​Creature Features

The abilities listed here are all about the basic nastiness found in a number of beastly and monstrous creatures in the Dresdenverse.

### **Addictive Saliva [–1]**

**Description:** Your saliva is a powerful narcotic, leaving a victim insensate in the short term. With just a little more exposure, your victim goes straight from senseless to senselessly addicted. For those poor saps, detoxing is a bitch—it’s easier, and more pleasant, just to play along with whatever you demand of them.

**Skills Affected: Fists, Deceit.**

**Effects:**

***Narcotic Saliva.*** You may use your narcotic saliva in a number of ways. The most common way in a fight is to spit it at your target or get close enough to lick him. This is handled with the Fists skill in either case and may only be done to someone in the same zone as you—preferably in very close physical proximity— and it is rolled as a maneuver. If successful, you place a temporary aspect on the target representing the momentary effects of your venom.

Alternatively, you may make a Fists attack—setting aside any damage bonus you might have—to inflict mental stress instead of physical stress. Any consequences resulting from such an attack represent the more lasting effects of the venom—if you score a moderate consequence or worse, or if you take your target out, you’ve really gotten your hooks into him (see below).

Typically, however, this saliva is administered out of combat—usually with an act of intimacy (kissing) or unintentional ingestion (spiking the punch). Roll Deceit with a +2 bonus against the victim’s Discipline. This is considered a “consequential contest”; if you win, you inflict a relevant consequence (usually Addicted) on the victim, severity determined by the contest. Addicts are in pretty bad shape when dealing with you—you don’t even need to spend fate points to take advantage of this. You get to tag their addiction aspect every time you enter a new scene with your new victim/pal, making it very easy to gain—and keep—the upper hand.

### **Claws [–1]**

**Description:** You have claws, fangs, or other natural weapons that let you add damage when attacking with your “bare” hands.

**Note:** Unless you have the ability to conceal your nature or change your shape (whether through Flesh Mask, shapeshifting powers, or the application of a Glamour), your claws are always visible.

**Skills Affected:** Fists .

**Effects:**

***Natural Weapons.*** You have claws (or something similar) that do +1 physical stress on a successful hit. This bonus stacks with any advantages due to **Strength** abilities or other powers or stunts that boost the damage of a Fists attack.

***Venomous [–1].*** Your claws are venomous. Make a Fists maneuver; if successful, the target gains a Poisoned aspect. In each subsequent exchange, the target must roll Endurance to defend against an attack from the poison equal to your **Fists** score. Once the target concedes or is taken out (falling unconscious), the attacks stop (see page 203 for guidelines on being taken out). However, the damage is already done; without proper medical attention, a taken out victim will die soon (within a few hours, perhaps less), though not immediately. Proper medical attention will remove the aspect and end the effect. This is an opposed roll—you can roll Fists (since that was the skill for the original attack) to set the difficulty to mitigate the poison.

### **Diminutive Size [–1]**

**Description:** You’re very small, or able to become very small at will if you’re a shapeshifter— at the very largest, you’re dwarfed by even a small human child.

**Note:** This ability is always in effect unless you have the ability to shapeshift.

**Skills Affected:** Alertness, Endurance, Investigation, Might, Stealth, combat skills.

**Effects:**

***Hard to Detect.*** You gain +4 to Stealth attempts to remain hidden.

***Small is Big.*** Being small, you’re much better at picking up on very small details, gaining a +2 to any perception (Alertness, Investigation) rolls needed to spot them.

***Wee.*** While small, your Endurance skill is taken to be no greater than Mediocre for the purpose of determining your health stress capacity. Your ability to manipulate objects and other uses of the Might skill are considered relative to creatures of your small size, rather than human sized. (Since most difficulties are determined for humans, this will usually impose a penalty between –2 and –4, or in some cases, forbid the use of Might at all.)

When your size is a factor in combat, you can only inflict 1 physical stress per attack (but this could be improved by damage bonuses from weapons and the like). Your ability to cross distances (using Athletics) is unaffected, but you gain a +1 to Athletics for dodging.

### **Echoes of the Beast [–1]**

**Description:** Some part of you is a beast, an animal—often due to shapechanging abilities or something similar. This brings along the benefits of that animal’s senses.

**Musts:** Define the type of beast you share a kinship with at the time you take this ability.

**Skills Affected:** Varies, but usually Alertness, Investigation, and Survival.

**Effects:**

***Beast Senses.*** Whether in human form or otherwise, your senses are strongly tuned in a fashion fitting a particular type of beast (you must specify the senses when you take the ability, based on what the beast is known to have). Whenever it seems reasonable that you’d have some sort of beast-born advantage of the senses (for example, a keen sense of smell while making an Alertness or Investigation roll), you get a +1 on the roll.

***Beast Trappings.*** You are able to do one minor thing that normal people can’t do, related to the abilities of your beast-kin. This might be tracking by scent (for a wolf or other predator), finding your way around while blind or in total darkness (like a bat), or hiding in plain sight (like a chameleon). This ability works like an extra skill trapping for the skill of your choice.

Alternately, you can choose a skill trapping that already exists and create a circumstance under which you gain a +1 on the roll that fits your beast kinship. For example, you might say that, because you’re kin to leopards, you gain a +1 to Stealth when barefoot.

***Beast Friend.*** You may achieve at least an instinctual understanding (if not actual communication) with beasts of a similar type. This can allow you to make assessment actions (see page 115) to suss out a particular animal’s motives.

### **Living Dead [–1]**

**Description:** You’re dead, but you keep walking around. It’s kind of gross.

**Musts:** You’ve got to be dead.

**Effects:**

***Corpse Body.*** Your body is a corpse. This means that you cannot recover from consequences with time, because your body does not regenerate. Any physical consequences you suffer are permanent until you take some kind of effort to remove them (know any good taxidermists?) or seek supernatural assistance to reconstruct your body.

***Death is a Nuisance.*** Unless wholly destroyed or killed by special means, you’re already dead, and that doesn’t seem to have fazed you much. No “death” result is ever permanent unless special means are used (usually as determined by your creature type).

***Dude! You’re Dead!*** And that’s pretty scary to a lot of people. When dealing with folks unaccustomed to the walking dead (and that’s most “regular” people), gain a +1 on Intimidation. The downside? Take a –1 penalty on nearly every other social skill (except Deceit). For every level of physical consequence you’ve sustained, increase the penalty/bonus by –1/+1. That said, the effect is short-lived with any one target—as they become accustomed to a reality where the dead walk, they eventually become inured to it as an *additional* reason to be terrified.

### **Pack Instincts [-1]**

**Description:** You are part of a pack and share a certain kind of unspoken, animal communication with one another.

**Musts:** You must define who is in your pack, and they all must share this ability.

**Skills Affected:** Alertness, Investigation, others.

**Effects:**

***Pack Communion.*** When near another member of your pack, gain +1 to your Alertness. When in the same zone as others of your pack, you may communicate with one another wordlessly. Only single words and simple concepts may be communicated: *attack, protect, follow, distract.* By focusing your senses, you may make an Investigation roll to pick out the approximate location of others of your pack. When ambushed, if any one of your pack spots the ambush (by succeeding at an Alertness roll), all packmates are considered to have won the Alertness roll as well.

### **Supernatural Sense [–1]**

**Description:** You have a supernatural sense of some sort, enabling you to detect something no one could normally detect (e.g., smell hope), or to perceive something normally in situations where you otherwise couldn’t (see in complete darkness).

**Musts:** With each supernatural sense, you must identify whether this is a purely mystical sense (using Lore) or a more physical sense (using Investigation and Alertness as appropriate).

**Note:** The sense you define can’t be a “gamebreaker” without the GM’s approval—no “hear someone’s True Name in their heartbeat,” probably no “see through walls.” Alternatively, such things might be possible, but they should probably cost an extra one or two refresh at least. A number of abilities already encompass some portion of supernatural sensory ability. Don’t purchase this ability unless it’s clearly something extra, above and beyond what you already enjoy from your other abilities.

**Skills Affected:** Alertness, Lore, Investigation.

**Effects:**

***Strange Sense.*** In situations where you might be penalized or otherwise told that it’s impossible to sense something, you can nevertheless attempt to sense the thing you’ve defined, without penalty.