[UA] re:New Magick Cherries

[adam green kalafarski]

Well... I'm sure you can guess that I don't have much experience posting
large documents. Here's my earlier post again, hopefully there won't be
any glitches:

Hi there!

Cherries are one of the many things that make UA adepts cool. However,
since there are only 10 cherries for all the magick schools you'll
probably get plenty of players with the same cherries if you're running a
game where all the PCs are adepts. Anticipating this problem, I designed
5 school-specific cherries for each school presented in the UA rulebook
and Postmodern Magic.

My goal was to make each cherry cool, useful, balanced and appropriate to
the school it belongs to. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't
succede with each cherry but with 97 to pick from I hope you'll find some
that you can use in your game. 

If you have any rules questions on the effects I intended these cherries
to produce, feel free to send me an e-mail. Don't hesitate to flame me
with criticisms either if you think some of these ideas are unfair,
overpowered or just plain stupid. 

General Comments on these Cherries:
 Just like most spells, cherries can only effect people or things in your
immediate vicinity that your character can sense somehow.
 Effects generated by cherries are allowed help your characters get
charges. The normal prohibition against using magick to get charges
doesn't apply here.
 Some of these cherries give your character a permanent increase to a
skill. This bonus cannot raise a skill above its governing stat.
 Your may always choose not to activate a cherry you roll. 
 GMs are heartily encouraged to think of a cool way for these cherries to
manifest in game. A "learn something" cherry might be described as a
vision or an intuitive leap of logic based on minor details in the current
scene.

Amoromancy Cherries:
 Dr. Ruth. You get a flash of insight into what someone nearby is looking
for in a partner.
 Casanova. You may flip-flop any charm type skill till sunup or sundown.
 Don't Hurt Me. If someone attacks you next round they associate you with
a loved one and get a -10% penalty to hit you until combat ends.
 Old Flame. One of your old conquests walks into the scene due to
coincidence. This person has been away from you long enough for you to get
a charge off him or her.
 Painful memories. If you know the juicy details about breakup a target
has gone through you may do significant blast style to the target if you
hit him with your blast next round.

Annihilomancy Cherries:
 Cut the Shit. For one hour, any attempt to influence you through magickal
or mundane means automatically fails.
 Asbestos Skin. The effects of the next successful spell you cast won't
hurt you.
 Appetite for Destruction. If you cast a blast or Clutter Buster next
round each extra charge spent doubles the destruction radius.
 Prized Possession. Learn the most prized material possession of any
target in your vicinity.
 Breakdown. All mechanical devices in the area immediately break down.
However, these machines can be fixed. Guns jam, cars stall, computers
crash, etc. If you stop this cherry from taking effect you lose all your
charges for violating your school's taboo.

Bibliomancy Cherries:
 Book Smart. Permanently increase a skill you could learn from a book by
+01%.
 Price List. Learn what a target's most valuable book is.
 Charge-o-Meter. If you have any books on you with stored spells you learn
how many charges each spell requires.
 Superior Bookbinding. Any one book you're carrying becomes immune to the
destructive effects of time and weather. If that book had been previously
damaged its immediately repaired.
 Library Watch. When you roll up this cherry you learn who the last person
to enter your library is. This one's great for especially paranoid
bookworms.

Cliomancy Cherries:
 Local History. Learn the most historically significant event that has
occurred in your current location.
 Know it all. Get a permanent +01% increase to any knowledge skill you
already have.
 Open Ears. Learn a current occult rumor.
 Mental Fortitude. Automatically succeed at your next madness check.
 Magic Dowser. For the next hour, you'll be able to know if anyone you see
is an adept or not.

Common Cryptomancy Cherries:
 Honest Face. The next statement you make, unless contradicted by the
circumstances at hand, is taken at face value for 5 minutes out of combat
or 5 rounds in combat.
 Quick Exit. If you're in combat, you may cast God's Forgotten or God's
Prison on yourself the next time someone successfully attacks you. If
you're successful you take no damage from that attack. Once combat ends,
you lose your opportunity.
 Screw Freud! Make your next magick roll without the normal -10% penalty.
You retain this bonus until you fail a magick roll or an hour passes.

Eastern School Cherries:
 Master of Deceit. You may flip-flop your lying skill till sunup or
sundown.
 Told You So. For the next 24 hours, one of the deceptions you're running
will be backed up by written evidence. The GM chooses the deception and
doesn't tell you which one it is.

Western School Cherries:
 Eagle Eye. Add a permanent +01% to a notice or investigation type skill.
 The Gods Walk Among Us. For the next 24 hours, any avatar you encounter
appears to be wearing symbols appropriate to their archetype. These
symbols are only visible to you.

Dipsomancy Cherries:
 Sober up. Lose up to 10% of your drinking impairment penalty
 Double Dose. Every 05% drinking penalty you take gives you an extra minor
charge until you sober up. If you're drinking from a significant vessel
you get a significant charge as normal plus the bonus minor charge.
 Drunkard's Radar. You learn the current drinking impairments of everyone
in you immediate vicinity.
 Helpful Poltergeist. Until you sober up objects in your vicinity will
float around. An unseen hand will seem to pour your drinks, light your
cigarettes etc. You have no control over these phenomena.
 Have one on me. A single target gets a 10% drinking impairment for 3
rounds including this one.

Entropomancy Cherries:
 Lucky Night. On your next gamble you may reroll one odd roll. If its even
you can do the same trick with another blast. If its odd you luck's run
out
 Chaotic Premonition. Roll a hunch and give it to anyone in sight.
 Luck of Odysseus. Everyone in the area gets a -10% shift to his or her
next action.
 Temporary Immortality. No matter what you do with your next action you
won't hurt yourself. Coincidence somehow manages to prevent injury. Any
action won't give you charges and other people can still hurt you
normally.
 Master of Chance. You may flip-flop any roll somebody else makes next
round.

Epideromancy Cherries:
 Pump up. Get a permanent +01% to your body or speed stat. Wound points
don't increase if you increase your body this way.
 Gross. The magic effect you just cast is more disgusting than usual. Use
your perverted imagination. Everyone who sees what you do must make a
rank-3 unnatural check.
 First Aid. Heal 3 points of damage even if you got a charge off that
damage.
 Feel my pain. The next person you touch feels like they've taken as much
damage as you have. If this much damage would kill them they need to make
a body test or fall conscious for an hour. The pain fades in one round.
 Reach out and Touch Someone. Next round you automatically succeed at any
attempt to touch someone within 20 feet. You accomplish this feat by
stretching your arms out like an elastic. Your arms return to normal
length at the end of next round.

Iconomancy Cherries:
(In the cherries below, "your idol" refers to the idol you channeled for
the effect you just cast)
 Learned from the Master. Get a permanent +01% bonus to a skill
appropriate to your idol.
 Wannabe. For the next 24 hours you look and sound like your idol. You
don't gain charges off of this, but you don't lose charges if your altered
image appears on a national medium.
 Divine Destiny. You'll recognize the next corpse-to-be worth a major
charge when see him or her on TV or in person.
 Dig up Dirt. Get a 10% bonus to a research or investigation type skill
the next time you use that skill.
 Parallel Lives. Within a month something will happen to you that's
freakishly similar to something that happened to your idol.

Infomancy Cherries:
 Extended Airtime. If your next spell manipulates skills its duration is
increased by one round.
 Net Ninja. Add a permanent +01% to any technology type skill.
 Free Broadcast. If you immediately yell a fairly short phrase, this
phrase will appear in a local news broadcast or newspaper although it
won't be attributed to you.
 Censor. One specific spell of your choice may not be cast in your
presence for 24 hours. Your character must know the name of the spell;
"Dipsomancy significant blast" won't work, you need to know its normally
called "Big Whammy".
 Expert Opinion. A local media representative will ask your opinion on a
random issue and print or broadcast your response if your answer sounds
serious.

Irascimancy Cherries:
 Nickname. Call someone in your vicinity by a taunting name. For one hour,
everyone else will address the target by that name as if it were a
nickname they'd used for years.
 Hot button. Learn a target's rage stimulus.
 Silent Scream. Focus all your anger inward and gain two hardened notches
in your self gauge.
 Total Bastard. You get 2 experience points. If your character survives
till the end of the adventure, each other player gets one less experience
point for each time this cherry is activated.
 Secret Enemy. Learn whom a target person hates most.

Kleptomancy Cherries:
 Mystic Casing. You learn how many charges a target adept is carrying.
 Perfect Crime. The spell you just cast will never be traced back to you.
The spell's effects will be attributed to some other source or disregarded
as coincidence.
 "I'm not there". Get a free dodge next round using your Kleptomancy skill
as your dodge skill.
 Five Fingered Discount. You get a 10% bonus to all non-magickal rolls
involving theft for one hour.
 Quick Getaway. If you're in combat you may run away any round during that
combat without the normal one round penalty. If you're already being
chased you automatically get away.

Mechanomancy Cherries:
 Better Machine. Your creation gets another 5 points to add to attributes
or skills.
 Two for the Price of One. Your clockwork can divide into two smaller
clockworks. Each divided clockwork has half of the total's wound points
and a -05% penalty to all skills and stats.
 Self Repairing. If provided with the appropriate spare parts, your
clockwork can repair itself at a rate of wound points per day.
 Scrounging King. Your clockwork was built for next to nothing no matter
how elaborate it was.
 Terminator. Your clockwork may flip-flop rolls it makes with it's combat
skill.

Oneiromancy Cherries:
 Wake Up! Lose up to 10% of your exhaustion penalty.
 Reset the Clock. You start taking exhaustion penalties as if you'd only
been awake for 12 hours. The severity of the exhaustion penalties still
increases normally.
 Caffeine Tolerance. The uppers you've been taking don't affect you for
one hour.
 Fading Dream. You may forget a single event that occurred since you last
slept. If you made a stress check during that incident you lose the
appropriate hardened or failed notch.
 Life's a Dream. By convincing yourself that you're dreaming you get +20%
to any stress check. Furthermore, if you make a stress check while in this
state you don't get a hardened notch. These effects fade when you fail a
stress check, take damage or consume an upper.

Personomancy Cherries:
 Face Maker. You get a permanent +02% to your Mask-Making skill.
 Just Another Masked Man. For the next 24 hours, masks you wear won't
attract attention. Other people can see the mask, they just don't think
its strange for you to wear it.
 The Method. Spend your next action studying a target. You permanently
gain the ability to flip-flop any acting roll used to impersonate that
person.
 Mask up my Sleeve. Conjure up any mask you won. The mask may either
appear in your hand or worn on your face.
 Submerge Passions. If you're wearing a mask you automatically succeed any
self based stress check until you remove the mask you're wearing. If
you're not wearing a mask you may use your next action to put one on and
get the same benefit.

Plutomancy Cherries:
 Gimme. The most valuable small object in your vicinity flies into your
hand. An object's value is determined by monetary worth.
 Fiscal Analysis. You learn how much cash everyone in the area is
carrying.
 Salesman's Personality. You can sell one item currently on your person
for twice its actual value to anyone who might conceivably have a use for
that item.
 Funny Money. The portraits on all legal tender in the area change to
pictures of you. You may choose to spare your own cash from this facelift.
 Sell your Soul. You may gain a permanent +01% bonus to any non-magickal
skill you possess. However, your soul stat goes down by 01%.

Pornonmancy Cherries:
 Dirty Secret. Learn the worst sex related thing a target person has done.
 Hard On. You get a +10% bonus to charm or seduce target person for 10
minutes.
 Hot Body. If you have a soul based skill like Sexually Alluring it
increases by 01% permanently.
 Incite Passion. If you know (or can guess) a target's noble stimulus you
may give that person a strong desire fulfil that impulse with his or her
next action or make a self check.
 Kiss of the Succubus. If use your next action to kiss someone (normal
struggle roll if target's unwilling) you may attempt to bast them. If
blast hits it does significant blast style damage. Like the Epideromancy
blast, you make both the struggle roll and the blast roll in the same
round.

Thantomancy Cherries:
 Killer's Mentality. Gain two hardened notches in violence.
 Hungry Abyss. If you use magick to kill a human or an animal within an
hour you get the same amount of charges that you would have gotten if you
killed them through your normal ritual. You only get this benefit for one
kill.
 Life Flashes Before Your Eyes. If you make a successful blast next round,
your target experiences the thoughts of the sacrifice that gave you the
charge. This triggers a rank 2 self check for a minor blast and a rank 6
self check for a significant blast.
 Scent of Death. You learn the name of the last person to die in your
current location.
 Hidden Fetish. For the next 24 hours, your fetishes won't attract
attention. Wear your bone necklace with pride.

Urbanomancy Cherries:
 Gang Colors. Learn the names of any group in your city a target belongs
to.
 Helicopter Crash. Your next blast hits the target instantly no matter
where he is.
 Cops on the Beat. A cruiser drives by just after your spell goes off.
 No Juice for You! A target adept cannot gain charges until he leaves your
city.
 Working up the Ladder. If you have a skill like "authority" you may
improve it by 05%. This will manifest in game as a promotion or an
increased amount of respect given to you in your current position.




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