Offdriver Pre-release

Description

+Sensory, +Luck, +Will*

*Choose from among all three when determining your two Class-based Personality Traits (the final may come from any Stat).

“Up the airy mountain, | Down the rushy glen, | We daren’t go a-hunting | For fear of little men.”

— — The Fairies, William Allingham

You are an offbeat fairy hunter, capturing, repelling, or eliminating capricious magical beings just beyond the view of mundane society. You are wildly effective against supernatural creatures, with many ways to flush out, trick, and cripple them, but this highly-specialized skillset leaves you with few tools against more mundane threats.

Conduits designing a mission for you should shoot for an interesting mix of threats. An obvious supernatural enemy isn’t always mandatory, since you can easily find one yourself, so if the Conduit wants to really challenge you they could instead focus on making smart, nuanced enemies that are harder for you to outfox.

Grounded in the relatively uncommon trope of fairy exterminators alongside a heavy dose of traditional folklore, particularly from the British Isles.

Examples from games and pop culture include:

  • Truants (FAE)
  • Big Jack Horner (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish)
  • Gargamel (Smurfs)
  • Artemis Fowl (eponymous)
  • Mr. Crocker (Fairly OddParents)
  • Cia (Hyrule Warriors)
  • Wizards of the Black Circle (Winx Club)

Challenge Level: High

Edition: Advent v2

Public: Yes

Signature Gear

Base Gear

Reversible Coat

Base

Knee-length overcoat with a drab exterior and patterned interior.

  • While worn right side out, makes mundane beings less likely to notice the owner (Mid Impact).
  • While worn inside out, gives the user a High Ward against magical forms of detection, identification, and similar.
  • The owner may walk (not run) backwards as quickly and easily as they can walk forwards.

Pinshooter

Base

Semiautomatic airgun, firing with a pop. Shoots small tacks, which embed with a sting but only leave shallow wounds, ineffective against physical armor.

Ammunition
Mid
Effective Range
Mid
Accuracy Boost
Mid
  • Almost perfectly bypasses magical defenses.
  • Embedded tacks minorly prevent the target from using magic, scaling up to Mid based on how many are embedded and the size of the target. (e.g. A human would require 5 tacks to even reach Low Impact; a rat-sized creature would reach Mid Impact after just one.)

Bottled Fairies

Base

Tiny supernatural beings trapped in bottles. Can hold a conversation through the glass.

Uses
2x
  • When first relevant, Pitch, in broad strokes, a trapped fairy’s behavior, powers, and how it was acquired.
  • Convince the fairy (by any means) to grant a Pitched, Low Impact magical benefit if released.
    • If insufficiently convinced, will instead hit the owner with a Pitched, Low Impact magical curse when released.
    • Immediately flees after doing either of the above. The empty bottle may be reused to capture a new, fitting target, refreshing one Use.

Elective Gear

Hobnail Boots

Elective

Tough, iron-cleated footwear.

Stomp Power Boost
Mid
Traction Boost
Mid
  • Provides a Mid Ward against hostile, ambient magic.
  • Any being or object pinned down under one of these boots is physically enfeebled, and other beings are compelled not to interfere while the owner does so (Mid Impact).

Butterfly Net

Elective
  • Captures a nonhuman creature on contact, shrinking it to a tiny size and negating its ability to harm the net while within.
    • Renders the target incapable of anything but trying to escape the net, which takes up to a Mid Duration scaling on the target’s original size and power. Exceptionally powerful targets escape immediately, breaking the net.
    • Creatures larger than a horse cannot be affected.

Mouser

Elective

Tough, ornery barn cat, primed to hunt small creatures and with a particular taste for magical ones.

Deadliness Boost
Mid
Sneakiness Boost
Mid
Magic Resist Boost
High
  • Does not heed commands but still controlled primarily by the player.
  • Inclined to occasionally bring its owner dead creatures as trophies. Whenever it does so, similar creatures become terrified of this cat and it gains a Ward against any attack made by them (Mid Impact).

Abilities

Lay Bare

Reveal a peculiar local being to be a supernatural being in disguise; they become very hostile to the user as well as desperate to conceal their true nature from others.

Essence Cost
Mid
Cooldown
Mid

Paired Action: Physically disturb the target’s body, Pitching their true nature plus a telltale sign of it that is revealed and some thematic Quirks with Mid total Impact.

  • Manifestations the target uses that are thematic to their Pitched true nature are notably Boosted (Mid Impact), though they will only ever willingly use these while trying to harm the user.
    • The target’s hostility towards the user is superseded by their desire to hide their true nature, especially from other locals.
    • The Pitched supernatural being must be either appropriate to the locale or grounded in the user’s Backstory.
  • The user may target themselves by also portraying a Turning Point grappling with their own fey nature, with behavioral Quirks becoming a potent Altered State. This limits the effects to a Low Duration and sets the Essence Cost to High.

Object of Desire

Enchant an object to be actively coveted by supernatural locals and also gain a Low Ward against mundane locals.

Essence Cost
Low
Duration
Mid
Cooldown
Mid

Paired Action: Whisper a short, fitting incantation into the object.

  • Covetousness has Low–High Impact, scaling on how fitting the Paired Action is. Has no effect on supernatural beings that the affected object is not thematically appropriate to.
    • When used, the user may choose for the covetousness to also affect physiologically mundane beings who are magically-gifted (instead of the Ward).

As It Was

Wipe evidence of magical activity from a single source within an area, dispelling lingering effects and causing local witnesses to forget that they saw it.

Essence Cost
Mid–High
Range
Mid
Cooldown
Mid–High

Paired Action: Completely neutralize the magic’s source within the area (by killing it, capturing it, removing it, or whatever else).

  • Cost & Cooldown scale with the extent of evidence being wiped/lingering magic being dispelled.
    • Physical damage caused by the magic (to people and objects) remains.
  • Range does not apply to witnesses: all locals who saw the affected magic have their memory of it wiped.
  • The affected area gains a High Ward against the magic’s source, preventing it from returning.