Powers (FiD)

Starfox's Blades in the Dark Powers

Powers transform Blades in the Dark from dark low fantasy into colorful high fantasy.

Introducing Powers

In the default setting, the supernatural is rare, obscure, and poorly understood. Adding Powers makes the fantastical reliable, structured, and accessible to player characters. Characters gain entirely new Abilities they can use deliberately and repeatedly. This shifts the tone and assumptions of the game world. The setting becomes more overtly supernatural and powerful in scope. Your game will move away from the typical grim Blades in the Dark atmosphere into something brighter, stranger, and higher-powered — though it can remain just as grim if you wish.

Using Powers

Powers consist of two main elements — Playbooks and Forms. Playbooks determine which Forms you can access and how you approach supernatural power. Forms define what you can do through specific Abilities linked to the Actions. Each use of a Form Ability requires rolling the appropriate Action, unless the effect is routine and rolling would only slow the narrative.

Below are links to Power Playbooks and Forms, followed by the rules governing their use.

Power Playbooks Artificer Things Bard Performance Chi Yang Cleric Divine Study Druid Spirits Monster Nature Mystic All Magic Ninja Yin Saint Divine Gift Sorcerer Blood Spirit Spirit Warlock Soul Wee One Mischievous Wizard Study Projects Hexer Curse Psychonaut Power of dreams Starborn Destiny Jedi Light Side Sith Dark Side

Power Forms Abyss Air Animal Barrier Darkness Death Earth Electricity Fire Flux Ice Illusion Kinesis Life Light Metal Mind Order Plant Space Time Water

Power refers to the Powers subsystem as a whole — the framework that adds supernatural Abilities to the game. A Form is a themed set of Abilities linked by a common concept, such as Darkness or Fire. Each Form provides four Abilities for each Action, arranged in tiers called Basic, Advanced, Master, and Apex. A specific Ability is referred to by its complexity, Action, and Form, for example: Apex Hunt Darkness or Advanced Study Fire.

Most Forms follow a common structural pattern. For example, Advanced Hunt Abilities are typically ranged attacks. The general structure shared by most Forms is described in Typical Power Details. Individual Forms may diverge from this structure to a greater or lesser degree. Barrier Powers differ significantly from the common frame, while Metal Powers follow it closely.

Power Playbooks

Power Playbooks are frameworks for acquiring Forms and Abilities. They represent supernatural traditions or roles in the world — wizard, sorcerer, saint, monster, artificer, and similar paths. Each Power Playbook includes a small selection of regular Special Abilities, though fewer than an ordinary playbook. These Special Abilities typically enhance or modify how you use Powers. Most importantly, a Power Playbook grants access to a defined selection of Forms. You select each Form as if it were a Special Ability. The Playbook itself does not grant any Form Abilities — you must select at least one Form to gain supernatural capabilities.

Each Power Playbook also imposes a unique trauma condition. Characters with a Power Playbook have reduced capacity to absorb additional Trauma compared to those without one. This trauma condition usually restricts how or when you may use your Abilities. It rarely grants additional experience.

All other playbook features remain unchanged. Some Power Playbooks include items that allow limited use of Powers without requiring full access to a Form.

Multiple Power Playbooks

You cannot select Special Abilities from a Power Playbook unless you are using that Playbook. This restriction includes Forms. You may acquire an additional Power Playbook by selecting the "Additional Playbook" Special Ability. Each additional Power Playbook expands your access to Forms but also adds another trauma condition. These trauma conditions apply to all of your Powers.

Forms and Abilities

Forms grant exceptional Abilities.

A Form Ability is defined by a combination of an Action', a Form, and a level of complexity. Each Action–Form pairing provides four Abilities, arranged by increasing complexity: Basic, Advanced, Master, and Apex. With 12 Actions and four levels of complexity, each Form provides 48 Abilities. This is far more than a typical Special Ability, but their use is constrained by Stress cost, dice requirements, Position, Effect, and narrative limits, described below.

A specific Ability is referenced in the order complexity – Action – Form, for example: Master Attune Fire or Apex Consort Illusion.

In many cases, Powers mechanically substitute for equipment, enhancing normal Actions. Higher-complexity Abilities go beyond what equipment alone can accomplish.

Using Powers

A Power Playbook does not grant any Form Abilities unless you select a Form from that Playbook’s list of Special Abilities. Once you select a Form, you gain all Abilities of that Form. Your ability to use those Form Abilities is governed by your Action ratings. For example, if you select the Electricity Form, you may use Hunt to shoot lightning, Tinker to power electric engines, Wreck to cause short-circuits, and Attune to summon electric creatures. You gain no control over unrelated phenomena, even if they arise as a Consequence of using Electricity.

Most Forms follow a similar structure across Actions. This limits the advantage of learning many Forms and encourages specialization.

Just because a Form allows something does not mean it requires a Form to attempt it. Mundane Actions remain fully effective. A weapon attack does not lose Effect simply because a Power can produce a similar result. Fine equipment may exceed the Effect of a Power in some situations. Equipment, once you pay Load for it, remains available for the duration of a score, while Powers risk Stress each time they are used. The Attune Action can identify supernatural creatures without using a Power, though Form Abilities provide more precise detection within their theme.

Stress Cost

You use your Actions to activate Powers, but there is an associated cost in stress. Each category of power requires a greater degree of success to avoid stress. The cost when you fail these goals is 2 Stress.

• Basic powers require you to not fumble to avoid Stress, the die selected can't be a 1.
• Advanced powers require a success to avoid Stress, the selected die must be 4 or higher.
• Master powers need a full success to avoid Stress, the selected die must be 6.
• Apex powers need a critical success to avoid Stress, you need to roll 2 or more 6s.

Stress Cost

You activate Form Abilities by rolling the appropriate Action. Each use carries the risk of a cost in Stress.

The complexity of the Ability determines the minimum result required to avoid Stress. If you fail to meet that requirement, you suffer 2 Stress.

• Basic Abilities: You avoid Stress if the result is 2 or higher.
• Advanced Abilities: You avoid Stress on a 4 or higher.
• Master Abilities: You avoid Stress on a 6.
• Apex Abilities: You avoid Stress only on a critical (two or more 6s

Powers are Inflexible

Unlike normal Actions, which are broadly interpreted, Form Abilities are specific. Each Ability is tied to a particular Action and complexity level.

If you want to make a ranged attack using a Power, you must use the Hunt Action unless the Ability description explicitly allows otherwise.

You cannot substitute a different Action or complexity simply because it suits the fiction.

Powers are Flexible

Each Form Ability description provides a typical example of use. The Action, Form, and complexity are fixed, but the fictional expression within that scope may vary.

If a character attempts something appropriate to a Form but not explicitly described, use the listed Action and complexity, and adapt a similar Ability within that same framework.

There is no specific Electricity Ability to start a fire, but it is reasonable that Tinker Electricity can create an arc hot enough to ignite most materials over time.

Effect and Outcome The Power rules use two related but distinct concepts that both affect mechanical resolution. Effect refers to the initial scale or potency of an Action, determined through negotiation between player and GM based on the fiction. Outcome refers to the final result after all modifiers — including differences in Tier, Pushing for Effect, and Set Up actions — have been applied.

Combining Powers

When combining multiple Abilities in a single roll, the Stress Cost is determined by the highest complexity used.

Combining Complexities

Using a higher-complexity Ability may include lower-complexity Abilities of the same Action and Form as part of the same roll.

You gain flexibility within the same framework, but you do not gain additional rolls, additional Stress thresholds, or expanded scope beyond what the highest complexity permits.

For example, if you use the Advanced Survey Metal Ability to scry from a specific metallic object, you may also use the Basic Ability of that Form to locate metallic objects using the same roll. You must still choose which of the detected objects to scry from without further information.

Combining Forms

If you know multiple Forms, you may combine them in a single Action when it makes sense in the fiction. For example, if you know both Fire and Plant, you may Attune, Command, or Sway using either or both Forms at once, without first determining whether the target is Fire- or Plant-aligned.

Combinations must remain coherent. Some mixtures naturally interfere with each other. Everyone will remember that popcorn attack you improvised using Plant and Fire!

Combining Actions

Combining multiple Actions in a single roll is more restrictive. If an effect genuinely requires more than one Action, roll using the lowest Action rating involved. That rating must also satisfy the highest die requirement among the Abilities being used.

If this requirement cannot be met, the combined effect cannot be resolved in a single roll.

Bessie wants to use Advanced Consort Animal to transform into a cat, then climb a tree. This combines Consort and Prowl. The player must roll using the lower of the two Action ratings. If the transformation requires Advanced complexity, the rolled dice must also meet the Advanced die requirement.

Cooperative Use of Powers

Cooperation with Powers follows the normal Teamwork rules: Group Action, Assist, and Set Up.

Powers do not create new teamwork structures. Use the standard rules. The only addition is that a successful Set Up may integrate the assisting character’s Form into the final effect, if it meaningfully alters what the Power does.

A crew attempts a Master Attune Darkness summoning. A Fire user performs a Set Up with Tinker Fire to infuse the ritual with volatile flame. On success, the summoned demon manifests Fire aspects in addition to its Darkness nature.

Power Specifics

Details on how Form Abilities manifest.

Duration

There are no general rules for the duration of powers. In general they last as long as makes sense in the fiction, very rarely lasting long after the end of a score.

• Most powers last for a single use of one 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 Form like Electricity, fight with it for the time it takes to make a single die roll (this can be involve several maneuvers in the fiction), then the power ends but any damage or other effects remain.
• Some powers have a specified duration, usually a scene. This is a single exchange between PCs and a challenge of some sort, usually involving die rolls. The end of a scene is often marked by moving to a different location or encountering a new set of personalities or problems.
• Powers that last longer usually last for an entire score, but this depends on the degree of success and on what builds tension. A possible consequence is that a power suddenly ends at an inappropriate moment.

Area

Some powers explicitly affect an area, and this has no additional cost. Depending on your Outcome, this may affect some or all targets in an area. But even powers that do not say so can affect additional targets when it makes sense in the fictions, usually at the cost of lower Outcome or rolling fewer dice.

Powers Gated by Dice

No dice, no power — Xinpitz, street shaman.

Power effects are gated by the number of dice rolled for the Action to use that Power. This means that pushing, assists, and anything else that gives additional dice enhances the effect of your power.

• 'Basic abilities have no die requirement.
• Advanced abilities requires you to roll 2d or more.
• Master abilities requires you to roll 4d or more. In the early game this requires added dice.
• Apex abilities requires you to roll 6d or more. This always requires additional dice.

Optional Rule

Abilities Gated by Tier

If power abilities seem to powerful for low-tier adventures, you can tier-lock powers. This meshes with the Poor Beginnings optional rule, p 231.

• At tier zero, you can only use Basic powers.
• At tiers 1-2 you can use Basic and Advanced powers.
• At tier 3-4 you can use Basic, Advanced, and Master powers abilities.
• At tier 5 and up, you can use all powers.

Long-term projects allows use of powers as if you were two tiers higher. This makes powers almost useless at tier zero and weak until tier 3. Make sure to limit exceptional equipment like bombs and grenades in a similar manner, see Poor Beginnings, p 231.

Availability and Genre

Not all power abilities exist in every setting. A setting determines which 'Power Playbooks', 'Forms', and 'Action-Power combinations' are available. If you allow all options, your setting becomes rich but risks being confusing.

The primary distinction between settings is the Power Playbooks in use. These are built on common ideas in myth and fiction and fit in different cultural contexts. This is the easiest lever to regulate Powers in a particular setting.

• Artificer Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard gives the powers common in dungeoneering.
• Artificer, Chi, Mystic, Ninja, and Saint creates a more oriental feel.

Many settings restrict powers to a limited subset of Actions, such as combat and movement, while excluding others such as divination, charm, or long-range perception.

• Many settings, especially those in manga and comics, focus on combat powers, primarily Hunt but also Finesse, Skirmish, and Wreck.
• More mystic settings may use Attune, Study, Survey, and Tinker.
• Mind control are common in horror and intrigue settings, using Command, Prowl, and Sway.
• Wondrous settings feature the transmutations of Consort, Prowl, and Tinker.

A setting can also focus on certain forms.

• The classic elemental forms of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water creates an alchemical feel.
• The ethical forms of Darkness, Flux, Light, and Order naturally create a setting of competing groups aligned with cosmic powers.
• Powers like Kinesis, Space, and Time creates a pseudo-scientific feel suitable to space fantasy.

• 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 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. The ability to use Survey Plant and the ability to use Pant in general become different choices. Looking at the touchstones, low-magic settings usually begin with the divination abilites of Study and Survey, while high-power fantasy often excludes precisely those making powers be about war and little else.