Blood Of The Fang

This is a collection of Delta templates related to classic monsters, massively inspired by Loch's recent post on Delta templates. For those unfamiliar with GLOG, a Delta template is a set of abilities you can gain dietetically through weird rite, ritual, and other odd action. It provides a diegetic way of advancement through experimentation and narrative costs to the PCs. Maybe if you had a whole monster manual accompanied by Deltas for each entry the players would engage even the smallest kobold with interest and ambition.

This is not an exhaustive list, but you knew that already. Edit as suits your wants and needs:

Power Takes Many Forms (art by Konstantin Vavilov)

BASILISK 𝚫 - GRAVEN TYRANT'S PRIDE
Petrify a basilisk. Place the statue in a town square as a permanent installation. If the statue is torn down, moved from its location, or the basilisk is unpetrified, start again.

• When you kill, the victim turns to stone.
• You can tear into stone and other earthwork with your body as if it were ground beef.
• When you first meet someone who has heard of you, but has never seen your face, they freeze and cower instinctively.

BEAR 𝚫 -  WILD LUNG'S ROAR

Land the killing blow on a bear with your bare hands. Show its mother what you've done, laugh, and walk away. After this, all bears you meet conspire to ruin your life. Start again once a bear has mauled you within an inch of your life.

• You are immune to being ignored and the most notable person in a group when you will it.
• You can perfectly mimic the roar of any beast you've heard that has HD less than or equal to your own.
• You cannot be knocked prone unwillingly.

BEHOLDER 𝚫 - EVIL EYE'S CLOAK

Replace one of your eyes with an eye from a living beholder. If the beholder dies or the eye is removed, start again.

• When people make eye contact with you, the ringing of mosquitoes fills their head, deafening them for the duration eye contact is made and leaving a nauseous aftertaste.
• ALL rolls for morale or Wisdom in your presence have their penalties doubled (if there are any negative modifiers). This does not affect you.
• You can communicate with the beholder in your dreams. If the beholder dies, you are shown who and what caused their death in your dreams.

DRAGON 𝚫 - GLUTTON KING'S CLARITY

Eat the most valuable item in a dragon's hoard. If you cannot find a way to eat it or keep it down, start again. Beware - knaves' eyes and dwarves' noses will be able to sense the treasure lingering in your guts.

• You have an innate sense of how valuable items are both monetarily and emotionally to their owner.
• You can move nearby gold objects you could reasonably wield in one hand with your mind.
• You deal +1d4 damage against those with less money on their person than you.

ENT 𝚫 -  HEAVEN FRUIT'S VIGOR

Eat the highest-hanging fruit on an ent's body. Survive the wrath of the forest while the fruit digests. If you ever discard the digested fruit from your person, start again.

• When you will it, you can turn your skin to bark. You take half damage from bludgeoning, piercing, and falling. You take double damage from fire and necromancy.
• You cannot be killed by poisoning. Surviving poison still remains an incredibly unpleasant experience.
• When you lie prone on dirt or stone, a cloak of foliage and underbrush quickly grows and effectively conceals you over the course of a minute.

FISHMAN 𝚫 - ABYSSAL FOOL'S CROWN

Wear a fishman's head over your own. Decry your humanity in a public display including a crowd of strangers, a body of water, and the destruction of 100 gp. After this, if the fishman's head is removed, start again.

• When you will it, you can emit a foul odor that blinds all who smell it, including yourself.
• You can talk to bodies of water. Their language sounds like moving sand. Only ones that are particularly old or sacred have much to say. They are often wise but poetically obtuse. Oceans and seas are too busy to talk unless you're very important.
• You can breathe underwater, unless the body of water does not like you.

GELATINOUS CUBE 𝚫 - BLUE BLOOD'S FLUX

Trap a gelatinous cube in a suit of armor. Once half an hour has passed and it has accepted its new shell, climb into the armor. If the suit of armor is removed, start again.

• You can turn into a sentient puddle of gelatin over the course of a minute. You  move at the pace of a toddler and take double damage from the cold but you can also fit through cracks the size of your pinky and are immune to piercing, acid, and suffocation. When you reform, one detail about your original form is off.
• Attempts to read your mind or alter it fail. The person attempting to read/manipulate you leaks slime from their mouth and nostrils for a minute.
• When you will it, your feet and hands leave a trail of slippery slime.

GHOUL 𝚫 - ROTTING LIP'S GIFT

Romance a ghoul. Get it to kiss you with genuine passion, which requires it to overcome the urge to rip off gnaw on your face-meat. If the ghoul falls out of love with you, start again.

• Your kiss can paralyze if you will it. The length of paralysis is equal to the length of the kiss.
  
• Your mouth has the grip strength of an industrial vice.
• You can appear as any age you desire. The process takes as many hours as years you are advancing if you are becoming older. The process as many days as years you are regressing if you are becoming younger.

GIANT 𝚫 - DREAD GOD'S GUTS

Make a comfortable home within a giant's innards. Store something of great value in there and fall asleep. You will wake up changed. If the house is destroyed or looted, start again. Beware, dead giants are teeming with other wannabe tenants.

• You are 10 feet tall. Adjust Strength and inventory space as appropriate. 
• Your voice is far deeper. If you will it, you can let out a scream that breaks all glass in earshot.
• You deal +1d4 damage against people with less self-confidence than you.

GOBLIN 𝚫 - TWISTED FIGURE'S FOLLY

Observe a live goblin long enough to draw them. Decry your humanity in a public display including a crowd of strangers and willing participants who will beat you into the shape you have drawn. If the drawing is destroyed, you will heal over the course of a week and have to start again.

• You no longer take fall damage. Instead, you bounce.
• Your fingers count as lockpicks.
• If you are naked and on all fours you can climb walls like a spider and run as fast as a rabid dog.

GRUE 𝚫 - LOOMING MOON'S PRESENCE

Eat a grue's tongue. Easier said than done. There is no reversing this - you are no longer truly safe in shadows or dreams.

• You can turn your skin and all equipment worn vantablack (the purest black) if you will it. 
• You can store three items in your shadow. Each item must not be bigger than you and must have taken a life. The weightier the shadow, the more grue attention it attracts.
• You can put out any light source in earshot if you will it. This attracts the attention of grues.

MIMIC 𝚫 - GREAT PRETENDER'S ART

Domesticate a mimic. Feed 1,000 gp worth of treasure to it. It will produce one dose of mimic milk for you to drink. If you take back the treasure you donated, start again.

• You can instantly disguise yourself as an object you have seen before, smaller than a cart but big enough to contain your body. Objects you  mimic work perfectly well for mundane purposes. You are still harmed normally while in disguise if something attacks.
• You can talk to traps. Their language sounds like mechanical clicking and electrical whirring. They are naturally duplicitous but very eager to brag how many people they have killed and how you are certainly next. Gaining a trap's respect is nigh-impossible.
• By tasting an object, you know if it is magic or not.

DESIGN NOTES

I like Deltas because I am a big fan of diegetic advancement while also liking the template system of GLOG. The issue is that designing Deltas is surprisingly difficult. I think I have devised of a way to make a compelling Delta while still being easy for the GM to generate, though. This process helped me:

First and above all, every Delta you make should get players scheming how to fulfill its requirements and imagining what they'd do with the given powers. Throw sense out the window when making the requirements to get a Delta, the weirder the ritual to get the Delta, the better, because that captures attention and gives you more material to work with. Get evocative, let the funk take over.

Ideally with Deltas related to monsters, you want the requirements and the abilities granted to relate to the monster's primary characteristics (e.g., a dragon obviously has fire as a theming) or secondary characteristics (but a dragon also keeps hoards of gold, which could be something to tap into)

I've found that going back to the old maxim of "fast, cheap, or good - pick two" is great for making the requirements for a Delta. When designing most of my Delta's requirements, I returned to this reliable "here's three options, pick two,":

• It is hard to execute. This is simple - the requirement needs a lot of problem solving and thinking in order to work in the first place. For example: petrifying a basilisk asks a lot of the players but it is achievable.
• It comes with a lingering cost or drawback. The requirement either needs you to uphold some kind of maintenance you didn't have to before or inflicts a considerable drawback on you as long as the requirement is upheld. For example: you may need to care for a beholder's life if you want to continue benefitting from the Delta they provide.
• It requires you to do something that will certainly make you a pariah in society's eyes. The requirement needs a public display of devotion which risks putting you at odds with certain sects of society. For example: adventurers who know (or sense, in the case of dwarves) that you have eaten part of a dragon's hoard will want to have a search around your guts.

Personally, I have found the most success in always picking the first option and then picking one of the other two options, or at least designing around the first option primarily. I feel as if choosing just the bottom two options makes this a downtime event with some consequences, which is less exciting to me than an adventure players must actively seek to improve themselves in strange ways.

As goes in the OSR, you should be open to accepting multiple answers to any problem a requirement presents. If a player is thinking cleverly, they should be rewarded. For example: a player does not petrify the basilisk in a conventional way, rather, petrifies it with fear for an extended period of time, or a paralyzing poison, or what have you. These are delightful solutions and should be accepted as valid in my opinion. 

As for abilities, each Delta template should give 2-3 abilities as a job well done. I don't have any particular advice around the design of abilities aside from also trying to relate these abilities to the particular monster or ritual required to get the Delta template. Don't be stingy with the abilities, especially if the Delta template can be taken away.

You can also always go more minimal with your Deltas. A recent example of this is Phlox's Fighter Deltas here. A few sentences can do the trick. I just like going big or going home with my Deltas so they feel more like strange, epic quests that change your character in some unignorable way.

All in all, Delta templates should get the players dreaming of what to do to get them, and then what to do with the abilities provided. Knowledge of how to get a Delta template can be a reward of its own, if the requirement is not already known to the players. 

Oh, also give your Deltas a kick-ass name - that always helps.