First Implement and Esoterica Feature 1

Your implement is a special object of symbolic importance: your badge as you treat with the supernatural and a powerful tool if things turn violent. Choose an implement from the options presented below:

• Amulet
• Bell
• Chalice
• Lantern
• Mirror
• Regalia
• Tome
• Wand
• Weapon

You begin play with a mundane item of that type, and you gain the initiate benefit for that implement. While an implement is useful to you, it typically has no value if sold. If you acquire a new object of the same general implement type, you can switch your implement to the new object by spending 1 day of downtime with the new item. As you advance as a thaumaturge, you will collect up to three implements and unlock the hidden potential stored within each, so you can mix and match their benefits to suit your situation.

While your implements are your primary tools in your dealings with the supernatural, you know the value of always being prepared. You constantly collect and carry various smaller mystic objects, bits of materials with paranormal affinities, and items used in folk practices: your esoterica. These might include cold-iron nails, scraps of scrolls and scriptures, fragments of bones purportedly from a saint, and other similar objects. You keep your esoterica in easy-to-access places on your person and are well practiced in brandishing your implement and esoterica together, so you can draw and use esoterica with the same hand you're using to wield an implement.

Exploit Vulnerability

You know that every creature, no matter how obscure, has a weakness. By identifying and empowering the right object, you can strike down even the most resilient of monsters. You gain the Exploit Vulnerability action.

You can attempt to Exploit Vulnerabilities in one of two ways: either by invoking properties that repel that type of creature, or by attempting a more improvisational, ad-hoc method with your esoterica that can impose a custom weakness on any creature, albeit one that usually isn't as dire as a creature's existing weakness.

• Mortal Weakness After identifying a creature's weakness, you use a thematically resonant bit of esoterica to attune your attacks to your discovery. Your unarmed and weapon Strikes activate the highest weakness you discovered with Exploit Vulnerability, even though the damage type your weapon deals doesn't change. This damage affects the target of your Exploit Vulnerability, as well as any other creatures of the exact same type, but not other creatures with the same weakness. For example, when fighting a pack of werewolves, you might use silver shavings or crushed moonstone to deal damage that applies their weakness to silver to your attacks against any of the werewolves, but you wouldn't apply this damage to any other monsters with a weakness to silver.
• Personal Antithesis You improvise a custom weakness on a creature by forcefully presenting and empowering a piece of esoterica that repels it on an individual level; for instance, against a tyrant, you might procure a broken chain that once held a captive. This causes the target creature, and only the target creature, to gain a weakness against your unarmed and weapon Strikes equal to 2 + half your level.

Traits