Resonant Deviances

Resonant Deviance Unlock Criteria

This section is here to help GMs delegate and reward these abilities to players without breaking their game. It is suggested that GMs consider whether or not they want to include them at all, as some can seriously disrupt the plot. Below are several examples of how characters can gain these abilities. As a GM, choose which of these three to offer into the pool of Deviances the player may select at the end of the session.

Trigger

Character takes at least 1 Wound in damage from a Resonant ability.

Character takes at least 1 Will in damage from a Resonant ability.

Character takes at least 1 Wane in damage from a Resonant ability.

Character is displaced, reversed, or paused by a Resonant effect.

Description

Something breaks—more than bone. In the heat of pain, the skin of the world peels back.

You fall out of step. A breath held too long by time itself.

Your name falls out of your head. Your shape flickers.

Your thoughts stutter, then spiral—and bloom. Not quite madness, not quite sanity. You are opened.

Abilities

Dirge Engine, Erosion Chord, Living Rune

Infant Cipher, Divine Crucible, Echo Matrix

Hymn of Silence, Hollow Name, Thoughtweave

Chronos Cadence, Harmonic Redux, Paint Reality

• Tier 1 : A nearby NPC or player forgets an important allegiance until the end of the session.

• Tier 2 : You hum a tune and machines nearby purge their data. This information cannot be recovered.

• Tier 3 : You focus vibrations to erase a person, place, or thing you have encountered in the campaign. Anyone that mentions these topics from now on takes 2 Wane in damage for struggling against the new cosmic narrative.

• Tier 1 : Immediately pass the next task you were about to attempt, regardless if you had any dice in your Dice Pool or not.

• Tier 2 : Imprint your psychic essence upon a painted likeness. If you are reduced to 0 in Wounds, Will, or Wane, you may immediately vanish and reappear at the artwork’s location, taking the damage as normal.

• Tier 3 : Take a turn as the GM with limitations. You cannot pull items from thin air or shrink the moon into your pocket, but you can make enemies throw down their arms or walk off a cliff before they come to their senses.

• Tier 1 : Cause an enemy to join your side until the scene ends. Target cannot be the leader of the enemy combatants but obeys your commands absolutely.

• Tier 2 : Use this Ability immediately after the party has taken your advice. All ally rolls succeed until the end of the turn.

• Tier 3 : Cause a faction to change their established mission statement or current critical objective.

• Tier 1 : Make a lock, security system, or minor barrier decay rapidly into dust.

• Tier 2 : Collapse a structure, fortification, or instantly increase the Age Index of an organic creature to Echo.

• Tier 3 : Shift tectonic plates with vibrational resonance to cause a localized cataclysm. Can take the form of an earthquake, tsunami, or volcanic eruption at GM discretion. You and your allies receive no form of protection from this event.

• Tier 1 : Inscribe a glyph to a surface to provide a glimpse into the cosmos. This causes all who witness it to become panicked and question their existence. Lower their Will and Wane by 1 point, but they are immune to the effects of this and further glyphs until the end of the session. Glyphs fade at the end of the session and are rendered inert.

• Tier 2 : Art you create challenges the human condition on such a deep level that some people begin to slowly starve to death upon first witnessing it, while others flee in terror. It is often worshipped by cultists or treated as terrorism by first world countries, causing complications should your name be attached to it.

• Tier 3 : You choose a narrow perspective of a cosmic truth to force your own narrative. Change the backstory or invent a story that others believe they witnessed about an NPC or player character. Players and NPCs take 2 Will and Wane damage if they speak about this event.

• Tier 1 : Rewind a single character or NPC's turn. They can make new choices, although repeated actions still require new dice rolls.

• Tier 2 : Prevent the death of a character or NPC, or prevent an Injury Deviance.

• Tier 3 : Revert a character to a previous Age Index (to a maximum of Seed), or reverse the GM decision on the outcome of a single session. NPCs and characters affected are fully aware of the shift, and suffer from the famous Mandela Effect when think too deeply about it.

• Tier 1 : Restore all lost Will or Wane. Anything recovered this way must be done retroactively to an NPC or character of your choice within sight.

• Tier 2 : Recover all Wounds or prevent your own death. All enemies within sight take damage equal to the Wounds recovered this way.

• Tier 3 : You gain a number of dice to all Dice Pools equal to your total lost Wounds, Will, and Wane until the end of the session. This cannot exceed Dice Pools of six.

• Tier 1 : Automatically pass a single action or task that you have previously succeeded in, even if the TN is significantly different.

• Tier 2 : Secretly ask the GM for a hidden plot point specific to the scene you are in. You may reveal this to other players, if you do, they take a point of Wane damage as they are exposed to the Divine Resonance.

• Tier 3 : Your eyes acclimate to the flow of fate and you begin to swim. You may choose when you want to take your actions in combat, whether they are in proper turn order or not. Your attacks cannot miss, and you cannot be struck by conventional weapons that rely on coordination until the end of the session. You may instead grant this ability to another, in which case they take 3 points of Wane damage at the end of the session for staring fully into the Divine Design without proper attunement.

• Tier 1 : People often recognize you, even when they shouldn't. Strangers may mistake you for an old friend, a distant relative, or even a feared rival. You may choose to lean into this mistaken identity to automatically succeed an Influence check against the target.

• Tier 2 : Commit any act you could accomplish otherwise with no direct consequences for your character. Kill a high profile rival, rob a bank, or commit high treason. No one will ever connect you to it.

• Tier 3 : You appear however you like to others, although your physical form remains the same. They are unable to tell you apart from the real thing on any level without using a Resonate Deviance to see your true form. If confronted with the individual you are imitating you will always be mistaken for the real person.

• Tier 1 : You see things in harsh truths with subtlety or nuance. You may ask the GM the allegiance of a character or their motives in the scene you are in, however you may only phrase it in a way that you get a one-word answer.

• Tier 2 : Reveal a deep personal truth about an NPC or player character, they lose all actions in the current turn and 1 Wane.

• Tier 3 : At the start of a session you may ask the GM three questions about the upcoming game. If you repeat or elude to any of this information those listening lose 1 Wane for each answer you reveal.

• Tier 1 : Succeed on an Engineering or Craft check without making a roll. Anything created or reinforced this way has double the durability it normally would.

• Tier 2 : Vibrating the nearby atoms with Divine Resonance, you cause objects to hit their flash point and flesh to spontaneously combust. Deals 1 Wound and Will damage each turn in an area of your choosing up until the end of the session. Appears as a violent heat distortion unless it has fuel to burn.

• Tier 3 : You collapse matter into a finite point in space, sending the energy to the Architect. Create a miniature black hole that sucks away everyone and everything within it. You may choose the size, but it must use a diameter to be measured. Anyone within the diameter at the start of the next turn are removed from the game along with all of their equipment and trinkets.

• Tier 1 : Gain a Skill until the end of the scene that matches the an NPC or player character. Gain two Skills this way instead if your character is in the Echo Age Index.

• Tier 2 : Have an intensely detailed and accurate hallucination of a past event in its entirety, or view it from different perspectives. You may also view the intent of anyone involved if you are in the Echo Age Index.

• Tier 3 : Reveal a cosmic truth. All witnessing the event take 2 points of Wane damage immediately. At the end of the session, the GM must offer at least two Resonate Deviances to choose from to each character or NPC that survived, (though they must still choose an Injury Deviance if one is present). Lower this damage to 1 point for any character in the Echo Age Index.

Channeling the divine forces of the cosmos is not for the weak of spirit. Unlike with Bionic Deviances that trigger Feedback penalties on a critical fail, or Somnic abilities that trigger these affects when Concentration is broken, Resonant Feedback penalties occur every time the corresponding ability is used. Each time a player or NPC uses a Resonant ability, the GM rolls 1d10 on the tables below to reveal the full weight of their actions.