s[FOCI]
Numenera Destiny
You've been around, which means that you've experienced the pendulum swings that living delivers to every creature. No matter the heights that someone might attain, situations change, disasters happen, friends die, and mistakes are made. No matter how brilliant you might be, or believe yourself to be, those mistakes are often made by you. What distinguishes you from others is that you learn from those mistakes. You learn from the past and use experience as your guide. You're older than many, but you've seen some amazing things in that time, and you can draw on that experience to do amazing things.
Those who've endured defeat, struggled against the odds, known loss, and suffered deeply are primed to learn from adversity. Not everyone is able to appreciate such bitter lessons, but the few who do so can go far.
As someone who's survived the long years and trials of life, you probably dress simply and practically. Though older than most others who risk exploration, you remain fit, lean, and probably have either no hair or hair as white as the frozen water that's said to cover the land in the far south.
A book filled with knowledge on a topic of your choice.
The range or duration of one of your abilities is doubled.
You can take another action on the same turn.
Experience has honed your reaction times, because those who act first gain the advantage in most situations. You're trained in tasks related to initiative, seeing underlying patterns, and solving puzzles.
Adversity has made you tougher. You gain +3 to your Might Pool.
Life's trials have toughened you and made you hard to read. You are trained in any task to resist another creature's attempt to discern your true feelings, beliefs, or plans. You are likewise trained in resisting torture, telepathic intrusion, and mind control.
Your mind is stronger for overcoming bad experience. You gain +3 to your Intellect Pool.
Ability Choice: Choose either Know Their Faults or Tall Tale as your tier 3 ability.
You don't live as long as you have without learning what makes others tick. If a creature that you can see has a special weakness, such as a vulnerability to loud noises, a negative modification to perception, and so on, you know what it is. Ask and the GM will tell you; usually, this is not associated with a roll, but in certain cases the GM may decide that there is a chance for you not to know. In these cases, you are specialized in knowing creature weaknesses.
You tell a short anecdote to a foe that can understand you about something you've witnessed in your life that's so over the top yet so convincing that, if you are successful, the foe is dazed for one minute, during which time its tasks are hindered.
You've learned that you have to react instantly when danger threatens. Once per round, if you succeed on a Speed defense roll to resist an attack, you gain an action. You can use it immediately even if you have already taken a turn in the round. If you use this action to attack, your attack is eased. You don't take an action during the next round.
Experience has taught you a lot, including that luck is sometimes something that you have to make for yourself. When you roll a 1, you can reroll. You must use the new result, even if it's another 1.
Learning from adversity includes recognizing when to move quickly. You gain +3 to your Speed Pool.
Ability Choice: Choose either Exploit Advantage or Lethal Ploy as your tier 6 ability.
Even if you can do something well, you've learned that you can always do it even better. Whenever you have an asset for a roll, you ease the task by one additional step.
Long experience has revealed to you that subterfuge is your friend in desperate situations. You push, attack, or distract the target in some seemingly inconsequential way that leads to the target’s death. The target must be level 2 or lower. In addition to the normal options for using Effort, you can also choose to use Effort to increase the maximum level of the target by 1. Thus, to kill a level 5 target (three levels above the normal limit), you must apply three levels of Effort.
GM Intrusions: Life always has new and potentially hurtful or even deadly lessons to teach.