By this point you will have decided all of your character’s identities, and linked one to their obsession. In this stage you will:
- Decide what features each identity has.
- Set the starting values for each identity.
- Set your character’s Wound Threshold.
This is the final stage for defining identities, and builds on decisions you have already made:
- For mundane identities, you should have described some Of course I can examples and chosen one ability that it substitutes for.
- For supernatural identities, you will have identified some usage conditions and chosen a mechanical effect.
There will be some additional details to sort out for adept, avatar and supernatural identities after this stage.
Choose identity features
Adept and avatar identities only ever take the Casts Rituals and Use Gutter Magick features. These can be added to supernatural identities, if it’s appropriate to the supernatural effect.
As well as substituting for an ability, each mundane identity has a number of features that confer mechanical benefits.
- The core rules for Unknown Armies 3 allow you to take 2 features for each identity.
- Book 4 introduces new features and allows players to take 3 features for each identity.
How many you can take in your game will be up to the GM.
Some useful skills are only available by taking identities with specific features:
- Want to be able to heal people? Take an identity with Medical (for wounds) or Therapeutic (for shock meters).
- Want to be quicker to react? Take an identity with Provides Initiative.
- Want to be harder to take out? Take an identity with Provides Wound Threshold.
- Want to be good at using a gun? Take an identity with Provides Firearms Attacks.
A full list of mundane features and supernatural categories follows below. Follow the links to see examples of identities that have a chosen feature or category. Note that supernatural categories are not features, and cannot be added to mundane identities.
Allocate identity points
Every identity has a percentile value, which is the target for making checks against it. The starting value is decided by the player.
- In a standard campaign, you get 120 points to spread across all identities, and whether they are mundane or unnatural.
- You may only allocate between 15 and 90 points to each identity that you start with.
Identity values are not fixed at this starting level, but will change during play.
- Most identities will only go up.
- Failing a non-avatar identity check allows you to mark experience.
- Passing an avatar identity check allows you to mark experience.
- At the end of a game session you can increase the identity by 1-5 points.
- Breaking taboo will reduce an avatar identity’s value.
An identity with a low starting value (less than 30%) is likely to fail a lot. However, each session it is used and that you fail an identity check (if not an avatar identity), you can mark experience, with a chance to increase it.
Set Wound Threshold
If you have an identity with the Provide Wound Threshold feature, set your character’s Wound Threshold to the value you allocate to the identity. It will change as your identity value changes.
Otherwise your Wound Threshold is set and fixed to 50 points.
Features
| Features | Description | Book | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Casts Rituals | You can roll the identity to activate minor rituals, or even to perform significant rituals as long as you’ve got the magickal charges needed for them. | 1: Play | 44 | 43 |
| Coerces a Meter | You can plausibly threaten someone and they either do what you say, or they suck up a stress check on a pre-determined shock meter. | 1: Play | 44 | 43 |
| Cooperative | You can help someone else who is undertaking an endeavour using the ability that this identity substitutes for. | 4: Expose | 35 | |
| Evaluates a Meter | Your identity gives you insight into people that lets you assess one of their shock meters after spending a little time with them. | 1: Play | 44 | 43 |
| Medical | You can keep people alive after physical injury and get them healthy when they’re sick. | 1: Play | 44 | 43 |
| Provides Firearms Attacks | You can realistically attempt to gun someone down when they’re running and screaming. Without this, you rely on a Struggle check to lay down suppressive fire (at best) with a gun. | 1: Play | 44 | 43 |
| Provides Initiative | In circumstances related to the identity, you may get a chance to act faster than others regardless of physical abilities. | 1: Play | 45 | 44 |
| Provides Wound Threshold | Your wound threshold may be set tougher than the normal 50% normal with this identity feature. Even if your identity is less than 50%, it has the advantage of improving over time. | 1: Play | 45 | 44 |
| Resists Shock to a Meter | You can fall back on this identity to defend a stress check to the nominated shock meter. | 1: Play | 45 | 44 |
| Sincere | You can enhance your chances of doing something to or with a character or organisation with whom you have a Relationship. | 4: Expose | 35 | |
| Tactical | You can provide advice or orders to other people. If it’s good advice that is relevant to this identity, and they follow it, they get to flip-flop if needed. | 4: Expose | 35 | |
| Therapeutic | Your identity involves caring, sympathy and healing the troubled souls of puzzled mortals in this modern era. Whatever your therapeutic modality, you can help people repair their damaged shock gauge. | 1: Play | 45 | 44 |
| Unique | You are proficient in a practice not well covered by other features. It’s a reasonably specific endeavour, but something repeatable rather than a one-shot trick. | 1: Play | 45 | 44 |
| Use Gutter Magick | You have a talent for being able to shove your face into reality and use pure will to bruise it. Gutter magick is a raw, improvisational exertion of the casters desire. It doesn’t rely so much on carefully rehearsed ritual as an unnerving belief in your power and need to break the world. | 1: Play | 45 | 44 |
| Weaponized Physique | If you attack someone bare-handed, using Struggle or any other Identity, your blows do an extra point of damage. | 4: Expose | 36 | |
| Substitutes for Ability | Every standard identity substitutes for at least one ability, by default, or more if taken as an additional feature. It’s only for taking actions that the ability it subs for ordinarily covers. An identity does not sub for that ability for the purposes of coercing a shock meter or making a stress check, unless it has the Resists Shock or Coerces feature respectively. | 1: Play | 42 | 41 |
Reference: UA3 Book 2: Run p32 | p31 pdf.