History TabletopGame / UnknownArmies

* GutturalGrowler: The Freak, as a result of drinking acid. [[spoiler:Not so much as the Human Eternal, though.]]

** Mechanomancers exchange EasyAmnesia for magickal mojo. The more memories you give up, and the more personal and important they are, the more mojo you get.

** Epideromancers draw their power from SelfHarm. That's bad enough, but their Taboo is that they're not allowed to let anyone else change their bodies in ''any'' way. Need surgery? Tough break, unless you're able and willing to [[SelfSurgery do it yourself]]. The er good news is that this only applies to ''willingly'' allowing another to alter their bodies; getting injured in a fight doesn't break Taboo.

** Epideromancers draw their power from SelfHarm. That's bad enough, but their Taboo is that they're not allowed to let anyone else change their bodies in ''any'' way. Need surgery? Tough break, unless you're able and willing to [[SelfSurgery do it yourself]].

 * ArmorPiercingQuestion: GNOMON is always willing to offer charges in return for filling out one of its personality questionnaires... which always end in such pointed and personalized inquiries it forces a Stress check.

%%* AttackDrone: A common Mechanomancer toy.

* {{Archetype}}s: Avatars gain supernatural power by consciously emulating Archetypes that exist in the collective unconscious and function in reality. (So you can be an Avatar of TheCaptain, thoughtful and respected, or TheExecutioner, unrelenting and grim, but not of the GreatDetective, because Great Detectives only exist in fiction.) An impressive route to power and later ascent into the “Statosphere” is to find an unclaimed but widespread archetype and then embody it to the full, but that’s difficult these days, when most slots are taken; a riskier route is to become an Avatar so perfect that you replace the existing Archetype in the Statosphere — but the existing Archetype will see that you’re trying this, and Archetypes have godlike powers…
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: GNOMON is always willing to offer charges in return for filling out one of its personality questionnaires... which always end in such pointed and personalized inquiries it forces a Stress check.

* AddictionPowered: All Adept magic counts in a sense, since it requires extreme adherence to a self-destructive pattern of behavior, with your 'reward' being magic charges instead of a high. Dipsomancers, Narco-Alchemists, and Ustrinaturges are the most blatant about it, since their magic actually requires them to consume addictive substances.

** Dipsomancers gain power from drunkenness. Such powers do ''not'' include a magically strengthened liver, or the ability to retain a sound mind while drunk off your ass. And if you want to do something beyond minor works, you'll have to go find something historically significant to drink your booze from, and you don't start with one of these items.

* ShouldntYouStopStealing: Kleptomancers literally ''can't'. The Kleptomancy taboo is that going a week or longer without stealing somehow voids their charges. Most of them started as actual kleptomaniacs.

** Urbanomancers gain power from the city they live in. ''Only'' that city - if they leave, they're powerless. Oh, and if you see yourself as an observer of the city from the outside, then you can't use its protection against elements, so you'll have to sleep on the streets or in a vehicle.

* InUniverseFactoidFailure: In the second edition corebook, one cabal is a group of radical feminists trying to replace the Naked Goddess with their own creation, the Womyn. They know just enough about the Statosphere to be completely wrong. [[spoiler:First of all, to join the Invisible Clergy, you have to represent a concept the world recognizes as universal, like the Mother or the Hunter. There aren't ''nearly'' enough radical feminists for the Womyn to qualify. Even if there were, to ''replace'' a member of the Clergy, you have to represent a different facet of their concept, like the "bounty Hunter" replacing the "survival Hunter". If the Womyn ascended, she would do so ''alongside'' the Naked Goddess, not ''in place of'' her.]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Also, "pornos" was not the Greek word for "female slave", and isn't what "porn" is short for anyway]].

** Irascimancers gain power from causing anger in others. ''They'', on the other hand, are never allowed to get personally angry at anyone. (Notably, this is one of the few schools of magick that prevents you from using a ''game mechanic'' - if you invoke your Rage Passion, you break your Taboo.)

** Fulminaturges gain power by carrying guns everywhere. Good luck not breaking Taboo unless you live in certain areas of the States and/or are willing to break gun laws and are good at concealing your weapon. And if you see firearms as enforcers of civilization, then you can't even use your gun to shoot a human being without breaking Taboo.

** Fulminaturges gain power by carrying guns everywhere. Good luck not breaking Taboo unless you live in the States.

* MartialPacifist: The Fulminaturgy school that views guns as, at their core, benign enforces of civilization, have a taboo of never actually shooting a human. Monsters are fair game though, as is using the actual magic to attack.

* UnequalRites: There are three types of magic: Ritual, Adept, and Avatar, which each come with their own benefits and drawbacks. None are mutually exclusive; the Freak is an Adept/Avatar (Epideromancer and Mystic Hermaphrodite) and could probably cast ritual magic if they wanted to for some reason, but doing so generally leads to severely maladjusted human beings- with the Freak being a great example about what double-pathing can do to your life.

* ThePornomancer: There is a whole school of magic called Pornomancy, based on the rites of the Naked Goddess, a porn star who [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascended to the Invisible Clergy]] by fulfilling an Archetype (generally thought to be The Girl Everyone Can Have But You). Pornomancers accumulate charges for their magic through ritual sex, recreating the roles the Naked Goddess played in her films, and can use these charges to do pretty much anything you can find on this trope's page. Ironically, it inverts the ''spirit'' of the trope as the Pornomancer Taboo is that they can't actually have normal sex; pornomancy is based on the ''performance'' of pornography, which bears the same relation to real sex as a production of ''Hamlet'' has to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_II_of_Denmark Queen Margrethe II of Denmark]]. Naked Goddess sex rituals are specifically called out as not being all that fun to the participants (though they must be consensual). This could be averted for a pornomancy Major Charge if you could find someone that the Naked Goddess had sex with for pleasure, but that would be it.

* ItOnlyWorksOnce:: Some Major Charge Rituals Adepts do will only work once before they have to find another source.

%%* MisappliedPhlebotinum

* MutuallyExclusiveMagic: You get one school of magic, either adept or avatar. Trying to learn more than one, or trying to be both an adept ''and'' an avatar, invariably drives you completely nuts (to the tune of an utterly blown-out Unnatural stress gauge). The mind just can't handle it. (The one exception is that avatars of the Mystic Hermaphrodite, whose entire basis for being is ambiguity, ''can'' also be adepts, so long as their magick isn't built around anything logical. The Freak, for example, is both an avatar and an Epideromancer.)

* AmusingInjuries: The Laff Riot videomancer spell protects everyone in the area from gunshots, reduces other types of attacks to five damage, and can turn a fall from a skyscraper from street pizza into an embarrassing pantsing. Watching the Detectives can retroactively turn any major injury short of death into a single point of damage. {{Game Master}}s who enjoy the RuleOfFunny can have quite an lot of fun here.

* AntiMagic: The sample NPC, Eustace Crane, is a walking fifty yard bubble of this that ironically wants to believe in magic. Other sources exist.

* PowerBornOfMadness: Magic works by taking something that isn't ''supposed'' to work and ''making'' it work.

* MechanicallyUnusualClass: Narco-Alchemists differ from other Adept schools in that there's essentially two 'levels'; minor and significant (no one has yet discovered how to do Major Narco-Alchemy). Minor Narco-Alchemists work like Dipsomancers in that they gain charges by taking drug hits and lose charges when the drugs wear off. Significant Narco-Alchemists instead make magickal drugs that function as enhanced versions of mundane drugs (Magick Cocaine is just as addictive as regular cocaine and has the same withdrawal symptoms, but it also produces a real boost in stats along with boosted confidence), which take time but ''not'' magickal charges to make and are incompatible with the playstyle of a minor Narco-Alchemist (they can be ''used'' to grant minor charges, but this is widely regarded as [[MisappliedPhlebotinium a waste of time and magick]] and so rarely done unless the adept is really desperate) because significant Narco-Alchemists can ''only'' take their own drugs, and taking the same mundane drugs that minor Narco-Alchemists use is a Taboo.

* MugglesDoItBetter: Because technology is more reliable and cconsistent. But adepts do it in ways that [[ConfusionFu defy logic]]. Nobody gets to have it both ways.%%Also averted with some high-level Avatars.

* KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: The Sleepers' duty is to enforce the Masquerade by any means necessary. Sometimes, that means grabbing new and dumb adepts and teaching them to keep their heads down, sometimes it means making everyone too scared of them to try anything, but all to0 often it means finding someone who's causing obvious problems and killing them.

* ThePornomancer: There is a whole school of magic called Pornomancy, based on the rites of the Naked Goddess, a porn star who [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence ascended to the Invisible Clergy]] by fulfilling the archetype of the Woman Everyone Can Have But You. Pornomancers accumulate charges for their magic through ritual sex, recreating the roles the Naked Goddess played in her films, and can use these charges to do pretty much anything you can find on this trope's page. Beware though, this is Unknown Armies and every school of magic restricts its practitioners; if a Pornomancer has sex for love, enjoyment, or any purpose other than ritual, all of their magic is negated.

* YourMindMakesItReal: Oneiromancer blasts will cause the victim to suffer nightmares, which will cause the victim to wake up (or die in their sleep) with real injury and mental trauma corresponding to the nightmare suffered. However, if the Oneiromancer falls asleep first, the blast fizzles. Granted, Oneiromancers are ''very good'' at staying awake, but nobody can go ''forever'' without sleeping.

* DrugsAreBad/DrugsAreGood: This dichotomy is the paradox that powers Narco-Alchemy; at the same time that they're giving themselves wondrous power through drugs, they're also giving themselves debilitating weaknesses in the forms of their addictions, becoming greater mages but lesser humans.

* HealingFactor: Epideromancers can gain this, although it excludes self-inflicted wounds.

%%* KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: The Sleepers' MO.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Averted. Adepts require not only a decent skill level to cast any sort of spell successfully, but also must charge up by doing particular ritual acts. Attacking via magic is less efficient than just using a gun. Avatar magic is flat-out linear, providing particular effects at a particular level of skill. Ritual magic progresses randomly, depending on the whims of the GM. Psychics are generally even more limited.

* MindRape: Entropics, demonic possession, and dozens of adept spells like the one that instantly spread a rumor to every one on Earth.

** Dipsomancers gain power from drunkenness. Such powers do ''not'' include a magically strengthened liver, or the ability to retain a sound mind while drunk off your ass.

** Iconomancers gain power from their devotion to celebrities... and by 'devotion', they mean that your magical charges will probably come with ''criminal'' charges for [[StalkerWithouACrush stalking]].

** Narco-Alchemists can gain supernatural effects from mundane drugs, and create supernatural versions of them, but they're not protected from addiction or other negative effects. In addition, these drugs are highly illegal, and will get them arrested if caught. Oh, and if you ever take (or get forced to take) a mundane psychoactive drug, all the effects of your works, including permanent ones, will dissipate, so have fun satisfying your addictions.