1 (Hearing) [2], Ultrahearing [0]
• Echolocation: Scanning Sense (Sonar; Extended Arc: 240, +75%; Targeting, +20%; Increased Range: 2x, +10%) [41], Ultrasonic Speech [10]
• Eyeless: Injury Tolerance (No Eyes) [5]
• Sensory Spines: Vibration Sense (Universal, +50%; Limited Effect: Front 120 Degree Arc, -30%) [12]
• Skin Oils: Slippery 1 [2], Temperature Tolerance 1 (Cold) [1]

Disadvantages [-50]

• Eyeless: Blindness [-50]

Quirks [-1]

• Sexless: Sexless [-1]

Optional Traits

Basic Attributes

• HT+1 [10]

Secondary Characteristics

• Per+1 [5]

Advantages

• Enhanced Echolocation [+2]: Some Dwenoren possess greater ability to emit and receive their echolocation. They replace the Increased Range: 2x, +10% enhancement on their Scanning Sense (Sonar) with Increased Range: 5x, +20%. 

Feature: Dwenoren may purchase Acute Senses for their Scanning Sense (Sonar) and Vibration Sense advantages. 

GURPS Hekinoe Races: Children of Volung

So writing out the Nel was getting rather difficult. And aggravating. And there are better things I could be doing with my time. So that's what I'm going to do. In the interests of productivity I'm going to return to using the blog as a place where I hammer out my thoughts about the GURPS Hekinoe campaign book, which is what I was doing with the whole sorcery, psionics, Gifts thing. Then I got sidetracked by fucking about with the Nel, which serves no purpose because they're such a minor feature of my campaign world. I like them way too much, which leads to me getting distracted by them at the drop of a hat. So we're going to shut down the whole Nel thing and start on the campaign book and go more or less chapter by chapter. Maybe. Probably not. Whatever. We're going to start with races.

There are currently 17 races in The Known World: Children of Volung, Conwighta, Dwenoren, Elduman, Elduman Descended Uncout, Fallen, Fell Descendants, Fell Humans, Fell Soulless, Greyskin Abraxens, Okwighta, Rankethlek, Sereth, Solwighta, Soulless, Uncout, and Vyanth.

Wait. Seriously? Seventeen fucking playable races? That's over double the fucking number of races in Pathfinder's core book. Yeesh. Anyway, alphabetically speaking, we'll start with the Children of Volung.

Before we do that though, I want to lay out some guidelines for creation and stuff. The first is that there will be no attempts at balance between the races. They are what they are and have the points values that they have. The second is that I really am going to step away from race and culture thing being tossed together because. In this campaign book, the second on races will be immediately followed by a section on cultures and every character in The Known World will pick a race and culture. Culture will govern things like languages, technology level, attitudes, etc, etc, etc. The race portion will cover things like biological traits and physical descriptions and so on and so forth. Make sense?

Each race will also be broken up into two sections: mandatory traits and optional traits. Mandatory traits will govern stuff that is absolutely always present, like Dwenoren being blind, and Fallen being unkillable. Optional traits are going to govern things like stat increases and stuff some members of the race have, but not all, like some Rankethlek being made out of copper, or some Soulless having very active Fallen personalities within them.

What do we know about Children of Volung? They're tough to kill, around seven feet tall, have tough hide, they're angry, hail from the far north, and have bony plates beneath their skin over their rib cage.

Hailing from the far north is easy, Temperature Tolerance 1 (Cold). The toughness is also easy, we give them one level of Hard To Kill and one of Hard To Subdue. We also add in a feature stating that they can buy up to three levels of each of those advantages, rather than the normal two of other races. Their tough hide comes out as Damage Resistance (Tough Skin, -40%) and the bony plates beneath their skin over their rib cages are Damage Resistance (Partial: Torso, -10%). They're all around seven feet tall, so we give them a Size Modifier of +1.

The anger of the Children of Volung is a genetic trait, they're ill tempered and quick to anger and this genetic predisposition to aggression has caused them to survive as a race through many trials and tribulations. It is referred to as Volung's Rage and is represented by Bloodlust and Berserk. They always have the option of reducing how often they fall prey to these disadvantages, but they can never buy them off.

They're immortal, which is easily represented by Unaging.

Children of Volung bones are also denser and tougher than those of other races, so it takes more work to break them. This is represented by Injury Tolerance (Unbreakable Bones; Limited Effect: x1.5 Damage To Cripple Limbs, -50%). This just means that the bones of a Child of Volung take 1.5 times as much damage to cripple. This toughness of their bones is why their bone plates over their ribs don't have the Semi-Ablative modifier.

In The Known World, baseline biology is Uncout, and their biology is similar enough to the Glenwighta and Dwenoren that drugs and medicine have similar effects on those three races. Children of Volung have some janky biology, so they get Unusual Biochemistry. This means that drugs designed for the three baseline races might work, or it might do something insane to them. They can get drugs and medicines that work for them, but they're more expensive in regions where the "normal" races exist.

The reason I say the Glenwighta, Uncout, and Dwenoren have similar biologies in terms of what drugs and medications do to them is because they are the three native races of The Known World, and they in theory evolved to live their, so it would be ridiculous, in my opinion, for them to have wildly different insides.

So the base Children of Volung racial template ends up being -2 character points. Let's move onto the optional traits.

The first of the optional traits is the hardiness of the Children of Volung. They're all tough and hard to take down, but some are very resistant to diseases and poisons. So we give them Resistant (Common: Poisons; +3 HT To Resist, x1/3) and Resistant (Common: Diseases; +3 HT To Resist, x1/3)

The optional traits also include the racial bonuses to basic attributes a race may have, for the Children of Volung this is ST+1 and HT+1. Their SM reduces the cost of ST, fyi. The reason I am including modifications to a race's basic attributes in their optional traits is because there is a lot of variance among the physical capabilities of a race, not every Child of Volung is going to be a big beefy bruiser, even if the majority of them are. I'm also going to include the normal range of their basic attributes at character creation in the mandatory traits section. This is going to tell players how high they can buy the stats for a particular race before modifying them. I envision the "normal" range being 8-14 for most individuals. In GURPS, 8 is considered below average and 14 is considered exceptional. So Captain America as the pinnacle of the human norm has a ST, DX, and HT of 15+. The Hulk has a ST upwards of 20, but a IQ of 8.

There's one more optional trait that Children of Volung have. They have access to a secret store of gear unavailable to every other race in The Known World. The players don't get to see the store beforehand or ever speak of what it contains, and accessing it requires the purchase of an Unusual Background, but it is an option.

Children of Volung

-2 points

Mandatory Traits

Basic Attribute Ranges At Character Creation

• ST 9-15
• DX 8-14
• IQ 8-14
• HT 9-15

Secondary Characteristics

• SM+1

Advantages [23]

• Immortal: Unaging [5]
• Northern Blood: Temperature Tolerance 1 [1]
• Plated Rib Cage: Damage Resistance 1 (Partial: Torso, -10%) [5]
• Tough Bones: Injury Tolerance (Unbreakable Bones; Limited Effect: x1.5 Damage To Cripple Limbs, -50%) [5]
• Tough Hide: Damage Resistance 1 (Tough Skin, -40%) [3]
• Tough To Put Down: Hard To Kill 1 [2], Hard To Subdue 1 [2]

Disadvantages [-25]

• Strange Biology:  Unusual Biochemistry [-5]
• Volung's Rage: Berserk (Self Control: 12, x1) [-10], Bloodlust (Self Control: 12, x1) [-10]

Optional Traits

Basic Attributes

• ST+1 [9]
• HT+1 [10]

Advantages

• Hardiness [10]: Resistant (Common: Diseases; +3 HT To Resist, x1/3) [5], Resistant (Common: Poisons; +3 HT To Resist, x1/3) [5]
• Secret Access: Children of Volung have access to a secret supply of goods. Accessing this store first requires the purchase of Unusual Background: 24 [25]. The player and character may never speak to other players or characters of what they have seen or purchased in this secret store, and if they do so the GM will remove the equipment without refunding character points spend on the background or money spent on the equipment, 

Feature: Children of Volung may purchase up to three levels of Hard To Kill and Hard To Subdue, rather than the normal maximum of two levels of each.

Feature: The bloodlust and rage of the Children of Volung is hardwired into their biology. They can always reduce the severity of their Berserk and Bloodlust disadvantages, but can never buy them off completely.

So there we go, the Children of Volung. Wee.

GURPS Nel Part 3: Feronel and Sokarnel Meta-Traits

So now we're here at part three, the court meta-traits. There are six nations/courts/kingdoms/etc of Nel: the Feronel, Sokarnel, Aubernel, Utenel, Sarownel, and Loronel. The Feronel are the oldest, the first. They're also the smallest and are dying out. No new Feronel have been "born" in the last thousand (possibly longer, I forget, it's written down somewhere) or so years. So we're dealing with a race of 1000 - 9999 year old supernatural berserkers. The Sokarnel are the second oldest and they are probably the largest court of Nel, as they are the dead of the Nel. When Nel die, unless the Nel in question really really fucking pissed off Keroen Skathos, they are offered reincarnation as Sokarnel. They're stripped of all memories of their life, but they get to continue and serve as Keroen's undying spies and assassins. The Aubernel and Utenel are the first of the young Nel. I have it written down, but I think it was somewhere between 3000 and 4000 DK that they came into existence. The Sarownel and Loronel are the youngest courts, again, I have it written down, but I forget the exact date of their creation. Are you detecting a pattern yet? Anyway. The Sarownel and Loronel only a  few thousand years old at this point. Four thousand tops.

Each court has different traits, but there is some equality between them. As my guideline for the following meta-traits, I want the Feronel and Sokarnel meta-traits to be of equal points value and be the highest value ones. I want the Aubernel and Utenel to be about 75% of the Feronel and Sokarnel and I want the Loronel and Sarownel to be 50% of the Feronel and Sokarnel.

This post will be about the Feronel and Sokarnel. We'll start with the Feronel, because I love them and they are the best.

The first thing is that the Feronel are hands down tougher and more physical than the other Nel courts. We represent this by giving them ST+2, DX+1, and HT+2. Feronel also respect strength of will and self-control (despite their berserker natures). So they also have Will+1.

Then we move onto advantages. All Nel are generally weather resistant so we add Damage Resistance 6 twice, but one gets Limited: Fire/Heat, -40% and the other gets Limited: Cold, -40%. Since Feronel are Feronel, they get Feronel Talent 1. Seems logical. Feronel regenerate pretty fast, so we take the base meta-trait Regeneration (Fast; Reflexive, +40%; Costs 4 FP/Minute, -40%) [50] and improve that to Very Fast (one hit point per second). Because it also represents a bigger drain on their Gifts, we up it to Costs 5 FP/Minute, -50%. Keep in mind that the Nel meta-traits are layered on one another, so even though the advantage is ultimately 90 character points, the Feronel meta-trait only accounts for 40 of it. All Nel can communicate with their ruler mentally, Contuck in this instance, so we need Telecommunication (Telesend). Since this is a function of the Nel's Gifts being connected to their ruler, we apply Gifts, -5%. Since it's only with one person we apply Contuck Only, -40%. Feronel generally have stronger Gifts in a larger amount, so we give them Energy Reserve (Gifts) +5 on top of the base meta-trait. They also have Gifts +3 on top of the base Nel meta-trait.

Now we move onto disadvantages. Feronel have a code of honor. There are two actually, and they're both fairly mild in terms of restrictions they put on behavior. The first is the Feronel Code of Honor, which basically amounts to speaking your mind, confronting foes and antagonists face to face instead of talking shit behind their backs, and never starting a fight unless the foe bears a weapon in hand. What defines a fight and a weapon are somewhat vague. The second code is Loria's Code. This is a more refined version of the Feronel Code. It involves things like not murdering your opponents during a duel, if a foe is ridiculously weaker than you in Gifts or blade skill, do not take advantage of that weakness. Basically, the Feronel Code represents barbaric warrior culture honor and Loria's Code is a slightly more civilized version. Neither of them are particular restrictive, so they're only worth -5 character points.

The Feronel are very savage and a bit bloodthirsty by nature, and those that aren't that way took a long ass time to change their ways and become something else. For the most part the Feronel are  basically Stone Age gods of war. So they have both Berserk and Bloodlust. This means any time violence occurs there is a chance they lose their shit, and when it comes to violence they want their foes dead and there's not much that can deter them from that.

So we're looking at 198 points for the Feronel on top of the 382 for all Nel, plus the racial templates. The actual  cleaned up and written out list format meta-trait will appear later, as there's still some final tweaking to do.

The Sokarnel, like the Feronel are tough and physical, so they get ST+2 and HT+2, but they're "dead" things of patience and stillness, so no DX bonus. Because they're "dead" things of patience and stillness, they get Will+2. Like the Feronel, they have Damage Resistance 6 for cold and fire, increased regeneration, the Sokarnel Talent, Gifts+3, Energy Reserve +5 (Gifts), and the ability to contact their ruler (Nostathon).

They have a few abilities that set them apart from the Feronel, the ability to wander into The Nightmare Lands whenever they want, and the ability to reconfigure themselves into the form of certain carrion creatures. They also have the ability to sort of fade into shadows and darkness. They also have a unique feature.

The feature is the easiest to explain. Sokarnel may take up to two levels of Aubernel, Feronel, Loronel, Sarownel or Utenel Talent. This is because they used to be living Nel from another court, and even if they lack the memories of that time, their Gifts might still be shaded with their former nature.

Wandering into The Nightmare Lands whenever they want is pretty easy as well. It's just Jumper built just like we built it for getting into Nel holdings.

Fading into shadows is a little bit more difficult to accurately represent. When Sokarnel enter a shadow it's a lot like the Hide In Plain Sight ability from Pathfinder. It doesn't matter if people are looking at you or not, you more or less disappear. The ultra points heavy way to represent this is using the Link modifier and coupling Insubstantiality and Invisibility together and applying a modifier that says only in shadows and darkness. It's similar to when Contuck moves through clay or Shim melded himself into the counter in the tower. However, the way I'm going to do it is with the Shadow Form advantage. You basically become a two dimensional shadow of yourself and end up resistant to physical effects and have a hard time moving around and physically affecting things. I want this to be an innate effect of Sokarnel, something that just happens automatically. Because it's somewhat uncontrollable, it becomes a disadvantage, rather than an advantage. We also apply the Accessibility: Only In Darkness Or Shadows modifier as well. I'm going to call it a -80% modifier (which reduces the points value of the disadvantage) because becoming a shadow when you are in shadows and darkness isn't really that much of a penalty and it can be relatively easy to avoid shadows and darkness. This is an automatic thing, but I do want the Sokarnel to be able to force themselves into their Nel form if they wish, but I want it to cost them. We apply the Switchable: Usually On enhancement, which means it costs 1 FP a second to turn their shadow form off. This normally increases the cost of an advantage by +5%. We also want to allow the Sokarnel to carry at least their light encumbrance with them in shadow form, so we add Light Encumbrance, which is normally a +10% enhancement. Since the accessibility, encumbrance, and ability to switch out of shadow form are all things that reduce how much Shadow Form penalizes a Sokarnel, they all reduce its value as a disadvantage. Unfortunately, the accessibility one already reduces its value by 80%, and you can't drop the value of an advantage or disadvantage below 20% of normal. This whole thing might change. It's a little wonky. 

Next up is the ability to shapeshift into carrion creatures. For this we use Shapeshifting (Alternate Form). This is the advantage used to represent creatures like werewolves and such. The base value is 15 points. If you're able to transform into a template with fewer points than your racial template, it's just a straight 15 points. If you can transform into something more powerful (like a 0 point human into a 300 point dragon) you pay 15 point plus 90% of the other template's character point value. Since Sokarnel are several hundred character points, Shapeshifting is only going to cost Sokarnel 15 points. The carrion creature forms aren't that special. They're just big bugs and weird insect crow creatures.

The Sokarnel do have a few disadvantages. The first two are Duty. One to Keroen Skathos, and one to Nostathon. Keroen and Nostathon don't really call on the Sokarnel to do much these days, so we go with Quite Rarely for both. The Duty to Keroen also gets the Extremely Hazardous addition. He pretty much uses the Sokarnel for one thing: war and murder festivals and when he does call on them, it's because he's backed into a corner or because he expects them to reduce everything to blood and raw meat.

Sokarnel are also vulnerable to the sun. It is a kind of poison to them. The first way we represent this is with Revulsion, which forces a HT roll every time you are exposed to a substance. Failure means you are at -5 to effective skill with all skill rolls and attribute checks for the next 10 minutes. The points value is based on how common the substance is. Direct sunlight is very common. 

The next way we represent this is with the Weakness disadvantage, which deals HP damage when exposed to a substance. This damage bypasses DR. We go with the highest rate of damage, 1d per minute of exposure, and then modify it based on how common it is. Sunlight is listed as very common with this disadvantage, and triples the value. However, with the innate regeneration of the Sokarnel (1 HP per second), 1d every minute is worthless. I'm going to say the damage happens to the Sokarnel's FP, which reduces the value of the disadvantage, but actually impacts the Nel by reducing its ability to use its Gifts. I think it's appropriate as it simulates the Nel's Gifts/lifeforce draining away under the hostile gaze of the sun. 

Alright, so now we have a rough draft of the Sokarnel and it comes in at 245 character points. Looking back at the Feronel, we see them sitting at 198. As I said before I want the Feronel and Sokarnel to match up points-wise. Normally, this wouldn't be a concern as races are what they are. There's no concept of equality/balance in GURPS. Racial templates are what they are. I'm ignoring this for the Nel because Nel are made out of Gifts. Every aspect of them stems from the Gifts they are composed of being turned to a particular purpose. So if two Nel are made out of the same amount of Gifts they should, in theory, be of roughly the same points value from the game mechanics perspective. Or at last that's what I think. 

So how can we equalize them a bit? I think the first step is to add another DX+1 to the Feronel. This brings us to a 27 point disparity. There's always going to be a slight disparity between the meta-traits, as any of them that add ST are going to be modified slightly when applied to mountain-kin due to their size reducing the cost of the ST, but 27 points is still too much. Derp. The Sokarnel need Disturbing Voice. Their voices are really creepy, all hissing whispers and hoarseness and the sensation of bugs crawling around your ears. This brings the difference down to 17 points. I think I'm comfortable leaving it there, as modifying either template much more kind of edges into adding and subtracting for the sake of adding and subtracting, rather than modifying them for the sake of making them more true to the vision in my head. 

Oh. Whoops. The Sokarnel and Feronel only had Gifts +3 for 39 points, instead of Gifts +5 for 45 points like I had written (which is bad math in the first place as 5x13 = 65, not 45). So some of the above math is off.

So here they are, the meta-traits for the Feronel and Sokarnel. 

Feronel Meta-Trait

212 points

Basic Attributes [80]

• ST+2 [20]
• DX+2 [40]
• HT+2 [20]

Secondary Characteristics [5]

• Will+1 [5]

Advantages [152]

• Damage Resistance 6 (Limited: Cold, -40%) [18]
• Damage Resistance 6 (Limited: Fire/Heat, -40% [18]
• Energy Reserve +5 (Gift) [15]
• Feronel Talent 1 [5]
• Gifts +3 [39]
• Regeneration (Very Fast; Reflexive, +40%; Costs 5 FP/Minute, -50%) [40]
• Upgraded from the base Nel meta-trait.
• Telecommunication (Telesend; Contuck Only, -40%; Gifts, -5% [17]

Disadvantages [-25]

• Berserk (Self-Control: 12, x1) [-10]
• Bloodlust (Self-Control: 12, x1) [-10]
• Code of Honor (Feronel's or Loria's) [-5]

Sokarnel Meta-Trait

229 points

Basic Attributes [40]

• ST+2 [20]
• HT+2 [20]

Secondary Characteristics [10]

• Will+2 [10]

Advantages [247]

• Damage Resistance 6 (Limited: Cold, -40%) [18]
• Damage Resistance 6 (Limited: Fire/Heat, -40% [18]
• Dark Vision [25]
• Energy Reserve +5 (Gift) [15]
• Jumper (World; Costs 2 FP, -20%; Gifts, -5%; Limited Access: The Nightmare Lands And Back Only, -20%) [55]
• Shapeshifting (Alternate Form; Carrion Creatures) [15]
• Sokarnel Talent 1 [5]
• Gifts +3 [39]
• Regeneration (Very Fast; Reflexive, +40%; Costs 5 FP/Minute, -50%) [40]
• Upgraded from the base Nel meta-trait.
• Telecommunication (Telesend; Nostathon Only, -40%; Gifts, -5% [17]

Disadvantages [-68]

• Disturbing Voice [-10]
• Duty (Keroen Skathos; Quite Rarely: 6; Extremely Hazardous) [-7]
• Duty (Nostathon; Quite Rarely: 6) [-2]
• Revulsion (Very Common: Direct Sunlight) [-15]
• Shadow Form (Light Encumbrance, -10%; Accessibility: Only In Darkness/Shadows, -80%; Switchable: Usually On, -5%) [-4]
• Weakness (1d/Minute; Very Common: Direct Sunlight, x3; FP Only, -50%) [-30]

Feature: The Sokarnel may purchase up to two levels of the Aubernel, Feronel, or Utenel Talent. The choice of talent denotes the court affiliation the Sokarnel had in life.