Possible player intrusions based on your character type:
Advantageous Malfunction
A device being used against you malfunctions. It might harm the user or one of their allies for a round, or activate a dramatic and distracting side effect for a few rounds.
Convenient Idea
A flash of insight provides you with a clear answer or suggests a course of action with regard to an urgent question, problem, or obstacle you're facing.
Inexplicably Unbroken
An inactive, ruined, or presumed-destroyed device temporarily activates and performs a useful function relevant to the situation. This is enough to buy you some time for a better solution, alleviate a complication that was interfering with your abilities, or just get you one more use out of a depleted cypher or artifact.
Knowledgeable
+4 to your Intellect Pool.
Granted from Mad
https://tools.cypher-system.com/account/cypher/players/D3570ABCE6B69CDB Last Updated: March 3rd, 2026 09:28 App Version: 3.04.20
", "description": "Background:
Adept
You master powers or abilities outside the experience, understanding, and sometimes belief of others. They might be magic, psychic powers, mutant abilities, or just a wide variety of intricate devices, depending on the setting. Adepts are usually thoughtful, intelligent types. They often think carefully before acting and rely heavily on their supernatural abilities. (“Magic” here is a term used very loosely. It's a catch-all for the kinds of wondrous, possibly supernatural things that your character can do that others cannot. It might actually be an expression of technological devices, channeling spirits, mutations, psionics, nanotechnology, or any number of other sources.)
Mad
You have delved too deeply into subjects people were not meant to know. You are knowledgeable in things beyond the scope of most, but this knowledge has come at a terrible price. You are likely in questionable physical shape and occasionally shake with nervous tics. You sometimes mutter to yourself without realizing it.
Hacks The Network
AI and the countless networks integrated into every part of life are as ubiquitous as air and, to most people, about as noticeable. Not you. From the moment you first realized that networks ran on an underlying “Ur” tongue, a code of mathematics and logical symbols, you were hooked. It wasn't your goal to learn everything you could about hacking computers so much as there was nothing else for you. As a thrown stone follows its trajectory, you learned to hack the network.
As long as you have access to a computer, hand terminal, or other connection, you accomplish your goals by working the code. You might have a few extra pockets for high-energy snacks and spare storage devices, as well.
Choose how you became involved in the adventure:
• Voices in your head told you to go.
• You instigated the whole thing and convinced the others to join you.
• One of the other PCs obtained a book of knowledge for you, and now you're repaying that favor by helping them with the task at hand.
• You feel compelled by inexplicable intuition.
Background Connection:
While traveling alone, you saved the life of a powerful person. They remain indebted to you.
Focus Connection:
Pick one other PC. You accidentally caught them in a trap you set, and they had to get free on their own.
Granted from Mad
Light Weapons
Granted from Adept
Heavy Weapons
Granted from Adept
Medium Weapons
Granted from Adept
Your mind is quite fragile. Tasks to resist mental attacks are hindered.
Granted from Mad
You are prone to acting erratically or irrationally. When you are in the presence of a major discovery or subjected to great stress (such as a serious physical threat), the GM can introduce a GM intrusion that directs your next action without awarding XP. You can still pay 1 XP to refuse the intrusion. The GM's influence is the manifestation of your madness and thus is always something you would not likely do otherwise, but it is not directly, obviously harmful to you unless there are extenuating circumstances. (For example, if a foe suddenly leaps out of the darkness, you might spend the first round babbling incoherently or screaming the name of your first true love.)
Granted from Mad
Whenever such knowledge is appropriate, the GM feeds you information although there is no clear explanation as to how you could know such a thing. This is up to the GM's discretion, but it should happen as often as once each session.
Granted from Mad
You are trained in using (and exploiting) computer software, you know one or more computer languages well enough to write basic programs, and you are fluent in internet protocol. Enabler.
Granted from Hacks The Network
With computer access, you jack in instantly and learn a bit more about something you can see. You get an asset on a task involving that person or object. Action.
Granted from Hacks The Network
For one minute you gain an asset on tasks to discern the level, function, and activation of technological devices that you touch. Enabler.
Granted from Technology Flavor
You attack a foe using energies that assail either their physical form or their mind. In either case, you must be able to see your target. If the attack is physical, you emit a short-range ray of force that inflicts 4 points of damage. If the attack is mental, you focus your mental energy to blast the thought processes of another creature within short range. This mindslice inflicts 2 points of Intellect damage (ignores Armor). Some creatures without minds (such as robots) might be immune to your mindslice. Action.
Granted from Adept
You scan an area equal in size to a 10-foot (3 m) cube, including all objects or creatures within that area. The area must be within short range. Scanning a creature or object always reveals its level. You also learn whatever facts the GM feels are pertinent about the matter and energy in that area. For example, you might learn that the wooden box contains a device of metal and plastic. You might learn that the glass cylinder is full of poisonous gas, and that its metal stand has an electrical field running through it that connects to a metal mesh in the floor. You might learn that the creature standing before you is a mammal with a small brain. However, this ability doesn't tell you what the information means. Thus, in the first example, you don't know what the metal and plastic device does. In the second, you don't know if stepping on the floor causes the cylinder to release the gas. In the third, you might suspect that the creature is not very intelligent, but scans, like looks, can be deceiving. Many materials and energy fields prevent or resist scanning. Action.
Granted from Adept
You have a shield of energy around you at all times that helps deflect attacks. You gain +1 to Armor. Enabler.
Granted from Adept
Restores a number of points equal to the cypher's level to the user's Intellect Pool. Subtle
", "basic": { "level": "8", "identified": true } } }, { "name": "Sleep Inducer", "type": "cypher", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/cypher.svg", "system": { "description": "Touch puts the victim to sleep for ten minutes per cypher level or until awoken by a violent action or an extremely loud noise. Manifest
", "basic": { "level": "2", "identified": true } } }, { "name": "Tracer", "type": "cypher", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/cypher.svg", "system": { "description": "Fires a microscopic tracer that clings to any surface within short range. For the next twenty-four hours, the launcher shows the distance and direction to the tracer, as long as it is within 1 mile (100 miles if the cypher is level 3 or higher, in the same dimension if the cypher is level 6 or higher). Manifest
", "basic": { "level": "3", "identified": true } } }, { "name": "Fast Punch", "type": "attack", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/attack.svg", "system": { "description": "A lightning left jab. Eased by one step for Light weapons.
", "basic": { "type": "light weapon", "damage": 2, "skillRating": "Practiced", "steps": 1, "modifier": "eased" }, "settings": { "rollButton": { "pool": "Speed", "skill": "Practiced" } } } }, { "type": "armor", "name": "Armor", "system": { "basic": { "type": "armor", "rating": 1 }, "active": true, "type": "armor" }, "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/armor.svg" }, { "name": "Initiative", "type": "skill", "img": "systems/cyphersystem/icons/items/initiative.svg", "system": { "settings": { "rollButton": { "pool": "Speed" }, "general": { "sorting": "Skill", "initiative": true } }, "basic": { "rating": "Practiced" } } } ] }