Your Channeling rating is your Intuition stat + Channeling skill.
When you encounter an Anomaly, you may attempt to swallow it. Roll your dice against its strength. If you succeed, you swallow it. You acquire an Anomaly trait equal to its dice or your pool, whichever is smaller. This is also limited by your highest die, so a human who swallows a 2d12 anomaly gets a 2d8 Anomaly trait.
If you completely swallow an anomaly (your new trait is exactly equal to its original strength) then its effects vanish from the world because you have absorbed the entire thing. This adds a new use to your Anomaly trait... release. That moves it to a new location and costs no die levels- the Anomaly is simply moved to that spot at its current strength. You may release it next to you, so that you aren't inside of the new effect, if you wish.
You can only have one Anomaly trait at a time (special: there might be a power that lets you store two, possibly splitting your dice between them). Each one provides you with some powers based on its nature. Some powers will reduce the Anomaly trait's rating by 1 or more steps, permanently, so you slowly use them up.
Strengths vary. Some ancient Anomalies are like 8d8 strength and are regularly visited by good channelers to absorb them.
Burner: makes an area hot and causes spontaneous combustion to occur. Creatures in the area must resist its strength periodically or burst into flame and take its strength as damage.
Electric: random electrical discharges in an area. Carrying metal items is risky and makes you a more likely target.
Ghost: random images of the past blot out the real world, leaving you disoriented and vulnerable until they fade.
Mist: produces toxic clouds of mist that block vision and slowly poison people who try to stay there. Affects a relatively large area.
Radiation: unnaturally strong and contained radioactivity. You accumulate rad points rapidly. Affects a relatively large area.
Distorter: random distortions of distance and direction, making navigating the area very difficult. You can easily find yourself walking in a straight line and a circle at the same time.
Teleporter: tries to randomly teleport targets to open spaces nearby, possibly including underground or up in the air. Large creatures may take damage instead as it tries to fling part of them away but can't move the whole critter.
Melter: melts victims into hideous, insane, zombie-like mutations, permanently. Greatly feared. Basically, it does a sort of damage and if the cumulative effect is too high you "die" and become one of these things. Also called a Monster-maker. Sometimes the victims have an Anomaly inside of them automatically, granting them appropriate powers. If killed, the Anomaly may fade away or be released.
Drainer: sucks the life force out of people, causing slow drain with intermittent bursts of reduced-to-a-husk drain.
Humans and Ferals probably have to buy the Swallow Anomaly feat in order to get the full benefit of the Channeling skill. Dogs may get it for free, or have a background that provides it for free. Hm. Perhaps there are separate "Resist Anomaly" and "Channel Anomaly" skills. You have to take a particular Power to get Channel, which lets you do the swallow trick. The other skill is used to resist being affected by them. You must successfully resist to be allowed to try and Swallow at all.
Specialized Channeler: pick an Anomaly type. The level-loss for invoking its powers is halved (don't round down, though- you just reduce it at half-level steps, so every other use drops it a level). You can start play with a half-strength Anomaly of that type already Swallowed.
One thing I like in D&D is uniqueness- lots of powers that other people can't take because classes are so restrictive. Add some similar "you get very few of these and have to qualify for them" powers/careers to NB.
ie- Sheltered Survivor (Human only): your family line spent most of the post-Apocalypse era in an underground shelter and only recently emerged. Adds access to some high tech equipment that normal PCs can't start with. Luck dice spent on ancient lore rolls count double? Stuff like that.
Hardened Survivor: take 1/2 damage from environmental poison/radiation (round down). Just plain more resistant because you're descended from people who survived the worst of it.
Luck: potentially a skill / special stat. A pool of dice that you can add to rolls, but after you add each one you must cross it off for the session. An interesting variant is to roll them all at the start of the session and then must use those dice. Luck dice can never roll 1s- reroll them if they do. There are powers that increase the minimum roll. If your min is equal to or larger than the size of the die rolled, use your die max automatically.
With Humans, Ferals and Dogs... human backgrounds mostly cover the community you grew up in. Sheltered (science + tech), Frontier (combat), Farmers (nature+hardiness), Nomads (wilderness+nature). These might work by adding new things that your Race Trait applies to.
Feral backgrounds concern special adaptations to the environment. Radproof (1/4 damage from radiation, round down). Fortitude (1/2 damage from radiation and toxin, round down). Berserker (able to enter melee rage). Wide Range (tires slowly, travels long distances). Adapted (1/4 damage from toxins, round down). Climber (claws apply to climb rolls [only if they don't automatically]).
Dog backgrounds concern things that dogs might be good at. Fast Runner (can reach speeds normal characters just can't). Scent Tracker (bloodhound scent skills). Keen Eared Hound (major listen bonuses). Wolf Blooded (bonuses in biting melee, dealing with wild wolves + feral dogs). Howler (can communicate details in howls). Lore-keeper (bonuses to social rolls with Akkas and ancient lore, but not technological lore).
Should definitely be a separate "tech lore" stat that governs figuring out how to recognize and use ancient devices.
Elves get a list of things that they can be immune to dependent upon their clan background. Earth elves resist Petrification, Night elves Sleep, et cetera.
With it being an Over the Edge style roll X and sum them system, giving certain races a +1 bonus or penalty to certain things shouldn't be overpowered.
Late night musings.
High Beasts have an Intuition die limit of d8.
Low Beasts have a Tech die limit of d8.
Half-Beasts (bestial high beasts that can drop to all fours as needed) have both at d10. They are very rare and tend to have problems breeding.
Humans, if the GM allows them, have an Intuition limit of d6 but a +1 bonus to all Tech rolls.
Only primitive weapons like swords, spears and bows are covered by Speed/Agility. Guns and crossbows are under Tech.
Intuition skills include Sense Danger, Sense Motive, Resist Hallucinations, Sense Radiation (or should that be in sense danger?).
There are some minor gifts like Geiger (Cybernetic): you have an implant that detects radiation. You can use Tech instead of Intuition if it's higher and you have a +2 bonus to your rolls.
The AI Factories are almost characters in their own right. That's an interesting idea- instead of being secret, people know about them and they rule their own fiefs of Beasts. They're all very interested in Anomalies / Rifts.
The Goddess of the Caretakers: has the best cyberware, but declares other AIs to be enemies of the Beasts and her followers maintain that she isn't really an AI but a divine being. The only one that does brain implants and then only in her best followers, so that they can hear her voice directly. Some outsiders wonder whether or not they also ensure that you obey that voice, but the Caretakers deny it. Still, folks with a high Intuition have qualms about them, so they're mostly High Beasts.
The Horror-Maker: a definite enemy of the Beasts, this insane AI manufactures what were originally construction robots now re-purposed as psychotic killing machines.
The Guardian and the Sentries: supplies and repairs the few remaining Sentry units... giant, nuclear-armed robots programmed to kill any unauthorized intruders in the country's airspace. Forbids almost all dealings with Beasts, but provides a token amount of basic survival supplies in the belief that Beasts probably count as non-combatant civilians. Destroys Horrors that have more than a bare minimum of actual weaponry (thus Horrors are usually built with blades and wood-chippers and nail-guns and such). Actually, they sometimes kill Beasts that acquire too many guns, too, if they get too close to a Sentry. Once in a great, great while one of the Sentries actually nukes something, but that happens about once a decade and they'll never discuss what they destroyed- military secrets.
The Toymaker: constructs more and more intricate "mannequins"- robots designed to mimic humans. Some seem to actually run errands for it, but many are just pieces of art- they attempt to reenact some kind of human activity such as a dance over and over and over again, mindlessly. Tolerates Low Beasts as animals but High Beasts tend to get hassled or attacked for not doing what they're supposed to.
The Trader: a cobbled-together and enormously jury-rigged complex that's been barely hanging on for decades. It offers electricity, guns, bullets, cybernetic implants, advice, et cetera, but requires you to bring it raw materials or better yet, useful electronics. These usually have to be stolen from other AIs. It has a few remote outposts where its robots and a handful of Beast helpers have set up a trading post or processing station for goods. The Trader is only arguably sane, and is obsessed with its own survival. Rumor has it that it was created to purchase and distribute goods under martial law equitably. To keep itself safe, even its followers generally can only guess at the purpose of the machines that they're maintaining.
Survival Rolls- to avoid acquiring Rad Points. Everyone starts with a few and acquires more just by travelling cross-country and having to drink the water or eat wild animals. On a crit you not only avoid taking more than the minimum rads for the area (often zero), you can pick someone else and give them a +4 bonus representing your good advice. If this changes their failure into a success, they take the newly revised rad penalty.