Base Powers - Inheritance Gambit

Animal Control

You can walk with the animals, talk with the animals, and fight with the animals on your side.

Basic Animal Control: Choose one favored type of animal. You may communicate with favored animals of this type as if they were human NPCs, although their understanding of the world is limited. In addition, you gain a +2 bonus to Rapport when asking an animal of that type to do something for you.

“Type” is an intentionally broad category. It doesn’t necessarily line up with a taxonomic category, but rather how useful the animal is and how often you’ll see it. Only multicellular animals can be controlled; bacteria are too simple to order around. Some types of animals you might control include fish, birds, insects, rodents, and dogs.

Creature Summoning

You’ve always got someone, or something, to watch your back.

Basic Creature Summoning: Once per scene, you can generate a creature that’s under your control. You might bring forth an elemental, or something mundane like a sidekick shows up to help out. When you take this power, create a creature with one aspect to describe it and one Good (+3) skill. Your creature has two physical and mental stress boxes, and it can take mild and moderate consequences. Your creature will dissipate or wander away at the end of the scene, clearing its consequences.

Your summoned creature is not an NPC, but another character under your control. When your creature is active during a conflict, it acts on your turn. Both of you take a free movement, but only one of you can take an action.

Disguise

Your ability to disguise yourself as another person is uncanny. Who are you, really?

Basic Disguise: You can alter your face, build, and voice at will in order to become a completely different person. Once you spend time interacting with someone, you can imitate them near-perfectly. Gain a +2 bonus to Deception to oppose others trying to see through your disguise.

Duplication

You can be an entire team, all by yourself.

Basic Duplication: Once per scene, you can create a copy of yourself up to one zone away. This copy has your aspects and skills, but it takes a -1 penalty to all rolls. The duplicate is not an NPC, but another character under your control. During a conflict, both you and your copy get a free movement, but only one of you can take an action. You may dismiss the copy at will, or it will fade away on its own at the end of the scene. Your duplicate has its own physical stress boxes and consequence slots for physical damage. If your duplicate would take mental stress, you take it instead.

Elasticity

You’ve got a body as stretchy as rubber and twice as resilient.

Basic Elasticity: Your body stretches to incredible lengths. By stretching yourself, you can interact with objects and make melee attacks in an adjacent zone without moving. Additionally, you can contort your body into rough approximations of animals, objects, and tools, although your mass doesn’t change and you still very much look like yourself.

Energy Absorption

You are a human capacitor, able to absorb pure energy into your body and release it at will.

Basic Energy Absorption: You may use Physique, with a +2 bonus, to defend against any energy-based attack and to overcome energy-based obstacles, simply by absorbing the energy into your body. Energy-based threats include electricity—such as stun guns and tasers—radiation, fire, and most super-powered blasts; in short, things that can hurt you but aren’t solid objects.

Energy Blast

A classic power with innumerable variations: you can shoot stuff. Lasers from your eyes, fire from your fists, things like that.

Basic Energy Blast: You can fire a projectile of some sort, with a range of three zones, using Shoot.

Flight

For many people, flight is the reason to activate their super gene. You are one of the lucky ones, able to take to the air as easily as most citizens walk down the street.

Basic Flight: You can move vertically through the air as easily as moving along the ground. Use Athletics to overcome obstacles or create advantages related to flying.

Gadgeteering

You have special insight into how stuff works, letting you assemble incredible devices with seemingly no resources.

Basic Gadgeteering: You have an intuitive understanding of machines of all types. Just by seeing a device, you can tell what it does, at least in general. In addition, you gain +2 to Crafts when repairing or building complex devices.

Harm

You have a deadly touch. You don’t have to hit people to hurt them; just brushing up against them can be fatal.

Basic Harm: By maintaining skin-to-skin contact with another person for a moment, you deal them 2 physical stress. Additionally, when you attack a target using your bare hands, add 2 physical stress to result.

Healing

You are, invariably, the most popular person to have on hand during a fight. You make hurt people not hurt so much.

Basic Healing: You can make a Will roll against Fair (+2) opposition to clear another character’s physical stress. A character may only benefit from your ability once per scene. Additionally, you can use Will to start healing any kind of physical consequence on another character.

Illusion

You can make things that aren’t there…there.

Basic Illusion: You can project an illusory image, up to about human size, as far as one zone away. You can also generate sounds, including voices. You must concentrate to keep the illusion active. Others must actively try to see through your illusion. This is an overcome roll using Investigate, which you actively oppose using Deceive.

Influence

You are a natural people person—whether people like it or not. You can’t control minds outright, but you can make them malleable.

Basic Influence: You can use Rapport to attack, defended against with Will. If you succeed against a nameless NPC, you may give them a task, which they will then attempt to fulfill. Against a named NPC or a PC, they may follow your order or take mental stress from the attack, their choice. Anyone you give a task to will try their best to accomplish it until they succeed or the scene ends, whichever comes first. The tasks you assign are short-term objectives, such as “Give me that gun,” or “Go away.” Because even the weakest-willed are driven by self-preservation, you cannot force someone to directly harm themself or put themself in an inevitably fatal position, such as jumping off a building, but you can force them to take riskier actions than they would like to.

Invisibility

Sorry, who said that?

Basic Invisibility: You can completely fade from view, including your clothes and anything you’re carrying. Cameras and similar devices cannot detect you at all, and you gain +2 to Stealth against being seen by living targets.

Item Summoning

You always have what you need close at hand.

Basic Item Summoning: You can create simple items, such as hand tools or weapons, just by willing them into existence. If you want something with no moving parts that you can hold in one hand, roll Will against Average (+1) opposition; larger or more complex items will increase that opposition. While the item you summon can have multiple parts—for instance, a sack of marbles—you can’t summon electronic gadgets, explosives, or items that require precise manufacturing, like firearms. You may only summon one item at a time, but you can summon as often as you’d like. Increase the opposition by +2 for every other item summoned by you in the scene. You can cause summoned objects to dissipate at will, but they’ll disappear on their own after a few minutes or the end of the scene, whichever comes first.

Machine Control

You have a powerful psychic bond with machines of all sorts. They do what you tell them to. You don’t even need a manual.

Basic Machine Control: You can control machines up to one zone away without touching them. Most machines won’t resist you at all, but something computerized will put up Fair (+2) opposition, and more complex and powerful computers will offer greater opposition; you use Empathy to overcome this opposition. You can only make a machine do something it’s capable of; while you couldn’t make a toaster float, for instance, you could make a car drive itself.

Machine Control (Hacking Variant)

You know your way around computers. Maybe you studied to get that way, maybe you have a natural gift and just 'get' them but code is your weapon and the digital realms are your playground so long as you can get around sysadmins and intrusion countermeasures.

Basic Machine Control: You can control anything with a computer in it in your area using your Lore skill. Most computers don't resist, though secured systems present Fair (+2) opposition and more powerful security measure will offer greater opposition. You can only make a machine do something it's capable of that the computer can control though that's a lot in built up areas which tend to have a lot of automated tech.

Material Mimic

You are what you touch.

Basic Material Mimicry: While in contact with any material—iron, stone, wood, and so on—you can alter your body to mimic that substance, turning into a living statue. To do so, create an advantage using Physique against Fair (+2) opposition. If you succeed, you gain an aspect reflecting your new state, such as Body of Steel. You may only have one such aspect at once, and it goes away if you break contact with the substance you’re mimicking.

Natural Weapon

You come pre-armed for everyone’s inconvenience.

Basic Natural Weapon: You have some sort of built-in weaponry, whether it be claws or crackling energy that surrounds your fists. You gain +2 to Fight while brawling unarmed in close quarters.

Phasing

Walls are something other people have to deal with. You’ve always found it easier to ghost on through.

Basic Phasing: You can use Burglary to walk through walls and other physical barriers. A standard interior wooden door is a Fair (+2) obstacle, while thicker barriers of sturdier materials provide more opposition.

Plant Control

You have a green thumb and then some: plants respond to you.

Basic Plant Control: You can communicate with plants up to two zones away. You can direct and accelerate their movements, animating them and using them to take physical actions or even make attacks. When an animated plant takes actions, you roll with Empathy to control it. Picking up objects is a Mediocre (+0) challenge, while manipulating them will be Fair (+2) or above, depending on complexity. Having plants uproot themselves and move around is a Fantastic (+6) challenge or greater.

Power Amplification

You don’t do much on your own. But when there are other super-powered fighters around, you are vital.

Basic Power Amplification: By touching a super-powered individual, you can give them the boost Empowered, which they may invoke during any use of their power. You may only have one such boost in play at a time; if you generate another, the first goes away. If unused, the boost goes away at the end of the scene. Additionally, you always know who around you is super-powered and generally what their power is.

Power Nullification

The guys who amplify powers are more popular, but you’re arguably more important, if only as a jailer.

Basic Power Nullification: You can render your zone inhospitable to the use of superpowers. If someone attempts to use a power in your zone, and that power prompts opposition, increase its opposition by +2. If the power doesn’t prompt opposition, they must overcome a Fair (+2) obstacle with Will to use it. This nullification field does not affect you, and you can dismiss it at will. Additionally, you always know who around you is super-powered and generally what their power is.

Power Replication

You never need to suffer from power envy. If you can find someone with the power, you’ll have it too.

Basic Power Replication: If you are touching a super-powered individual, you can mimic their power. If they resist, you may make an attack using Fight to grab them against their will. You may use one stunt’s worth of effect from their power suite, but you cannot access their special effects or collateral damage effects. You can change which effect you can access, but you cannot use two effects at the same time. Additionally, you always know who around you is super-powered and generally what their power is. If you are touching someone with super powers, you know exactly how their power works.

Precognition

You have a bit of insight into how things are going to go; mainly you know how to dodge just before a punch gets thrown.

Basic Precognition: You can see hits coming early, letting you use Notice to defend against all physical attacks. Also, during a conflict you always act before anyone who does not have Precognition.

Regeneration

You aren’t made of iron. You can get stabbed just as easily as the next guy. Difference is, once the knife gets pulled out, you’re ready to fight again.

Basic Regeneration: Whenever one of your physical consequences begins to recover, it gets renamed and moved to the next lower consequence slot, if available. This clears away mild consequences immediately. Additionally, at the end of a scene, if you have any mild physical consequences—whether they are recovering or not—they get cleared away automatically.

Shape-Shifting

You are what you want to be.

Basic Shape-Shifting: You can change your form into that of any creature. You can use Will to create an advantage of Creature Form. The opposition is generally Fair (+2), though it increases for particularly large or small shapes and for complex transformations like a swarm of bees. Your new shape persists until you decide to end it or get taken out.

Shielding

You keep people safe with invisible walls of force. It’s not flashy, but it’s a solid defensive ability.

Basic Shielding: With a moment’s concentration, you can erect a barrier between your zone and an adjacent zone, which lasts until the end of the scene or you will it away. This barrier is transparent, but no matter can pass through it. When someone attempts to attack through the barrier, or attacks the barrier itself, you intercept the attack, using Will to defend. If the attack succeeds, you may either take the shifts as mental stress or allow the barrier to shatter and take mental stress equal to half of the shifts, rounded down. You may erect multiple barriers, but each active barrier after the first reduces your Will roll to defend by one.

Slowing

You have the ability to stop a person in their tracks.

Basic Slowing: Select a target up to one zone away and make a roll using Shoot. That target cannot move to another zone until you release them or they overcome an obstacle with opposition equal to your roll.

“Slowing” is a broad term for several different means of getting an opponent to stop in their tracks. The skill used to overcome your slowing depends on the nature of your power:

If you are physically entangling your opponent, as with vines or webbing, they use Athletics.
If you are encasing your target in a barrier, such as a mound of ice, they use Physique.
If you are slowing them with a psychic force, they use Will.

Super Agility

You are an acrobat without compare, a position you show off best with your graceful leaps.

Basic Super Agility: You are preternaturally graceful, and gain +2 to Athletics when leaping, balancing, or otherwise demonstrating your agility. In addition, you have a prodigious leap: leaping up to a second-story window or from rooftop to rooftop across a wide alleyway is a simple task that, without further complication, requires no Athletics roll.

Super Intelligence

You are the smartest person in the room, whatever room you happen to be in.

Basic Super Intelligence: You gain +2 to Will when working though puzzles, riddles, or other mentally absorbing tasks. In addition, you can answer complicated mathematical problems instantly.

Super Senses

Some of your senses are much more acute than is normal. It sometimes surprises you when you realize just how blind the rest of the world is.

Basic Super Senses: Pick a single sense—sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. You gain +2 to Investigate when using that sense. In addition, that sense cannot be impeded; for instance, you can see in darkness or hear clearly in a cacophony.

Super Speed

Gotta go fast, gotta go fast!

Basic Super Speed: You gain +2 to Athletics rolls that involve moving quickly. Additionally, you can move quickly enough to run across liquids or up sheer vertical surfaces—although if you slow down or stop, you’ll fall.

Super Strength

You are a powerhouse, a wall of muscle, an unstoppable force. Are you strong? Listen, bud…you really are.

Basic Super Strength: You gain +2 to Physique in all situations that require pure strength.

Super Toughness

It’s not that you’re too strong to show that you’re hurt, or that you recover especially well from being hurt. It’s that you just don’t get hurt.

Basic Super Toughness: You gain Armor:2 against any purely physical damage.

Telekinesis

You are a genuine spoon-bending, mind-over-matter psychic, able to enforce your will on the world.

Basic Telekinesis: You can move small objects in your own or adjacent zones without physically touching them. By hurling objects around, you can attack with Will against targets in your zone.

Telepathy

You know what everyone is thinking.

Basic Telepathy: Choose one skill from Empathy, Investigate, or Notice. You can use this skill to glean information from the minds of people in your zone or adjacent zones. If your target knows or suspects you are reading their mind, they can actively oppose you with Will. Empathy can discover what someone is feeling, Investigate delves into deep thoughts and memories, and Notice picks up surface thoughts and detects unfamiliar minds. You can also project words into the minds of anyone within range.

Teleportation

You go where you want, whether there’s a path there or not.

Basic Teleportation: You can move up to three zones as an action, provided that you can see where you are moving to.

Teleportation: Portals (Variant)

Doors between locations open at your command.

Basic Portals: You can open a portal that allows you to move up to three zones as an action, provided that you are not somehow prevented from entering it and know where you are going.

Theme: Chaos Conduit (Mutant Only)

You have a genetic connection to a force of chaos beyond our reality.

Basic Chaos Conduit: The use of your powers is accompanied by baleful glowing lights, minor fortean phenomena and other expressions of chaos.

Theme: Corruption

You are…unfortunate. Whatever turned on your superpowers did not do so nicely, and you’ve been rendered an almost-inhuman mess.

Basic Corruption: Your powers have a particularly disturbing aesthetic. You might be obviously mutated or disfigured, you might look like a corpse or a monster, or you might simply seem “wrong” to everyone around you on a subtle, psychological level. Regardless of the specifics, your presence is unnerving.

Theme: Dark Conduit (Mutant Only)

Some quirk of your genetics leaves you connected to an otherworldy force of darkness and evil which leaves its mark in everything your powers touch.

Basic Dark Conduit: Use of your powers is accompanied by pentagrams, Sulphur smells, flaring demonic sigils and other signs of the dark and unholy.

Theme: Electricity Projection

You are filled with enough electrical potential to make Tesla blush.

Basic Electricity Projection: Your powers are electrical in nature, and you’re infused with electrical energy. Whenever you use your power, you create sparks and bolts of lightning.

Theme: Energy Manipulation

Your powers manipulate energy, be it electro-magnetic or something different.

Theme: Fire Projection

You like fire. Fire likes you. It doesn’t have to get more complex than that to be fun.

Basic Fire Projection: Your powers are infused with flame, creating fireballs and billowing smoke when you use them.

Theme: Frost Projection

You bring winter wherever you go.

Basic Frost Projection: Your power expresses itself through ice and cold. Whenever you use your power, the temperature of the room drops.

Theme: Gravity Manipulation

Your powers are the result of your mastery of one of the fundamental forces of the universe.

Theme: Light Conduit (Mutant Only)

You have an innate genetic connection to a force of order, stability and healing from beyond our reality.

Basic Light Conduit: Your powers are accompanied by often quite bright lights. Manifestations of your power may in fact be formed out of pure white light but whatever the case you are quite luminous when using your abilities.

Theme: Shadow Projection

You can surround yourself with shadows and use them to fuel your powers. It doesn’t actually make sense as far as physics is concerned, but it works for you.

Basic Shadow Projection: Your power is expressed in the creation and manipulation of shadows; whenever you use your power, you create swathes of living darkness.

Theme: Super Form

You’ll be ready for action as soon as your transformation sequence finishes up.

Basic Super-Form: Your power isn’t always active; instead, you need to take a moment before battle to change form. You might grow a shell of metal around your body, or charge up with cosmic energy, or just turn big and green. Converting to your super-form requires an action, but while you’re not super it’s impossible for anyone or anything to detect that you have a power at all.

Theme: Technology

Not everyone can take advantage of their superpower gene. Some people come by their powers honestly.

Basic Technology: Your power isn’t actually a superpower in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s an ability that comes from advanced technology you have access to, such as cybernetic implants. While your “power” isn’t necessarily built into you, you always have access to your superior equipment and it never breaks down. In addition, powers that affect other powers (such as Power Amplification or Power Nullification) do not affect you.

Wall-Crawling

Gravity is something that other people have to worry about; you just need a surface to put under your feet.

Basic Wall-Crawling: You can move along any solid surface, even upside-down, as easily as you move along the ground. In addition, you get +2 to Athletics while navigating obstacles that involve climbing.

Weather Control

You can rain on anyone’s parade.

Basic Weather Control: You can fill your zone with specific weather patterns by creating an advantage using Will. The opposition is generally Fair (+2), but increases with especially difficult weather, such as tornadoes, or especially inclement weather, such as snow during high summer. These weather patterns fade away when you will them to, when you leave the zone, or otherwise at the end of the scene.