Gutterborn Scum

An ill star smiled upon your birth. Poverty, crime, and bad parenting didn't help either. In your community an honest day's work was never an option. Not that you ever tried — what are you, some kind of mug? A razor blade and a moonless night are worth a week of chump-work.

• Begins with: 1d6×10s and d2 Omens.
• HP: Toughness + d6.

Abilities

• Small: roll 3d6−2 for Strength.
• Stealthy: all Presence and Agility tests have their dr reduced by 2 (normal tests are dr10 instead of dr12).
• Roll d6 on the weapon table and d2 on the armor table.

Bad Birth (d6)

1. Dumped onto a moving shit-cart still in your birth caul.
2. Mother hanged from a tree outside of Galgenbeck — you fell from the corpse.
3. Raised by rats in the gutters of Grift.
4. Kicked and beaten beneath a baker's table in Schleswig.
5. Escaped the Tvelandian Orphanarium.
6. Educated by outlaws in a hovel south of Alliáns.

You Also Begin With One Specialty (d6)

1. Coward's jab: When attacking by surprise, test Agility dr10. On a success you automatically hit once with a light one-handed weapon, dealing normal damage +3.
2. Filthy fingersmith: Your snaky little digits get into pockets and pick locks with a dr8 Agility test. You also begin with lockpicks!
3. Abominable gob lobber: Your phlegm is viscous, lumpy, vile, and ballistically accurate at short range. You can spit d2 times during a fight. Roll a dr8 Presence test for accuracy. Targets are blinded, retching, and vomiting for d4 rounds. Anyone witnessing this — friend and foe — must make a Toughness test to not also vomit. PCs test dr10 and enemies dr12.
4. Escaping fate: Every time you use an Omen there is a 50% chance it is not spent.
5. Excretal stealth: You have an astounding, almost preternatural ability to hide in muck, debris, and filth. When hidden in these conditions a dr16 Presence test is required to notice you.
6. Dodging death: You are so unpleasant, irrelevant, disgusting, and vile even Death would rather avoid you if it can. On death, if there is even the slightest possibility that you survived, there is a 50% chance that you did. If successful, after 10 rounds you pop back up with d4 hp and an unlikely explanation of your escape.

Specialty progression: The first time the Scum gets better (see Getting Better, page 33) another specialty is rolled. From the second time the Scum gets better, it is possible to reroll these two specialities — or just one.

Compare the Scum creature entry — Bent and his ilk are gutter-born too. A successful Gutterborn Scum has more or less escaped that fate.