Cloak of Shadows

You and the shadows are as one. You’re able to melt into the shadows with ease;
the cover of night offers easy concealment.

Mechanics:
See in the Dark. Perception skill rolls are not penalized by darkness.

Melt into the Shadows. You’re more effective than most at hiding in a reasonably sized area of darkness or shadow. Under the cover of darkness, you get a +2D bonus to your Stealth rolls.

Cost: 1

Ghost Speaker

You see dead people. All the time. Some people mistakenly refer to you as an ectomancer (a kind of Focused Practitioner—see page 76), but your ability is more instinctual and you are not technically a spellcaster (although this ability can be added on top of an existing spellcaster if the character template allows for it).

Mechanics:
See the Dead. You have no problems perceiving the presence of spirits and ghosts, unless they are deliberately trying to conceal themselves— in which case it’s Investigation (or Alertness) vs. Stealth.

Seen by the Dead. Spirits and ghosts have no problem perceiving you as well, regardless of how tenuous their manifestation is (page 170)—they recognize you as a conduit to the mortal world and will readily come forward to contact you. This means such creatures will see and find you more easily than other people, when all other factors are equal. Spirits get a +2D when trying to perceive or locate you.

Speak to the Dead. You can speak and otherwise communicate directly with ghosts and other invisible or incorporeal spirits, without any need to perform thaumaturgy.

Seek the Dead. The dead seek you out, and it goes the other way as well—enough so that you may use Contacts to seek out information and specific individuals among the dead.

Cost: 1

Mana Static

Despite not being a mortal practitioner of magic, you have a tendency to cause technology to short out the way a wizard or other mortal spellcaster does.

Musts: If the character ever takes a spellcasting ability, it replaces this one.

Note: While we don’t have documentation of this sort of ability in our casefiles, it’s pretty well supported by theory. There are plenty of folks out there with undeveloped magical talent, and it’s easy to see how they might first—and perhaps only—manifest the hexing aspect of their abilities.

Mechanics:

Hexing. You can hex technology deliberately, as described on page 228. You may need to roll your Discipline skill occasionally to keepyour emotions in check and avoid accidentally hexing technology, but you make these rolls at +2D due to the relative weakness of your “talent.”

Cost: 1

Marked by Power

You’ve been marked by something powerful, in a way recognizable to those with a magical affinity. Such people and creatures will think twice about acting against you, but they’ll also see you as a representative of the thing that’s marked you.

Mechanics:
Aegis of Respect. A magical mark is upon you, placed by a creature or person of significant power. It’s not that the mark provides any actual protection, but magically aware people and creatures can perceive this mark upon you and word tends to get around that you’ve been “claimed.” Whenever dealing with someone in the magical community, all of your social skill rolls operate at a +1D bonus. The downside, of course, is that people tend to see you as a representative of the thing that marked you, which can lead to some uncomfortable entanglements and assumptions. If you absolutely must conceal this mark, you can, but it takes some concentration—use any appropriate skill (Stealth or Con, usually) restricted by Willpower to do so, but you can’t do anything stressful (like combat) without dropping the concealment.

Cost: 1

Wizard’s Constitution

You are a wizard, or are like a wizard—incredibly long lived for a human, able to recover from injuries just a little better than the next guy.

Note: This ability is replaced by any Inhuman or better Recovery or Toughness ability, if any such abilities are taken. In terms of game effects, the uses of this ability are so minor that they’re really almost cosmetic; hence the zero cost.

Mechanics:

Total Recovery. You’re able to recover from physical harm that would leave a normal person permanently damaged. You can recover totally from any consequence—excluding extreme physical ones—with no other excuse besides time; simply waiting long enough will eventually heal you completely. (Many wizards use this ability to avoid hospitals, where their tendency to disrupt technology can put others in serious danger.)

Long Life. As a side-effect of your improved ability to recover from injury, your lifespan is significantly extended. In game terms this will rarely have relevance, but it’s why the Senior Council of the White Council of wizards can talk at length about the events of the American Civil War (many of them were there) and several can go back even further than that.

Cost: 0