Shaped Nails

Shaped Nails (minor) by Stone Gargoyle

The hero can shape her fingernails to create tools. The nails are resistant to breakage, having 1d4 SDC per inch.

Range: The character's fingernails can be grown out at a rate of 1 inch per melee round, up to a distance equal to half the hero's PE number in square feet. The nails can be grown to this length in any direction but each inch of the shape is grown individually. This refers to the nail on each finger, so multiple shapes can be grown simultaneously at this rate.

Duration: The nails remain the length they are grown to until cut off by the superbeing and reshaping them requires cutting them off and regrowing them. Being organic, the nails degrade as normal for bone fragments, but could be used for constructing small objects and will remain in the shape they are sculpted into until destroyed.

Attacks: Growing a nail uses one melee attack/action per round, shaping during growth uses an additional attack/action for each nail being shaped, and it uses one melee attack to strike with the nails.

Damage: Each fingernail can be sharpened enough to do 1d4 damage, so one hand could potentially strike for 5d4 damage.

Bonuses: The hero is +2 to strike opponents using her fingernails, +1 at levels 4, 8 and 12. +1 to block and parry hand-to-hand attacks for each foot of nail length. Cut nails can be thrown for 1d4 damage without this added bonus to strike.

Nail Sculpting Skill: The hero can shape her nails into tools such as lockpicks and spoons, etc. Shaping the nail requires a skill roll (Skill Base: 50%, +2% per level) each melee round the hero is growing her nails.

Limitations: Growing the nails out more than a few inches imposes penalties when trying to use objects with the hands, growing them out for a foot or more makes using the hands for anything other than attack or use of a shaped nail tool impossible.

[Example: Miss Manicure keeps her nails an inch long most of the time. She decides she needs to create a spade which is triangular and eight inches long and seven inches wide. She would therefore have to grow 27 total inches to shape it fully, since the nail can only be grown in one direction at once, and to control the growth she would make a control roll each melee round for 27 melee rounds, or roughly six and a half minutes.]