Barrier Powers (FiD)

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Main Page is Powers Barrier is the ability to create walls and circles of protection. A barrier is normally a wall up to your twice your tier meters in height and width or a globe with a diameter equal to your tier. Yes, that means that at tier zero, you cannot create a barrier. If you only know this power, the barriers you make are transparent and vaguely luminous. If you use another power together with barrier, you can imbue your barrier with that power at no additional cost, which can give additional effects, often damage to creatures that try to break through your barrier. A barrier can be one-way, hindering effects only one way.

When used to attack, barrier takes the form of darts or blades that cut or pierce.

No creatures are associated with the barrier power.

Barrier Power Effects Table

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	Perceive You can feel the presence of barriers of all kinds. You can identify what power a creature is linked to, which helps you to decide what kind of barrier to use against it.	Barrier Barriers you create can repel any summoned creature and stop any power. When you create the barrier, you can make it ignore some powers of your choice.	Wall A barrier you create can also bar mundane creatures or effects.	Arena You can create a large extradimensional barrier covering an entire scene. You can pick who you bring into this extradimensional space, and who stays put.
Command	Message Ward You can create signs or imbue barriers that impart a simple non-verbal message across language barriers to creatures nearby.	Translation Wall You can create a barrier that translates speech from one side to the other. You need to know these languages, or at least have a dictionary.	Mental Wall You can make a barrier that commands all or certain creatures not to cross. This can be in addition to other effects of the barrier.	Honey Wall You can make a barrier that commands all or certain creatures to cross. Making the barrier one-way thus creates a prison.
Consort	Magic Mask You can create clothes and accessories from barrier. These can take any form but look supernatural. This can mask your identity or create fabulous outfits.	Body Mask You can cover yourself in an obviously supernatural barrier that envelops you, disguises your appearance and can even change your sounds and scents. It acts as tier 2 prowess armor.	Give Mask You can use Body Mask on willing or helpless creatures. In combination with other powers you can create barriers that change those who pass through them, making such as an underwater club where every guest gets a mermaid tail and the like.	Wild Hunt You can body mask a large number of creatures over a wide area, making them anonymous and unidentifiable.
Finesse	Ride You can control existing devices based on barriers. Barrier devices are rare and barrier vehicles rarely even exist.	Barrier Blade You can create barrier splinters that work as a fine and potent close-range attack, similar in effect to a fine potent dueling sword	Labyrinth You can create very temporary barriers that are persistent enough to split a battlefield and negate an advantage in numbers.	Storm of Blades Your barriers can form a storm of blades, suppressing the effect of multiple opponents and acting as a fine potent weapon.
Hunt	Track Barriers You can sense and track barriers powers.	Cage You can cage a target to isolate it for an hour or so.	Prison You can cage all creatures in a small area. This allows you to fight many creatures in the same area very effectively, but there is a risk of caging allies.	Fort You can create a great barrier bubble that spans a small city, allowing you to control who can pass.
Prowl	Dark Barrier Gives you the protection of a barrier when you prowl, reducing position by one step to a minimum of controlled.	Wall Walk You can move on and through barriers.	Team Barrier You can use Dark Barrier and Wall Walk on you and allies simultaneously.	Bubble Walk You and allies can teleport from inside one global barrier and into another. This is regional travel, you stay within the same city or region.
Skirmish	Barrier Blade You can use barriers as close-range attacks, similar in effect to a melee weapon or pistol.	Fine Barrier Blade Same as Skirmish Attack, except the weapon is fine and potent.	Maze You cage all opponents who try to attack you except the one you are fighting. You can do this as a part of an attack.	Barrier Shards Your power strikes out in all directions, attacking all enemies in a wide area.
Study	Analyze You can identify and get a basic analysis of a barrier.	Research You know the powers and abilities of something you analyze.	Hindsight You can read the past events of something you analyze. This allows you to see the creator as they create the barrier.	Omniscience You research every barrier in a large area. This is easy to do where you are, more difficult at range. You can then use hindsight on some of these targets.
Survey	Detect Barriers You can sense barriers at a distance and understand their general nature. This works even when you can't see the target, but both range and information suffers.	Barrier Eye Choose a power barrier that you have detected; you can perceive as if you were at that spot. You cannot use your Survey action for anything else when doing so.	Barrier Scry Choose a location or creature. You gain a sensor at the nearest power barrier, which is often close enough to perceive the target.	Omnibarrier You perceive from all power barriers at once over a wide area. As long as you concentrate you retain this perception and can report what you see to others.
Sway	Signpost You can create signs or imbue barriers that impart a simple non-verbal message across language barriers to creatures nearby	Echo Wall You can create a barrier that translates emotions and expressions from one side to the other. This is not language-dependent.	Insinuate You can imbue a barrier with the ability to insinuate an action in the mind of a nearby creature. Common insinuation are to steal something, attack someone, or ignore some event.	Instill You change the personality and motivations of creatures that move through a barrier. The target remember their past, but regard it as unimportant compared to their new motivations.
Tinker	Barrier Apprentice You can manipulate existing power barriers as if they were made of stout wood.	Barrier Journeyman You can create temporary objects obviously made out of barriers.	Barrier Master You can create temporary but complex objects out of barriers. This can create objects that are fine and potent. You can also create an environment inside a shield globe, if you have the appropriate power.	Barrier Factor This is similar to Barrier Master, but you mass produce objects, even a set of different objects. You can also make something large, such as a vehicle or building.
Wreck	Jimmy Barrier You can noisily jimmy barriers, but not to a great degree.	Smash Barriers Similar to jimmy. When smashing barriers you affect hard objects as if they were wood. Works as a fine potent sledgehammer in combat.	Aegisbreaker Similar to smash, but destroyed barriers silently disappear or are reduced to a fine dust.	Aegisquake 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.

Expanded Barrier Powers

Expanded descriptions of effects that differ significantly from Typical Powers.

Attune

Barrier powers are not linked to any kind of supernatural creature or plane. Instead, you learn how to create barriers that specifically protect against summoned creatures and alter against supernatural creatures.

Perceive: You can detect creatures and power use tied to your power.

This is usually done to spot a disguised summoned creature, but can also detect supernatural creatures behind walls or otherwise hidden, as well as traces of their passing and use of powers. Naturally, this gets more difficult as the creature is more heavily obscured. This reduces effect. The position usually starts controlled, with the usual consequence that you cannot try again.

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 the power you use.

Dismissing a creature is hard, and might require the creature to be weakened, either by previous attempts to dismiss it, or by other attacks, interactions, or by being set up. The consequences of this depends entirely on what happens around you when you do it. If a powerful creature resists being dispelled, its obviously dangerous. 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.

Dispelling is usually easier, but not always. 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. It can be used as a defense against others' use of power, or it can be used to break the continuing effects of powers. When dramatically appropriate that a power is hard to dispel, often because it is the crux of the situation, this will simply not work, but will 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.

What a "place of your power" means depends on the setting, but is always a different place that you normally cannot interact with. This is usually a parallel world or plane of existence, dominated by your power. So fire summons creatures from a very fiery place, air summons from a very airy place and so on. These places can be unique to each power, or one big place where different places are dominated by different powers. It might also be from other places in your own world, exotic regions of your own world or distant planets like Pluto or starts like Aldebaran. This is the usual explanation in the cosmic horror genre. In a science-fiction setting with powers this is usually related to faster-than-light travel, so if ships travel through hyperspace, this is also where summons come from. If travel is by gate, the medium the gate stretches through is where summons come from, and so on. The Gate power of Attune is the usual way to get to these places.

Summoning can bring you allies to fight, but more commonly you summon a spirit to do some specific task related to your power. Summons can use most power effects and maintain power effects you have created. They can also give advice and information related to their power. In general, you can summon generic creatures one tier lower than yourself without having to do a flashback. Such a creature is similar to a gang member.

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 a type id number, a blueprint, or a 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. Doin this kind of preparation also counts as a set-up action for your summoning, even if you are doing it in a flashback.

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.

Spirits 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 similar to elementals in that they are made out of the stuff of their power, but the powers that create spirits are less material. This makes spirits ephemeral, less physically oriented, and usually more intelligent than elementals. They can use sophisticated power effects and usually have an agenda of their own. Darkness, Death, Flux, Illusion, Order, and Space can summon spirits.

Creatures with powers resemble normal creatures, most having a biological body, metabolism, and functioning as ordinary living creatures but also 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 power effects.

Depending on your degree of effect the creature is willing to do different things. Limited effect 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 afterwards.

Standard effect 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.

Great effect 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 effect, like summoning the creature to guard a treasure for as long as it can.

The position is usually risky. The creature is being forced to serve and might lash out. Typical consequences are: The creature strikes out at you once. A tightwire struggle to keep the creature under control The creature breaks things around you, demands concessions from you. Overly literal interpretations of your commands. The creature deliberately does its tasks poorly.

Offering a creature gifts or services appropriate to its nature can make the position controlled, with consequences like half-heated efforts, demanding not to be summoned again until some time or event has passed, or just general sulkiness.

Desperate position usually comes from trading position for effect, 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. Consequences include the spirit demanding 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 for a limited time.

This is rarely useful, but can be under exceptional circumstances. As outlined under Summoning above most powers are linked to a different world where that power is dominant. There are also things that are possible to do on these planes that are not allowed in the regular world, most effects 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 effects rarely reach outside the plane where you perform them, but if they affect creatures on that plane, the effect may remain when you return to the mundane world.

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.

Using a gate is usually played out as a score, which means there is an engagement roll. Depending on how quickly the matter is resolved, the game master may require a separate game to return home again. However if you do this in a scene that is dangerous, such as asking for help against an enemy too powerful for you to defeat, the position is usually much worse. Once you have established a connection to a certain place or audience with a certain creature, you can usually do so again from a controlled position and without doing it as a score.

Command

Command creatures based on your power with communication and authority. Position and effect is determined normally, depending ion the situation and your relation to listeners. If you know several powers and use a Command power but don't know what type of creature you are facing, it works as long as you have the appropriate power. You need not select a specific type of creature in advance. If you try to Command a type of creature and don't the appropriate power, effect is at best limited—the game master may judge that Command skill can be used non-verbally, but often you will have no effect at all. This still has the normal stress cost.

Communicate: You can make creatures understand you, but you do not understand them.

This is useful because it allows you to intimidate creatures of your power and to command foreign or alien subordinates. Combined with the basic power of Sway allows two-way communication.

Translate: You and allies can communicate with creatures based on your power. This allows full conversation with creatures of the power. It is still a Command ability, it is more forceful and less subtle than the Sway equivalent.

Authority: You can give commands to creatures based on your power, as if you were their superior. This does not remove existing loyalties, which can lead to conflicts.

This is more powerful than a normal Command action, having about one additional level of effect, but it is not absolute. Creatures of the relevant type will understand your orders.

Targets will see you as an officer, professional superior, alpha, or other leader type outranking them. It is very helpful to have a grasp of the social order of your targets, as this allows you to avoid conflicting with their established loyalties. Ordering city guards to return to barracks and ignore a disturbance is much harder (lower effect) than to tell them to scatter the disturbance and move on, because their task is to protect the city. Limited effect can lead to a creature not doing what it is supposed to, such as reporting you or giving you a speeding ticket. Standard effect makes the creature do what it is supposed to in a way you decide, such as a police escorting you to a safe location or do you a favor that is quick, such as letting you past a checkpoint even if they ought not to. Great effect means targets will go out of their way to please you, such as warriors from a neutral faction fighting for you, enemies ignoring you or even fleeing.

The position depends on the creatures' actual relationship to you—a creature that perceives itself as your superior will use a stronger rebuke. A controlled position comes from a creature that agrees you are superior to it, and usually just means that trying again is harder. A risky position is typical against a creature that perceives itself an equal to you, and not your enemy. This might lead to heat,

Enslave: You can permanently bind creatures to service. Unless affected by other powers, they will stay in one location and act according to your instructions, like very loyal and literal-minded goons.

Obviously a broken ability, and one that will have a low effect unless you are already in a position of power. The effect is similar to the authority, the difference is that this is a long-lasting and potentially permanent effect. A creature that is under the care of your enemies will likely break the effect after some time, and a creature confronted with something it used to feel very strongly about might break your control, but it otherwise lasts until removed by other effects.

Consort

Utilize the power of Consort to change forms and manipulate objects imbued with your power. You not only understand how to behave to conform to social norms, you change your own (and alter others') physical form.

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 accessorize and change your outfit. The effect is usually limited and the position controlled, but some changes might be more extreme than this.

Shapechange: You assume the form of another creature that manifests your power. Add 1d to one action and subtract 1d from all actions covered by an attribute except if you just raised one of them.

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. This can give you new abilities, but these are things you could already do using the same power. You may get away without having to use each specific power, at the cost of losing some of the abilities of your original form. So if you turn into a fish you don't have to use powers to swim and breathe water, but you are close to helpless on land.

If desired your transmutation might benefit an action relevant to your new form, at the cost of lowering all the actions covered by a specific attribute. You rating in the improved action increases by one. The actions covered by your weakened attribute are all reduced by one, except that if you chose the attribute that governs your improved action, this action gains the benefit and does not suffer the penalty.

Example Jillyan uses the Animal power to turn herself into a monkey. She gains a +1 bonus to the Prowl action, but suffers a -1 penalty to Finesse Skirmish and Wreck. She does not suffer the penalty on Prowl, as that is the action that was improved. If the penalty had instead been applied to Insight, Hunt, Study, Survey and Tinker would all have suffered the penalty.

Transform: You can shapechange a willing or helpless creature into a form imbued by your power. This can be a curse, it can be broken but it is not easy. You can easily break the effect.

This is the shapechange power applied to another creature. The duration depends of the effect, limited effect is very temporary, more of a warning. Standard effect lasts for the duration of a score. Great effect lasts a long time and potentially become permanent, depending on the development of the story. Other abilities can be used to reverse such a transformation.

You cannot use this on a powerful opponent that cannot be defeated by a single successful action. You may have to confront them in several scenes to finally get them to the point where you can transform them.

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.

This is where Consort becomes a combination of the Shapechange and Summon power effects. Instead of summoning a host of allies, you transform a number of existing creatures and give them a task that they will perform with gusto. Essentially you turn them into single-minded minions. Targets must be willing, non-sentient like animals, or just very minor figures in the plot, likely several 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 turned into lesser servants, like the scene with the fairy godmother from Disney's Cinderella.

Prowl

Sneak, move, and perhaps even fly or teleport with the stealth and agility granted by Prowl.

Camouflage You assume the camouflage pattern of an animal, effective concealment in environments where any animal could hide.

You get your pick of mammal whose coloration you borrow.

Beast Stride You can use the movement capabilities of animals, to climb like an animal, and move through herds or packs of animals.

Again, you get to pick which mammal you imitate.

Pack Prowl: You can bring allies along when you use Reconnaissance and Maneuver.

All your allies get the same mammal coloration or movement. They still use their own Prowl action.

Roaming You and allies can teleport from one animal den to another. This is regional travel, you stay within the same city or region.

The animal den you start and end in need not be of the same type of animal, but if it is the same, it improves your position.

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.

Tinker

Manipulate, shape, and create objects imbued with your power to suit your needs. When used with long-term projects, powers can often substitute for missing resources such as tools or raw materials, but that is all it does until you can start using Fabricate.

Animal Crafts You work with animal products like leather, bone, teeth, sinew, and horn as if you had the appropriate tools and protective devices. Items you work with can have small parts made of other materials, such as metal eyelets or synthetic thread.

This mainly substitutes for tools, up to a small workshop. You can cure leather and make it hard as if boiled in oil. You are also protected from the effects of working with the often caustic and toxic chemicals involved in these crafts.

Animal Shaping You can shape materials that manifest your power as if they were of clay.

You can now do more than normal craft could do. This speeds things up and allows more extensive modification.

The position depends on how quiet your workplace is and how much time you have to work with. 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.

Beastcraft You can create objects made from animal parts 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.

This is two distinct effects. The first allows you to create animal matter out of nothing. This is raw matter and needs to be shaped and refined to be of much use. You can create meat for consumption.

The second can only be used if you know multiple powers. You transmute material connected to one of your powers into animal matter. The result will maintain its form as if affected by the Shape ability. The advantage of this is that you can transform a complex object and it will retain its form and function as far as its new material allows. This can transform something like a sword from metal to bone, and it would still be a functional sword. A door could be changed from wood to wool, which can be easily broken down.

Wild Fabrication: This is similar to Beastcraft, above, but you mass-produce objects, even a set of different objects. You can also make something large, such as a vehicle or a huge tent.

Pretty self-explanatory, this is Create on a larger scale. This is useful for equipping a large band or building something large out of nothing. When doing long-term projects that involve building or crafting, you can use Fabricate to gain great effect, even under what normally be poor conditions, but this has the usual stress cost.

Wreck

Destroy, dismantle, and obliterate animal matter.

Mangle You can jimmy organic materials either made of animal products, or that animals could reasonably destroy. Noisy and leaves a twisted object in place. Can be used to attack in melee like a sledgehammer.

Just as crude as it sounds. You destroy animal matter and strike with the force of a sledgehammer in combat. As usual, Wreck may be at an advantage or disadvantage compared to Finesse and Skirmish, depending on the situation.

Decompose You can apply the effect of reducers like bacteria and insects like woodworms. Still slow but powerful. You can also create a bone club that works as a fine potent sledgehammer in combat.

You can slowly rot any organic matter by attacking it with bacteria and worms. This is slow, so more of a long-term project. It is also subtle, so if you do make a long-term project of it, you can create a back opening in a wooden wall to exploit in a score, giving you +2d on the engagement roll.

Wildwarp Similar to Mangle, but destroyed targets silently disappear or are reduced to a fine dust.

The real difference here is that wrecking things is now silent when you have the right power. You also leave less traces, as what you wreck disappears. This can also be used to get rid of animal evidence.

Obliterate: Similar to Mangle, but over a large area. This can level a tent camp, disarm a host of troops armed with organic weapons, and similar massive destruction.

Rather straightforward, this just scales things up.