The Blood of the Three Eyed Lich
Ritualistically brewed by the blind murder monks of the underground cult of the Undead Crusader, ‘The Blood of the Three Eyed Lich’ is a hypodermically injected poison. It seems somewhat aware, in that it will only affect those who willingly receive it.
When you poison yourself with The Blood roll + CON and pass out. On a 10+ you can carry on like nothing happened after waking up. On a 7-9 take the SICK debility or, if you already have it, lose one point of CON forever. On a 6 or less The Blood still has its effects, but you are both sickened and suffer the permanent loss of one point of CON.
At midnight of the next full moon you return to the point in time and space where you awoke after the injection. If you died in the meantime you still wake up in the condition you were after the injection.
Every time you go back, Roll + (WIS or INT or CHA). On a 10+ you may take +1 as if spending preparation (see BOLSTER Special Move) whenever you are in a situation you’ve seen play out before. On a 7-9 you receive the benefits of the 10+ roll but take a permanent loss of one point in the rolled stat.
On a miss your mind is unable to wrap around what is happening to you – lose one point in the rolled stat and take -1 ongoing until the next full moon.
To cure yourself of the poison you must slit an artery and, as your poisoned blood spills out, drink all of the blood from a still living creature of your race. The poison makes this possible, but it does not make it pleasant or prevent the corresponding emotional scarring.
Note that this requires either
A – The whole party partakes
B – The players of the characters who don’t are able to roleplay ignorance during multiple playthroughs, and won’t find it boring.
I really like the idea, but I think the execution is going to cause too many problems. As you noted either everyone is going to have to use the poison, or the other players are going to have to be OK with undoing everything that happened during that time.
I think it’d be far less messy to simply let the player see the future. Something like this:
When you poison yourself with The Blood of the Three Eyed Lich, you pass out for several hours and experience visions of the future. When you awake, roll +Con. On 10+, hold 3. On a 7-9, hold 1. On a 6-, hold 1 in addition to whatever else the GM says.
For the next 24 hours, you may spend your hold on a 1 for 1 basis to know something you could not otherwise know.
Or or or.
Why not just have the blood give 3 Preparation from having lived the future already. Player spends Preparation when they narrate the fatal mistake they made last time and what they do different now.
Good idea. The only thing I would worry about is making it Preparation. Doing that means players might mix it up with Preparation gained from the Bolster move.
That’s fair! How about Insight or Foresight or something better
Groundhog day!
As I wrote this up I was thinking it’d be perfect for a Groundhog Day / Run-Lola-Run / That one episode of ST:TNG type scenario. A one-shot tool for a single session – the betrayed priest Thresh has seen a vision of the Great King being assassinated and The Pretender forcibly taking the throne. The heroes have three days to prevent it from happening, even though they’ll get no support from the authorities (and may end up jailed for scaremongering)… and another four or five to witness the beginning of the Dark Reign and figure out how the traitors sneaked in in the first place. Without this tool they’ve got one shot. With it they can, at least for a while, investigate and prepare different ambushes / outsmart the enemy.
I like Stone-Bush’s take as a piece of gear the heroes could use at any point without screwing the pacing. Dropping the ‘Murder someone and go Vampire on them’ and the stat loss makes it more generally usable too – I’m going to steal that and give it another name.
Rudzki, that is probably how I’d use it if one or two players used the blood without everyone else. Maybe add ‘When something happens in your presence that you would try to prevent if you could have anticipated it, you may spend one Foresight to set time back to just before the event.’