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Revision as of 19:01, 18 August 2024
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Powers turn Blades in the Dark-style games into power fantasy.
Introducing Powers
Rather than the fantastical being rare and poorly understood, adding powers to your gives characters entirely new abilities they can use. Introducing these into a game changes the game world, making it more fantastical. Your game will change from the typical grim blades in the dark into something different and higher powered, though possibly just as grim. Powers consist of two elements—a playbook, and powers. Playbooks are frameworks for which powers you can use and how you use them. Powers describe what effects you can create.
Here follows links to power playbooks and powers, explained in the rules below.
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Power Playbooks
Playbooks are the frames for acquiring powers. The playbooks are the power traditions of your world, roles such as wizard, sorcerer, saint, mutant, or technomancer. Each playbook gives you access to certain powers, which are chosen in the same manner as special abilities. A power playbook can also have regular special abilities to choose from, but rarely as many as ordinary playbooks do. This is in addition to all the normal features of a playbook.
Finally, each power playbook gives you a trauma condition. This means you can't survive as much new trauma as characters who have not meddled with the powers. The actual trauma condition generally affects how you use powers, imposing conditions you must fulfil in order to use powers.
Multiple Power Playbooks You cannot pick special abilities from a power playbook unless you are using that playbook. It is possible to add a power playbook by selecting this as a special ability. If you already have a power playbook, you can gain multiple power playbooks this way, giving you a wider range of powers at the price of more trauma conditions and thus more restrictions on the use of all of your powers.
Powers
Powers are what actually gives you exceptional abilities. A power playbook doesn't give you any power abilities unless you select a power from that playbook's special abilities. Once you select a power, you gain abilities appropriate to the power. So if you select the electricity power, you can shoot lightning, power electric engines, cause shortcuts, summon electric creatures, depending on which actions you are good at. In many cases, powers work as equipment does, empowering your normal actions. Some powers allow you to do what is normally impossible, these generally have more rules governing them
Stress Cost You use your normal actions to activate powers, but there is an associated cost in stress. The stress cost of each category of power abilities is given at the top of each column, but this cost is reduced by the result of the action roll. This works much like resistance rolls, but is handled as a part of the action roll. Each power ability has a stress cost, which is reduced by the result of the action roll. A critical success reduces the cost by 2 for each six rolled beyond the first. This is the same roll used to judge the effect of the action itself. Sometimes the use of a power does not need an action roll, but you still make one to find the stress cost. For example, using Survey and darkness to allow your friends to see in the dark is not exciting enough to require an action roll. In this case, ignore the result of the action roll, it always succeeds without consequences. For basic powers not used as a part of a significant action, just ignore the cost and action roll.
Avoid The Trap of Powers Just because a power allows something does not mean that you can't do it without that power. Attacks with weapons do not lose any effectiveness just because there are power that do the same. Items can be more effective than powers because once you select an item of equipment, you usually have it for the rest of the score. Attune allows the identification of supernatural creatures even without using a power, tough powers are more precise in detecting creatures and things tied to that particular power.
Powers are Inflexible Unlike normal actions, which are flexible, powers are specific. If you want to make a ranged attack using your power, that is done with Hunt action unless the particular power description says otherwise, you cannot fudge this with another action as you normally can.
Powers are Flexible The abilities described for each combination of power and action are typical examples that can be expanded upon. The drift of the ability is set, but the particulars can be changed. If a character wants to do something that seems appropriate to their power but no description fits, modify existing abilities to allow it as some kind of action.
| Effect and Result There are really two kinds of effect in Blades in the Dark, and the power rules use this concept so much it need to be explained. To keep them apart, I have introduced the term result for one of these types of effect. The first kind, that I call effect, is the initial effect of the action. This comes from the negotiation between player and game master and depends entirely on the situation at hand and how suitable the player's proposed action is. I call the other kind of effect the result, but this could also be called final effect. It is the effect after all modifications due to such things as a difference in tier, assist and push for effect, and setup actions. |
Combining Powers If you know several powers, you can combine all of them with a single action, as long as this makes sense. So if you know both the fire and plant powers, you can dismiss, command, or sway using both at once. The stress cost is that of the most difficult effect you use. This often increases effect at the cost of position as controlling a combined power is harder.
Combining Actions Combining multiple actions into one greater effect is harder, you have to use the lowest of all the involved action ratings. This lower rating must then satisfy the minimum die requirement.
If you want to use both the basic Command and Sway effects, likely to both speak to an understand someone, you use the lower of your Command and Sway rating.
Cooperative Powers It is possible for multiple characters to cooperate in using a power in a group action. Each member contributes the powers they know to the final effect. If multiple actions are involved, different people in the group can roll using different actions, as long as it makes sense. This can be exploited by adding nonsensical effects to a cooperative power use just to allow the use of different actions, keep an eye out for this.
A group of scoundrels want to summon a demon. This is a Master Attune Darkness effect. One player suggests turning this into a group action by adding a Hunt Plant effect to create a bower in the shape of a pentagram. This draws some chuckles from around the game table, no-one else thinks this a meaningful group action. Instead the GM suggests this as a setup action.
Power Duration There are no specific rules for the duration of powers. Most powers last for a single use of an action: you use the power, the effect happens, and then the power ends but the effects of the power remains. An attack is the typical example of this. You create a bolt of energy using a power like electricity, fight with it for the time it takes to make a single die roll (this can be involve several die rolls in the fiction), then the power ends but any damage or other effects remain. Powers that last usually last for an entire score, but this depends on the degree of success. A possible consequence is that the power suddenly ends at an inappropriate moment.
Power Area The target of powers can be described in plural or singular, but powers use the normal effects of multiple targets, increasing position and/or reducing effect as appropriate. If the power explicitly says it has an area this does no apply.
Powers Gated by Dice Power effects can be gated by the number of dice rolled for an action. This means that pushing, assists, and devils' bargain enhances the effect of your powers. No dice, no power. One die gives access to free abilities. two dice gives access to item abilities, three dice gives access to stress abilities, four dice allows access to all powers.
Optional Rule: Powers Gated by Tier If powers seem to powerful for low-tier adventures, you can tier-lock powers. At tier zero, you can only use free powers. At tiers 1-2 you can only use free and item powers. At tier 3-4 you can use free, item, and stress powers abilities. At tier 5, you can use all powers. This makes powers almost useless at tier zero and weak until tier 3. Long-term projects allows use of powers as if you were two tiers higher. Make sure to limit exceptional equipment like bombs and grenades in a similar manner.
Availability and Genre Different power and action combinations fit in different genres, as do power playbooks. The easiest way to manage this is to modify or remove the power playbooks and powers that don't fit. But you can also remove the abilities linked to certain actions.
- Removing attune removes summoning and anti-power abilities, making the setting decidedly less mystical.
- Removing command and sway powers make powers more physical and less subtle.
- Removing consort makes a creature's form more definite, making the setting less confusing.
- Removing finesse, hunt, skirmish, and wreck removes exceptional attacks, making the setting much less flashy.
- Removing prowl limits how people move, also making the setting less flashy.
- Removing study and survey removes information powers, making the setting more mundane.
It is also possible to limit sub-categories of power playbooks, making certain components secret and something that has to be earned. You can also lock certain action/power combinations behind an additional cost, such as requiring a separate ability to use Survey power if you dislike scrying.
Typical Powers and How to Use Them
This is the pattern that most powers follow. You can refer to this when interpreting how powers should work. TLDR, this list is too long to read it all every time, its here to look up in to resolve specific situations. It is good to have skimmed it at least once.
Attune
Harness the power of Attune to perceive and manipulate supernatural energies, allowing you to detect and interact with beings and phenomena from other planes of existence.
The consequences usually depends on what happens around you when you do it. Having helpers and bodyguards reduces the consequences, and sometimes a creature wants to be dismissed and the consequence might be that it loses control of itself, or that other creatures appear to intervene.
Perceive: You can detect creatures and power use tied to your power.
This is usually done to identify powers you can dismiss or dispel. However, it can also help to spot a disguised creature and provide valuable insights into the abilities of creatures.
- Limited outcome: Something you can clearly see.
- Standard Outcome: Something that is hidden
- Great Outcome: Behind a wall.
Dismiss: You can force a creature based on this power that is native to another plane of existence to return to that plane, or to end the operation of an ability of this power.
- Limited outcome: A creature that wants to be dismissed.
- Standard Outcome: A creature that has been wounded or otherwise weakened.
- Great Outcome: A creature at full ability.
Dispelling is usually easier. Most powers only dispel effects of their own power. Read this generously. As an example, the fire power can dispel any fire power, but also powers that affect flames and heat sources, as well as powers that affect Fire creatures.
Dispelling is often used as a setup action to help another character in a situation when the opposition is using powers. This improves the position of the supported action.
It can also be used to break the continuing results of powers. When used directly, the effect is usually limited unless the opponent is relying on powers for their safety. Against an opponent that uses power to fly or even breathe you may have a better effect.
When dramatically appropriate that a power is hard to dispel, often because it is the crux of the situation, this will not negate the power but instead give you a clue to what you need to do to resolve the situation.
Summon: You can call a creature from a place of your power. This is generally an unwilling servant. It will obey one command from you and this can be extended. Learning who to summon may require study or be a score in itself.
Summoning can bring you allies to fight or labor for you, giving you scale. They can also give advice and information related to their power. Summons can use simple powers and maintain powers you have created.
You can summon generic creatures without having to do a flashback. Such a creature is similar to a gang member in ability and are often summoned in groups to add scale. To summon a particular creature, similar to a cohort, you need its unique identity, often called true name in the mystical power traditions. For a technomancer this would be an id number or block of data. Learning about the right creature to summon is a task in its own right, often requiring a flashback or downtime activity to use Command, Consort, Study, or Sway to gain information.
It might be worth the extra effort to summon a creature of higher tier, but this is also much more demanding, using the usual rules for tiers.
Summoned creatures generally come in three types, elementals, spirits, and creatures with powers.
Elementals only exist for powers that have a direct physical manifestation, like the four classic elements of air, earth, fire, and water, but also the other forms that have a physical manifestation, electricity, ice, metal, and plant. An elemental is a simple creature totally dominated by its power. Most elementals have animal intelligence, and often take the shape of animals as well, tough animated chunks of matter and humanoid forms are also common.
Spirits are naturally immaterial, but some can take physical form. They manifest the emotional and mental manifestations of their power. Spirits are of roughly human intellect, but can seem monomaniacal in their focus on their particular power. They can use sophisticated powers and usually have an agenda of their own that might well be irrelevant to humans.
Creatures with powers resemble normal creatures, having a biological body, metabolism, and functioning as ordinary living creatures but also have some exceptional abilities related to their power. A fire dragon is impossibly large, flies, and breathes fire. An air turtle hovers and can grow to massive size, to the point where a city can be built on top of them. An undead creature is a corpse animated by the powers of Death. And so on. Not all creatures with powers are summonable or dismissible, many are native to this world and have no special vulnerability to Attune powers.
Depending on your outcome the creature is willing to do different things.
- Limited outcome allows you to ask questions of an intelligent creature or demand a short period of physical labor from a simple creature. The creature will not fight for you. If forced into a fight due to circumstances, it will resent it.
- Standard outcome allows you to ask for any service appropriate to the type of creature. A devil will do evil, a fire elemental will burn stuff, and so on.
This includes dangerous tasks such as combat if the creature has such abilities, which most of them do.
- Great outcome allows actions outside the creature's comfort zone, but not things it directly opposes. A devil will do most things except those associated with Light, a fire elemental will heat your forge or power your steam engine. Lengthy service also requires great outcome, like summoning the creature to guard a treasure for as long as it can.
Typical consequences include:
- A bargain of payment in things the creature prizes.
- The creature strikes out at you once.
- You need to concentrate to keep the creature under control.
- The creature breaks things around you.
- Overly literal interpretations of your commands.
- The creature deliberately does its tasks poorly.
- Demanding not to be summoned again until some time or event has passed.
- General sulkiness.
Offering a creature gifts or services appropriate to its nature can help. This is essentially a devil's bargain, accepting a price in advance. Desperate position usually comes from trading position for outcome (called trading position for effect in the rulebook), but it might come from a difference in ethos. If you are a priest of light and summon a demon, or if the summon is three or more tiers above you the position will be desperate. Desperate consequences include a tightwire struggle to keep the creature under control, a demand that you sell your soul, become its agent in the world, that you come to its home plane to serve it there for a time (usually three scores), that you defeat the creature in a duel or similar dramatic story events.
Gate: You can create a portal that allows travel to and from the plane of your power.
Most powers are linked to a different world where that power is dominant, such as the Realm of Air, Land of the Dead and such. A gate lasts for a while, enough for a quick score. If things take a lot of time it might require a separate use of the power to return home again. The first time you gate to a certain place the position is at least risky and becomes desperate if there is any kind of disturbance.
Gating can allow access to creatures too powerful to summon, so you instead ask for an audience. The creature may then use the gate to come to you, call you into its presence, or just communicate with you.
There are things that are possible to do on these planes that are not allowed in the regular world, most power abilities are reduced one step in difficulty, from Advanced to Basic, Master to Advanced, and Apex to Master. This opens the possibility of new Super-Apex powers that have to be negotiated with the game master. Such power rarely reach outside the plane where you perform them, but if they affect creatures on that plane, they may remain when you return to the mundane world.
Command
Command and intimidate creatures based on your power, projecting authority. Position and effect depend on the situation and your relationship with listeners.
Communicate: You can make creatures understand you, but you do not understand them.
This is useful for intimidating and commanding foreign or alien XXX creatures. Combined with the basic power of Sway, it allows two-way communication.
Sending: You can communicate long distance with creatures linked to your power.
You can communicate with power-linked creatures over any distance as long as you know the target, and a line-of-sight even if you do not. You can communicate with the most powerful creature related to your power in a vehicle or installation as long as you can see the exterior. The communication is simple and direct, suitable for the Command skill.
Powers related to various materials can use these materials to send and receive messages, speaking fire to fire, crystal to crystal, and so on.
Authority: You can give commands to creatures under your power, as if you were their superior.
Targets will see you as an officer, professional superior, alpha, or other leader type outranking them. This is essentially a fine attempt at communication, increasing your outcome compared to a normal attempt at Command. This does not remove existing loyalties, which can lead to conflicts. Understanding the social order of your targets helps avoid conflict with their established loyalties. Ordering city guards to ignore a disturbance is harder (needs more outcome) than telling them to deal with it and move on, because their task is to protect the city.
Position depends on the creatures' actual relationship to you—ordering a creature that sees itself as your superior is a desperate position. A controlled position comes from a creature that agrees you are superior, usually just making retrying harder. A risky position is typical against a creature that sees itself as your equal and not your enemy, possibly leading to heat, misunderstood orders, or small rebellions.
Enslave: You can permanently bind creatures to service.
This won’t work unless you are already in a position of power. This is similar to Authority but permanent. Strong emotions can break your control, but otherwise, it lasts until dispelled.
Consort
Consort powers change your form and later that of other creatures. This often works as a set-up action, giving you a bonus to effect or improved position, make success automatic, or even allow an action that a human could not even attempt.
A common consequences is that you are mistaken for someone, or that your assumed form is somehow a hindrance. You might be obnoxiously attractive, trigger prejudices, or have unexpected handicaps.
Mask: You can change your clothes and accessories by imbuing them with your power. This can mask your identity or create fabulous outfits.
You do not physically change yourself, you change your accessorize and outfit. As an advanced ability, you can do this for another.
Shapechange: You assume the form of another creature that manifests your power.
This is a true physical transmutation. You need not assume the form of an existing creature, as long as the gamemaster agrees your new form matches the power you use.
Shapechange can work as a set-up action for a number of other actions but may penalize other things, as appropriate to your new form. When appropriate, your new form can use Basic and Advanced powers inherently without risking stress.
- Limited outcome you can transform into yourself like you would have been, had you grown up as the creature whose form you assume. Those familiar with you will recognize you.
- Standard outcome can make you a generic creature, very hard to recognize as yourself.
- Great outcome allows you to assume the shape and some of the personality of a specific creature you have studied.
Transform: You can shapechange a willing or helpless creature into a form imbued by your power.
This is Shapechange applied to a willing or helpless creature. The duration depends of the outcome, limited outcome is very temporary. Standard outcome lasts for the duration of a score. Great outcome lasts a long time and potentially become permanent, depending on the the story. If you also want to make the target unrecognizable, that requires additional outcome, see Shapechange.
This is sometimes used as a kind of poetic justice, transforming the target as a punishment, a curse that is very hard to break.
Wild Hunt: Transform many willing or non-sentient creatures and give them a simple instruction.
This is where Consort becomes a combination of the Shapechange and Summon power abilities. You transform a number of existing creatures and give them a task that they will perform with gusto, turning them into single-minded minions. Targets must be willing, non-sentient like animals, or just very minor figures in the plot, many tiers below you.
This is usually used to create a host of goons that will fight and chase for you. Such goons are more interested in chasing and cornering targets than in actual combat. Or they can be given bit parts, like the scene with the fairy godmother from Disney's Cinderella turning animals into horses and footmen.
Finesse
Exercise finesse with your power, manipulating and attacking with precision.
Ride: If there is a mount or vehicle of the appropriate power, you can ride it as if it was domesticated and you have the keys.
This allows you to use Finesse with mounts and vehicles you are not familiar with. You can bypass simple locks on vehicles, but not more serious security. You can ride beasts even if they are not trained to carry a rider. They must still be physically able to carry you.
Duel: You can use the power as a fine and potent close-range attack, similar to a fine potent dueling sword or pistol, or you can give your friends the Ride ability for the duration of a score.
What this actually does depends on the power used. Fire burns, wind slices, ice pieces or freezes, and so on. Certain targets may be more or less vulnerable to certain attacks, but this is the exception. Besides variety, this only substitutes for equipment, fine and potent finesse weapon is just as powerful. In a fight, using this does not take any more time, activating your attack power is equivalent to drawing a weapon.
Manipulate: You can do small and exact manipulations at range.
This allows you to manipulate small amounts of matter governed by your power, similar to what you could do by hand, but you can do so at short range, allowing you to push buttons, trigger devices, and perform legerdemain. This can substitute for simple Tinker actions, but nothing complicated. You can open doors, trigger or hinder mechanisms, or perform other minor manipulations, as long as the target is appropriate to your power.
Surge: Your power manifests like a storm of blades, overcoming scale.
As Duel above, and you also create distractions. This is like having a number of trusty but entirely defensive allies in the fight and negates any scale advantage an enemy gets for having allies of their own.
Hunt
Track, attack, and unleash devastating barrages with the power of Hunt. At short range, this can be dangerous to you and yours.
Track: You can track and pursue based on your power.
This works even if the quarry does not leave any mundane trail or clues. Consequences here are mainly to lose the trail, but depending on the environment and targets, it might lead you to get lost, into traps, or even into an ambush.
Potent Snipe: You can use your power to attack, similar to a fine and potent rifle.
The result of this action varies depending on the nature of your power. For instance, fire will burn, wind can slice, ice might pierce or freeze, and so forth.
Essentially, this serves as a replacement for traditional equipment; a fine and potent ranged weapon would be equally powerful in combat. While some targets may exhibit more or less vulnerability to specific types of attacks, this is the exception rather than the rule.
Environmental Control You can alter environments by controlling or introducing the element of your power. You can change the environment of a single room indoors or a city block outdoors.
This is usually used as a setup, but may also change how people act in reaction to the environment—rain, smoke, or snow and the like are likely to make people want to stay indoors or run out as the case may be. This does not inflict any direct damage.
Area Attack: Attack like a fine and potent grenade. Hurt many but risk collateral damage.
An escalation of Potent Snipe. Less precise, this affects all creatures at a location, with a risk of collateral damage. Targets in trenches, behind walls, or otherwise shielded are not in direct danger, but tend to keep their heads down, which gives your side the initiative.
Prowl
Sneak and move with stealth and agility. Most powers use Prowl in ways that vary from the norm, so this is a more rough sketch than the power abilities of many other actions.
Reconnaissance: You can hide in environments linked to your power.
This allows you to hide in impossible places as long as the environment manifests your power. Where and how you can use this is explained in each specific power. It otherwise works just like any other attempt to use Prowl to avoid notice. Note that only you can use this ability, your friends and allies cannot unless you use Travel, below.
Maneuver: You can move on and through environments composed of your environment. .
This allows you to climb on air, swim unhindered, walk through walls of the appropriate material and so on, depending on your exact power. Again, each power will explain how it can use this mobility. Your friends and allies cannot use this unless you employ Travel, below.
Travel: You can bring allies along when you use Reconnaissance and Maneuver.
Now you and your allies can Prowl in places where your power is at home. They still use their own Prowl action.
Transport: Your crew teleport from one location where your power is present to another.
How and where you use this is explained in each power. You and allies can teleport from one location in darkness to another. This is regional travel, you stay within the same city or region, but it is generally sufficient to escape just about any situation or location.
This takes you to places you are familiar with. Both effect and position is worse unless you know where you are going, which means it is great for escapes but less so for intrusion into an enemy's territory that you are likely to be much less familiar with.
Skirmish
Prosper in the chaos of battle.
Energy Block: Resist power-related harm.
Absorb power energies. This allows you to ignore most harm from a dangerous environment matching your . Roll Skirmish when subject to harm from such energies. This is your inherent resistance, it does not require any activity on your part. Reduce the level of harm inflicted based on the level of success. 1-3: Nothing. 4-5: Reduce level of harm by one. 6: Reduce level of harm by two. Crit: Negate all harm and recover 1 stress.
Fine Skirmish Attack: Attack similar to a fine and potent melee weapon
Besides variety in the type of damage, this only substitutes for equipment, mundane weapons are just as powerful. Certain targets may be more or less vulnerable to certain attacks, but this is the exception.
Obstruction: Fine Skirmish Attack, plus obstructions that prevent scale.
This creates some kind of hindrance, perhaps spectral allies, perhaps a maze or concealing mist. The result is to deny the advantage of numbers.
Flurry: Attack all enemies in a wide area.
Turns you into a one-man army. Not only do you negate the advantage your enemy may get from numbers, you also spread your damage to hurt all your enemies in the skirmish.
Study
Study and analyze objects and creatures imbued with your power to gain insight and knowledge. The outcome required depends on range.
- Limited outcome for touch.
- Standard outcome for line-of-sight.
- Great outcome to reach a target you know of or have some link to, but which is out of line-of-sight.
Position depends on the situation. Safely in your base the position is controlled. In the middle of a fight or when pinned down the position is desperate. Sometimes thing you are researching it dangerous in itself, worsening position, consequences may give you knowledge that lacks crucial details.
Analyze: You can identify objects and creatures that manifest your power.
This gives the name and very basic information in narrative terms, but not details or actual rules.
Research: You know the powers and abilities of something you Analyze.
You learn of any powers or special abilities the target has. This includes actual rules and game result.
Hindsight: You can read the past events of something you analyze.
This includes previous owners and how the object has been moved around as well as significant scenes from its history. The power zooms in on events of interest to you.
Omniscience: You Research everything you can see, then use Hindsight three times.
Provides a detailed view of events involving your power as far as you can see, pinpointing locations of interest like bases and power nodes. You can then use Hindsight to learn the history of up to three such locations.
Survey
Perceive and locate manifestations of your power. The outcome you need depends on the target's concealment. Limited outcome finds targets in concealment. Standard outcome finds those hiding behind cover and in far places you can only barely see. Great outcome can look behind walls and into hard cover.
Detect: You can sense manifestations of your power.
This is a basic spotting power, selectively sensing things related to your power.
Sensor: Choose an object manifesting your power you know of; you can perceive as if you were at that spot.
You move your perception to an object or place that manifests your power and sense as if you were at that spot as long as you maintain concentration. You still sense things at your actual location, but only very dimly.
Scry: Choose a location or creature. Gain sensory perception from the nearest object linked to your power.
Similar to Sensor but allows you to focus on a specific creature or position. Automatically directs your senses to towards the best vantage point for Sensor, typically close enough to observe the target. Fails if no suitable viewpoint is available.
Omnipresence: You perceive from all objects manifesting your power at once over a wide area.
Enhances your senses impossibly, akin to being multiple individuals spread across the scene. You sense from every bit of matter corresponding to your power. Creates a comprehensive mental image of the area, revealing numerous details simultaneously. It's challenging for targets to hide unless they are aware of how to conceal themselves.
Sway
Communicate, mesmerize, and manipulate creatures imbued with your power. Position is determined normally, depending on the situation and your relation to listeners.
- Limited Outcome works if it follows the target's existing impulses, just overcoming fragile self-restraint.
- Standard Outcome can convince a target with no particular stake in the matter.
- Great Outcome will convince a reluctant target, but not a passionate one.
Communicate: You can understand creatures linked to your power even if normally you couldn't.
You can gauge the mood and motivations of these creatures and understand what they are saying. This does not allow you to be understood. Used together with the basic Command power, this allows full communication.
Translate: Crew can communicate with creatures based on your power.
This allows you and your crew to use the Sway action at full power, overcoming cultural and linguistic barriers. You are persuading, not speaking with authority.
In addition, many powers will have the ability to inspire a mood or emotion specific to that power in any creature, which is commonly used as a setup for a Sway going along with these moods.
Mesmerize: You implant suggestions in the minds of creatures linked to your power.
This is essentially an enhanced Sway attempt, allowing you to implant suggestions that will trigger under conditions you set. The power remains subtle until the suggestion is activated. The target will not remember being swayed.
Suggestions cannot be absurd to the target. A typical use would be to sway a servant to leave a window open or a guard to forget to load their weapon. Suggestions fade over time depending on the level of outcome achieved: limited outcome lasts for the immediate situation, normal outcome lasts for the duration of the score, and great outcome can extend beyond the score if it fits the story.
Inculcate: You permanently change the personality and motivations of creatures that manifest your power.
This is permanent but blatant. It changes the target's mind on a deep level, altering their priorities and loyalties. Target remembers their past but considers it unimportant compared to their new motivations. There are limits to this power, especially for creatures linked to a power—you cannot make a fire creature love the sea or an angel perform deeds of darkness. Exceptional creatures and circumstances can break this change.
Tinker
Manipulate, shape, and create objects imbued with your power to suit your needs. The power and durability of your constructions depend on the outcome. More powerful devices are harder to sustain and will not last as long. Most creations will endure until the end of a score.
Position depends on the tranquility of your workspace and if you are working on something dangerous in itself.
For long-term projects, Tinker powers can substitute for missing tools, but that is all they do until you can Fabricate.
Handle Work materials imbued with your power.
This ability substitutes for tools and protection devices typical of a small workshop.
Shape Work materials imbued with your power as if they were clay.
This surpasses normal crafting, letting you manipulate elements that are not stable, shaping water, sand, or smoke and making them stay in the new shape. This can substitute for pipes and containers and facilitate the construction of traps or devices, avoiding the need for extensive equipment. You don't need tools to build complex fine and potent items appropriate to your powers.
You can also form parts of a larger object as if it were clay, creating openings in walls, doors, and other massive objects.
Create You can conjure objects from nothing or transmute materials from one Power to another.
You can create stuff related to your power from nothing. This is like Shaping, above, but needs no raw materials.
With multiple powers you can transform material linked to one of your powers into material linked to another. This allows intricate transformations where a metal sword can be transmuted into fire and still work as a sword, or a wooden door can be changed to air so you can walk through and the door then returns to normal.
Fabricate Similar to Shape, but on a larger scale.
You can mass produce objects or create large structures like ships or buildings that normally require a work force and facilities. In long-term projects involving construction or crafting, Fabricate makes many dozens of items with the same effort as one item, but with a stress cost.
Wreck
Destroy, dismantle, and obliterate objects made of stuff related to your power.
The outcome required depends on the size and structural strength of your target.
- Limited Outcome: Construction significantly weaker than a brick wall.
- Standard Outcome is a car-sized hole in a brick or mortar wall. A smaller hole still needs standard outcome.
- Great Outcome can affect something larger and/or stronger, up to the size of a house, ship, or other large construct.
The position depends on the situation. A quiet workspace is controlled, the general hustle of adventure risky, dealing with a fight, massive crowds, or dangerous construction is desperate.
Jimmy: You can jimmy objects manifesting your power much like a sledgehammer. Noisy and leaves a twisted remnants.
Just as crude as it sounds. You destroy things related to your power and strike with the force of a sledgehammer in combat. As usual, Wreck may be at an advantage or disadvantage compared to Hunt, Finesse and Skirmish, depending on the situation.
Smash: Similar to jimmy. You can smash any relevant material as if they was wood. Works as a fine potent sledgehammer in combat.
This bypasses the strength of materials, allowing you to break even the strongest barrier, as long as you know the relevant power. You can also use this to smash other things or as a fine, potent sledgehammer.
Disintegrate: Similar to smash, but destroyed targets silently disappears or are reduced to a fine dust.
The real difference here is that wrecking things is now silent when you have the right power. Leave less traces, as what you wreck disappears. Get rid of evidence, as long as that evidence matches your power.
Obliterate: Similar to smash, but over a large area. This can level a city block, empty a canal system of water, raze a city wall, and similar massive destruction.
Rather straightforward, this just scales things up.