5  Traits

Also trying for the less-is-more approach. Thinking:

[Maybe a trait’s degree is the number of skills of that trait’s type that a unit can have? And the degree of the primary skill is their trait’s degree, a secondary is one less, etc. So, a 3° unit would have 3° primary skill, a 2° secondary, and a 1° tertiary. But a 2° unit would have a 2° primary, a 1°secondary, and no more skills of that trait type.]

5.1 Genetic Modification

Not only have Humans naturally warmed to a toasty range of browns with few extremes in color1, but they have artificially accelerated this:

Mean People

Meaner Still

Everyone is pretty pretty. Everyone is pretty fit and has a pretty low risk of mental illness2. After many well-minded government intentions to implement similar strategies failed, one to commodify this into exactly what people wanted nearly inadvertently also included some healthy gene options. Symmetrical faces and all that.

(Of course, this is only true of the Substrate through genetic drift3. There, it’s the Anthropic natural environment that drives selection. With sometimes interesting results4. And the Normal society does benefit from that “natural” genetic pool.

But still. People are most all of an attractive—if smallish—stature.

Further genetic modifications are also possible. Good ones aren’t cheap, though, since they have to integrate cutting-edge prototypes into very specific genetic integration with the host. And since they are so expensive, the cost incidentally raises because modifiers don’t want to hurt the children of their wealthy benefactors. Abortions are still common, though, among those seeking more advanced Humans. They are therefore uncommon at lower degrees5.

  • (Based on some system I’ve not gotten around to yet,) maybe 1 point per degree above 5° to use for this? can be devoted to modifying the genes of that unit, changing how it interacts with the environment.

5.1.1 Stir the Pot

When creating a unit, a Player or GM can decide to stir the genetic pot for that unit. This allows one, 2D roll on the following table:

Roll Result
01 Psychotic, sec-psychotic

Psychotic

The unit gains 1 – 3° in Influence.

Whenever the unit is attacked in combat, the psychotic unit must roll against its Influence6 : - Failure (i.e., the unit rolled above its Influence degree): No effect - Success (i.e., the unit rolled below its Influence degree): The psychotic target’s defenses are reduced by the degree of the roll for the rest of the combat scenario. This effect is cumulative.

5.1.2 Proclivity

Not sure how to do this yet. Makes improving one trait especially easy.

5.1.3 Genius

  • Whenever a unit gains a specialization in that particular trait, they can roll against the degree of that new specialization
    • Failure: The unit does not gain an additional specialization
    • Success, either:
      • A random 2° specialization in that particular trait
      • A random specialization of the degree of the natural roll in a randomly-chosen trait
  • A Player raises a unit’s Fortitude, its area of genius, to 5, thus earning a 1° specialization.
  • The Player rolls against that 1° skills and gets a 1. Yay, free 1° specialization in a random trait, or a 2° in Fortitude.
  • They opt for the 2° Fortitude specialization7
  • They have also gotten an additional specialization in their ares of genius, letting the Player roll yet again.
  • Were they to make this roll, they would gain a specialization of the degree of the roll (a 1 or 2) in a random trait or go with that cheat roll. Create some super human with a bunch of little weird superpowers in one thing.

5.1.4 Radical

The unit has a very unique specialization. X-Men kind of stuff. Well, like a 1° X-Man8, but still.

5.1.5 Acute

Doubles the degree of all Specifications within a given trait.

5.1.6 Resistant

That trait and all specializations in it are especially well defended against attacks.

  • The degree of this modification is a permanent defense mod to all attacks against it of a well-specified type, like acidic or at least ballistic.

5.2 Agility

5.2.1 Specializations

  • Manual dexterity
  • Swiftness
    • Maybe trait roll once per round to gain an additional move-flavored AP
  • Balance
  • Ellusiveness (in covert situations)
    • Can mod reveal rolls in combat
  • Evasion (in battle)
  • Nimble
    • Mod hand-to-hand melee combat defense rolls

5.3 Fortitude

5.3.1 Specializations

  • Hardiness
    • Can resist diseases, starvation, etc.
    • Maybe do a trait roll to not loose an HP?
  • Strength
    • Mod hand-to-hand combat attack rolls
  • Obstinate
    • Resists morale failures?
  • Endurance
    • Can run longer? Stay awake longer?
    • Higher levels can be from nearly limitless lactate thresholds in muscles, allowing them to never feel tired
  • Moral
    • Resist Blattid attacks?
  • Courage
    • Maybe can resist suppression?

5.4 Influence

  • Influence can be used to raise or lower the Anthropic degree of a given space.
    • Successful rolls will move the degree up to the magnitude of the success

5.4.1 Specializations

  • Charismatic
  • Attractive
  • Cunning
    • Can influence others, but high-risk / high-gain (maybe coutnered by intelligence rolls? Especially Perceptive or Understanding)
  • Persuasive
    • Less powerful than cunning, but less dangerous
  • Artistic
  • Adaptable
    • Can blend in?

5.5 Intelligence

Intelligence subsumes perceptiveness: If a species simply has very powerful sensors (e.g., it can see really far) and an ability to process those sensations accurately and well, it can have an advance form on intelligent, often including the mass/distributed processing of that advanced information. If the complexity, severity, and predictability of the environment are all high enough, highly-perceptive species could evolve a high group intelligence.

5.5.1 Specializations

  • Perceptive
    • Can mod recon rolls
  • Understanding
    • Maybe mod experience point (EP) rolls
  • Knowledgeable
    • Must note either general knowledge or a (broad) area of knowledge
  • Willful
    • Mod suppression?
    • Resist Blattid attacks?
  • Intuitive
    • Also mod recon rolls?
  • Nimble

  1. Yes, their are certainly not few Humans who’ve been modified to be blue or to fluoresce. But that’s mostly 2°s & 3°s whose parents imposed their fads on their children.↩︎

  2. And pretty small in stature. Like looking at classical XXXL shirts with astonishment.↩︎

  3. What a good name for a courtesan unit.↩︎

  4. In Cambria, that’s where psionics start.↩︎

  5. In Taurus, the Decider bicker about how their genetic precision is diluted by their need to mate with lower degree people.↩︎

  6. Or Copilot’s suggestion: “the attacker must roll against the degree of the unit’s Influence. If the attacker fails, the unit can use its Influence to redirect the attack to another target of its choice.”↩︎

  8. Needs to sleep for 15 minutes a day, never forgets a face, can freely dislocate any joint, is venomous, that sort of stuff.↩︎