Guiding the Dead

If your psychic characters are looking for a new tool to play around with I've come up with a little something they might enjoy.

It's fairly vague and not to heavy on crunch. What it can do exactly I'll leave up to you since I'm not sure what all would come up in your campaign and I'm sure you know better than I do.
 I tried to write it fairly system agnostic but there might be some villains and vigilantes specific terms in there since that's what I play.
Full disclosure, a lot of this is borrowed from the Farscape character Stark.

I've been watching the show a lot lately.

Psychopomp: The character has a natural connection to the dead and dying.


This ability can be used to see the souls of the recently deceased as well as spirits that roam the earth and refuse to leave.

Ghosts, ghouls and other haunts can hide themselves from the psychopomp but he can find them with a detect hidden check, an attack as mind control, or whatever search system you prefer.

Psychopomps are able to detect when a person is close to death and can guide a dying person to their afterlife if they are in close physical proximity.

This does not hasten the dying process but instead gives the individual spiritual peace and a death without pain. In return the Psychopomp receives a spiritual "echo" from the person. This echo is a limited copy of the person's essence and has their thoughts, memories, skills and emotions compounded. Psychopomp's can access these echoes for their own means. Not everything in the person's mind will be available however and generally the better a Psychopomp is at guiding the person to peace the more likely they will find what they want in the spiritual echo.

The full limits of a Psychopomp's abilities are unknown. They are often highly skilled at exorcising spirits still haunting the earth, dealing with all kinds of intangible enemies, and finding the shortcuts that connect between the realms of the living and the dead.

Due to their connection to death, Psychopomp's have been known to experience mental trauma when close to mass slaughter.

Flames of the Phoenix

Any attempt at gaming this summer is still on hiatus, but today I had an interesting idea of how phoenixes might fit into my campaign. The result is a bit of lore as well as a new toy for the players to get their hands on.

The Lore: Phoenixes are capable of taking on three separate forms. The first is a large bird of prey with scarlet feathers. This more traditional form has healing properties in both its feathers and tears but they are rarely given up easily.

The second form is a humanoid appearance with tanned skin and bright red, feathery hair.

Its most destructive form is of pure fire and light. This can theoretically be in any shape but often forms something resembling its human or bird shapes.

In either of its physical forms a phoenix can manipulate and produce flame and is capable of learning other types of spells as well. It can remain in its human or bird shapes indefinitely but taking on its firey form can burn up its supply of magical energy unless it takes time to rest.

Symbolizing destruction, death, rebirth, and life, phoenixes are notoriously difficult to kill. If one is hit with a fatal blow (or even dies of old age or starvation) its body erupts in fire and light. This engulfs its surroundings and often any foes responsible for the phoenix's death. After its body burns up, the remains restore themselves in a new body. This carries the phoenix's consciousness and the most of its personality, but the physical form is all new and resembles someone different (much like Doctor Who style regeneration).

The only known instance of a true phoenix death was in a near vacuum. Without oxygen, the creature was unable to produce its death fires. If the old body is not burned up, it is theorized a new one cannot take its place. Phoenix fire seems capable of burning the oxygen molecules in water however, making drowning a less likely option.

The Toy: Enchanters have been able to capture the life restoring phoenix fire in certain pieces of jewelry such as pendants. If someone wearing one of these is about to die, the pendant activates, wreathing the person and their nearby surroundings in flames.

The individual's body is cremated while they are still alive (this is understandably unpleasant) but then is restored with the same mind in a new body (just like a phoenix).

It is said no one ever willing goes through this process twice. The trauma of being burned alive stays with them in their new life. They live deathly afraid of all forms of fire and would almost always choose death over that experience again.

Entropic Adaptation

Note: This entry is specific to Villains and Vigilantes rules which consists of players rolling random powers anyway. Those who don't know or play that system may find it still useful especially if they have or are considering a supers game.

Upon rolling this power the player rolls a different ability from the Power list (or some other list if you like) and makes the decisions concerning it as normal.  The next time they go rest for the night (6 hours or more) they lose this ability and awake to find a new power in its place (roll again).

For groups who do not wish to stop in the middle of a game for the player to work out how exactly their new power will work (such as chemical power, size change, or poison/venom) they can have the player roll each game session rather than each night of rest.

If the player rolls an ability they already have they can either roll again or strengthen their power as per the normal rules.  This ability is intended for player's who wish to play a hero with random if sometimes unreliable powers.

If player's wish for their abilities gained through Entropic Adaptation to be more specific the GM should be encouraged to come up with new charts more tailored for that character's 'theme'.

So energy characters could have something like this:
1-10: Power Blast
11-20: Disintegration Ray
21-30: Flame Power
31-40: etc.
and so on...

or animal characters:
1-10: Natural Weaponry
11-20: Poison/Venom
21-30: Pet
31-40: etc.
and so on...

Depending on what other powers are available to the player they may wish to tie this ability to death such as the Resurrection man.