Gifts
Welcome to the Gifts thread! Here we'll outline what each gift is, common skills attributed to it, what levels it tends to have and finally how to roll for your character's Gifts.In general, this system works like this:
- Figure out what sort of character you want to make
- Set up your character profile
- Come here and roll for your number of Gifts (three attempts, keep one)
- Pick your Gift type(s)
- Roll Gift strength for each Gift
Gift Types
Mind Magic
Called 'Mind Magic' in Valdemar and beyond, these are Gifts that use the power of the mind and spirit.- Mindspeech
- The ability to send and receive thoughts (including both words and images) telepathically. In addition to allowing communication at range, Mindspeech is notable for conveying more information than verbal exchanges, adding texture with memories, emotions, and experience the recipient can feel and perceive. Lying through Mindspeech is nearly impossible as a result. Mindspeech is also one of the most common Gifts among Heralds, giving the opportunity to talk with Companions.
- Occasionally, Mindspeech expresses an ability to overhear thoughts, known as Thought-Sense, with uncommon strength giving sensitivity to the unGifted. It appears most often alongside standard Mindspeech, but exceptions occur.
- Mindspeakers strong enough to have unusually long range are sometimes called Farspeakers.
- Powerful examples of Mindspeech are occasionally capable of exerting small amounts of control telepathically, such as interrupting or compelling a quick action with an unspoken command.
- Animal Mindspeech
- The ability to telepathically communicate with animals, and to sense and understand their emotions. With repeated and extended contact, those Gifted with it may forge friendships with animals. When persuasion fails, stronger-than-average examples of Animal Mindspeech can also be used to exert control over animals, compelling them for help with situations like scouting, navigation, or defense.
- Some Animal Speakers are able to see through the eyes of creatures, allowing out-of-body observation, unobtrusively, and in places people may not be able to reach.
- Empathy
- The potential to sense (and sometimes influence) emotions in people and animals. Though typically displayed in the capability to detect feelings, it can also project the emotions of the Empath to others, and may sometimes be used to subdue or emphasize feelings. Empathy appears most commonly alongside Healing Gifts, and is markedly helpful to Mind-Healers. Empaths can sometimes provide targets for Fetching too, using sites of strong emotion as an anchor.
- Fetching
- The potential to manipulate objects with one’s mind. Energy required to move an object is directly proportional to its size and distance from the user. Fetching displays in two related abilities, and those who possess it may have one or the other, or both:
- The ability to teleport objects between oneself and elsewhere, in either direction.
- Traditional telekinesis, allowing the manipulation of mass within range of the user.
- Firestarting
- The ability to start fires and control heat with one’s mind. Combustible materials are easier to coax into flames, but unusually Gifted Firestarters can set fire to any object, including those that may not ordinarily burn. Though all Gifts have been known to react to the user’s emotions, Firestarting tends to be more sensitive than most, and can sometimes be difficult to control.
- Farsight
- An ability to see distant or out-of-sight targets (including, rarely, spiritual or psycic beings) using supernatural senses. Farseers are consequently individually talented at surveying and scouting. They’re also uniquely useful to those Gifted with Fetching, with the Seer providing a target for the Fetcher to retrieve. This is the second most frequently-occurring Gift in Heralds.
- Foresight
- The ability to perceive potential futures, usually in flashes or visions. Far less uniform than most Gifts, Foresight varies hugely between individuals, with length, relevance, and even type of information differing from one person to another. One Seer may get dreams, while another receives intuitive impulses. Some warnings may come years, months, days, or only minutes ahead, with accuracy decreasing the further they reach from the present. Powerful Foreseers may even See many possible futures. But the future is fluid, and warnings are prone to change.
- Bardic Gift
- The ability to convey emotions through music, allowing the audience to experience the feelings behind it. Setting Bards apart from unGifted minstrels, Bardic Gift strongly resembles the projective ability of Empathy, with the potential to influence moods.
- Admission to the Bardic Collegium requires this Gift, in addition to either Talent or Creativity.
Healing
Appreciated all the world over, not all Healers are Gifted, but those who are prove extraordinarily helpful.- True Healing
- The potential to use ‘life energy’ to accelerate, or engage a body’s natural recovery process. For the recipient, this Gift means near-instantaneous healing of minor injuries. Major injuries, such as severe physical trauma, may require months of Healing sessions, depending on the strength of the Healer’s Gift. True Healing can mend both injury and illness, and improve scarring, but cannot restore missing limbs. Please note individuals with True Healing are not typically Chosen by Companions.
- Though the combination is very rare, individuals with both True Healing and Mage Gift are sometimes called Healing-Mages. In Groveborne, both Gifts are required for Healing-Mages.
- Minor cuts and abrasions, colds, etc.
- Simple fractures, fevers, familiar diseases, etc.
- Complicated single fracture, severe fevers, plague, and unknown diseases
- Complicated multiple fractures, head injuries, internal trauma, heart attacks, and severe plague and unknown diseases
- Severe traumatic injuries, severe internal bleeding and trauma, strokes etc.
- Reattaching severed limbs, brain injuries, treating cancer-like diseases and their spread
- Mindhealing
- The ability to see and influence memories. Mindhealing is capable of a variety of feats, from dulling painful memories, to modifying, removing, or implanting memories from one person to another. Those Gifted with Mindhealing almost always become Mind-Healers—a calling made easier by Empathy appearing frequently alongside it—and are guided by the strict moral code of the Collegium. Healers with Mindhealing often specialize in psychology.
True Magic
- Mage Gift
- An ability allowing individuals to utilize ‘life energy’ to produce true magic, from illumination to lightning manipulation and shields. Restored to Valdemar after generations of suppression, what used to be trained as an unusual variant of Farsight has been correctly identified as Mage Gift since the havoc of the Final Storm. Throughout Velgarth, magical infrastructure may have been shattered, and power may have been scattered… but magic is on its way back into the world. And with the gradual spread of Mage Gift, so are its practitioners.
- The ability to see life energy is called Mage-Sight, and all mages possess it, even if Sight is an individual’s only mage ability. A mage’s Sight may not be as strong as his skill with power, though.
- Less commonly, a mage may possess Mage-Sense, or an ability to feel magical energy; either actively being used, or in applications like set spells and the residue left after a casting.
- Though the combination is very rare, individuals with both Mage Gift and True Healing are sometimes called Healing-Mages. In Groveborne, both Gifts are required for Healing-Mages. More on Healing-Mages can be found in LORE.
- Personal energy, available to Apprentices and above
- Ambient energy, available to Journeymen and above
- Ley-lines, streams and rivers of energy available to Masters and above
- Nodes, pools of energy where ley-lines meet, available to Adepts
- Channeling
- The ability to sense and funnel life energy, moving it from one place to another, or from one or more mages to others. The source limits imposed on mages by their rank does not apply to energy transferred from a Channel, though Channels themselves face the same boundaries. (And bodies can manage only so much power, no matter the source. Even if Gift strength is typically a fair indication of just how much power.) A Channel’s ability to influence energy ends with the Gift to touch and move it, though; Channels cannot utilize life energy themselves. This is an innate talent, deeper than what can be taught, but lessons can help Channels improve their technique beyond instinctive.
Wild Talents
- Gift of Tongues
- The ability to intuitively understand spoken language. Though comprehending a language doesn’t innately mean an ability to speak it, unusually Gifted individuals have been known to be capable of that too.
- Truth-Sense
- An instinct for the truth, independent of relying on the Truth-Spell. In its simplest form, an individual with Truth-Sense can discern the validity of any comment. But the stronger the Gift, the stronger the sense; powerful examples can also determine whether or not an individual has any relevant knowledge still unshared. The Haighlei Empire has similar potential in Truthsayers; see LORE for additional information.
- Earth-Sense
- A supernatural sensitivity to nature, allowing the user to gauge the health and condition of their immediate natural surroundings. Individuals Gifted with Earth-Sense are synced so closely to the environment, they can perceive maladies in nature, and know innately whether or not natural order is in harmony. Tayledras Healing-Mage Adepts always possess Earthsense; learn more about them and their goddess-given charge in LORE.
- Pathfinding
- An unusual ability to orient on a target—be it person, place, or thing—and follow an intuitive, safe ‘path’ to reach it. As with most Gifts, the strength of one’s Pathfinding influences its effective range, but if something can be sensed, it can be found. Regardless of whether or not it’s hidden. This is not a Seeing Gift, but with such keen instincts, neither is it a lack. Few secrets are safe from a Pathfinder.
- Navigation-Sense
- An uncanny sense of orientation. Knowing innately what direction an area is in and approximately how far away it is means an individual with this Gift is nearly incapable of getting lost. (So long as the place is within one’s range.) The information granted by Navigation-Sense isn’t detailed enough to provide a route out of a cave, but it can keep its user from moving in circles while traveling through one. With exceptional memory, one may even use it to build mental maps.
- Touch-Reading
- The ability to gain information about a person or object’s past through touch. Exactly what information is conveyed varies from person to person and Gift to Gift, but can cover everything from emotions and thoughts to visions, both with and without sound. One person might get an impression of feelings or intent, while another might See flashes of scenes spanning years. Generally, the stronger the Gift, the more information it provides, with some instances reaching all the way back to the target’s beginning.
- Spirit-Speech
- Unusual sensitivity to spirits, allowing the user to see and interact with the dead—even when the spirit is inhabiting or possessing something (or someone). This Gift gives Spirit-Speakers some control over ghosts, with an ability to drive spirits away from areas and compel them for help. Including large groups, if the Speaker is stronger-than-average. Sometimes, the most powerful and skilled among their number may even channel a spirit’s abilities, using themselves as conduits or hosts, and in turn manifesting the same. The tier of spirits an individual can perceive is determined by Gift strength, but a spirit's power also reflects its ability to influence the living; and sensitivity goes both ways. Untrained Spirit-Speakers are consequently uncommonly susceptible to possession.
- Dream-Walking
- The ability to exert control over others’ dreams through touch. How much control varies with the strength of the Gift, but the most powerful Walkers can change the entire context of a dream, connecting deeply enough to elicit strong emotional reactions. Moreover, if someone were to find himself subjected to a Dream-Walker’s touch more than once, he might be more susceptible to it in the future, with each new exposure intensifying the response. The application of this Gift can vary hugely between people, but using it effectively or subtly requires both skill and training. No Dream-Walker’s influence extends past a single day and night, though, no matter their power.
Before You Start
Species Innate Gifts
- Human characters roll Gifts from scratch.
- Companions, kyree, hertasi, dyheli, tervardi, tyrills and ratha always have at least average (50) Mindspeech.
- Companions have at least average (50) Gift of Tongues and Mindspeech. (Groveborn Companions are Farspeakers with at least strong (85) Mindspeech.)
- Gryphons start with weak (30) Mage Gift and average (50) Mindspeech.
- Firecats have strong (85) Mindspeech and Fetching (which Firecats call Jumping; this is a teleportation variant.)
- Bondbirds have weak (20) Mindspeech.
- Warsteeds are not Gifted and cannot roll for Gifts. ONE d100 may be used to determine intelligence.
1–50: Above Average, 51–85: Excellent, 86–95: Extraordinary, 96–100: Genius-level Horse Intelligence
All Gifted characters may roll for the strength of their Gifts, even if a character has species base Gifts only. (Firecats and Bondbirds included.) If the result is lower than the base strength, keep the default. Higher results may be used to upgrade the strength of base Gifts.
For example: a gryphon who rolls three Gifts has one Gift in addition to the gryphon defaults of Mindspeech and Mage Gift. If the same gryphon rolls weak Mindspeech and strong Mage Gift, Mindspeech remains at base strength (average) and Mage Gift gets upgraded to strong.