Possible player intrusions based on your character type:
Friendly NPC
An NPC you don't know, someone you don't know that well, or someone you know but who hasn't been particularly friendly in the past chooses to help you, though doesn't necessarily explain why. Maybe they'll ask you for a favor in return afterward, depending on how much trouble they go to.
Perfect Suggestion
A follower or other already-friendly NPC suggests a course of action with regard to an urgent question, problem, or obstacle you're facing.
Unexpected Gift
An NPC hands you a physical gift you were not expecting, one that helps put the situation at ease if things seem strained, or provides you with a new insight for understanding the context of the situation if there's something you're failing to understand or grasp.
Grounded
+4 to your Might Pool.
Granted from Gwaloth
Possible GM intrusion from your focus:
A required ingredient goes missing and you can't use your abilities. Something vital has spoiled. Somehow, an ally experiences food poisoning.
https://app.lostcompanypress.com/account/cypher/players/FDF77DAB2C020044 Last Updated: May 12th, 2025 01:39 App Version: 1.02.12
", "description": "Background:
Gwaloth
Most gwaloth have the appearance of wiry dwarves made of wood, although adults can stand up to 12 feet (4 m) tall. They travel unshod, with a thick coating of raw earth around their root-like feet. Most live in areas dense with other plant life—sun-dappled forests, whispering pines, buzzing jungles, and teeming swamps. A precious few live in mountainous scrublands, and fewer still in deserts—hermits in places with limited sunlight, water, and fertile soil.
Most gwaloth are unbridled optimists who advocate for peaceful coexistence with others, a virtue they inherit from native gardens. Only those who take a vow a strict pacifism are considered for the rites of adulthood. Gwaloth leaders literally put their roots down—never leaving their planting positions as a sign of their dedication to the garden.
Prepares Delicacies
You can cook. You might be a trained chef, or someone with a deep connection to family recipes. Whether you focus your talent for personal or communal gain, your art is most satisfying when shared with those who appreciate it.
While you are known for your cooking, people constantly underestimate what else someone who knows their way around a kitchen is capable of. You know what is in season, and what the people you are feeding need.
Choose how you became involved in the adventure:
- Pick one other PC. You see so much potential in this person. You will do anything to help foster their growth.
- Pick one other PC. This person has spent too much of their life in the shade, and needs to step into the light.
- It sounded like a good cause.
- Your garden is destroyed, so you have become scattered seed.
Story Arc: Defense
A person, place, or thing is threatened, and you want to protect it.
Opening: Analyze the Situation. What are you defending, and what threats are involved?
Step: Account for Your Resources. How are you going to defend?
Step(s): Fend Off Danger. The forces threatening what you are protecting probably make an initial threat that you’ll have to defeat. It’s not the main threat, though. There might be multiple such initial threats.
Climax: Protect. The true threat reveals itself and you confront it.
Resolution: A time for reflection on everything that occurred, and an assessment of the person, place, or thing’s safety going forward.
Background Connection:
You have no memory of anything that happened to you before the age of 18.
Focus Connection:
Pick one other PC. For reasons unknown to you, that character is completely immune to your focus abilities, whether you use them for help or for harm.
When you make a recovery roll, you can divide points into a fruiting instead of your stat Pools. The fruiting sprouts from your body in the manner of your choosing. A creature—other than you—that uses an action to eat a fruiting can divide its points among their stat Pools however they wish. Any fruiting you produce spoils at the end of your next ten-hour recovery roll. Enabler.
Granted from Gwaloth
Your natural lifespan (unless tragically cut short) is thousands of years. Enabler.
Granted from Gwaloth
You gain nutrients from sunlight and fertile soil. You don't need to eat or breathe if you have daily exposure to sufficient sunlight. Enabler.
Granted from Gwaloth
When you make a defense roll and you are standing on fertile ground, you can plunge your roots into it. Until the end of your next turn, you cannot move, but gain an asset on all defense rolls you make. At that time, you can make a free recovery roll. Enabler.
Granted from Gwaloth
You gain the Summerbloom ability, and you can pay its point cost with your Might Pool instead. Enabler.
Granted from Gwaloth
Granted from Gwaloth
Granted from Speaker
Granted from Speaker
Granted from Speaker
Your skin produces a pattern of exterior enchanted wood-like bark that grants you +1 to Armor if you do not wear physical armor—this armor also shields your mind against mental attacks that would inflict damage to your Intellect Pool (even if you are wearing physical armor). Your timberskin provides no protection from fire, however, and your stiff limbs are ill suited for agility—you have an inability in running, jumping, swimming, and Speed defense tasks. Enabler.
Granted from Gwaloth
You can bear four cyphers at a time. Enabler.
Granted from Speaker
You can lift the spirits of a group of creatures and help them bond together by entertaining them with an uplifting or pointed anecdote. For the next hour, those who pay attention to your story are trained in a task you choose that's related to the anecdote, as long as it's not an attack or defense task. Action to initiate, one minute to complete.
Granted from Speaker
You gain a level 2 follower. One of their modifications must be persuasion. You can take this ability multiple times, each time gaining another level 2 follower. Enabler. (When you use Basic Follower, the GM may require that you actually look for a suitable follower.)
Granted from Speaker
You are trained in cooking and all related tasks, for example, identifying, sourcing, and determining the quality and nutritional qualities of ingredients. While you are cooking, you gain an asset to intimidation tasks. Enabler.
Granted from Prepares Delicacies
You are trained in the crafting of two kinds of items. Enabler.
Granted from Crafter Flavor
You gain a level 3 follower. They are not restricted on their modifications. You can take this ability multiple times, each time gaining another level 3 follower. Alternatively, you could choose to advance a level 2 follower you already have to level 3 and then gain a new level 2 follower. Enabler.
Granted from Speaker
Your words, gestures, and touch invest an object no larger than yourself with an aura of doom, fear, and doubt for one day. Creatures that can hear and understand you feel an urge to move at least a short distance away from the object. If a creature does not move away, all tasks, attacks, and defenses it attempts while within the aura are hindered. The duration of the aura is extended by one day per level of Effort applied. The aura is temporarily blocked while the object is covered or contained. Action to initiate.
Granted from Speaker
When in a group of people (a caravan, a palace, a village, a city, etc.) you can ask around about any topic you choose and come away with useful information. You can ask a specific question, or you can simply obtain general facts. You also get a good idea of the general layout of the location involved, note the presence of all major sites, and perhaps even notice obscure details. For example, not only do you find out if anyone in the palace has seen the missing boy, but you also get a working knowledge of the layout of the palace itself, note all the entrances and which are used more often than others, and take notice that everyone seems to avoid the well in the eastern courtyard for some reason. Action to initiate, about an hour to complete.
Granted from Speaker
You are trained in two tasks of your choosing (other than attacks or defense). If you choose a task you're already trained in, you instead become specialized in that task. You can't choose a task you're already specialized in. Enabler.
Granted from Speaker
When you succeed on a roll to perform a task related to the stat that you choose upon selecting this ability, and you applied at least one level of Effort, you may choose another character within short range. That character has an asset on the next task they attempt using that stat on their next turn. Enabler.
Granted from Speaker
You quickly create an object using what would seem to be entirely inappropriate materials. You can make a bomb out of a tin can and household cleaners, a lockpick out of aluminum foil, or a sword out of broken furniture. The level of the item determines the difficulty of the task, but the appropriateness of the materials eases or hinders it as well. Generally, the object can be no larger than something you can hold in one hand, and it functions once (or, in the case of a weapon or similar item, is essentially useful for one encounter). If you spend at least ten minutes on the task, you can create an item of level 5 or lower. You can't change the nature of the materials involved. For example, you can't take iron rods and make a pile of gold coins or a wicker basket. Action.
Granted from Crafter Flavor
You are trained in butchery, and attacks made with cookware, for example, knives, cleavers, and cast iron pans. Enabler.
Granted from Tier 5 Advancement Focus Ability Knife Skills From Prepares Delicacies
You can take any two manifest cyphers and quickly jury-rig a new manifest cypher of the same level as the lowest-level cypher. You determine the function of the new cypher, but it must be that of a cypher you have used before (but not necessarily one you've ever built). The new cypher is a temperamental cypher, like those created with Always Tinkering. The original two cyphers are consumed in this process. This ability does not function if one or more of the original cyphers are temperamental cyphers. Action.
Granted from Crafter Flavor
You alter your posture and way of speaking and make a small but real alteration to an outfit (such as putting on or taking off a hat, reversing a cloak, and so on). For the next hour (or as long as you keep up the alteration), even creatures that know you well don't recognize you. All tasks related to hiding your true identity during this period gain one free level of Effort. Action to initiate.
Granted from Speaker
You can use light and medium weapons without penalty. If you wield a heavy weapon, attacks with it are hindered. Enabler.
Granted from Speaker
Your words inflict a destructive psychosis in the mind of a target within long range that can understand you, dealing 6 points of Intellect damage (ignores Armor) per round. The psychosis can be dispersed if a target uses an action doing nothing but calming and centering itself. Action to initiate.
Granted from Speaker
You examine an area and learn precise, useful details about the past (if any exist). You can ask the GM up to four questions about the immediate area; each requires its own roll. Action.
Granted from Tier 4 Advancement From Speaker
You create one of the following effects:
You create a trinket in your hand that predicts what the weather for the next 24 hours. The trinket does not account for supernatural interference with the weather.
You touch a plant of your size or smaller, providing it with enough nourishment for one day. If you wish, it flowers, blooms, fruits, or opens its foliage.
You create a harmless display of life's great tapestry within a short distance and in an immediate area—a shower of cherry blossoms, a warm breeze, the sounds of birdsong or similar effect.
Action.
Granted from Gwaloth
You observe or study a creature or object. Your next interaction with that creature or object gains one asset. Action.
Granted from Speaker
For 24 hours after eating a meal you have prepared, your friends can add a +3 bonus to one recovery roll they make. You choose the Pool the bonus restores points to when you prepare the meal. Enabler.
Granted from Prepares Delicacies
You utter a word so powerful that to fully invest it, you sacrifice a cypher in your possession that is level 6 or higher. You issue the word to one creature within long range that you can see. The affected target must obey the command for several hours before it is free to act as it wishes. Targets that are attacked while under the effect of the command can defend themselves. Typical commands include \"retreat,\" \"calm,\" \"come,\" and \"stay.\" The GM decides how the target acts once a command is given. Action.
Granted from Speaker
To activate the cypher, the user must succeed on an Intellect attack against a beast whose level does not exceed the cypher's level. If successful, the beast immediately becomes calm. The beast awaits the user's commands and carries out all orders to the best of its ability. The target remains so enslaved for a number of hours equal to the cypher's level minus the target's level. (If the result is 0, the target is enslaved for only one minute.) The beast could attack or defend, a dog could follow a scent or retrieve an object, a badger could dig a hole, and so on. The cypher doesn't give the user any special ability to understand the target or perceive through its senses. For example, the user can command an eagle to fly above a group of enemies, but the eagle can't describe what it sees and the user can't look through its eyes. \"Beast\" in this sense refers to creatures of animal-level intelligence and may include unintelligent magical creatures like basilisks, pegasi, and so on.
", "basic": { "level": "6", "identified": true } } }, { "name": "Makeshift Construction", "type": "cypher", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/cypher.svg", "system": { "description": "You quickly craft or repair an object whose level doesn't exceed the cypher's, provided you have access to at least primitive tools and materials to construct it. The process takes no more than 1 hour per crafting level. The object is of serviceable, but questionable quality. When performing tasks with it, the GM intrusion range increase by 1, and continues to increase regular intervals determined by the GM.
", "basic": { "level": "1", "identified": true } } }, { "name": "Light Weapon", "type": "attack", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/attack.svg", "system": { "description": "A light weapon of your choice. Granted from Starting Equipment. Attacks are eased by 1 for Light weapons.
", "basic": { "type": "Light", "damage": 2, "skillRating": "Practiced", "modifier": "eased", "steps": 1 } } }, { "name": "Punch", "type": "attack", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/attack.svg", "system": { "description": "A right jab. Attacks are eased by 1 for Light weapons.
", "basic": { "type": "Light", "damage": 2, "skillRating": "Practiced", "modifier": "eased", "steps": 1 } } }, { "name": "Initiative", "type": "skill", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/initiative.svg", "system": { "settings": { "rollButton": { "pool": "Speed" }, "general": { "sorting": "Skill", "initiative": true } }, "basic": { "rating": "Practiced" } } } ] }