I love heritage moves, but I’m drawing a few blanks on the inspiration front.

I love heritage moves, but I’m drawing a few blanks on the inspiration front.

I love heritage moves, but I’m drawing a few blanks on the inspiration front.  How have you folks used them?  What do you do for the traditional races?  Human and elf moves for the half-elves?  Just use the existing class-based racial moves?

Obligatory J. Walton ?

2 thoughts on “I love heritage moves, but I’m drawing a few blanks on the inspiration front.”

  1. Here’s the “racial” heritage move list I pass around when running one-shots. I encourage people to take moves from multiple lists for the Planarch Codex, reflecting the diverse heritage of the planes. For longer games, I tend to encourage people to invent moves reflecting their cultural, family, or religious background in addition to one or more racial ones:

    Human

    • Be underestimated

    • Succeed at a foolish stunt

    • Pledge your service to a greater power

    Dwarf

    • Drive them back

    • Navigate through stone

    • Withstand poison

    Elf

    • Inflict pain beyond measure

    • Pass on divine knowledge

    • Use darkness to your advantage

    Djinn

    • Speak to the flames

    • Ritually cleanse yourself or another

    • Dream of a place unseen

    Ratfolk

    • Rip something apart

    • Summon the swarm

    • Burrow in or through

    Crocodilian

    • Attack with unexpected savagery

    • Escape into the water

    • Hold something tightly in your jaws

    Doppelganger

    • Assume the shape of another

    • Use the heritage move of a shape you’ve taken

    • Speak or decipher an unfamiliar language

    Medusa

    • Turn a body part to stone with a glance

    • Draw someone’s gaze

    • Reveal your hidden terrible beauty

    Vampire

    • Charm someone

    • Track the smell of blood

    • Heal your wounds (not those inflicted by wood or silver)

  2. Not exactly traditional, but our current game has an arcanaloth tiefling with:

    Tower of Iron Will: Highly resistant to mind-affecting magics.

    Devil’s Advocate: Negotiate a fiendishly complex contract.

    Cunning Linguist: Make sense of any language.

    a warforged/inevitable with:

    Implacable Jailer: Prevent a spell or effect that would have freed your target from your power.

    Swiss Army Knife: Use a special tool or adaptation, built-in.

    Endure: Take it.

    and a god-blood with the fairly straightforward:

    Move with incredible speed

    Act with sudden strength

    Shrug off an injury that should have been much worse 

    Going more traditional, for elves or half-elves:

    Songs of Earth and Power: heal or mend something by singing the ancient songs

    Elven Grace: walk atop snow, up an olyphant’s trunk, etc

    Lore of the Ages: spout lore about something no still-living being could possibly know

    Dwarves:

    Stout Belly: out-drink any non-dwarf

    Stand Your Ground: resist any attempt to move you from where you stand

    Kneecapper: Hack and Slash against an opponent whose immense size would otherwise prevent it

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