Life Powers (FiD)

Starfox's Blades in the Dark fan page

Life power is about life energy. You heal and improve living things.

This is life and life-force at the primal level; the essential principle that fuels all creatures, empowered and mundane. It is at the opposite scale of the evolution from Mind, which deals in intelligence, yet Mind could not exist without Life. It is the antithesis of death, but without death Life would become static.

Life attacks causes wounds to spontaneously appear on living things and undead but does nothing to things that never lived.

Life is a wide but diffuse energy, there are no life creatures.

Life Power Effects

Action	Basic No minimum 3 Stress	Advanced Minimum 2 Dice 5 Stress	Master Minimum 4 Dice 7 Stress	Apex Minimum 6 Dice 13 Stress
Attune	Vitality Vision You can detect all kinds of living creatures and living objects such as plants.	Purge Pulse You can negate powers affecting any living thing, but you cannot dismiss creatures.	Life Loom Use life energy to heal harm. The effect needed depends on their level of harm.	Liberate Life Free living creatures over a large area from power effects and light harm.
Command	Extend Emotion You can project negative emotions to living creatures you see.	Emotion Echo You can read emotions.	Slumber You can put living creatures to sleep.	Hold on the Heart You can cause a permanent emotion.
Consort	Living Mask You can make cosmetic changes to your own body, growing or losing hair, changing coloration, gaining or losing weight, and so on.	Mimicry You assume the form of another creature of the same basic type as you, such as a human if you are human. Add 1d to one action and subtract 1d from all actions covered by an attribute except if you just raised one of them.	Morphing You can shapechange a willing or helpless creatures as Mimicry. This can be a curse, it can be broken but it is not easy. You can easily break the effect.	Wild Hunt You can transform a large number of willing or non-sentient creatures and give them a simple instruction, typically someone for them to hunt.
Finesse	Track You can emote with and ride any living but non-sentient creature.	Beastly Blade You can use the power as a fine and potent close-range attack, similar in effect to a fine potent dueling sword or pistol, or you can give your friends the Beast Bond ability for the duration of a score.	Beastly Barrage You can infuse life energy into living things, energizing them and making them look their best.	Beastly Blitz Your power manifests like a storm of blood, suppressing the effect of multiple opponents and acting as a fine potent weapon.
Hunt	Sanguine Scout You can track living creatures, even if the target does not leave any mundane trail or clues.	Beastly Blade You can use your power to cause wounds at a distance to attack, similar in effect to a fine and potent rifle.	Beastly Barrage You can use your power to create a fount of blood, an attack similar to a fine and potent grenade. This allows you to fight many creatures in the same area very effectively, but there is a risk of collateral damage.	Beastly Blitz You call down a torrent of blood, the equivalent of a fine potent artillery barrage, attacking everything and everyone in a wide area.
Prowl	Hide in the Herd You can hide among living creatures, even if you look nothing like them.	Agile Advance You empower your own strength and stamina, helping your movement.	Pack Passage You can bring allies along when you use Hide in the Herd and Agile Advance.	Transport You and allies can teleport to any place in the same region where you have slept.
Skirmish	Clawed Clash You can use the power as a close-range attack, similar in effect to a melee weapon or pistol.	Razor Rumble Same as Skirmish Attack, except the weapon is fine and potent.	Swarm Strike Your power creates distractions and obstructions that prevents the enemy from benefiting from numbers and otherwise works as a fine potent weapon.	Mob Maul Your power strikes out in all directions, attacking all enemies in a wide area.
Study	Analyze Anatomy You can identify living creatures and any aliments they suffer from.	Life Lore You know the powers and abilities of something you analyze.	Living Legacy 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.	Wisdom of the Wild You use Life Lore on everything in a wide area. This is easy to do where you are, more difficult at range. You can then use Living Legacy on some of these targets.
Survey	Vitality Vision You can sense life and life powers at a distance and understand their general nature. This works even when you can't see the target, but both range and information suffers.	Sensory Symbiosis Choose a living creature with eyes you have detected; you can perceive what that creature perceives. You cannot use your Survey action for anything else when doing so.	Savage Scrying Choose a location or creature. You see through the eyes of the closest living creature, which is often close enough to perceive the target.	Legion Lens You perceive from all living creatures at once over a wide area. As long as you concentrate you retain this perception and can report what you see to others.
Sway	Emotion Echo You can read the emotions of living creatures you see and get a sense of their motivations.	Mood Meld You can read and project emotions to living creatures.	Empathic Charm You can project emotions of warmth and affection to living creatures, which will usually improve their attitude.	Soul Serenade You can change the emotional state of living creatures. This power is permanent, but blatant. Targets remember their past, but regard it as unimportant compared to their new motivations.
Tinker	Refine Remnants You can handle living and formerly things that are not creatures, such as wood, bone, leather, and fossils, as if you had the appropriate tools and protective devices.	Remnant Reconstruction As handle, and you can manipulate items as if they were of clay.	Materialization You can create items you could handle using Refine Remnants out of nothing, or transform an object from one material to another as long as you know the power required for both the starting and final form. This can create complex tools, such as fine and potent items appropriate to the power(s) used.	Biological Building This is similar to Remnant Reconstruction, above, but you mass produce objects, even a set of different objects. You can also make something large, such as a vehicle or building.
Wreck	Grind and Gash You can jimmy objects made out of living and formerly things that are not creatures, such as wood, bone, leather, and fossils like a sledgehammer. Noisy and leaves a twisted object in place.	Bone Break Similar to Grind Gash. When smashing objects you can jimmy, you to affect hard objects as if they were wood. Works as a fine potent sledgehammer in combat.	Digest Similar to Bone Break, but destroyed targets silently disappear or are reduced to a fine dust.	Breakdown Blitz Similar to Bone Break, 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.

Expanded Light Powers

Expanded descriptions of effects that differ significantly from Typical Powers.

Attune

Vitality Vision You can detect all kinds of living creatures and living objects such as plants.

This is so broad that it is of less use than other similar powers, but you can use it to detect creatures with Life powers.

Limited effect suffices against a creature you can clearly see. You need greater effect against against a creature that is hidden (standard effect) or behind a wall (great effect). The position usually starts controlled, with the usual consequence that you cannot try again.

Purge Pulse You can negate powers affecting any living thing, but you cannot dismiss creatures.

Life is good at dispelling since you can negate any power affecting a living creature. This can only counterspell Life powers as they are being cast, but can negate lingering power effects.

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.

This can also remove effects that are not strictly powers but reduces the targets vitality, like drunkenness, hangovers, bruises, colds, or lingering poisons and drugs, as long as these effects are not considered harm. You can cure withdrawal symptoms which over time helps the victim fight addiction.

Life Loom Use life energy to heal harm. Lesser harm needs limited effect, moderate harm standard effect, and severe harm great effect

The effect needed depends on the most severe level of harm. Lesser harm can do with limited effect, moderate harm requires standard effect, and severe harm requires great effect. A success has the same effect as a successful recovery downtime action; reduce each harm by one level.

The position depends on the situation, used in a score this is usually risky, done in your lair the position is controlled. Consequences might require components (costing load, or even coin), transfer the harm to you, or interference from your surroundings.

Liberate Life Free living creatures over a large area from power effects and light harm.

This is Purge Pulse over a large area, and also removes light harm. With limited effect you have the effect of Purge Pulse over everyone in the area. With standard effect you also cure light harm, but have no effect on more serious harm. With great effect the power becomes selective, you can select who to heal and who not to help.

Command

Life deals with emotions. The intensity of the emotion is set by the effect and the target's self control and tendency to such emotions. It is hard to excite a calm creature and might be impossible to make a true pacifist start a fight.

Position mainly depends on the scene; are you in a dangerous spot, in a hurry, or dealing with a dangerous target? Consequences range from changing your own emotions, provoking the target, or misdirecting the emotion to Heat and creating permanent enmity.

Extend Emotion You can project negative emotions to living creatures you see.

You can strengthen or calm negative emotions like fear, inferiority, uncertainty, hate, disgust, and the like. If such an emotion is already present you can exploit it and cause the target to react. More commonly, this is used as a setup action to help some other social interaction.

Emotion Echo You can read emotions.

You can either focus on a certain creature to read their emotion, or you can focus on a particular emotion and spot nearby creatures affected by that emotion. The stronger the emotion, the easier it is to detect. Often combined with Extend Emotion to learn which emotions to play on.

Slumber You can put living creatures to sleep.

Tiredness and unreadiness are emotions you can play on. Targets may just doze a few seconds while still standing, enough to rush past a guard, or you may make them gradually relax, move into a sedate position, and sleep. This is similar to an attack in position and effect; it is pretty easy when used on unsuspecting target(s), much harder during a fight.

Hold on the Heart You can cause a permanent emotion.

This is similar to Extend Emotion, but you can inflict the full range of emotions in others, and the result is potentially permanent. Usually used to create love or loyalty, you might make any emotion dominant in the target, which can become a mental illness if done carelessly. Limited effect inflicts only negative emotions, or positive emotions of short duration. Standard effect can inflict any emotion, and you control whom it is directed at. This can make the target afraid of dogs or in love with a specific person. Great effect allows subtle manipulation that can change the target's attitudes in selected situations.

Consort

Often Consort rolls are not actually made when you use the power to change your appearance or form, it is rolled when in the social situation and effect and position is decided at this critical point.

Living Mask You can make cosmetic changes to your own body, growing or losing hair, changing coloration, gaining or losing weight, and so on.

Mimicry You assume the form of a humanoid, mundane animal or into a plant.

This is a true physical transmutation. You can change into any mundane living creature or into a plant. As a plant you are rooted to the ground and can only move your branches very slowly, but have your normal senses. You can freely change sex and age. Your mind remains, but you gain the instincts of your assumed body.

You have the option to add 1d to one action appropriate to the assumed form and subtract 1d from all actions covered by an attribute. If the buffed action is covered by the penalized attribute, only apply the bonus, you are specializing that attribute on this particular action.

Morphing You can shapechange a willing or helpless creature, as Mimicry.

What shape you can turn the target into depends on their type, not yours. This can be a curse, it can be broken but it is not easy. You can easily break the effect.

Wild Hunt You can transform a large number of willing or non-sentient creatures and give them a simple instruction, typically someone for them to hunt.

Mimicry on a grand scale and an emotional drive that controls the changed creatures.

Finesse

Track You can emote with and ride any living but non-sentient creature.

Beastly Blade You can use the power as a fine and potent close-range attack, similar in effect to a fine potent dueling sword or pistol, or you can give your friends the Beast Bond ability for the duration of a score.

Life attacks cause wounds to spontaneously appear on living and formerly living creatures and things. This does not work against robots, elementals, and other purely artificial creatures.

Beastly Barrage You can infuse life energy into living things, energizing them and making them look their best.

This helps guards stay alert and heightens attention and appearance. Can poke others at a distance, which may distract them. Mainly used as a setup for other actions.

Beastly Blitz Your power manifests like a storm of blood, suppressing the effect of multiple opponents and acting as a fine potent weapon.

As Beastly Blade, and storm of blood distracts enemies and prevents them from benefitting from numerical superiority.

Hunt

Sanguine Scout You can track living creatures, even if the target does not leave any mundane trail or clues.

Beastly Blow You can use your power to cause wounds at a distance to attack, similar in effect to a fine and potent rifle.

Life attacks cause wounds to spontaneously appear on living and formerly living creatures and things. This does not work against robots, elementals, and other purely artificial creatures.

Beastly Blitz You can control flora and fauna, manipulating the environment.

Turns plants and tiny vermin like mice and insects from nuisances to serious distractions, or creates an open path for your side. Things affected can only do what they normally can, but they now so do with a purpose.

Beastly Barrage Beastly Blow turned into a fine and potent grenade. This allows you to fight many creatures, but there is a risk of collateral damage.

Prowl

Hide in the Herd You can hide among living creatures, even if you look nothing like them.

You can hide in a crowd or herd as if you were a typical creature in that group. Crowded streets and pens and herds of animals become hiding places for you.

Agile Advance You empower your own strength and stamina, helping your movement.

This does not allow anything that would normally be impossible, but within that limit you increase the effect of Prowl actions to move.

Pack Passage You can bring allies along when you use Hide in the Herd and Agile Advance.

Allies still use their own Prowl action, but get the advantages of Hide in the Herd and Agile Advance on a single action.

Camp Call You and allies can teleport to any place in the same region where you have slept.

You return to your last sleeping spot. This can be an old camp, building, or even the interior of a vehicle that might have moved on to a new location, as long as it is in the same region.

Skirmish

Life attacks cause wounds to spontaneously appear on living and formerly living creatures and things. This does not work against robots, elementals, and other purely artificial creatures.

Clawed Clash You can use the power as a close-range attack, similar in effect to a melee weapon or pistol.

Razor Rumble Same as Clawed Clash, except the weapon is fine and potent.

Swarm Strike Your power creates distractions and obstructions that prevent the enemy from benefiting from numbers and otherwise works as a fine potent weapon.

Mob Maul Your power strikes out in all directions, attacking all enemies in a wide area.

Study

Study and analyze objects and creatures imbued with your power to gain insight and knowledge. The effect required depends on range, limited effect for touch, standard effect for line-of-sight, and great effect to reach a target you know of or have some link to, but which is out of line-of-sight. This is commonly a part of what you want to analyze.

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.

Analyze Anatomy You can identify living creatures and any ailments they suffer from.

This gives precise mundane information, giving you their physical strengths and weaknesses.

Life Lore You know the powers and abilities of something you analyze with Analyze Anatomy.

Now you are not restricted to mundane information, you also learn of any powers or special abilities the creature has.

Living Legacy You can read the past events of living and formerly living things.

You can learn the history of living and formerly things that are not creatures, such as wood, bone, and leather, as well as fossils and oil products like plastics. This includes previous owners and how the object has been moved around as well as significant scenes.

Wisdom of the Wild You use Life Lore on everything in a wide area. You can then use Life Lore on some of these targets.

Life Lore on a grand scale, followed by Living Legacy on a few choice things you observed.

Survey

The required effect depends on the targets concealment. Limited effect suffices for targets in clear line of sight. Standard effect can penetrate concealment, sense those hiding behind corners, or far to points you can only barely see. Great effect can look around behind walls and into hard cover.

Vitality Vision You can sense life and life powers at a distance and understand their general nature.

This is a basic spotting power, sensing all living things related to your power.

Sensory Symbiosis Choose a living creature with eyes you have detected; you can perceive what that creature perceives.

You move your perception to something living and sense as if you were at that point as long as you maintain concentration. You still sense things at your actual location, but only very dimly.

Savage Scrying Choose a location or creature. You see through the eyes of the closest living creature, which is often close enough to perceive the target.

This is like Sensory Symbiosis, but you get to select a creature or position. The power will automatically zero in on the living thing that has the best view of your target

Legion Lens You perceive from all living things at once over a wide area.

This gives you impossibly enhanced senses, as if you were dozens of people spread over the scene. All this creates a landscape of the area in your mind, a composite image that reveals many, many things at once.

Sway

Communicate, mesmerize, and manipulate living creatures. Position and effect is determined normally, depending ion the situation and your relation to listeners. If you know several powers and use a Sway effect but don't know what type of creature you are facing, it works as long as you have an appropriate power. You need not select a specific type of creature in advance.

Limited effect works if it follows the target's existing impulses. Standard effect can convince a target with no particular stake in the matter. Great effect will convince a reluctant target, but not a passionate one. Effect in excess of what's needed allows you top affect ten or so targets, as long as they are in a group.

Emotion Echo You can read the emotions of living creatures you see and get a sense of their motivations.

You can learn a living creatures mood and immediate motivation, which is useful when deciding what to do and where to go. This is usually a good setup for later Sway and Command actions.

Empathic Charm You can project emotions of warmth and affection to living creatures, which will usually improve their attitude.

This projects feelings of trust and friendship into living creatures. You cannot give target's specific orders, but they will react positively and are likely to follow your further suggestions.

Mood Meld You can read and project any emotion to living creatures.

You create emotions in living creatures. Less intelligent creatures have simple emotions, along the lines of fight, flight, f..k. Intelligent creatures have more complex emotions. This is not mind control. Targets keep their thoughts, colored by the emotions you give them. If the emotion is appropriate to the situation, it is likely to be acted upon. If the emotion is irrelevant or conflicting, it might just create a moment of confusion but no more, which might give you an opening.

Soul Serenade You can change the emotional state of living creatures. This power is permanent, but blatant. Targets remember their past, but regard it as unimportant compared to their new motivations.

Change the targets emotions and motivations on a very fundamental level, and the change is permanent. Their thoughts are not changed, but without the emotional backing, they are still likely to buckle under the pressure and become who you make them.

Tinker

You can handle living and formerly things that are not creatures, such as wood, bone, and leather, as well as fossils and oil products like plastics. The effect determines the effectiveness of your construction, but also how long it will last. Devices that are more powerful are harder to contain, and thus wont last as long. Most shaping will only be good for a single scene, but if your effect surpasses that required for the effect you want, you can stretch the effect until the end of the score. The position depends on how quiet your workplace is and how much time you have to work with.

Refine Remnants You can tinker as if you had the appropriate tools and protective devices.

This substitutes for a small workshop.

Remnant Reconstruction As handle, and you can manipulate items as if they were of clay.

You can now do more than normal craft could do. You can work life stuff as if it was clay, and it will remain in the shape you set it in.

Materialization You can create items you could handle using Refine Remnants out of nothing, or transform an object from one material to another as long as you know the power required for both the starting and final form.

This can create complex tools, such as fine and potent items appropriate to the power(s) used.

Biological Building This is similar to Remnant Reconstruction, above, but you mass produce objects, even a set of different objects. You can also make something large, such as a vehicle or building.

Become your own factory.

Wreck

You can wreck living and formerly things that are not creatures, such as wood, bone, and leather, as well as fossils and oil products like plastics.

The effect required depends on the size and structural strength of your target. Standard effect is a car-sized hole in a brick or mortar wall. Construction significantly weaker than this only demand limited effect. A smaller hole does not make the effect easier. Something larger and/or stronger require great effect.

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.

Grind and Gash You can smash living creatures, undead, and appropriate objects like a sledgehammer.

This works as a sledgehammer in combat, causing concussion and interior bleeding in living creatures. Noisy and leaves a twisted object in place.

Bone Break An improved Grind and Gash. You to affect hard objects of appropriate types as if they were wood. Works as a fine potent sledgehammer in combat.

You can smash hard fossils and construction made out of organic materials and plastics as if they were made out of simple wood. This weakens composite wood structures as well as plastics and other petrochemical products, like kevlar and fiberglass.

Digest Similar to Bone Break, but destroyed targets silently disappear or are reduced to a fine dust.

The effect is the same, but the method becomes subtle. You leave no debris and few clues. The demolition makes almost no sound or vibrations.

Breakdown Blitz Similar to Bone Break, but over a large area. This can level a city block, empty an oil depot, level a wood, and similar massive destruction.

Now we're abandoning subtlety and going for massive destruction over a large area. Even if you cannot destroy some of the materials in the area, what you do destroy is likely to make the rest collapse under its own weight or at least become structurally unsound.