Friday, November 13, 2020

Paranormal PC Quirks

Roll a d30 at character creation:

  1. When you close your eyes, you can see invisible things...and nothing else, because your eyes are closed.
  2. When first clothed for the day, one pocket is always mysteriously full of sand.
  3. You know one additional language, with the following caveats: You can only write it with your non-dominant hand (ambidextrous characters have a 50/50 chance of either hand being the one that can write it). You can only read it with your non-dominant eye (50/50 chance of either if you don't have a dominant eye). You can only understand it in its spoken form by hearing it in one ear (it has to be on the same side as either the hand that writes it or the eye that reads it - player's choice). You can only speak it when you bleed.
  4. Your fingerprints are identical to those of every other player character who rolls this result, and to the first NPC you meet who has never been met by any player character before.
  5. Any metal surface you touch is noticeably slightly warmer that it should be, even accounting for your body heat, for d10 minutes afterward.
  6. Your body is just incredibly unique, and doesn't necessarily match the genetics of your parents. Your belly button is an "outie," your hair has a counterclockwise whorl, each of your hands has a single palmar crease, your blood type is AB positive/AB negative/ RH null (player's choice), you have no wisdom teeth, you have an extra rib and a preauricular sinus and palmaris longus muscles, and cilantro tastes like soap to you. Your eyes also have at least one of the following features (player's choice):
    1. Complete heterochromia
    2. Segmental heterochromia
    3. Central heterochromia
    4. Gray
  7. One day of each week, no one can remember your name without some kind of exterior prompt like seeing it in writing; seeing or talking to you doesn't count. Roll a d8 for the day:
    1. Monday
    2. Tuesday
    3. Wednesday
    4. Thursday
    5. Friday
    6. Saturday
    7. Sunday
    8. Player's choice
  8. Once a day, you can cause one human being in your line of sight to have hiccups for 3d20 minutes if they fail a saving throw vs. paralysis. This requires no gestures, only a deliberate mental trigger.
  9. The first time your HP is reduced to 0 (or whatever amount would normally kill you), roll a d10: on a 1 or 2 you die as normal, but otherwise you regain half of your maximum HP. The next time you would normally die from HP loss, roll a d10 and only die on a roll of 1 to 3, then the next time you die on a roll of 1 to 4, and so on. The ninth death definitely sticks.
  10. Your shadow is always (roll d6):
    1. Darker than it should be, even pitch-black sometimes.
    2. Lighter than it should be, even somewhat transparent sometimes.
    3. Longer than it should be.
    4. Shorter than it should be.
    5. Changing size and shape subtly if exactly one person looks at it, but returning to normal before anyone else can see it or the viewer can be certain they saw anything unusual.
    6. Moving dramatically when no one but you is looking at it.
  11. Blood tastes delicious to you, drinking blood does not trigger nausea or cause an iron overdose, and you receive an additional saving throw with a +4 bonus against contracting any bloodborne diseases (even receiving a saving throw if you normally wouldn't get one at all).
  12. You've somehow gone your entire life up to now without experiencing physical pain. This is because things that would normally cause a small amount of physical pain instead cause an equally compelling share of emotional "pain" or distress, and only things that would hurt at least a moderate amount register as "literal" pain. You've never been injured enough to overcome this pain "threshold." But now's your chance!
  13. You have wildly changing luck. Whenever you fail a roll on which you don't have advantage or disadvantage, you gain advantage on your next roll. Whenever you succeed on a roll on which you don't have advantage or disadvantage, you suffer disadvantage on your next roll.
  14. Your dreams always consist only of an accurate recreation of everything you experienced since the last time you dreamed. (Well, except for your very first dream, which covered everything from your birth up to that point.) You live everything twice.
  15. Once per day, you can make every domesticated animal within earshot come to you and try to get you to pet them by saying "pspspsps."
  16. Your ability scores are each increased by 1 point while you are exposed to sunlight. Your ability scores are each decreased by 1 point for ten minutes after you speak, with the timer resetting if you speak again during this "cooldown period."
  17. There is a second consciousness or personality inside of your brain. You cannot read their thoughts except those they choose to mentally "speak" to you, and vice versa. They cannot directly control your body, but they experience all of your sensory input while they are "awake." They "sleep" the same amount as a normal person, but this never occurs while you sleep, so they experience what you miss while you slumber, and you have a period of privacy during your waking hours. Each of you always knows when the other is awake or asleep.
  18. You're an expert ventriloquist and can do spot-in impersonations of the voices and mannerisms of others. Your voice can realistically imitate a variety of sound effects, too. This is all instinctual and not the result of practice. You have no original voice of your own, although you may have chosen a specific impression as your "default," and others might not know its origin.
  19. You have an unerring sense of time. You'd know the exact hour even deep underground, and you can count the passage of zeptoseconds flawlessly (even if you don't know for sure what a zeptosecond is). You have perfect rhythm, naturally.
  20. You can bend spoons and keys and similar small objects just like Uri Geller, except for real.
  21. Your voice echoes more than usual, even in places where it shouldn't echo at all.
  22. While touching another non-supernatural animal, you experience all of the creature's sensory input.
  23. No insects, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, spiders, woodlice, mites, or ticks will ever willingly bite or sting you. All venomous snakes and lizards you encounter will make biting you their number one priority, even above survival.
  24. You know the exact distance and direction to one particular living being at all times. Once per week, you can change which person this is, provided the new target is within your line of sight or earshot.
  25. Your outer layer of dead skin is incredibly hydrophobic, so the outside of your body is never really wet. Somehow, this doesn't seem to cause any health problems - your skin doesn't even look or feel particularly dry even though it literally is. Any clothes you wear become hydrophobic as well until removed.
  26. Eldritch forces are constantly reshaping you for unknown purposes. Reroll a random ability score every day.
  27. You were born under a bad sign. Pick a zodiac sign: you must behave in accordance with the worst stereotypes about that sign.
  28. You've found a way to bargain with some god of chance. Once per game, you can change the result of one of your rolls to the best possible result or change the result of one roll that negatively affects you to the best possible result for you. In exchange, your next d3 rolls will automatically be the worst possible result(s).
  29. Roughly speaking, you perceive orange as what others would consider blue, and vice versa. Same for the red-green and purple-yellow pairs. But how would you even know?
  30. You're a p-zombie. Although you are indistinguishable from a normal human as far as others can tell, you have no sentience or conscious experience or inner life. The light's on, but nobody's home. So yeah, there's no meaningful difference between you and other characters in the game.

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