Animal Retainers

1-point Options - Brawny: Your Retainer can carry weight equal to its body weight , or pull with force equal to its body weight times its stock NPC rating. - Ferocious: Once per hour, your Retainer may use a feral combat maneuver without expending Willpower. - Fleet: If your Retainer expends both its simple and standard actions to move, it can move nine steps in a round instead of the standard six steps. - Hardened: Whether by a chitinous carapace, hardened scales, or a thick hide, your Retainer gains a +3 bonus to its defensive test pools when resisting Brawl or Melee attacks. In addition, it applies a +1 bonus to its defensive test pools when resisting Ranged attacks. - Huge: Your Retainer is a large, lumbering example of its type, gaining 2 additional Healthy wound levels. - Imposing: Both animals and humans alike find your Retainer especially intimidating. Nonsupernatural stock NPCS with a rating lower than this Retainer cannot attack or interfere with it unless supernaturally compelled to do so - Stealthy: Due to size, natural camouflage, or ingrained hunting practices, your Retainer is naturally adept at hiding. It gains a +3 bonus to Stealth skill-based test pools.

2-point Options - Aquatic Combatant: Your Retainer can swim at its normal movement speed. While submerged, your Retainer receives a +2 wild card bonus to Brawl skill-based attack test pools. - Burrowing: Your Retainer can move underground at normal speeds. It cannot pass through materials that aren’t earth, such as rock, water, concrete, or a thick tangle of roots. - Climbing: Your Retainer can stick to solid surfaces, climbing up walls or even walking upside-down on a ceiling. - Grappler: Whether it has the jaws of an alligator or a python’s ability to crush, your animal is capable of holding onto things and not letting go. It can use your choice of either the Grapple or Disarm combat maneuvers once per hour without the need to spend Willpower to do so. - Natural Weapons: Your Retainer features overdeveloped tusks, claws, or teeth that seem to maximize its ability to inflict pain. Whenever your Retainer scores an exceptional success on a Brawl skill-based attack, it inflicts an additional point of damage.

3-point Options - Ambush Predator: Your Retainer gains a +2 wild card bonus to Physical test pools if it attacks an opponent who was unaware of its presence. - Combat Mount: Your Retainer can serve as a mount in combat, initiating attacks on turns when you do. Without this ability, your Retainer is not excluded from carrying you, but it cannot initiate attacks. To select this quality, your mount must be capable of carrying your body weight. - Elusive: Your animal is especially cunning and difficult to find. It gains a +3 wild card bonus to all Dodge skill test pools. - Intelligent: Your Retainer has a deeper understanding of your requests than an normal example of its type could. You can provide your Retainer with complex if/then tasks to accomplish, and it will do its best to complete them. - Species Alpha: Your Retainer attracts two additional creatures of the same type, so long as it is residing in a place where these creatures are encountered in the wild. These additional creatures have a Stock NPC rating equal to or one fewer than your Retainer, and you can buy them as additional Retainers if you choose. They do not follow your direct orders without supernatural compulsion, but they treat your Retainer as their leader and follow its lead. If one or more of these animals is lost or killed (or purchased as a Retainer), new ones arrive at a rate equal to one per month. Unnatural creatures who can animal qualities (such as Vozhd) cannot take this quality.