DJH Abilities

Abilities

Academic:

Accounting
Biological Sciences
Cthulhu Mythos
History
Humanities 
Languages
Law
Occult Studies
Physical Sciences
Physician
Psychology
Research
Social Sciences 
Trivia

Interpersonal:

Assess Honesty
Bureaucracy
Cop Talk
Flattery
Flirting
Intimidation
Negotiation
Oral History    
Reassurance
Streetwise

Technical:

Art
Craft
Evidence Collection
Forensics
Outdoorsman

General Abilities:

Athletics
Counseling
Driving
Filch
First Aid
Fleeing
Health    
Hypnosis
Infiltration
Mechanics
Preparedness
Sanity
Scuffling
Sense Trouble
Shooting    
Stability
Surveillance

Description of Abilities

Accounting (Academic)

You understand bookkeeping and accountancy procedures; you can read and keep financial records. You can:

• tell legitimate businesses from criminal enterprises
• reconstruct financial histories from old records (uncovering, say, slave trading or smuggling)
• spot the telltale signs of embezzlement, bribes, blackmail, or dummy companies
• track payments to their source

Art (Technical)

You can create some sort of art – music, painting, dance, sculpture, song, poetry, drama, and so forth. You can choose to focus on one medium or diversify: For each rating point in Art, you may select another type of art in which you are generally proficient. You may specify when you create your Investigator, or choose opportunistically in the course of play, revealing that you happen to be, say, a fine amateur contralto if circumstances suddenly require it. Creating great (or even particularly notable) art requires spends (see p. 54); points allocated to such spends cannot be allocated to different artforms in the future.

Assess Honesty (Interpersonal)

This is the human capacity to judge and sense motives and character. Basically, this ability allows you to tell if someone is lying to you, and (with a spend) make a decent guess about their motives.

Not all lies are verbal. You can tell when a person is attempting to project a false impression through body language.

Certain individuals – con men, actors, professional gamblers, and similar — may be so adept at lying that they never set off your built-in lie detector, or overload it by being “always on.” Some people believe their own falsehoods. Psychopathic and sociopathic personality types (like most sorcerers turn out to be) and brainwashed cultists lie reflexively and without shame, depriving you of the telltale tics and gestures you use to sense when a person is deceiving you. Those who have communed excessively with the inhuman intelligences of the Mythos will occasionally “read wrong,” but will similarly fail to send any useful signals to a sane watcher. You can also use Assess Honesty to cold-read a mark for fortunetelling scams, phony séances or mentalist acts, and the like.

Athletics (General)

Athletics allows you to perform general acts of physical derring-do, from running to jumping to dodging falling or oncoming objects. Any physical action not covered by another ability, probably falls under the rubric of Athletics. If your Athletics rating is 8 or more, your Hit Threshold, the Target Number your opponents use when attempting to hit you in combat, is 4. Otherwise, your Hit Threshold is 3.

Biological Sciences (Academic)

You study the evolution, behavior, and physical makeup of living organisms. You can:

• tell when an animal is behaving strangely
• tell whether an animal or plant is natural to a given area
• identify an animal from hair, bones or spoor
• identify a plant from a small sample

Bureaucracy (Interpersonal)

You know how to navigate a bureaucratic organization, whether it’s a governmental office or a large business concern. You know how to get what you want from it in an expeditious manner, and with a minimum of ruffled feathers. You can:

• convince officials to provide sensitive information
• gain credentials on false pretences
• find the person who really knows what’s going on
• locate offices and files
• borrow equipment or supplies

Cop Talk (Interpersonal)

You know how to speak the lingo of police officers, and to make them feel confident and relaxed in your presence. You may be a current or former cop, or simply the kind of person they immediately identify as a solid, trustworthy citizen. You can:

• coolly ply cops for confidential information
• get excused for minor infractions
• imply that you are a colleague, authorized to participate in their cases

Counseling (General)

You can provide comfort, perspective and solace to the mentally troubled. You may be a therapist or counselor, a priest or pastor, or just a empathetic and intuitive individual. You can restore panicked characters to a state of calm, and treat any long-term mental illnesses they accrue in the course of their investigations

Craft (Technical)

You can create useful physical objects, working with materials like wood, metal, jewelry, and so forth. Although the resulting cabinets, kettles, or rings may be beautiful, your focus is utility, not art. Like the Art ability, you may focus on one craft (blacksmithing, cabinetry, coopering, etc) or diversify into many; the same rules apply.

You may be able to use your Craft ability to specific investigative ends: discover a secret drawer in a desk if you are a cabinet-maker, and so forth.

Cthulhu Mythos (Academic)

You have begun to piece together the secret rules of the real world, rather than the ignorant scrim of physics and religion. You recognize the great names, and the truths they conceal. If you’ve read a Mythos tome, using this ability lets you recall any specific hints or facts from it relevant to your current situation. If you’re staring at an ancient alien bas relief, using this ability lets you perceive, with a single shocking gestalt, the horrific history it unfolds.

Using this ability costs both Sanity and Stability.

The primary use of this ability in the course of an investigation is to “put together the pieces” and draw upon the terrible knowledge that you have been subconsciously suppressing, achieving a horrific epiphany. The Keeper provides you with the result of your intuition, sketching out the Mythos implications of the events you have uncovered. (See p. 74 for further Keeper guidelines for this ability.) This may not be the “solution” to the mystery, although it should allow you to aim your efforts in the right direction; at the Keeper’s discretion, an actual spend might provide more specific (and potentially horribly dangerous) answers.

Consider “The Dunwich Horror” to be a Trail of Cthulhu adventure. Professor Armitage uses his Cthulhu Mythos ability and realizes that old Whateley somehow incarnated Yog-Sothoth on Earth. In the story, he then reads Wilbur’s diary to learn that he needs both a special incantation and the Powder of Ibn-Ghazi to destroy Yog-Sothoth’s spawn. Had he not managed to get hold of the diary, Armitage could use his Cthulhu Mythos ability to “intuit” that Yog-Sothoth must be made visible before he could be fully banished, and spending a point might tell him that the Powder of Ibn-Ghazi would accomplish such a task. No spend would provide the formula for the Powder, except to suggest which eldritch tome might conceal similar truths.

Possessing this ability requires the loss of one point in sanity in addition to its normal cost.

Driving (General)

You’re a skilled defensive driver, capable of wringing high performance from even the most recalcitrant automobile, pick-up truck, or van. You can:

• evade or conduct pursuit
• avoid collisions, or minimize damage from collisions
• spot tampering with a vehicle
• conduct emergency repairs

For every additional rating point in Driving, you may add an additional vehicle type to your repertoire. These include: motorcycle, transport truck, helicopter, or airplane. You may choose exotic types, like hovercrafts and tanks, although these are unlikely to see regular use in an investigation-based game.

Evidence Collection (Technical)

You’re adept at casing an investigation site and at finding, bagging, and tagging important clues. You can:

• spot hidden objects or objects of interest (including bullet casings under a couch, or drops of blue ooze behind the desk) at a crime scene or other investigation site
• note relationships between objects at a crime scene, reconstructing sequences of events
• find, transfer, take, and compare fingerprints
• match handwriting to a known sample
• store objects for forensic analysis without contaminating your samples

Filch (General)

Your nimble fingers allow you to unobtrusively manipulate small objects. You can:

• pilfer clues from (or plant clues at) a crime scene under the very noses of unsuspecting authorities
• pick pockets
• plant objects on unsuspecting subjects

First Aid (General)

You can perform first aid on sick or injured individuals.

Flattery (Interpersonal)

You’re good at getting people to help you by complimenting or playing up to them, as subtly or blatantly as they prefer. This works particularly well with subjects who find you attractive, but that isn’t strictly necessary. You could just compliment them on their exquisite taste, or the quality of their dissertation. You can get them to:

• reveal information
• perform minor favors
• regard you as trustworthy
• date you (if applicable)

It’s up to you whether a high rating in Flattery means that you are physically alluring, winning and charismatic, sycophantic, or simply exude a personal magnetism unrelated to your looks or demeanor.

Fleeing (General)

Running away is an excellent survival skill; your characters may be doing a great deal of it. Like many of Lovecraft’s spindly, neurasthenic protagonists, you can be very good at running away without being generally good at other physical tasks. So Fleeing becomes an ability unto itself, which you can use as a substitute for Athletics when escaping during chase sequences. It does not make you any better at pursuit.

If your Fleeing rating is more than twice your final Athletics rating, you can buy rating points in Fleeing above the value at a reduced rate, getting 2 rating points for each build point spent. Hence, if your Athletics rating is 0, all your Fleeing is half-price.

Forensics (Technical)

You study crime scenes and perform autopsies on deceased subjects to determine their cause and circumstances of death. You can use skeletal evidence to reconstruct the physical details (age, sex, medical condition, sometimes occupation) of the deceased. In the case of death by foul play, your examination can identify:

• the nature of the weapon or weapons used
• the approximate time of death
• the presence of intoxicants or other foreign substances in the bloodstream or on the skin
• the contents of the victim’s last meal

In many cases, you can reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the victim’s death from the arrangement of wounds on the body.

Health (General)

Health measures your ability to sustain injuries, resist infection, and survive the effects of toxins. When you get hit in the course of a fight, your Health pool is diminished. A higher Health pool allows you to stay in a fight longer before succumbing to your injuries.

When your Health pool is depleted, you may be dazed, wounded, or monster chow.

History (Academic)

You’re an expert in recorded human history, with an emphasis on its political, military, and economic and technological developments. You can:

• recognize obscure historical allusions
• recall capsule biographies of famous historical figures
• tell where and when an object made during historical times was fashioned
• identify the period of an article of dress or costume

Humanities (Academic)

You are broadly acquainted with art history, the classics, literature, philosophy, religion, and the arts. You may be a well-read autodidact or have an undergraduate degree, or portions thereof, on your C.V.

The humanities ability may reflect a basic grounding in all of these disciplines, with specialization for your profession. If you’re an ordained minister, you’ll know a great deal about your own faith, and see other disciplines through that prism. If you’re a musician, you’ll know the other disciplines via your knowledge of music history, and so on.

Hypnosis (General)

Only Parapsychologists or Psychologists can buy or use this skill This ability represents medical hypnosis; it is not psychic mesmerism or Dr Caligari-style mind control. You can only hypnotize a willing subject, and only one subject at a time. Using Hypnosis requires a Test against Difficulty Number that varies depending on what you are using it for.

• Simple hypnotic state: To place a patient in a hypnotic trance, you must succeed against Difficulty 3. During this trance, she is calm and placid.

• Establish analytic rapport: Once you have successfully hypnotized a patient, your Psychoanalysis pool increases by 3 during any future use of Psychoanalysis on them. Your Counseling rating must be at least 3 to gain this benefit, and the 3 points must be spent on the patient.

• Recover memories: The patient’s fragmented or buried memories, as of dreams, traumas, or murky monster attacks, can be called to the surface and “relived.” This is a Difficulty 4 test. Reliving an experience that cost Stability will cost the patient the same amount again, although you may practice immediate Psychological Triage to minimize the patient’s shock. The Keeper is free to provide false memories if she feels you are “leading the witness.”

• Post-hypnotic suggestion: Upon lifting the trance, you may cause your patient to perform a single action without apparent thought. You may require a “trigger phrase” or simply specify a time: (“When you get home, you’ll leave the book on the desk.”) Spells and other complex activities cannot be post-hypnotically induced. The patient will not accept a suggestion contrary to her normal behavior. This is a Difficulty 4 or higher test; the Keeper may increase the Difficulty based on the suggestion.

• Ease pain: You can relieve symptomatic pain in a patient. This removes the mechanicalpenalties for being hurt, and lasts until the patient is wounded again. This is a Difficulty 4 or higher test; the Keeper may increase the Difficulty depending on the pain’s severity. This does not work under battlefield conditions.

• False memories: You can purposely implant false memories in the patient or bury real ones. This is extremely unethical without a direct therapeutic benefit (such as easing a remembered trauma). This is a Contest between your Hypnosis and the patient’s Stability. Your Difficulty Number is 5; the patient resists with Difficulty 4. Again, the Keeper may increase your Difficulty based on the severity of the memory change. At the Keeper’s discretion, if the patient suffers a further trauma (such as her Stability dropping below -5 again), she may suddenly recall the truth.

Infiltration (General)

You’re good at placing yourself inside places you have no right to be. You can:

• pick locks
• deactivate or evade security systems
• move silently
• find suitable places for forced entry, and use them

Despite its name, Infiltration is as useful for getting out of places undetected as if its for getting into them.

Intimidation (Interpersonal)

You elicit cooperation from suspects by seeming physically imposing, invading their personal space, and adopting a psychologically commanding manner. Intimidation may involve implied or direct threats of physical violence but is just as often an act of mental dominance. You can:

• gain information
• inspire the subject to leave the area
• quell a subject’s desire to attempt violence against you or others

Languages (Academic)

For each rating point in Languages, you are verbally fluent and literate in one language other than your native tongue. You may specify these when you create your character, or choose opportunistically in the course of play, revealing that you just happen to speak Javanese when circumstances require it. You are not learning the language spontaneously but revealing a hitherto unmentioned fact about your character. You may elect to be literate in an ancient language which is no longer spoken. Languages might not come up in the game.

Law (Academic)

You are familiar with the criminal and civil laws of your home jurisdiction, and broadly acquainted with foreign legal systems. At a rating of 2 or more, you are a bar-certified attorney. You can:

• assess the legal risks attendant on any course of action
• understand lawyerly jargon
• argue with police and prosecutors

Mechanics (General)

You’re good at building, repairing, and disabling devices, from classic pit-and-pendulum traps to DVD players. Given the right components, you can create jury-rigged devices from odd bits of scrap. Mechanics doubles as an investigative ability when used to:

• evaluate the quality of workmanship used to create an item
• determine the identity of a handmade item’s maker by comparing to known work by that individual

Negotiation (Interpersonal)

You are an expert in making deals with others, convincing them that the best arrangement for you is also the best for them. You can:

• haggle for goods and services
• mediate hostage situations
• swap favors or information with others

Occult Studies (Academic)

You’re an expert in the historical study of magic, superstition, and hermetic practice from the stone age to the present. From Satanists to the Golden Dawn, you know the dates, the places, the controversies, and the telling anecdotes. You can:

• identify the cultural traditions informing a ritual from examining its physical aftermath
• supply historical facts concerning various occult traditions
• guess the intended effect of a ritual from its physical aftermath
• identify occult activities as the work of informed practitioners, teenage posers, or out-and-out cultists
• fake a fortune-telling session, séance, or other occult activity
• read and cast a horoscope
• identify occult paraphernalia, grimoires, symbols, and codes

This ability does not allow you to work magic or summon supernatural entities, even if the campaign admits the existence of non-Mythos magic. You may believe in the occult or not; the either case.

Depending on the campaign frame, an Occult rating of 4 or more might mean that you have seen obscure names like “Cthulhu” or “Yog-Sothoth” before, but without a rating in Cthulhu Mythos you dismiss them as trivia or explain them as regional or cult variations on Tiamat or Choronzon.

If you have a rating in both Cthulhu Mythos and in Occult, you can identify a given occult ritual as actually (even if ignorantly or unintentionally) a Mythos ritual. This counts as a use of Occult, and costs no Sanity or Stability.

Oral History (Interpersonal)

You can find sources willing to talk, win their confidence, and gather (usually lengthy) oral testimony about historical events, local traditions, folklore, family legend, or gossip. This is an excellent way to do research in illiterate or semi-literate societies, and in rural or small town communities in general. This ability also covers taking shorthand notes or making recordings without spooking your sources.

Outdoorsman (Technical)

You are familiar with working and living outdoors and in the wild. You might be a farmer, cowboy, or logger, or an amateur (or professional) fisher or hunter, or work for the Park Service. Perhaps you were merely an Eagle Scout, grew up in the back of nowhere, or served in a military unit with sufficient patrol experience “in country.” You can:

• tell when an animal is behaving strangely
• tell whether an animal or plant is natural to a given area
• find edible plants, hunt, and fish
• make fire and survive outdoors at night or in bad weather
• navigate overland, albeit more easily with a compass and a map
• track people, animals, or vehicles across grass or through forests

Physical Sciences (Academic)

You maintain a broad knowledge of non-biological sciences. These include astronomy, chemistry, engineering, genetics, geology, paleontology, physics, and applied technology. You may have only this general familiarity, or might also practice a profession.

Physician (Academic)

You diagnose human disease, injuries, poisonings, and physical frailties, and may be broadly acquainted with veterinary medicine as well. At a rating of 2 or more, you may have a medical license. You can:

• diagnose diseases, poisonings, and other ailments
• prescribe treatment for a treatable condition
• identify the extent and cause of an unconscious person's trauma
• detect when a person is suffering from a physically debilitating condition such as drug addiction, pregnancy, or malnutrition
• establish a person’s general level of health
• identify medical abnormalities
• understand medical jargon
• call on medical colleagues or contacts for favors and advice
• Basic Forensics (“the killer used a blunt instrument; death was instantaneous”) with this ability.

At the Keeper’s discretion, you may be trained in a more complex specialty, as well as the sort of general practice indicated here.

Preparedness (General)

You expertly anticipate the needs of any situation by packing a kit efficiently arranged with necessary gear. Assuming you have immediate access to your kit, you can produce whatever object the group needs to overcome an obstacle. You make a simple test; if you succeed, you have the item you want. You needn’t do this in advance of the adventure, but can dig into your kit bag (provided you’re able to get to it) as the need arises.

Other abilities imply the possession of basic gear suitable to their core tasks. Characters with First Aid have their own first aid kits; Artists have their materials to create art. If you have Shooting, you have a gun, and so on. Preparedness does not intrude into their territory. It covers general-purpose investigative equipment, plus oddball items that suddenly come in handy in the course of the story.

The sorts of items you can produce at a moment’s notice depend not on your rating or pool, but on narrative credibility. If the GM determines that your possession of an item would seem ludicrous or and/or out of genre, you don’t get to roll for it. You simply don’t have it. Any item which elicits a laugh from the group when suggested is probably out of bounds.

Inappropriate use of the Preparedness ability is like pornography. Your GM will know it when she sees it.

Psychology (Academic)

You can employ psychological concepts to understand human behavior. You can:

• predict the general behavior of an individual
• glean useful information from simple observation of someone
• understand psychological jargon
• detect when a person has mental health issues

Reassurance (Interpersonal)

You get people to do what you want by putting them at ease. You can:

• elicit information and minor favors
• allay fear or panic in others
• instill a sense of calm during a crisis

Research (Academic)

You know how to find factual information from books, records, and official sources. You’re as comfortable with a card catalogue and fiche reader as with an Internet search engine. You know the right people to talk to to gain information in various walks of society, and your SIM card is full of their phone numbers.

Sanity (General)

Exposure to the truths of the Cthulhu Mythos shatters the core of the human psyche by stripping away all illusions of human significance, benign nature, and loving God, leaving nothing but the terrifying vistas of stark, cosmic nihilism. Your Sanity rating indicates the degree to which you can sustain belief in any fundamental human concerns whatsoever. Unlike other abilities, you never test your Sanity or spend points from your Sanity pool. They are leached away by the Outside.

Once your Sanity reaches 0, your beliefs – and what you used to consider your soul – have been completely corroded beyond repair. In game terms, you become an NPC, shut away in a sanitarium forever, if you are fortunate, or a willing servitor of the uncaring Great Old Ones if not.

It is important to note that a Mythos initiate might have a Sanity of 0 and seem completely normal after rebuilding his intellect around the revealed cosmic truth, and a raving madman who believes himself to be Jesus Christ reborn might retain a Sanity rating at almost any level – if his mania is of purely human construction, rather than the result of a communion with Yog-Sothoth.

If you have a Cthulhu Mythos rating at all, your Sanity rating can never be higher than 10 minus your Cthulhu Mythos rating. (If you know nothing about the Mythos, your Sanity can be as high as you care to buy it. You will lose these points if you gain Cthulhu Mythos.) For a longer-term, more survivable, or pulpier game, the Keeper may wish to adjust this ceiling upward, or shift it downward for a shorter, deadlier, or starker game.

Scuffling (General)

You can hold your own in a hand-to-hand fight, whether you wish to kill, knock out, restrain, or evade your opponent.

Sense Trouble (General)

This ability allows you to perceive (either with sight or other senses) potential hazards to yourself or others. For example, you can:

• hear the splash of the Deep One dropping into the sewer behind you
• see a flittering shape cross the moon
• smell the sharp juniper reek of the Treaders of the Dust as they silently approach
• notice the freshly split human bones hastily hidden behind the easel
• have a bad feeling about that eerily hunchbacked priest at the seemingly deserted cathedral

Players never know the Difficulty Numbers for Sense Trouble before deciding how many points to spend, even in games where Keepers generously inform the players of other Difficulty Numbers. Players must blindly choose how much to spend. The Keeper does not roll in secret, so even a failed roll allows the group the sense that something is amiss. They just don't know exactly what this is. Think of it as the game system equivalent of tension-building eerie music in a horror movie.

Shooting (General)

You are adept with firearms.

Social Sciences (Academic)

You are broadly familiar with the academic fields of anthropology, archaeology, communication, economics, geography, linguistics, political science, and sociology. As with humanities, you are either well-read, have an undergraduate’s broad education, or know these other fields through a professional specialization.

Stability (General)

Whether caused by an onrushing shoggoth, a horde of ghouls, or an NKVD torturer, shock and fear take a toll on the mind and nervous system. Mythos and non-Mythos threats alike can send Investigators into screeching panic, near-catatonic funk, or blind frenzy. Your Stability rating indicates your resistance to mental trauma.

Although the sudden revelation or confirmation of the truths of the Cthulhu Mythos can damage your Stability, so can service in the Great War or the deaths of your beloved family in a fire. In other words, although losing Sanity can decrease Stability, the two are not directly correlated. A Sanity 0 cultist of Hastur might be a gibbering backwoods cannibal (with an appropriately low Stability) or a sophisticated, wealthy art critic with a Stability higher than that of any of the Investigators who seek to take him down.

You get Stability 1 for free.

Sources of Stability For every 3 full rating points you possess in Stability, you must name one person that keeps you sane when the terrors of the world threaten to shred your psyche. This network of friends, colleagues and family provides you with a motivation to keep fighting the good fight and going back into that crypt every night.

A name and identifying phrase are sufficient for each. You may not use fellow Investigators; they go through the same stresses you do and remind you of the horrors you confront. It’s permissible, but risky, for multiple Investigators to lean on the same folks as members of their support network.

Relying on others is a source of strength, but also of danger. Once you come to the attention of entities or cultists of the Mythos, they may use your loved ones against you. They may turn them to evil, possess them, or take the tried and true route of subjecting them to horrible tortures. If anything bad happens to them, you not only face immediate, difficult Stability tests, but may permanently lose the rating points they’re linked to. Your wife, mother, or child can no longer soothe your spirit if you can only visit their scarred and broken bodies in a secluded mental hospital.

Streetwise (Interpersonal)

You know how to behave among crooks, gang-bangers, druggies, hookers and other habitués of the criminal underworld. You can:

• deploy criminal etiquette to avoid fights and conflicts
• identify unsafe locations and dangerous people
• gather underworld rumors

Surveillance (General)

You’re good at following suspects without revealing your presence. You can:

• guide a team to follow a suspect for short periods, handing off to the next in sequence, so the subject doesn’t realize he’s being trailed
• use telescopic viewing equipment to keep watch on a target from a distance
• find undetectable vantage points
• hide in plain sight

Trivia (Academic)

You’re a font of apparently useless information that would stand you in good stead as a contestant on a quiz show. You’re especially good in the following spheres of interest:

• celebrities and entertainment
• sports records and statistics
• geography
• arts and letters
• names in the news

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