Arcanum: Life
Practice: Weaving
Primary Factor: Potency
Withstand: Stamina
Suggested Rote Skills: Animal Ken, Science, Survival
The mage can transform life by giving it features normally exhibited by other organisms.
She can grant herself claws or gills, change a harmless herbivore into a venom-spitting killer, or impart limbs and air-breathing lungs to a shark, among other changes.
She may grant one feature per level of Potency.
A transformed target instinctively knows how to use its new aspects to the best of its ability. The magic is capable of affecting even microscopic organisms, if the mage can perceive them, but for obvious reasons most microbes cannot benefit from aspects like armour, limbs, or senses.
The mage can grant viruses and bacteria increased Toxicity, or the ability to replicate or survive in environments that might otherwise kill them.
Because of the sheer variety of adaptations displayed by the world’s flora and fauna, the following is not an exhaustive list, but serves as an example for possible traits:
Claws: The subject gains savage claws, granting her a +1 weapon bonus.
Environmental Adaptation: Like creatures adapted for life deep underwater or inhospitable deserts, the subject gains the ability to survive pressure, extreme heat or cold (up to level 4 environments), and arid or moisture-heavy environments.
Gills/Lungs: The subject may breathe underwater (or in air, if normally aquatic) freely.
Immunities: The mage may grant resistance to toxins or poisonous materials, like a rat’s ability to devour even rotten food unharmed or herbivores’ ability to fully digest plant matter.
Leaping: Gaining powerful legs like a frog’s or kangaroo’s, the target gains a bonus to jumping rolls, increasing the distance leaped by each success on the Athletics roll.
Prehensile Tail: Gain a bonus to rolls related to balance or climbing equal to Potency.
Scaly Armour/Thick Hide: The subject gains 2/1 armour (must be at least Size 2).
Senses: The subject gains a new sense, such as echolocation, primitive infra-vision, or a keen sense for vibrations, granting a bonus to Perception rolls and the ability to perceive phenomena outside the human senses.
Tentacles: The subject may make grappling attempts against targets up to her Size in feet away.
Venom: The subject gains fangs or small stingers (damage bonus 0) capable of injecting venom with a Toxicity equal to the spell’s Potency. Must grapple first unless a second level of this adaptation is taken. If taken with Tentacles, the Venom may be delivered automatically by any successful move during a grapple.
Wall-Crawling: The subject (which can be no larger than Size 7) gains the ability to climb on surfaces without equipment or even handholds, provided the surface can bear her weight.
+2 Reach: The bestowed traits, if made indefinite, can be passed on to the creature’s descendants.