Powers (FiD)
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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 is a term used for the whole concept, as well as for each specific ability connected to one of the forms. A Form is a set of power abilities linked by a common theme, such as Darkness or Fire. Each Form has four Powers linked to each of the Actions of Blades in the Dark abilities in tiers called Basic, Advanced, Master, and Apex. These are referred to thus: Apex Hunt Darkness or Advanced Study Fire. Most Forms follow the same scheme of abilities, for example Advanced Hunt powers are almost always a ranged attack. The basic pattern of powers is given here: Typical Power Details but is then modified by the specific form to greater or lesser degree. Barrier Powers have very little in common with the basic frame, while Metal Powers follow the frame very closely.
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. You only very rarely get extra experience points from your power playbook trauma condition.
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.
Forms
Forms are what actually gives you exceptional abilities. A power playbook doesn't give you any power abilities unless you select a Form from that playbook's special abilities. Once you select a Form, you gain all Powers of that Form, but your ability to actually use these Powers are governed by your Actions. So if you select the Electricity Form, you can shoot lightning, power electric engines, cause short-circuits, and/or summon electric creatures, depending on which Actions you are good at. In many cases, powers work as a replacement for equipment, empowering your normal actions. More complex powers allow you to do what is normally impossible.
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 a resistance roll, but is not a separate roll but instead an additional effect of the action roll. 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 Advanced Survey Darkness ahead of time 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 except to calculate stress cost, the action itself 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 is a power that does the same. Fine items can be more effective than powers, and 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 Outcome There are really two kinds of effect in Blades in the Dark, and the power rules use this concept so much it needs to be explained. To keep them apart, I have introduced the term Outcome 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 Outcome, it is the final 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.
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. Some powers have a specified duration, but most are dependent on the fiction. 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 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. Powers that last 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.
Power Area Some powers explicitly affect an area, and this has no additional cost. Depending on your degree of success, this may affect some or all targets in the 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.
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 devils' bargain enhances the effect of your powers. 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 Basic powers. At tiers 1-2 you can only use Advanced powers. At tier 3-4 you can use Master powers abilities. At tier 5 and up, 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, see Poor Beginnings, p 231.
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 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. Looking at the touchstones, low-magic settings usually begin with divinations powers, Study and Survey, while high-power fantasy often excludes precisely those making powers be about war and little else.