MET LARP SRD
(2013 BNS MET System)
Chimerstry
Summary
Chimerical illusions are shaped from the stuff of dreams, a quasi-substantial essence that members of the Ravnos clan call maya. Items made with this power are not real, but they are also not entirely insubstantial, as they are formed of the physical substance of dream. A chimerical gun has the appropriate weight and heft. A chimerical flag will sway in the wind and will cast a shadow. However, if a chimerical item is disbelieved, it loses all physical qualities — but only to the individual who successfully disbelieves.
A Chimerstry construct cannot physically deflect anything more substantial than a bright light or a slight breeze. Items or creatures made with this power cannot cause harm. Chimerical armor doesn’t stop bullets, and a chimerical sword can’t cut anything.
One of the most important things to remember about Chimerstry is this: illusions can add to the world, but they can never subtract from it. A character could create a chimerical wall and hide behind it, but could not use this power to create a hole in the ground, as Chimerstry cannot “subtract” the dirt that is present. A character cannot use Chimerstry to make items or people invisible, nor to duplicate the powers of Obfuscate. However, you can use Chimerstry to create a chimerical bucket to put over an item and thus hide it. This power cannot alter a character’s overall appearance, as Mask of a Thousand Faces does, but it can change the color of a trenchcoat from red to blue.
Chimeristry is made of semi-tangible maya, mixed with the mind’s willingness to believe what it can perceive. An illusionary wall can block your progress, but it is not substantial enough to support more than a few ounces of weight. An individual is blocked by a chimerical wall in large part because her mind will not allow her to pass that barrier. However, if a falling person grabs hold of an illusionary rope, it will fail to support her weight.
Disbelieving Chimerstry : Recognizing that something is chimerical is not the same as disbelieving the illusion. Disbelieving a construct requires an active attempt to destroy the chimerical creation, indicated by a contest of wills with the illusion’s creator. It is possible to realize that an illusion is false, but fail to disbelieve it. The subject’s subconscious mind simply cannot agree that this construct isn’t real. In this manner, if a character sees a chimerical sword pass harmlessly through an object, she may realize the sword is an illusion. However, the sword will still exist, and will still look and feel real unless she chooses to actively disbelieve and then defeats its creator in a contest of wills.
If a character suspects that something is formed of Chimerstry, she can make an active attempt to disbelieve that illusion. To do so, she must expend her simple action and enter a contest of wills with the illusion’s creator. Make an opposed challenge using your Social attribute + Willpower versus the Chimerstry user’s Social attribute + Subterfuge. If the attempt to disbelieve succeeds, the illusion becomes a semitransparent shadow of itself. Characters cannot interact with items they have successfully disbelieved. For example, after disbelieving a chimerical wall, a character can see through it clearly and can move through the wall without impediment.
After disbelieving an illusory sword, the character is unable to pick it up; it will pass through her hand if she tries. If a character successfully disbelieves an illusion, other individuals will not notice any change in that illusion. Even if the character sees someone walk through an illusionary wall, she must make a separate test and successfully disbelieve it in order to walk through the wall herself. If she fails to disbelieve, she must treat that wall as if it is real, and must bash it down or go around it in order to pass. If a character who has successfully disbelieved a chimerical illusion then does something to demonstrate that it is not real, such as walking through a chimerical wall, it provides an excellent opportunity for other observers to realize that the illusion is not real and call for their own challenges. If an individual fails an attempt to disbelieve an illusion, she cannot attempt to disbelieve that illusion again for five minutes.
If an illusion’s creator disbelieves her own illusion, it immediately ceases to exist. The user must treat her illusions in all ways as though they are real or the maya fades.
Quote
“Eternity is as ephemeral as breath, as fleeting as dream. Seize what you can while you can, and never let go.” — Vassily Taltos
Ignis Fatuus
Level 1Maya is a delicate substance, drawn like a gossamer thread from the substance of mortal dreams. You can weave a simple illusion from this delicate material, making it real enough to fool a single sense.
By spending 1 Blood and using your standard action, you create an insubstantial sensory illusion. Illusions created with Ignis Fatuus can only affect one of the following senses: sight, hearing, smell, or taste. With this power, you might cause a loud bang as a distraction, give a letter the sweet scent of perfume, or read by the light of a chimerical candle. These illusions are incapable of movement or change once they have been created. Illusions created with Ignis Fatuus last for up to one turn per level of the Subterfuge skill you possess.
A character using Ignis Fatuus in combat can distract and confuse her opponents with false sensory input. To do this, you must pay the costs of this power and then make an opposed challenge using the Chimerstry test pool. If successful, your target is momentarily distracted and loses her simple action the next time her initiative comes up. This use of Ignis Fatuus relies on surprise and, therefore, cannot be used on a specific individual more than once per combat.
Mirage
Level 2Your control over the threads of maya has increased to the point that your illusions can fool all senses at once. Although you must anchor these more substantive illusions in reality, they have a far greater depth and stability.
Expend your standard action to alter the appearance of an inanimate object. Mirage cannot be used on creatures or individuals.
Remember that Chimerstry can be used to add to an item, or to cover what is there, but it cannot be used to subtract something from the item or environment. You cannot use this power to decrease an object’s size, but you may increase its size by up to 10 percent. You can alter the way the object looks, smells, sounds, tastes, or feels — or all of the above. You can make a ragged chair look and feel like an opulent throne, cause a glass of water to smell and taste like fine wine, or change a rolling gurney into a mahogany table covered with candles. This illusion will last for up to an hour.
Users of Mirage must completely cover the object they are altering; any part of the foundation that is not covered will be visible through the illusion. For example, you may make a gurney look like a mahogany table, but you cannot make a file cabinet look like a table — the solid body of the file cabinet would show between the table’s legs. You could, however, make the file cabinet look like a table with a tablecloth hanging to the ground, thus covering the entirety of the file cabinet.
Mirage cannot be used to modify the appearance of living or undead individuals, as that is the purview of Obfuscate. It can be used to make simple alterations to clothing, such as coloration, material, or general quality.
Apparition
Level 3No longer confined by the boundaries of reality, your illusions are independent fabrications of dream. They move as you direct them, either on a repeating loop or following your continual, step-by-step instructions. You can give your illusions a semblance of life, causing illusory people to move or speak, illusory water to drip and ripple, and illusory music to change from song to song.
Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to create an independent illusion that appears real to every sense. This illusion can move either in a predetermined loop, or, with continued concentration by the creator, can change as you wish. A fireworks display can shift and change color, an illusory policeman can appear to walk his beat around a block, and so forth. Illusory objects seem to fulfill their standard functions; an illusory gun can cock its hammer or shoot an illusory bullet (which causes no harm), and an illusory engine can be taken apart and put back together.
Further, your Apparitions will automatically react when they interact with external forces or obstacles. A chimerical flag will blow in the wind, and a chimerical person will walk around a solid object placed in its path.
When you create an Apparition, you determine a simple pattern of actions for that illusion to enact, as per the beat cop’s casual walk around the block. Thereafter, you may expend a simple action to alter your illusion’s activity for one round, perhaps causing the beat cop to stop and have a brief conversation with someone (expending a simple action for every round you make the cop remain still and speak or listen). If you expend a standard action instead of a simple action, you may add, remove, or otherwise make a permanent change in the Apparition’s pre-established patterns, such as causing the beat cop to stop and whistle a brief tune every time he reaches a certain corner in his circular route.
Such alterations to the Apparition’s pattern are accomplished silently, through an act of concentration by the illusion’s creator. Note that your character does not receive any special ability to see or hear through her own Apparition. If the beat cop’s creator cannot hear the questions being asked by the individual speaking with her illusory policeman, she cannot direct the policeman to answer correctly.
Apparition cannot be used to make an illusion with a total mass larger than 10 cubic feet, although the mass can be shaped in any manner you choose. Illusions of creatures or individuals can move, as appropriate for their creature type. For example, an illusionary cop can pace back and forth down a street. Apparition lasts for one hour, unless the power is ended by its creator, or the creator dies.
Permanency
Level 4The illusions you create almost take on a life of their own, existing without your concentration and maintaining a continued existence by drawing on the essence of the dream. You may gift your lesser illusions with this capacity, providing them a durability that can outlast even your own existence.
Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to make an already-created Mirage or Apparition permanent. The illusion will last until you choose to dispel it, until it is irrevocably unable to continue, or until it is subjected to sunlight. A permanent illusion is irrevocably unable to continue if it is believably destroyed, such as by throwing a chimerical gun into a pool of molten metal, or if the beat cop’s route is completely blocked by a massive tractor-trailer.
Horrid Reality
Level 5Belief is a tangible thing, capable of near-miraculous things. You can turn dream into reality, lending genuine verisimilitude to your imaginary creations. Your phantasms gain a tangible reality and are capable of interacting with the real world in concrete ways — even causing harm to your enemies, as you choose.
Spend 1 Blood and a simple action to augment one of your already existing Apparitions with Horrid Reality. For the next five minutes, that illusion cannot be disbelieved and is imbued with the power to physically interact with people.
An illusion given credence with Horrid Reality cannot interact with inanimate objects, but can cause lasting harm to mortals, supernatural creatures, and animals. Apparitions that have been augmented by Horrid Reality may be used to attack, either by secondary means (such as firing a chimerical pistol) or as a primary attacker — the illusionary beat cop lunges and strikes with his nightstick. In either case, the character who created the augmented Apparition is the actual attacker, and the attack occurs on that character’s initiative in a round.
To attack with an Apparition augmented by Horrid Reality, expend your standard action and make an opposed challenge against a single target, using your Social attribute + Subterfuge versus the target’s Physical attribute + Dodge. If successful, your target takes damage from the item or creature created with this power. Horrid Reality cannot be used to inflict victory conditions other than damage.
Damage inflicted by the use of Horrid Reality reflects the illusion’s apparent mode of attack, and deals either 3 points of normal damage or 2 points of aggravated damage. An illusionary police officer shooting a pistol or using a nightstick inflicts a maximum of 3 points of normal damage, while an illusionary flamethrower inflicts a maximum of 2 points of aggravated damage. Fortitude (and similar powers) can reduce damage inflicted by Horrid Reality.
Even if the illusion appears to affect several people or objects, such as the illusion of a flamethrower, Horrid Reality can only deal damage to one target at a time. This limitation does not prohibit normal issues caused by such an Apparition. If you engulf three individuals in a Horrid Reality flamethrower’s spout, choose one individual to potentially harm. The other two may still frenzy from being engulfed by the Apparition of fire. They cannot, however, take damage from this attack.
Individuals, creatures, or objects created with this power have a maximum number of health levels equal to your dots in Subterfuge, minimum 1. You may create an object with fewer health levels (an illusionary piece of paper wouldn’t be believable if it had 5 health levels). Chimerical illusions cannot directly prevent you from being harmed. A Chimerical wall cannot stop a bullet.
Once Horrid Reality has been used to augment an Apparition, the augmented illusion can attack a target repeatedly; this is an exception to the rule prohibiting a character from using a Social power on the same target immediately after failing. If you fail a Horrid Reality attack against an opponent, you can try again against that same opponent, or someone else, on the next turn. When you use an item created by Horrid Reality or create an illusory individual, the attacks are precisely timed with the creator’s will; this is why Apparitions augmented with Horrid Reality cannot be used by anyone other than their creator. If you give an augmented illusory weapon to another individual, it loses its potential to cause harm.
An augmented Apparition cannot attack during Celerity rounds, even if it is a weapon wielded during Celerity rounds. Harmful effects of Horrid Reality are fleeting, as they are based in the substance of dream. Damage caused by Horrid Reality can knock an individual unconscious or into torpor, but it cannot kill. After five minutes, the effects of Horrid Reality fade; injuries erase and unconscious or torpored individuals awaken.
Army of Apparitions
Level 6Where some can conjure an individual or item from nothingness, you have the capacity to fill a warehouse or populate a civil rights march entirely with illusion — in the blink of an eye.
Spend 1 point of Blood and use your standard action to create up to three Apparitions for each dot you possess of the Subterfuge skill, minimum three. When created, you can give each Apparition its own pattern. When you use a simple action to alter your Apparitions’ patterns, you may choose to affect one, some, or all Apparitions created with this power. You can only have one application of Army of Apparitions active at any time.
Shared Nightmare
Level 6Shared Nightmare is a terrifying power, capable of inflicting the effects of your imagination upon multiple targets at once. Your chimerical attacks are no longer constrained to a single individual per round.
Once purchased, this power is always active and enhances all uses of Horrid Reality. Attacks made by your Horrid Reality-augmented Apparitions can attack up to five characters simultaneously. Your illusion might throw a grenade, wounding several targets, or launch a gout of flame, burning a group of victims.
When targeting multiple enemies with this power, you must make a separate opposed challenge against each of the defenders. Should you spend a point of Willpower to retest any of these opposed challenges, you also gain that retest for the remainder of the opposed challenges, without spending further Willpower. If you spend the Willpower to retest after some challenges are already resolved, you cannot go back to previous challenges you’ve lost and apply that Willpower retest retroactively.
If you expend both your simple and standard actions to apply a combat maneuver, as per the Charisma attribute focus for Horrid Reality, that combat maneuver only applies to one individual.
Horrid Blade of the Demons
Level 6Reality is constantly in flux, shifting and moving with the ebb and flow of the universe. You understand the impermanence of reality and how to create and destroy with little more than a thought and the power of your blood. Through such understanding, you have learned to create weapons from little more than thin air, imbuing them with mystical properties that only you can control.
Spend 2 points of Blood and your standard action to create a magical melee weapon that only you can wield. For the next hour, the illusion cannot be disbelieved. At the end of the hour, the item immediately disappears unless you spend 2 additional points of Blood to maintain the illusion. This weapon must always remain in your hands or it will cease to exist. If you are disarmed the item immediately disappears unless you spend 1 additional point of Blood to immediately return it to your hand. This power cannot be used in conjunction with Horrid Reality. Unlike Horrid Reality, the damage inflicted by this illusionary weapon does not fade when the illusion ceases to exist though any damage inflicted by the weapon may be healed as normal.
Weapons created in this manner are considered level 5 magical weapons. In addition to applying two standard qualities to the weapon, weapons created by this power may have up to 5 points of Cantrips, as detailed below. As these weapons are not technically real, they may not be further augmented by powers such as Quietus.
Each Cantrip costs a number of points equal to its level and, unless otherwise noted, may only be purchased once. In addition, you may give the weapon any number of non-mechanical aesthetic characteristics pertaining to things like style, appearance, or apparent composition.
Level 1 Cantrips – 1 Point
Level 2 Cantrips –2 Points
Level 3 Cantrips – 3 Points
Truth's Essence
Level 6In every deception there lurks some truth. Truth’s Essence exposes the seed of truth upon which the lie is built by enabling you to unmake the illusions and deceptions of others. The effects of this power are not limited to Chimeristry and can affect other forms of trickery such as Obfuscate.
If you are aware or suspect the use of Chimerstry, Obfuscate, or other similar powers that trick the mind such as a werewolf’s Blur of the Milky Eye or Coyote’s Mantle, you may attempt to dispel the power much like you would end your own illusions. Spend a standard action and 1 point of Blood to target an individual or area no larger than 15 square feet and attempt to dispel active powers as described above. If you target an individual, you must succeed in an opposed challenge using your Chimerstry test pool versus the test pool used to create the deception. If the targeted individual has multiple effects active, she uses whichever is the highest test pool for those effects. If the active power on the targeted individual originated from another character, such as the effects of Cloak the Gathering, use the test pool of the character that created the effect. If successful, all active illusionary powers that are affecting your target end. NOTE: this power does not grant you the ability to target individuals you cannot see; you must first be able to perceive your target with Auspex or similar abilities.
If you target an area with Truth’s Essence, make an opposed challenge against the illusionary effect’s creator. However, if the effect’s creator is not present, the challenge becomes a static challenge with a difficulty equal to the creator's appropriate discipline pool and the effect’s creator may not retest the challenge using Willpower or other effects that grant retests. Use of Truth’s Essence to target an area can only be used against a single area-wide effect; if there are multiple effects active on the area you must target each effect individually. If successful, you end the effect of any active illusions in the area; however, their creators may activate them once again.
The Storyteller is the final arbiter on when a character has reason to suspect the use of illusionary powers, such as the appearance of a chainsaw from someone’s pocket or a dragon swooping in from the sky. The use of Truth’s Essence is not considered an attempt to disbelieve illusionary effects, and therefore works against Horrid Reality. Truth’s Essence has no effect on illusionary effects created by elder powers or luminary powers.
Passion Play
Level 7Reality is temporary; a toy easily manipulated and changed to suit your purposes. By invoking the power of your blood, you control the world around you, shaping illusions to your liking. From a dilapidated warehouse springs forth an elaborate manse fit for a king; a garden of simple rose bushes erupts into a labyrinthine forest of vicious, thorny vines. To others, your manipulations become a solid irrefutable reality.
Spend 3 points of Blood and 3 full turns to craft an illusion that engulfs the world around you. This illusion must be centered on your immediate location and affects an area no larger than a small warehouse, mansion, or an outdoor area up 2000 square feet. At the end of your third turn you have created a solid illusion, filled with inanimate objects that can be touched or moved by anyone within the effect.
When crafting your Passion Play you may change any details of the physical location that you would like. For example, rooms grow smaller, buildings shrink, gardens fill with the scent of fresh cut flowers, and stairs appear from thin air. Passion Play can only be used to craft inanimate objects such as a building or furniture. Manifestations of sentient entities must be created separately. The details of the area created through this ability are at the discretion of the user. For example, the space may become an opulent art gallery or a terrifying den of horror.
Once your Passion Play is active, it cannot be changed. You may only have one use of Passion Play active at any given time. You may move through the illusion or even leave the area, and the effect will continue. Your Passion Play will persist until dawn unless you elect to end the power earlier by spending a simple action or you die.
A character caught within your Passion Play cannot disbelieve any non-harmful Chimerical creations within. Here, a chimerical table looks and feels as real as the rest of the world. Damage caused by Chimerstry powers such as Horrid Reality do not fade (even if the area is left or this power ends) and have the potential to kill if they cause sufficient damage. In addition, any attempt by you to use the first four levels of Chimerstry in the Passion Play area of effect does not require an opposed challenge and automatically succeeds without an additional cost. This benefit only applies within the Passion Play; illusions that leave the area lose this benefit.