Heart: The City Beneath - Minor Abilities
I just want to give a quick peek at my favourite minor abilities from each of the Heart classes.
When you make a character, you get one major and three minor abilities from their class. Each of the classes has minor abilities that let them pick up skills, domains or +1 resistance protections. Your standard, staple picks. And then there are my favourites, which are minor abilities that often let you pick up a skill or a domain but ALSO give you something else small and weird to go along with it. So. A quick look at my favourite minor ability for each class:
Cleaver:
PITCHSKIN. Your skin bubbles and shifts into night-black tones as tar seeps through the pores. Gain the Sneak skill. The secretions from your skin are flammable and adhesive, acting as a sort of volatile glue you can exude at will.
Cleavers are vaguely (or explicitly) cannibalistic survivalists who vibe with the eldritch nature of the Heart, so naturally to sneak they secrete flammable tar from their pores to become permanently and literally pitch black and hard to see. And now you can give yourself flammable glue whenever you want it! Win-win!
Deadwalker:
DIRT UNDER THE FINGERNAILS. You dug your way out of your own grave. Gain the Warren domain. You can dig through earth and mud with your bare hands as though you had a shovel; your fingernails are always stained with a little soil, and you cannot clean it off.
Deadwalkers are thieves and infiltrators that have already died and are haunted by the personifications of their own deaths. Their abilities tend to be evocative of death and funerals, but I think I love this one the most. I did also consider LAST RITES, which lets you ask the spirit of a dead person one question as you perform their last rites, but the whole âyou dug your way out of your grave so now you have mole clawsâ just does it for me, I think.
Deep Apiarist:
APISAMBULATION. Your body sleeps while your mind, riddled with industrious bees, marches on. Gain access to the Delve skill. Once per session, while on a delve, you can opt to fall asleep and let the bees inside your body steer you. In this state, the bees speak for you and perform actions on your behalf â roleplay accordingly (the GM can use Fortune fallout to represent your inhuman pilots). Assuming you get a few hoursâ rest and progress on the delve, refresh D6 from any of your resistances.
Deep Apiarists are living walking hives of eldritch bees, and nothing makes that more clear that this fantastic and horrifying/hilarious ability. Need a nap and some healing but youâve got to stay on the move? Nap anyway, and let your body be piloted by your bees! Which sounds like a hilarious time for you and your entire party that absolutely will not have any bad consequences whatsoever.
Heretic:
SHARD OF THE TEMPLE DOOR. The great doors of the Moon Ascendant temple were smashed to pieces on the night of the purge. You carry a shard of the door, reminding you that your faith is eternal. Gain the Endure skill. Once per session, when you touch the shard to a closed door, it will not open for at least an hour (unless it is destroyed).
The Heretic and their abilities have a distinctly gothic sort of vibe, and I love them a lot. I was so tempted to go for LIARâS BURDEN which lets you roll if you think someoneâs lying to you and on a success your goddess deals d4 stress to them if they were lying as their mouth bleeds as if eating glass. Which, metal. But I love SHARD because it feels ⌠Youâre carrying a relic of the night your faith was purged, and it gives you strength, and the shattered temple doors still do their best to protect you. I love that.
Hound:
ROUND THE NEXT CORNER. You can find a place to shelter, smoke a roll-up and let things blow over. Gain the Delve skill. Once per delve, you find an out-of-the-way location where you can catch your breath and recuperate without fear of being discovered by your enemies. You can take your time and heal here without incurring a bane.
Hounds are a lot more practical and less ⌠excitable than a lot of other classes. Their abilities do tend towards normal, practical solutions to problems. I like this one. The perpetual soldierâs instinct to just find a nice nook or cranny to hunch up for a bit and breathe.
Incarnadine:
EYES IN THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD. Youâve set up enough crooked deals to know when youâre about to be suckered into one. Gain the Discern skill. When you stand still and concentrate, you can quite literally see behind you as though you had eyes in the back of your head. Doing this for too long causes headaches and nausea.
Incarnadines are themed around debts, acquisitions and trade. I was tempted to go for RED MARKETEER, which gives you the Warren domain, but also makes your attacks Brutal if its against someone trying to steal from you, which I just find funny? But I went with EYES, because literal eyes in the back of your head that give you a headache if you use them too long is both hilarious and cool.
Junk Mage:
MARK OF HUNGER. You can taste the power slumbering in the City Beneath, and you want it more than anything. Gain the Delve skill. You can smell sources of magical power â the more potent and active, the more pungent the smell. Different types of magic have different scents: relics of the Moon Beneath have the aroma of wine and butter, necromancy smells like nujabian kafee and the occult technology of the Vermissian resembles malt and rich tannins.
I actually like a lot of the Junk Mage abilities, because a lot of them use things like tattoos or junk or relics to channel abilities, but I think my favourite is this one. Because Junk Mages are junkies. They crave magic and power, they crave the hit. So how they find magic? They can smell it. Extremely literally. And, since a lot of their abilities require destroying occult resources to power spells, being able to sniff out replacements is extremely handy.
Vermissian Knight:
SANGUINARY ARRAY. Your inefficient mortal heart is supplemented by a rig that extracts, filters and nourishes your vital fluids. One side effect of this is that your blood acts as an antenna for the scattershot electrical impulses of the Heart. Gain the Discern skill. If one of your senses becomes damaged or unusable, you can replace it with the weird echoes that shudder through your exposed blood â itâs not perfect, but itâll do.
Vermissian Knightsâ abilities are themed around their train-steel armour. Different abilities are different pieces of equipment youâve installed on yours. And while I love a LOT of them, this one has to win prizes for being the weirdest? If your senses get damaged, the weird occult purification array thatâs running your heart can function as a replacement in a pinch. By picking up eldritch vibes in your vicinity for you to steer by. Also, like. What does that look like? Someone tries to open your armour to help/hurt you and is like, what the fuck is this?
Witch:
RAMBLEWYRD. You are well-versed in exploring and surviving the places most connected to the Heart Itself; sometimes you do it for pleasure. Gain the Cursed domain. Once per session, when you are in an area with the Cursed domain, remove D6 stress from resistances of your choice.
Witches, as people blood-cursed by the Heart, have a lot of fun abilities, from healing spit to aura vision, but I think this one is my favourite, just for the ⌠spite? Not spite, but close. Cursed areas are some of the most dangerous in an already just generally eldritch setting, and youâre not only fine in them, you feel actively better inside them. Actively, mechanically better. You walk into a cursed landmark, take a nice deep breath, and are like, ah, feels like home! I love that. I just vibe with that.
End Thoughts:
This is such a funky game and setting. Like, itâs weird, and itâs fantastic. Let your body be piloted by bees! Hook up a weird purification rig to your heart thatâll function as eldritch eyesight in a pinch! Smell magic! Become the tar monster from Scooby Doo! The tone is just absolutely fabulous. If you enjoy games like Fallen London/Sunless Sea, Heart: The City Beneath absolutely has your vibes. (I do. I do enjoy those games a lot. This is such a funky setting for me). Granted, there is a lot of body horror. Do keep that in mind. But the weirdness is just *chefâs kiss*.












