Power Experiments (Action)

Heroic Action Role-Play

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Power experiments is what you use to exceed the limitations of powers in Action. Powers are designed for everyday use in an action context, not for solving large social or engineering problems, make inventions, or otherwise perform world-altering events. In other games, this might be called ritual magic, but the powers of action need not be magical and thus a more generic term is used here. Power Experiments has some similarities to Tinkering.

A power experiment represents a significant muster of resources.

Power Experiments

In Action adventures, miracles are performed with frenzied effort and leaps of genius in very short time. These rules give a framework for power experiments; the game master must always interpret these rules in ways that fit the campaign. The following table gives benchmarks for calculating the difficulty of power experiments. There are schticks and powers that use or modify the power experiments rules.

Decide what you want to do. Sum the difficulty modifiers from each column to get the final difficulty. You can choose to keep one of the factors open and dependent upon your outcome. So, for example, you can decide upon what you want to do, and then see how long it takes (keeping Time open) or you can decide how long you want to spend and go for as little exposure as possible (keeping "Interference" open).

Power Experiments Table

The difficulty of a power experiment is 10 plus the modifiers from this table

Difficulty Modifier	Time	Size	Powers	Secrecy	Duration	Resources	Difficulty Modifier
+0	Week	Personal	Exact Power	Intervention	Day	Factory	+0
+1	Day	Building	Relevant Power	Intruige	Month	Lab	+1
+2	Hour (Limit Break)	Town	Extended Power	Published	Year	Field kit	+2
+3	Minute	Regional	Relevant Form	Rumors	Century	Basic tools	+3
+4	Basic Action	Widespread	Nothing	Secret	Permanent	Nothing	+4

Time: This is how long you spend on the project. Power experiments is possible in action rounds; the inspiration of stress allows you to treat a Limit Break as a full fifteen minutes of normal work.

Size: Larger effects are harder to create. Not everyone in a large area is affected automatically.

Powers: Depending how relevant the powers you already have are, power experiments become harder.

Secrecy: How tightly the lid is on. In an action story, the enemy usually discovers your experiment and tries to counteract it. This can range from direct armed intervention or cloak-and-dagger spy action to lost worksheets and whispered rumors. The GM is free to refuse anything below "published" because of lack of interest and/or opposition.

Duration: Power experiments have effects that last from days to centuries. All such effects are considered Curses and can be broken with enough effort, with longer-lasting the effects being harder to break.

Resources: How much resources you have at your disposal to work your experiments. It is harder to improvise something out of rubber bands in the field than it is to order your ten thousand mooks to build it using state-of-the-art tools.

• Factory: A full set of equipment, plentiful supplies, and a willing and able workforce.
• Lab: Plentiful equipment and more supplies than you can carry. A truck full of gear or access to a large trash heap.
• Field kit A man-portable power experiments kit, plus suitable pieces to work with.
• Basic tools: A small toolkit and some junk. A Swiss army knife and what you can loot from a wreck.
• Nothing: Your own will and power prevails!