Path of the Three-Fisted Drinker

By Max Rible

“Drink up! Learning to move with the flow of your own reeling is the first step on learning to move with the flow of the universe itself.”

The Path of the Three-Fisted Drinker is practiced by the Brotherhood of the Rainbow Flow, an order (if you can call it that) of chaos monks. One part of the path can only be practiced if you have access to vooshith, an alcoholic brew that contains a strong essence of Chaos and induces random shapeshifting in its users. (It also contributes to your long-term Chaos warping...)

The practice of fighting while drunk and randomly changing shape enable the practitioner to get practice in “going with the flow,” learning to accept uncontrollable phenomena such as drunken reeling and new limbs sprouting and make use of them, rather than wasting attention, time, and energy in resisting the changes.

Practitioners of this Path have better control over warping that they undergo; it has a tendency to follow a particular aesthetic amenable to the warpee, rather than pure randomness or a default pattern. (Chaos warping might simply extend a pelt of striped fur rather than put in incongruous scales, and Unlife warping might transform eyes to baleful black orbs that shine with an inner green flame, rather than milky white ones.)

Your minimum servings are a number of servings of wine or liquor equal to half your Constitution, or a number of beers equal to your Constitution, consumed within the past half hour. Borrowing from Brad Solberg: drinks of up to ¹/3 your Constitution do not cause impairment, up to ²/3 will cause –1 impairment, up to your Constitution will cause –2, and an additional –1 for each ¹/3 of Constitution after that. At levels higher than your Constitution, you must make a Constitution check at difficulty 0 (with your modifier!) to avoid passing out. The passage of an hour of time negates one drink under most circumstances, though advanced students of other paths can use them to “burn off” alcohol through enhanced chi circulation (with a side effect of an apparent fever).

Drunken Stance

Chi Cost: 1

Shot Cost: 1

Stagger around as continuous action. You take no drunkenness penalties to your Martial Arts for the rest of the sequence. Opponents must make a Perception check against the number of servings of alcohol you have consumed in the past half hour (beers count half) to attack you; this takes them one shot. You can also consume two servings of alcohol per shot.

Prerequisite: none

Path: Drunken Fist, Three-Fisted Drinking

Involve shapechanging in a martial arts attack, such as briefly manifesting an extra limb to hit someone, stretching your neck out to head-butt them, rotating your wrist 360° to break a hold, and so on. You may choose whether this is an attack that your opponent cannot actively Dodge, whether you do extra damage equal to half your Strength (rounded up), or gain another appropriate advantage (such as for getting out of a joint lock). If you have the Three-Fisted Drinking power, your long-term warping due to vooshith cannot exceed 10 – your Chi rating. You must have consumed your minimum servings in order to use this power, and have at least one of those servings be vooshith.

Prerequisite: Drunken Stance

Path: Flesh Like Water

Flesh Like Water

Chi Cost: X

Shot Cost: 0

After being struck, spend X chi to negate X points of damage as your flesh flows around the strike and it simply passes through you. (This is much the same effect as Wily Stupor, but requires no extra shot cost in exchange for having consumed a more rare and dangerous form of liquor.) This power can also be used out of combat to pass through some obstacles, such as prison bars and narrow corridors. (Going under doors and through gratings may require unreasonably large amounts of chi to perform successfully.) You must have consumed your minimum servings in order to use this power, and have at least one of those servings be vooshith.

Prerequisite: Three Fisted Drinking

Path: Rainbow Flow

Rainbow Flow

Chi Cost: X

Shot Cost: Special

When you must make a Warping check, add X to your roll. The difference based on the Chi affords the amount of control you have over the sort of warping you experience. If your Outcome would have been –9 without the roll and you spend 5 Chi, you will still acquire monstrous features, but they are likely to be something that suits you quite well. The gamemaster has control of the details— if you try to control the monstrous features, you’re more likely to get the interesting mental traits chosen by the game master, and if you try to choose the mental traits, the GM should pick appropriate physical ones to go with it. You must have consumed your minimum servings in order to use this power, and have at least one of those servings be vooshith.

Prerequisite: Flesh Like Water

Path: Freedom of the Flesh

Freedom of the Flesh

Chi Cost: Special

Shot Cost: Special

Spend a permanent Chi point; if your Kung Fu is not linked to your Chi (as for the Old Master), you lose a permanent point of Kung Fu as well. Your Chi must be positive to use this power. You may remove a warping that you feel would be more interesting given independent existence, detaching it from your body and turning it into a creature which will be roughly as loyal as the body part it once was. (If you’re removing an unwanted personality trait that was caused by warping and putting it into something you can do without, like your small toe, it will probably be unfriendly, following you around to create trouble and haunting you persistently if you kill it. If it’s an extra arm that you learned to use well, it will be a helpful minion.)

Alternatively, you can trade body parts with a Supernatural Creature, living and willing or very recently dead. If you do not already possess the Creature Powers skill, you will have it at +1 after this. Once you incorporate part of a Supernatural Creature into your own body, you have the capacity to buy Creature Powers based on the nature of that creature and the nature of the organ you’ve incorporated into yourself. (The GM who supervised the transfer has the say over what you can buy, and the GM who’s currently running has the say over how well it works.) In some situations, you may gain a Creature Power immediately upon incorporating the body part, but such instant mastery is not guaranteed.

Hands, feet, arms, and legs are obvious targets for replacement. Freedom of the Flesh, however, expends enough chi that it can sustain life while the master swaps any organ except the brain with their target. Some of these organs are known to Chinese medicine, but not to Western medicine. I’ve provided a rough table of correspondences for inspiration: your characters may use it for judicious choice of organs or a horrifying Pokémonesque “Gotta catch ’em all!” obsession. Healing or Chirurgy can make good skills for such a character.

Element	Sensory organ		Zang [solid] organ (yin)		Fu [hollow] organ (yang)
Wood	Eye	Vision	Liver	Regulates chi; calmness; positive feelings, humor, planning, creativity	Gall bladder	Decision-making, forward thinking
Metal	Nose	Smell	Lung	Assimilation of energy from the air, mental alertness	Large Intestine	Confidence
	Skin	Touch
Water	Ear	Hearing	Kidney	Source of energy; sustain the skeleton and brain, provides willpower	Bladder	Gives strength and courage
Earth	Mouth	Words	Spleen	Concentration, thinking, analyzing	Stomach	Mental energy
Fire	Tongue	Taste	Heart	Awareness, belief, long-term memory, feelings, base of the spirit	Small Intestine	Decisions
	Third Eye	Mystic insight	Heart Governor (pericardium)	Protector and help for the heart; external relationships	Triple Burner	Circulates chi, emotional exchange with others

Prerequisite: Rainbow Flow

Subtract X from an opponent’s Dodge value when performing a barehanded strike. You must have consumed your minimum servings to use this power.

Prerequisite: Drunken Stance

Path: Wily Stupor, Drunken Dragon

Wily Stupor

Chi Cost: X

Shot Cost: 1

Add X to your Toughness when a successful attack is made against you. This is a defensive action. You must have consumed your minimum servings in order to use this power

Prerequisite: Drunken Fist

Path: Aberrant Spasm

Aberrant Spasm

Chi Cost: 3

Shot Cost: 1

Duck and weave unpredictably as a defensive action. After your opponent’s Martial Arts check, make one of your own and select any character or object in 3 m as the target of his attack. Your Difficulty is your opponent’s Action Result plus half the new target’s Dodge value, rounded up. The new target suffers damage equal to your Outcome plus the damage rating of your opponent’s weapon. You must have consumed your minimum servings in order to use this power.

Prerequisite: Wily Stupor

Path: Spasmodic Leap

Spasmodic Leap

Chi Cost: 3

Shot Cost: 1

For the rest of the sequence, any opponent trying to attack you with a ranged weapon must make a Perception check against the number of servings of booze (or half the number of beers) you’ve had in the past six hours. If they fail, they must spend 6 shots firing at you without hope of success, then 3 shots cursing their failure or otherwise not acting.

Prerequisite: Aberrant Spasm

Spray flaming alcohol to a range of X meters for a base 10 points of fire damage. You must consume alcohol that is sufficiently concentrated to be flammable immediately before this; since you already know Speed Drinking, a single shot is long enough to get one serving down your gullet and have another one ready to burn. The flame is ignited by your energetic chi; no match is required.

Prerequisite: Drunken Fist