Perks and flaws?

In the unfinished Ex Oculis fanbook, a new mechanic called Assets, Burdens and Goals was added to past life generation at character creation. Assets and Burdens were similar to perks and flaws from other systems, while Goals were plot hooks that could be pursued for experience and such. These were basically a more systematized way of handling past life legacies, which were very vague in the rulebook. A similar idea appeared in another homebrew as Secrets, Quests, and Curses, and another as Resources.

The French 3rd edition independently did something similar. Characters were created with their relative power levels measured, then balanced by adding an equal measure of flaws.

To quote or explain for those who don't have those PDFs or cannot access them:

Secrets, quests and curses

(From Nephilim Redux 1.2 by Frank Rafaelsen)

Secrets

Every incarnation has given the Nephilim secret knowledge. To represent this, each past life allows the Nephilim to know one secret. These secrets are pieces of information that can be relevant for the Nephilim in its current incarnation. Typical examples include:

• You know the location of a hidden grimoire.
• You know the location where a nexus manifests.
• You know the location where great riches are buried
• You gained access to the mysteries of another Arcanum. This allows you to buy the arcane technique associated with that Arcanum.
• You developed a friendship with another Nephilim.
• You gained the friendship of a secret society
• You founded a cult

Quests

One of the reasons this particular incarnation stand out is because you have unfinished business here. Completing these actions contain insights into the path to Agartha. If you ever successfully complete a Quest from a past life you gain 5 Ka in addition to any experience rolls at the end of the adventure. Typical quests include:

• Rebuilding a structure or monument.
• Protecting a human bloodline.
• Bring back a Nephilim from stasis
• Revenge a wrongdoing
• Liberate a hominoculus
• Make up for a wrongdoing
• Return a stolen object.
• Fulfill a prophecy.

Curses

But past lives also bring unpleasant memories. Something happened in your incarnation that has haunted you ever since. Typical curses include:

• A secret society became your sworn enemy
• Another Nephilim became your enemy/rival
• An enemy learned your true name.
• You were cursed with a stigma that follows you across incarnations.
• You had an encounter with a powerful elemental force that raised your Khaiba score (1D10)
• You were killed with orichalka (-2 starting Ka) 

Assets, burdens, and goals

(From Ex Oculis by former Chaosium freelancers)

In addition to skills and knowledge, you have other baggage from your past. Some of this baggage is useful, some is a hindrance, and the rest is just unfinished business. Assets and burdens are not scored like abilities and attributes. Instead, they reflect abstracts like fame, favors, enemies, and knowledge. Goals are the unfinished business of your past lives. They may be treasures to recover, sins to atone for, or scores to settle. Goals are motivations for your character, plot hooks for your GM, and part of your character’s pathway to Agartha. 

Assets

Assets are benefits carried over from your past lives. You typically have one asset from each of your past lives, either chosen from the list below or that you and your GM have created. You may take additional assets with your GM’s permission, but they should be balanced with additional burdens or more demanding goals. 

• Contact (Arcanum, Mundane, Secret Society): Your character has good relations with a family or organization. These contacts won’t go too far out of their way to help or knowingly put themselves in danger for your sake, but you can count on getting reliable information when needed. 
• Cult: Your character founded a cult, and, surprisingly, it still exists! These cults are small, often with only a few worshipers, but taking this asset over multiple lifetimes provides a larger, more widespread cult. Your cult will provide automatic helpers once you make yourself known, but you may also have to deal with fanatics, inconvenient things said in past ages (possibly distorted), and a cult leader who might begrudge losing his independence. 
• Favor (Arcanum, Mundane, Secret Society): Perhaps your character saved someone’s life, provided an important service, or kept someone from disgrace. Whatever the reason, someone owes you and will make good on the favor. This asset does not imply that the other party likes or respects your character, only that they will honor the debt. 
• Inscribed Spell: Your character learned a spell of third circle sorcery or summoning and was able to inscribe it. You must still pay for this spell with development points as normal. 
• Knowledge (Grand Conjunction, Plexus, Secret Society): Your character gained some important, hidden knowledge. This might be the location of a secret plexus, the time and place of a Great Conjunction, the plot or workings of a secret society, or any number of other things. 
• Philosopher’s Stone: Your character has sound knowledge of a work or teacher that can teach him Philosopher’s Stone, the third circle of alchemy. This asset does not provide the location of or easy access to this source; knowledge alone of a legitimate source is rare and precious enough for one asset. 
• Prestige: Your character did something worth remembering, and others haven't forgotten. You should determine what your character did and whom it impacted. Your character is something of a minor celebrity among those who know of his act. Depending on the deed and the person involved, your character could be met with awe, respect, fear, hatred, or some combination of these emotions. 
• Stash (Loot, Magical Text, or Artifact): Your character acquired an object of substantial value, magical or otherwise, and stashed it somewhere it wasn’t found. You may have to travel to regain it, but the object is where you left it, or at least it was at the time of your most recent Awakening. 

Burdens

Past lives provide a wealth of experience, but they also provide plenty of opportunity to cause trouble and make enemies. The problems that linger are called burdens. Burdens are similar to assets, but bad for you. You typically have one burden from each of your past lives, either chosen from the list below or that you and your GM have created, but you may take additional ones if you find them appropriate. 

• Dark Secret: Your character may have aided Charlemagne’s crusade, conspired with the Selenim, or incarnated as Hitler. Whatever the reason, your character did something in this past life that, if it became known, would gain him Ostracism, an Enemy (or Enemies), and likely other problems as well. 
• Enemy (Arcanum or Secret Society): Someone really is out to get your character. Whomever you angered will be actively seeking you and trying to do Bad Things to you once word of your reincarnation spreads. 
• Hatred (Arcanum or Secret Society): Hatred is the other side of Enemy. In other words, you are some other person or organization’s Enemy. Your might not be actively working towards their downfall, but you are probably not entirely rational about the object of your hatred and will take any opportunity to hurt it. 
• Known True Name: Perhaps one of your character’s enemies discovered it, you accidentally used it in a famous event, or your cult used it and made it popular (like Horus). However it happened, someone or many ones know your True Name and can use it to your detriment. 
• Obligation (Arcanum, Mundane, or Secret Society): The reverse of Favor, Obligation means that your character owes someone else and feels the need to pay up on it. If taken with Dark Secret, this burden may indicate that someone knows your secret and is blackmailing you. 
• Ostracized: If you make people dislike you and respect you, you can earn Prestige. If you only get the first half right, you may be Ostracized. Unlike Enemy, no one is out for your blood, but you are widely disliked and/or disrespected. Others treat you with distaste, refuse to do you favors, and leave you hung out to dry. Revealing lesser Arcanum secrets, working with the wrong secret societies, and betrayal are easy paths to this burden. 
• Phobia: Your character is irrationally afraid of something, often something connected to dark events in you past. A Nephilim burned at the stake might be terrified of fire, one who was tormented by the Inquisition might fear rats, or one who experienced life in the trenches of World War I might fear thunder and gunfire. This phobia is treated like any other (p.XX), except that it cannot be removed by therapy alone—it is essentially an Inscribed phobia. 
• Scars of the Homunculus: Your character was bound as a homunculus (p. XX), a magically broken, Nephilim slave, and somehow survived and mostly recovered. In the weeks after Awakening, your character will develop a large, pentacle-shaped scar, always red and fresh-looking, that resembles a poorly treated cut or burn (depending on how you were branded). This scar is not part of your metamorphosis or linked to your traits. It will always appear and, while it can be covered with clothing or makeup, it cannot be healed by any known surgery or magic. This burden is often accompanied by Enemy, Hatred, and/or Phobia. 

Goals

Goals are the unfinished business of your past lives, the treasures you lost, the sins you regret, or simply things you failed to complete in one lifetime. Goals are your dreams, your motivations, and, many say, your pathway to Agartha. 

There is no set list of goals to choose from. You and the gamemaster should work together to create a goal for each of your past lives that reflects the events of your character’s past life and what business remains. Assets and burdens often provide excellent inspiration for goals. 

If the gamemaster is running a revelation campaign (p. XX) and/or your character has little memory of a particular past life, you and your GM may delay choosing a Goal and decide upon it as the game plays out 

Examples: 

• A character who learned the name of a text teaching Philosopher's Stone alchemy wishes to find that text and initiate into third circle alchemy. 
• A character who lived through the sack of the Temple of Solomon may wish to journey there, summon the Archangel Gabriel, and question her about the meaning of its destruction. 
• A Vengeful character who was enslaved as a homunculus may wish to track down the descendants of its master, destroy them, their friends, families, and pets. 
• A character that predicted the time and place of a Great Conjunction may have a specific spell that can only be cast then.

In Nephilim: Revelation (3e)

(From Nephilim: Revelation by MultiSim)

The French 3e independently introduced a similar mechanic in the form of Falls: these were divided into Blessures/Injuries (physical and emotional flaws) and Enemies (negative social relationships) that were used to balance the power level of characters. 

Character creation was divided into several steps: Initiation, Aspect, Occult Path, and Past. Each step was measured from 1 to 3. After selecting the rating in each, then the player had to balance this with an equal sum of Falls.

The exact meaning of each varied between Nephilim, Selenim, and Ar-Kaim. For Nephilim, Initiation was their Ka, Aspect was their Metamorphosis, Occult Path was which occult sciences they specialized in, and Past was their past lives and incarnation eras. 

You could start play as a very old Nephilim with a lot of past lives by selecting high ratings, but you'd have to balance it with more Falls. These represent various events that happened to the character that resulted in negative social relations, magical injuries, etc. 

Injuries were broadly divided into the categories of Alterations, Misalliances and Incarnations, then further into more specific groupings. Examples below:

Alterations

• Draconization: the pentacle of the nephilim is deformed which can cause an illness of the magic of the immortal, or generate dragon effects whose purpose is to suck up the magic sources, therefore the pentacle of the immortals (of the other immortals as well as that of the generator).
• Narcosis: When a nephilim fails to reincarnate, it falls into narcosis and gradually loses its magical essence in nature, until it dissolves in the magical fields. Once one has tasted the narcosis either the pentacle tends to return to it, or an almost phobic fear results.
• Cruxim: A Ka of the Pentacle of the Immortal has disappeared. The pentacle is then reorganized but the immortal can no longer use this Ka. (it is possible that the moon branch is transformed into a black moon after an experience which allows you to have an occult skill of selenim but you will have to pay the price).
• Khaiba: Khaiba is a serious illness: it is a degeneration of the magic fields caused by orichalcum, by failed magic experiments. It causes the death of the nephilim if he arrives in the terminal phase, but little by little especially the immortal finds it increasingly difficult to control himself.
• Curse: reserved for selenim, either the selenim is very likely to react to entropy, or it fears the orichalcum such is its curse.
• Instability: reserved for Ar-kaims, the immortal's heart has a malformation which makes it very vulnerable. (loss of ka, more frequent instability roll)
• Charge: The ar-kaim can recharge his heart in different ways. This wound removes some possibility of recharging.
• Forgotten by the stars: reserved for the ar-kaims, he is the chosen one of the stars, yet he is afraid of his destiny or does not believe, he does not use his talents well.

Misalliances

• Basaltic Double: The Immortal possesses a Double who has a Pentacle Branch of the Immortal in exchange for his own. This link can be made with another immortal or with a place. But having this double is not always easy.
• Fulgurance: the immortal is very much in love with another immortal, but life does not always go as we want.
• Fraternity: The immortal belongs or belonged to a fraternity. He owes something to this fraternity or is wanted by another, or his simulacrum belonged to a soldier of the minor arcana
• Twin: the immortal has a twin brother. He is related to him. But family isn't always fun.

Incarnations

• Shouit: it is possible that after bad manipulations, the spirit of the simulacrum regains the upper hand. This mechanism is called the shadow, it can be beneficial for the immortal as it can be deadly sometimes. This ambiguity is scary or some immortals do not know how to manage it well.
• Orichalc: it is deadly for magic fields, it is devastating among immortals. Some develop a phobia, others suffer because they cannot resist it or are very sensitive to it.
• Stasis: The minor mysteries to be able to control immortals have to create stasis. These prisons keep immortals who have not reincarnated in prolonged sleep or they forget their lives there. But it has good points because it is also a very useful reserve of Ka. Unfortunately some are faulty.
• Homunculi: certain minor arcana have succeeded in subjugating immortals by transforming them into homunculi. This situation is not irrevocable but still leaves traces.
• Simulacra: reserved for the ar-kaim, the lineage is limited, the current simulacrum is inappropriate. Lots of little things that can do a lot of harm or lead to a lot of risk.

Enemies

These were organized into Minor Arcana, Major Arcana, DraKaOn, and Figures. This covered things like debt, collaboration, hunting, revenge...

In Nephilim 4th edition

In the 4th edition, aka 20th anniversary edition, past lives were assigned "Assets." These represented advantages that the Nephilim managed to retain throughout his various incarnations.

The listed Assets were "Access to an Akasha", "Adoption by a Major Arcana", "Artifact", "Dragon-Effect", "Figure", "Focus", and "Refuge".

These ideas are interesting and I want to incorporate some of them myself in a future post...