Elemental Touch

The part of Obscura that lets you break out the prosthetics and face paint.

Elemental Touch is an extremely new phenomenon that’s only been sighted recently, and is currently extremely rare. Humans have been seen that are touched by the elements, changing their appearance and behaviour, and occasionally giving them unusual abilities.

It’s known that becoming elementally touched is possible through interacting with large magical effects, and some experimentation has been done with deliberate surgical grafts of elementally active material. Legend has it effects similar to this were also sometimes exhibited by those who had made pacts with elementals.

• All PCs start untouched.
• Basic grafts are an accessible way to get a chosen basic elemental touch.
• Elemental touches with a combat benefit will typically take a mortal wound slot.
• Random elemental touches may happen as a result of contact with large magic and alchemy effects, but only with the player’s OC agreement.
• Basic elemental touches grant predictable benefits for predictable drawbacks.
• Advanced grafts and pacts with elementals are ways to get more powerful elemental touches, which will have a dramatic effect on the character. The more powerful the elemental touch the more dramatic the appearance change should be.

Elemental touches have strong roleplaying effects and will affect how NPCs interact with the person, particularly elementals. They may also have mechanical advantages and disadvantages. Becoming elementally touched can never happen without the player’s OC consent. Once touched by an element it can’t easily be removed (though it is possible), but a change within the same element is fine (and a way to alleviate OC issues with a physrep). It is possible to become elementally touched from two non-opposing elements. Becoming elementally touched by opposing elements is probably a terrible idea.

Basic elemental touches will have a preset type of physrep required. Advanced elemental touches can be more custom, and there is scope for red, green, blue and grey/white face markings, fey features, iconic animal features, demonic features and undead features.

Example Elemental Touches

Name	Element	Physrep	Mechanical Effect	Roleplaying Effect
Brush with element	Any	Sparse face markings of your elemental colour.	None. Special: May be gained once per element.	RP effects of your choice in line with your element.
Third Eye	Any	An extra eye in the colour of your element.	You can control an extra power when leading rituals of your element. You cannot lead or participate in rituals of your opposing element.	You want to find things out, particularly anything to do with your element.
Horns	Creation	Horns	Once per encounter you can call STUN with a melee weapon. Takes a mortal wound slot.	Aggressive towards strangers.
Deathly Resilience	Destruction	Extensive grey skin colouring.	Allows you to CURE 1 yourself within 10s of incapacitation once per encounter. Takes a mortal wound slot.	You have great belief in your ability to survive any situation.
Flame Lash	Chaos	Extensive red skin or veins on the hand and/or arm.	Once per encounter you may call ranged MAGIC TRIPLE. Takes a mortal wound slot.	You are quick to anger.