The More Things Change

While this document is written as largely a replacement for much of the existing M&M ruleset, rather than a less coherent set of house rules, it isn't a complete rewrite. The core system - checks, DCs, ranks and measures, and so on - remains more or less in-tact. Some areas of the rules are excluded from the document just because they're the same as they used to be.

...And some areas are excluded because they've been removed wholesale. So, before we get into any of the new rules, let's go over the big things that you won't be finding here, and why.

Note that this section is for entire sections of the rules that aren't included. For sections that are included, any individual rule that hasn't been included has been intentionally removed. In many cases, these things have been replaced with or folded into something else. In a few cases, they simply weren't deemed worth having.

Ranks and Measures: Take it right from the SRD.

Complication, Backstory, Descriptors, and other Fluff: This stuff is really more fluff/advice oriented. I'll grant, I might have said certain things somewhat differently, but there's no need for me to take my socket wrench and banana (don't ask) to this section of the rules.

GM Advice and NPC Building: Again, this is all largely advice-based. Not something I need to touch.

Examples and References: While I've added plenty of my own examples and occasional "see here" notes, even when I copied something from the SRD untouched I've usually removed these, in case you're wondering.

Abilities: The Abilities are entirely removed under these rules. All the mechanical effects Abilities provide can be acquired a la carte, and there is no sense in presenting packages that characters might not have a use for, or offering bulk discounts for arbitrary groupings.

Character Creation

The Basics

The first step of building a character is to determine how powerful it is in a broad sense. Overall character power is measured in four ways - character rank, Power Level, Power Points, and Versatility Points.

The GM assigns these totals for all PCs and NPCs, although all PCs in a group should have the same base totals (it's technically possible for different PCs to be more or less powerful than others, but in terms of game play, this is usually not an ideal situation). The defaults for PCs are Major rank, Power Level 10, 100 PP and VP.


Rank: A character's rank is a sort of measure of its narrative importance, which in a cinematic game like M&M translates to concrete capability. Ranks range from 1-5, with each rank having a descriptive title: Minion, Mundane, Elite, Major, and Boss. PCs are generally Rank 4 (or Major) characters.

Rank differences cause the following results naturally, although some traits may also be more effective against lower-rank characters.

Bosses treat all non-Bosses as one rank lower than normal.

Major characters use normal rules.

Elite and lower characters halve the total points of success on their checks and double their total points of failure, when rolling against characters of higher rank. Likewise, characters of higher rank double any points of success on checks against them and halve their points of failure. So a success is still a success and a failure is still a failure, but extreme results are more pronounced for higher-rank characters and more curtailed for lower-rank characters. Note that these rules apply even if the check is made to benefit you - low-rank characters provide less benefit when Aiding high-rank characters, for example.

Mundane and lower characters treat any failures on checks as failing by a minimum of three degrees. Attacks against them have their durations increased by one step. Finally, they halve all critical and heroic bonuses they receive.

Minions are treated as Mundanes, but are also extremely easy to take out in combat; the attacker rolls a single check, either Accuracy against DC 11 + the minion's Defense, or Force against DC 11 + the minion's Resistance, at the attacker's option. If the check succeeds, the minion is treated as if it was hit and failed its Resistance check by four degrees. They also cannot benefit from critical or heroic bonuses at all.

Power Level (PL): Power Level is the main determinant of a character's personal power. It determines the character's stats, which in turn determine how complex its powers and arrays can be, and the limits of its measures. PCs default to Power Level 10, but the GM can choose to assign PCs a higher or lower PL depending on the game. See the Power Benchmarks sidebar for a general sense of what sort of characters might typically fit what PL.

Power Points (PP): Power points are the resource you spend to purchase stats, measures, advantages, and powers. While they do have a certain amount of impact on your versatility, power is their main thing - they let you purchase the traits that make you directly better at performing actions and achieving your goals. PCs typically default to 100 PP.

Skill Points (SP): 1 PP can be traded for 10 SP, and vice-versa. Skill points are used to purchase very low-cost traits, like individual skill ranks and features.

Versatility Points (VP): Versatility points are used to purchase arrays and utilities. Utilities include niche traits like immunities, or special modes of communication, movement, and senses. Arrays allow you to broaden your available powers without directly increasing the amount of power you can bring to bear at once. PCs typically default to 100 VP. Anything that can be purchased with VP can also be purchased with PP, but the reverse is not true.

Feature Points (FP): 1 VP can be traded for 10 FP, and vice-versa. Feature points, like skill points, are used to purchase low-cost traits, but a smaller subset than skill points can (mainly just features). Skill points can be used to purchase anything that feature points can, but the reverse is not true.

Niche and Iconic Traits: Certain traits are designated as niche or iconic. Niche traits tend to be better than their cost suggests when they come up, but only come up in fairly specific circumstances. Niche traits have their costs multiplied by 5 when purchased "on the fly", such as through a stunt or Variable array. Basically, if you didn't already have the trait, and are temporarily gaining it, the cost is multiplied.

Iconic traits are balanced around being purchased directly. They can likewise be pretty strong for their costs, especially if you can shunt those costs elsewhere when you don't need them. Iconic traits have their costs multiplied by 5 when purchased on the fly as niche traits do, but they also apply the cost multiplier when purchased in an array.

Power Rating and Power Value

Power Rating and Power Value is a system for measuring how diverse groups of characters are likely to compare against each other in combat. Obviously, they don't tell the whole story - a character who has more combat-oriented powers, or immunities to the exact types of attacks the enemy uses, will have a combat advantage. But for the most part, they should give you a pretty reasonable sense.

Power Value is relative, using the PCs as the baseline. A PC has a Power Rating of 0, which corresponds to a Power Value of 600. Every ten Power Rating lower halves the Power Value, and every ten higher doubles it. The table below summarizes Power Ratings from -30 to 30, but they can continue scaling indefinitely in both directions.

Generally speaking, each Power Level is worth 5 points of Power Rating. More precisely, one point of a stat is generally worth 1 point of Power Rating. If PP and VP scale with PL, they can largely be tied in; a standard advancement of +1 to a stat, +2 PP, and +2 VP being worth one Power Rating works fine. If they're detached, VP generally doesn't directly tie into Power Rating (versatility is its own form of power, but not one that can be easily codified), but 10 PP can generally be equated to a point of Power Rating individually, if PP is detached from PL.

Each character rank is worth 10 Power Rating. A doubling of numbers equates to +10 Power Rating.

So, if you have a team of four PL 10 PCs, they have a Power Value of 600 each, for a total Power Value of 2,400. So an "even match" would be another 2,400 Power Value; this could mean a "mirror match" of four PL 10 opponents, or a pair of PL 12s, a single PL 12 of Boss rank, or something more complex, like a PL 12 (1,200), four PL 8 Elites (600), and 16 PL 6 Minions (300). You could also get more granular; a PL 8 character with two standard advancements would be Power Rating -8, or Power Value 360, for example.

Power Rating	Power Value	Power Rating	Power Value
-1	570	1	660
-2	540	2	720
-3	510	3	780
-4	480	4	840
-5	450	5	900
-6	420	6	960
-7	390	7	1,020
-8	360	8	1,080
-9	330	9	1,140
-10	300	10	1,200
-11	280	11	1,320
-12	260	12	1,440
-13	240	13	1,560
-14	220	14	1,680
-15	200	15	1,800
-16	190	16	1,920
-17	180	17	2,040
-18	170	18	2,160
-19	160	19	2,280
-20	150	20	2,400
-21	140	21	2,640
-22	130	22	2,880
-23	120	23	3,120
-24	110	24	3,360
-25	100	25	3,600
-26	95	26	3,840
-27	90	27	4,080
-28	85	28	4,320
-29	80	29	4,560
-30	75	30	4,800

Combat Stats

There are five combat stats, which determine broadly how powerful your character is in battle and impact how strong and complex its powers can be. All five stats begin equal to your Power Level, and they cannot exceed your Power Level + 5.

You may lower your stats to raise others; this is called a tradeoff, and is done on a 1:1 basis. You may also lower your stats to gain PP, or spend PP to raise your stats. Increasing a stat by one point costs 10 PP. Lowering a stat gives you 5 PP as long as the stat is above PL - 5, or 2 PP otherwise.



Accuracy: Your Accuracy stat determines your ability to overcome any form of active defense. Hit with a projectile, overwhelm a foe's guard, time an area attack so the targets don't have time to take cover, overpower an opponent's will, slip a curse past a counterspell, etc. When you attack, you roll an Accuracy check to determine if the attack "hits" (not all attacks actually involve making physical contact, but "hit" and "miss" are used as a shorthand for succeeding or failing to overcome an active defense).

Defense: Defense represents your ability to actively defend yourself from attack. Dodge a projectile, parry a strike, fend off a mental attack, hold your breath before a gas grenade explodes, etc. When you get attacked, the DC to hit you is 11 + your Defense stat.

Force: Force determines the raw power of your attacks. Greater strength, heavier weapons, more potent energy blasts, more virulent diseases, are all represented by higher Force stats. If you hit with an attack, the DC to resist it is 11 + your Force.

Resistance: Resistance represents your ability to resist enemy attacks, negating or minimizing their effects. Endure a hit, ignore a psychic compulsion, tough through a poison, resist a spell, etc. When an attack hits you, you make a Resistance check to see if you are affected by it, and how much of an effect you receive.

Tenacity: Tenacity represents your ability to outlast your opponents and keep going when the going gets tough. Ignore your wounds, throw off mind control, clear your head, catch your breath - or press your opponents so hard that they can't do the same. Each round, you make a Tenacity check to gain Recovery Points to remove some conditions - and when you hit your opponents, your Tenacity can be used to set the DC of their Tenacity checks.

Measures

There are five measures - Quickness, Range, Scope, Speed, and Strength. Each measure reflects an in-game numerical measurement for your character, which scales on the Ranks and Measures table - meaning each rank of a measure more-or-less doubles the actual quality being measured. Measures all begin at rank 0, and cost 1 PP per rank. You may lower a measure below 0, gaining 5 SP (so, half a PP) per rank below, to a minimum of -5. If you want a measure even lower than -5, treat it as a Complication.


Quickness: Your Quickness determines how swiftly you can perform time-consuming tasks. Primarily, this means extended actions, but it can also apply to mundane tasks that take time but don't have any concrete mechanical effects. The amount of subjective time you spend on such tasks is increased by one Time rank per rank of Quickness. The speed at which you think, process sensory information, and so on is likewise sped up. For example, if you have Quickness 5, you could accomplish four minutes of work (Time rank 5) in just six seconds (Time rank 0).

Quickness doesn't change the actual action cost for actions, and does not alter the speed at which you can move. When performing extended actions that take place over a large area - such as searching an entire building or canvassing a neighborhood - you may need equivalent Speed to get full benefit from your Quickness.

Range: Your Range determines how far away you can target a close or ranged action. Baseline, you can target ranged actions at a Distance rank equal to your Range stat, and close actions a Distance rank two lower. So a normal character with Range 0 can target ranged actions up to 30' away and close actions up to 6' away, while a character with Range 10 can target them up to four miles and one mile away respectively. Range has no effect on personal- or interaction-range powers.

If the power involves a roll of any kind, and can be targeted at Distance rank 0 or higher, you can target it one distance rank further by taking -2 on the roll, or two distance ranks further by taking -5. Note that unless you have a similarly high Scope measure, it might be difficult to target at extreme ranges. It's also worth noting that the curvature of the Earth will generally provide total cover and total concealment past about three miles at ground level.

Scope: Your Scope determines how far your Ranged senses are effective out to. How far away you can perceive something depends on how strong the perception is - the size (and brightness) of the object, the volume of a sound, the strength of a smell, etc. As a rule of thumb, a human is generally considered the baseline intensity; a full-grown person in normal lighting, a human speaking in a clear voice, a human's body odor, etc. Each doubling of intensity effectively gives observers +1 Scope, and each halving effectively gives -1. So a Size rank 0 giant, two size ranks larger than a normal human, could be seen from two ranks further away, for example. A Size rank -4 dog, on the other hand, would need to be two ranks closer to be seen with equivalent clarity.

But at baseline intensity, you can see with perfect clarity at a Distance rank equal to your Scope rank (or 30', for a normal person); this allows you to easily make out full details. You can perceive with good clarity at a Distance rank up to Scope + 2 (120' for a normal person); you can make everything out fine, but you may occasionally need Perception checks to make out certain details. You can perceive with adequate clarity at a Distance rank up to Scope + 4 (500' for a normal person); everything has a minimum of Partial Concealment from you, so you can make out generalizations but not any clear details. You can perceive with poor clarity at a Distance rank up to Scope + 8 (a mile for a normal person); you can only barely make things out at this distance, treating them as having Full Concealment. Past Scope + 8, you can't make things out at all, giving everything a minimum of Total Concealment against you.

You need a Ranged sense to use your Scope normally. Without one, your Scope is automatically treated as -5, and the additional Distance ranks for reduced clarity are halved (so Distance rank -5 for full clarity, -4 for good clarity, -3 for adequate clarity, and -1 for poor clarity, and further than that the sense is useless for detecting things of normal intensity).

Speed: Your Speed determines how fast you can move. Most actions refer to "moving your speed"; this means moving a Distance rank up to your Speed rank, plus the Time rank that a round represents. So, for a typical active scene, where one round is six seconds (Time Rank 0), characters simply move a Distance rank equal to their Speed rank with each action. For a normal person (Speed 0), this means 30'.

A character's "travel speed", how fast it moves over prolonged periods, is generally equal to its Speed rank + 10 every hour - essentially what it would be if the character spent both its move and standard actions moving. For a normal person, this would be 4 MPH (a bit faster than the real-world average walking speed, but this is probably a fairly brisk walk anyway).

A character's top speed - the maximum distance it can cover in a given period of time - is a Distance rank equal to the character's Speed rank + 2 + the Time Rank spent moving. No combination of actions that allow movement can allow a character to move faster than this - for example, during a typical Time Rank 0 active round, a character with Speed 0 can move a maximum of Distance Rank 2, or 120', no matter how many actions it takes that allow it to move up to its speed. This includes free actions and reactions, though the latter deduct from the next turn's maximum movement.

Strength: Your Strength determines how much weight you can physically lift and carry. How different Mass ranks compare to your Strength determines what sort of load a given weight counts as for you.

Negligible: A negligible load is a Mass Rank no higher than your Strength - 3 (so, 6 pounds for a normal person). This is the sort of load you can wield one-handed without difficulty.

Trivial: A trivial load is a Mass rank no higher than your Strength - 2 (so, 12 pounds for a normal person). This is the sort of weight you can wield one-handed with difficulty or two-handed easily.

Easy: An easy load is a Mass rank no higher than your Strength - 1 (so, 25 pounds for a normal person). You can carry this sort of load in one hand without particular problem, and potentially even wield it (two-handed) with difficulty.

Light: A light load is a Mass rank no higher than your Strength measure (so, 50 pounds for a normal person at Strength 0). This is too much weight to really effectively wield or manipulate with precision, but you can carry it around in both hands, a backpack, or similar without any particular difficulty.

Medium: A medium load is a mass rank no higher than your Strength measure + 1 (so, 100 pounds for a normal person). This is enough weight to impede you; you count as Restrained while carrying a medium or heavier load.

Heavy: A heavy load is a mass rank of up to your Strength measure + 2 (so, 200 pounds for a normal person), which is considered the maximum you can effectively lift. You are considered Bound while carrying a heavy load. It's possible for you to lift up to one Mass rank higher a little bit, but you can't get it over your head and you are Immobilized while doing so.

Skills

There are ten skills, each one covering a broad range of potential capabilities. Skills all begin at 0, and generally go as high as 20. You buy skills with SP. Initially, each rank of a skill costs 2 SP. However, as skills get higher, that price goes up. Each time a skill reaches a rank divisible by 5, the cost for future ranks doubles. So ranks from 1-5 cost 2 SP each, ranks from 6-10 cost 4 SP each, 11-15 cost 8 SP each, and 16-20 cost 16 SP each. You can bring a skill above rank 20, but the cost doubling continues, making such ranks extremely expensive - generally more expensive than they're worth.

Skills are considered an iconic trait, multiplying the cost by 5 if purchased in arrays or on the fly.

A skill of 0 is considered a novice-class skill; the character has no particular training or aptitude in the skill, but isn't any worse than the next person. A skill of 5 (total cost 10 SP, or 1 PP) is professional-class; the character is fully trained, qualified, and capable of making a decent living using the skill. A skill of 10 (cost 30 SP, or 3 PP) is expert-class; the character is especially adept in using the skill and can probably rely on it even in the sort of situations heroes are likely to encounter. A skill of 15 (cost 7 PP) is master-class; the character can compete with some of the most skilled practitioners in a nation, and accomplish most mundane tasks with trivial effort. A skill of 20 (cost 15 PP) is world-class; one of the best on the planet, at the peak of human potential with the skill, able to accomplish things even experts couldn't hope to attempt and trivially handle even heroic challenges.

You don't have to buy skills at levels divisible by five; these are just benchmarks.

You can lower a skill below 0, gaining a flat 2 SP per point below, to a minimum of -10. A skill of -5 represents ineptitude; the character is especially bad at the skill and may occasionally fail to perform even trivial tasks with it. A skill of -10 represents incompetence; the character will find even the most trivial tasks challenging, and any sort of serious task all but impossible. If you want to represent an effective skill lower than -10, treat it as a Complication.

Skills are detailed more fully in their own chapter.

Other Traits

Once you've gotten your basics, stats, measures, and skills, you can start adding other traits. Each of the trait types below is covered fully its own chapter, detailing all the options of each trait and how it works.

Advantages: Advantages are specific capabilities that can have a significant effect, but generally in a very narrow niche. Advantages cost 1 PP each and are considered iconic traits.

Powers: Powers are specific effects that are then modified with extras and flaws. Extras are beneficial effects that make your effect better, and cost PP to add to a power. Flaws are detrimental effects that make the effect worse, and lower the cost of the power. All powers cost a minimum of 1 PP, even if they have more points of flaws than they do extras. Some effects also add directly to the point cost of the power; in these cases, flaws can't lower the power's cost below this base amount.

Utilities: Utilities are special abilities that expand on a character's options more than improving its actions. Like advantages, they tend to be fairly niche, but they can be quite a bit broader and more powerful than advantages can be. Unlike most traits, utilities are purchased with VP rather than PP.

Features: Features are sort of like advantages, but even more niche. They're minor things that generally come up rarely - but when they do, it can be important to know if a character has access to them. Features cost FP to purchase, with varying costs based on how useful they are. Many features are specific to devices, vehicles, and installations, defining traits of the character's equipment more than actual capabilities of the character, but some can be purchased directly for a character.

Natural and Supernatural Traits

When you buy traits, you can designate them as natural or supernatural. Natural traits come from skill, natural physical aptitude, physiological traits, relatively mundane technology, and other generally "real-world" sources. Supernatural traits come from magic, powers, weird energies, metaphysical forces, psionic potential, and other strange sources.

Generally, you just specify whether each type of trait (stats, measures, skills, advantages, powers, features, utilities, and teammates) are natural or supernatural. However, you can be much more detailed if you want. You can make certain traits within the same group natural and others supernatural, or even certain ranks of certain traits different. For example, a character with Force 10 might get half of it from sheer physical strength and skill at landing decisive blows, and the other half from being able to channel supernatural energies into its attacks.

There'ss no inherent distinction between natural and supernatural traits, but conditions from the Hampering tree only affect natural traits, and those of the Suppression tree only affect supernatural traits. Realistically, as traits get higher they're more likely to be supernatural, but this isn't exactly a realistic game here. If you want to play a character who is so amazingly skilled it can go toe to toe against people with superpowers, you're more than welcome to. There may be some traits that the GM requires be supernatural (it's hard to justify the ability to teleport from place to place or open up portals without resorting to supernatural effects, for example).

General Rules

The Game as a Game

Before we get into all the rules of the game, we should take a moment to recognize the rules that really matter. This is a game, and the goal is to have fun, tell an entertaining story, and pretend to be awesome superheroes. All of the other rules of the game are subservient to those listed here, and when in doubt on how to interpret a rule, look to these for guidance.

The Group Has The Final Say: Every single rule in the game is subject to change. Now, to be fair, changing the rules isn't necessarily something you want to do at a whim. The rules are intended to allow a wide array of options while still ensuring everyone has roughly equivalent capability and narrative importance, as much as possible. Changes can have ripple effects. That being said, if your group feels something should have a different cost, or effect, or should interact with another rule differently, or shouldn't exist, or should exist when it doesn't - cool! Change it!

This rule specifies that the group has the final say on these things. In practice that usually means the GM has the final say, since at the end of the day the GM is the one who the group has invested with the lion's share of its authority for managing the rules and running the game. That said, the GM rules with the consent of the group, and the best GMs will change the rules to serve the group and discuss potentially controversial possibilities with everyone before making a decision.

The Rules Are Not (Necessarily) The Laws of Physics: No one's saying they can't be, mind, if that's the game you want to play. But the game rules are written under the implicit assumption that they're meant for use in actual play, not as a behind-the-scenes simulation of the world. Of course, the big things are going to cross over - a character with super-strength or heat vision has those powers whether "on screen" or not. But the rules are written to allow for fun and dramatic scenes, not to perfectly simulate a world.

What this really means in the context of the game is that the rules shouldn't be extrapolated beyond their usual scope. A good example here is how powers are usable "at will" in the context of the game. In reality, just because you have a healing power doesn't mean you can actually go from hospital to hospital healing a person every six seconds indefinitely. Just because there aren't strict rules for getting hungry, or sleeping, or going to the bathroom, doesn't mean the characters are immune to such concerns. Just because damage is nonlethal by default doesn't mean guns aren't considered deadly weapons in the game world. And so on. Occasionally, these sorts of matters may pop up as Complications. More likely, they're just kinda "glossed over" - they are factors in the world of the game, but they're not important enough in play to bother with detailed rules to simulate them, or they are abstracted to allow for a more entertaining game.

Even the basic system of determining success, the d20 roll, is there to allow for a wider range of challenges and increase the chance of interesting results and dramatic upsets. Realisticaly, something like 2d6+4 with a degree of success every three points is probably somewhat closer to how odds would go in the average game world when "off screen".

In short, don't assign the rules a greater scope than they're meant to have - unless that's the sort of game your group wants to play.

Fluff Doesn't Need Rules: Similar but somewhat opposite to the above, a lot of powers and options in the game have some sort of cost to balance its usage. And that cost should matter to a certain degree in the narrative - a power that costs Hero Points to use isn't one that the character should be assumed able to break out routinely, for example. But with that in mind, whether on screen or off, the rules are flexible. If a PC wants to do something that is fun or cool, doesn't really have a huge impact on the intended challenges of the plot or step on another player's (or the GM's toes), and that is reasonably within their character's range of capability...let them do it. Don't worry about checks and costs and strict rules for things that are basically adding flavor and fun to the game. Save that for actual challenges and important stuff.

Encourage Action: This is something that comes up most often with skills, but is a good thing to keep in mind in general. How many times have you been in this situation in an RPG? The characters are talking to an NPC about some important thing, and half the group tries to say as little as possible because they have squat for social skills and don't want to make the situation worse.

Don't do that! Yes, there are certain options that balance a potential reward with a possible risk, and those are indeed best avoided by characters without high enough stats to have a good shot at success - because one of the rewards for having a high stat is being able to use those sorts of actions reliably. But a low stat shouldn't preclude participation - instead, a high stat should reward you with additional benefits. The game rules try to bake this in to a large degree, with things like running all scenes in rounds so actions are use 'em or lose 'em, and many actions having basic effects at lower DCs that are then improved by degrees of success. But it's something to remember in general. If a player makes a good point, let it stand on its own merits and a strong social skill can improve it. If one character has good Stealth, let them lead the group through the enemy lair rather than having one character sneak ahead and the rest sit around doing nothing. When a character fails a check to learn something, don't give them false information, just say they didn't learn anything (or give them both the true and some false information, tell them that only some of it is true, but don't tell them which!) And so on. Encourage players to act, even when their actions don't have the highest chance of success.

A Roll Should Matter: The dice are used to provide an element of randomness and risk to the game. As was mentioned above, the d20 creates a much broader range of possibilities than is strictly realistic, for dramatic purposes. But probabilities get wildly skewed when multiple rolls are being made for the same thing. As a rule of thumb, a single activity should be resolved with as few rolls as possible. This doesn't mean actions that explicitly require multiple rolls should have them cut down, or that players shouldn't spend Hero Points to reroll bad checks, or so on. But again, the rules are not meant as a simulation.

Again, this is largely baked into the rules with things like One-Shot actions and the removal of Routine checks, but it's still good to keep in mind. If the characters can simply keep trying to do something with no cost or consequences, rolling just wastes everyone's time. If you're making a check, a failure should matter.

Don't Stress The Minutia: This document is written following the philosophy that you can change whatever rules you want, but most players and GMs probably would rather get into the game than have to arbitrate rules. As a result, it includes a substantial amount of minutia, minor or niche rules governing strange use-cases, odd interactions, occasional vagueness, and so on. The rules can't cover everything, and some adjudication will always be required, but the system tries to account for a good amount of it.

Seriously, don't worry too much about this stuff.

This isn't to say these rules should be casually ignored or changed any more than any rule, but don't drive yourself nuts trying to remember if you saw a rule for that somewhere and trying to hunt it down, or trying to keep straight every single possible combination of actions, options, extras, and flaws in your head. It's probably not a big deal if you accidentally let someone add some maintenance to an action because you forgot it had a fixed duration or something. If someone knows the actual rule, or can quickly reference it, great. If not, make a decision and move on. It's fine to revisit it later, or if it turns out it wasn't the right call, just say oops and apply the correct (or a revised) rule going forward. The rules are detailed this heavily to save the GM time on adjudication by having a ready answer for some questionable interactions that might come up (with the implicit understanding that if the GM doesn't feel that particular ruling is appropriate to its game, it can freely change it), not to bog the game down in trivial details.

Checks

Players often roll checks to determine the results of actions their characters take. When you make a check, you roll a twenty-sided die (1d20) and add some number, usually a stat or skill. You are trying to roll equal to or higher than the Difficulty Class (DC) of the action. If you do so, you succeed. If you roll lower, you fail.

If your roll is anywhere from exactly equal to the DC to four points higher, it is one degree of success. Each full five points higher than the DC adds another degree. Likewise, a roll up to five points lower than the DC is one degree of failure. Each additional range of five points below is another degree of failure. So if you beat the DC by 0-4 it's one degree of succes, 5-9 is two degrees, 10-14 is three degrees, etc. Likewise, if you fail by 1-5 points it's one degree of failure, 6-10 two degrees, 11-15 three degrees, etc.

If the d20 itself comes up as a natural 20, it's a critical success. You get a +5 critical bonus on the roll, on top of the base result. This only applies when you actually roll a 20, not from any mechanic that might cause a roll to be treated as a 20, have a minimum result of 20, or the like. The inverse of this, a natural 1, has no special effect; if your check bonus is high enough that a 1 still meets or beats the DC, it still succeeds just fine.

There are a few different ways DCs can be determined. Some actions may have DCs calculated in multiple ways. In this case, they don't stack with each other - only the highest applies.

Active DCs: An active DC means a character is actively doing something that makes the task more difficult. Often, actions that allow setting active DCs call for the character setting the DC to make a check to do so. This still counts as the DC for incoming actions, so an active DC still treats a tie as one degree of success for the character making the check against it.

Calculated DCs: A calculated DC is determined by the game mechanics and variables in the action. Sometimes, this is just a flat DC for an action, but often it's a DC that scales as the result gets better. In some cases, calculated DCs may involve the skills of others; this is slightly different than a passive DC, since passive DCs can be modified by certain mechanics that calculated DCs can't.

Passive DCs: A passive DC is determined using a stat or skill of another character, typically the one being targeted or affected by the action. Usually, the DC is 11 + the relevant stat, but some actions may be easier or harder. The difference between passive and active DCs is that passive DCs don't generally require active effort on the opposing character's part.

Set DCs: A set DC is one that is set directly by the GM, based on the situational factors at hand. Set DCs are most often used for skill checks.

Bonuses

Many of the game's mechanics result in bonuses or penalties to certain stats, checks, or DCs. Bonuses come in five types, which determine how they can combine with other sort of bonuses. Penalties usually don't have a classification listed and stack fully. However, some penalties are called out as condition penalties; these penalties don't stack with other penalties to the same trait - use only the worst.

Circumstance Bonuses: A circumstance bonus generally comes from favorable circumstances, tactics, and situations. Circumstance bonuses stack, but you cannot apply a higher circumstance bonus than +5 to any given roll or DC.

Critical Bonuses: A critical bonus generally comes from high check results - the most common, of course, being the +5 critical bonus to a check for rolling a natural 20. Critical bonuses don't stack - use only the highest. In addition, critical bonuses only apply for purposes of calculating the degree of success or failure, not for purposes of determining if a check succeeds or fails. A one-degree failure becomes a zero-degree failure; the attempt still fails, but any consequences the failure might have imposed are ignored. A one-shot action that fails by 0 degrees can be attempted again later in the scene.

Heroic Bonuses: A heroic bonus is a special bonus that ensures an above-average showing. Heroic bonuses only apply on natural check results of 10 or less. Heroic bonuses don't stack, and are capped at +10 (so a full +10 heroic bonus ensures a result from 11 to 20).

Trait Bonuses: A trait bonus raises one of the character's traits directly. They stack and don't have an individual cap, but cannot bring the affected trait higher than its listed maximum; PL + 5 for stats, PL + 10 for measures, 10 + 5 per two points of Force for extras, etc. In addition, if a given trait bonus would bring a trait to a point where its cost per rank increases, the rest of that trait bonus is lost, but a separate trait bonus can apply to increase it further. For example, a measure below PL can't be brought above PL with a single trait bonus, and a skill below rank 10 can't be brought above it, or above rank 10 can't be brought above the next multiple of 5.

True Bonuses: A true bonus is just a straight-up bonus with no limits. They have no caps and can stack freely. If a bonus is not given a different type, it is a true bonus.

Game Time

While Time Ranks are used to measure in-game time and are fine for certain things, other rules are served by a more narrative time structure. The following organizations of game time are used for these purposes:

Rounds: Rounds are primarily a measure of organization, ensuring everybody gets their turn in the spotlight and their chance to act, and that one character can't move things too far before others have a chance to respond or the GM has a chance to resolve everything. Each round, each character involved in the scene may take a certain number of actions. Each player (including the GM) declares and resolves actions for all characters they control, and once everyone has had a turn, a new round begins.

You can't store actions, or gain any benefit for passing them. If you don't have anything you want to do, that's fine, but you should never feel like you shouldn't do anything. Most actions won't make things worse if you fail, and the actions for a round aren't something you can use better elsewhere - use 'em or lose 'em! So even in scenes that are outside of your character's strengths, you may as well still do something - you might roll high, after all!

A round is generally a fairly short amount of time, but how much time it represents can vary based on the type of scene. Active scenes usually have rounds each take just a few seconds (or possibly even fractions of a second, if everyone is operating at superhuman speeds). Whereas more social or investigative scenes could have rounds that last for minutes, hours, or even longer! A complex political negotiation could represent each round as a whole day of calls of meetings!

The default round is six seconds during active scenes, and one minute outside of active scenes, though the GM can use a different value if desired.

Scenes: A scene is a single specific situation. If the PCs meet up for breakfast, that's a scene. When they go out on patrol, that's a new scene. When they come across a bank robbery and stop it, that's a third scene. And so on. The length of a scene in terms of in-game time can vary widely. Often, a change of setting means a change of scene, but not always - high-speed characters could hold a running battle across an entire city, country, or even the whole planet as part of a single scene! Likewise, a fancy party with all of high society in attendance can all take place in one location, but include multiple scenes as the PCs interact with a bunch of different important people, each with their own agendas.

Generally speaking though, a single scene is a single continuous instance of game time. If there's a brief timeskip where the PCs are just hanging around, waiting for the police to arrive, getting some rest, or travelling to their next destination, that ends the scene. The time during that timeskip is considered "between scenes". This timeskip is also where things that happen at the end of or between scenes occur, like removing scene duration effects.

Active Scenes: Some scenes - such as battles and chases - are considered active scenes. Active scenes are generally fairly short and have correspondingly short rounds, and primarily involve short-term physical actions. Active actions only have action costs during active scenes. Note, however, that in many cases, taking an active action might turn a scene into an active scene (if you attack someone or try to run from them, they'll probably fight back or give chase, immediately turning the scene to an active scene).

Episodes: An episode is a collection of scenes (generally, although it's possible to have an episode that all takes place in a single scene) that are tied together by having a coherent, short-term plot, typically with longer-than-usual timeskips between the last scene of one episode and the first scene of the next. An episode is generally a single "mission", with one major goal the characters are trying to accomplish - foiling a single plot, rescuing someone, finding some macguffin, etc. An episode might also be just a single period of time where a bunch of things can happen, such as one interesting day in the lives of the PCs.

Downtime Actions: Between episodes, players have the opportunity to take downtime actions - long-term background actions that can provide them with certain narrative benefits or influence the story or setting in some way. See the Downtime Actions chapter for more information.

Adventures: An adventure, then, is a group of episodes that are all tied together by a coherent plot - or, perhaps, simply separated by major events. Think an entire season or half-season arc of a TV show or a multi-volume comic book story or even a movie trilogy. The end of an adventure usually means the PCs have accomplished some major, overarching goal - defeating a primary villain, winning a war, destroying a dangerous artifact, or even saving the world! Adventures typically involve substantially more downtime between them, although they don't have to.

Advancement: When characters complete an adventure, they can develop new capabilities and grow in power. This is called advancement. Advancement can result in new PP and VP, bonuses to your stats, or even full Power Level increases. The default advancement is 2 PP, 2 VP, and +1 to a stat. After five advancements, characters increase in PL, although this does not raise stats directly - the gradual stat increases are considered to be "building towards" the new PL. However, stat maximums (i.e. the PL+5 limit) increase when PL goes up. The GM decides how many advancements characters receive at the end of each adventure. As a rule of thumb, shorter or more minor adventures (2-3 episodes, no major plot events) are generally good for one. Fairly significant adventures (4-5 episodes or having some substantial story significance) might award two. And really major adventures (6+ episodes or achieving some major story goals) might be worth three.

These are all guidelines, though; the GM can advance characters in other ways as suits the sort of progress desired. Games where characters are meant to stay at a single overall level of power might award only PP and VP, or might award stat points only occasionally with PL itself never increasing. Likewise, some games may hold off on awarding stats only to raise them all in a single lump when characters gain a new Power Level (or might only advance stats and then award a lump of PP and VP on gaining a PL). You could even forego gradual advancement entirely, raising PL and awarding a new PP total when the PCs achieve certain major story goals. Some games may award more or less PP and VP per advancement, or split the normal awards among a larger number of advancements (such as 2 PP and 2 VP every odd advancement and a stat increase every even one with ten advancements to a PL, 1 PP and VP per advancement and a stat increase every two, or staggering 2 PP, 2 VP, and +1 to a stat every three advancements, with fifteen advancements to a PL). And so on.

Resetting: On completion of an adventure, Hero Points reset to their base total. Any remaining points are lost. PCs can spend unspent Hero Points at the end of an adventure - typically on Action (Downtime), Edit Scene, and Inspiration surges, or for Bonuses or Rerolls for their downtime actions.

Respeccing: Characters aren't static. They learn new ways to do things, make changes to their devices, train new skills, and so on. At the end of an adventure, players should have the opportunity to edit their characters - removing things that they no longer want and respending those PP and VP on new stuff. The extent to which a player can edit may be limited by the GM - the character's general theme should stay the same, for example, unless something happened during (or after) the adventure that might have dramatically altered the character's existing powers.

Actions

The game rules define several actions that have concrete mechanical effects. Actions all have the following parameters. These parameters dictate when and how you can perform the action.

Action Types: There are five main classifications for actions. Some things, such as setting a passive DC for enemy checks, qualify as non-actions. They don't count as actions and happen automatically or at player choice, unaffected even by conditions that prevent or compel actions.

Free and Instant Actions: Free actions usually have little to no mechanical effects. You can perform free actions as often as the GM deems reasonable. In practice, this means as often as you want, but the GM might step in if you're trying to perform more free actions than can logically be physically or mentally undertaken in a certain span of time.

Generally speaking, actions that are unopposed and have no mechanical effects are considered free actions by default. For example, speaking, dropping to the ground, turning around, opening a door, drawing a weapon, pushing a button, and so on.

Instant actions are like free actions in that they take negligible time in and of themselves, but they're not the sort of things you can do again and again in immediate succession. You may perform any number of instant actions per round, but you may only perform any given instant action once per round. For example, swapping the slot of an array is considered an individual instant action for each array, so you may swap slots for any number of arrays each round, but you can only swap each given array once per round.

Toggling a power or effect on or off is considered an instant action (separate for each power or effect), so you can't deactivate an effect in the same round you activate it, or vice-versa.

Instant actions and free actions are considered the same action type, so moving either one up one step results in a move action. If an action with a higher action cost is reduced below move, it always becomes an instant action rather than a free action.

Move Actions: Move actions are simple, but do require nominal effort. You may perform one move action per round, but if you wish, you may spend your standard action to perform an additional move action.

Standard Actions: Standard actions are normal actions with significant mechanical effects. You may perform one standard action per round.

Full Actions: Full actions take significant time or effort. You may perform a full action by spending both your standard and move action for the round.

Action Classes: In addition to their type, all actions have one or more classes, determining which resources you ever need to spend on the action.

Active Actions: Active actions primarily only involve short-term, often physical effort. Active actions only have an action cost during active scenes. Movement, for example, is an active action, so if it's not an active scene, you don't have to actually spend actions moving - you can walk around freely during like an investigation or social scene (although your Speed still determines how far you can move in a given amount of time). If you take an active action in a non-active scene, though, it may turn into an active scene - attack someone and they can fight back, for example!

Basic Actions: Basic actions are the normal type, with no special rules.

Extended Actions: Extended actions take a specific amount of time to perform, specified as a Time Rank. Your Quickness measure can reduce the amount of time required to perform an extended action. Extended actions are most often performed between scenes. If performing an extended action during a scene, you must pay its action cost each round you are performing it to count the time period of that round towards its time. For example, if performing an extended standard action that would take you an hour during a scene where each round is fifteen minutes, you would have to spend a total of four standard actions during the scene to complete it. With Quickness 3+, you'd reduce the time required to only eight minutes, allowing you to complete it in one round - but it would still cost a standard action! You can't spend the action to make progress on a given extended action more than once per round.

You have to remain in range of the target for more-or-less the whole time, but it's assumed you might take occasional breaks, move away to get a tool or something, etc. Some extended actions target groups, areas or locations, in which case you have to be in or among (for close) or in range of the group or area for more-or-less the entire time, but can (and generally are assumed to) move about within or among it as you work.

You make a check at the end of the time period. If it fails, you fail to perform the action. Many extended actions can be retried, but you only keep a Time Rank worth of progress equal to the Time Rank of the action minus the degrees of failure. So if the action took you Time Rank 10 (2 hours) to perform, and you failed by two degrees, your next attempt would start with Time Rank 8 (half an hour) of progress effectively reusable, so you'd only need to spend another hour and a half.

Multiple characters performing the same extended action can divide the time up among them. Everyone who succeeds contributes their full progress, and anyone who fails doesn't. If some people failed, more work will be required by those who succeeded to complete the action (those who failed can also make new attempts to contribute).

One-Shot Actions: One-shot actions allow only one attempt at that action to be made in a given scene for a given purpose.

That "for a given purpose" is important. If, for example, you perform a one-shot action targeting a certain character, you could target a different character with the same action later. Likewise, if you try to gain information about a certain subject, you could gain information about a different subject later. That said, it has to be clearly different; you can't just approach the same purpose from a different angle, it has to be an entirely different purpose.

One-shot limits apply between characters. However, a character with a higher check bonus could take the action after an ally already did, keeping the same die roll but applying its own bonus, to potentially achieve a better result. And it could spend Hero Points to reroll the original die, if desired. So don't be afraid to try one-shot actions just because someone else on the team has a better skill - they can always just take the action themselves to substitute their bonus if they would have succeeded where you failed, and maybe you'll roll high and they'll be able to spend their action on something else instead!

Reactions: You can take reactions even when it is not your turn. However, each reaction can only be taken in response to a specific trigger. You may only take one reaction in response to any given trigger. A single action or event counts as one trigger, even if it fulfills qualifications for multiple triggers. For example, if you have a reaction you can use when you are attacked, and another that you can you when you are touched, being punched would qualify for both, but it still counts as only one trigger, so you can only take one of those reactions. The action cost of the reaction, if any, is deducted from your next turn, and you can't take a reaction if you don't have the necessary action available for your next turn. For example, if you take a standard reaction, you lose your next standard action. If you take an instant reaction, you can't take that specific action on your next turn. And so on.

Action Ranges: Actions can operate at one of the following ranges.

Personal: The action works only on you, the initiator.

Close: The action targets nearby; unless improved by a high Range measure, it's more-or-less limited to targets you can reach. Close powers can affect any valid target (Cover and Concealment may limit who you can target, and your own sensory range might further restrict your ranged powers) within a Distance rank equal to or less than your Range measure minus 2. If the power requires any sort of check, and you can target it at Distance rank 0 or higher, you can increase this Distance rank by 1 by taking a -2 penalty on the attack, or by 2 by taking a -5 penalty.

Ranged: The action targets at a distance. Ranged powers can affect any valid target (Cover and Concealment may limit who you can target, and your own sensory range might further restrict your ranged powers) within a Distance rank equal to or less than your Range measure. If the power requires any sort of check, you can increase this Distance rank by 1 by taking a -2 penalty on the attack, or by 2 by taking a -5 penalty.

Interaction: The action doesn't really have a specific range, but you need to be able to interact with the target(s). Generally, this means you have to be able to perceive them, and they you. You can't improve an action's range to Interaction; it's just a special action type for many social actions and such.

Action Requirements: The two primary requirements for performing actions are focus (ability to think and concentrate) and movement (ability to physically move). Each action specifies whether they need full, partial, or no focus or movement. Lacking the necessary focus or movement may cause penalties for the action or make it impossible to perform at all. Some actions may also have more specialized requirements, the lack of which may cause increases to set DCs, penalties, or an inability to perform the action, as defined in each individual action's write-up.

Focus: Actions that require full focus mean you need to be able to concentrate on what you're doing and really pay attention; if something is preventing you from fully concentrating on the task (as per conditions in the Distraction Tree), you'll be at a penalty or even entirely unable to perform the action. Actions that require partial focus require conscious effort, but not devoted attention; you can use them even while distracted, but not if completely incoherent. No focus means that no conscious effort is required to take the action; it's instinctive, unconscious, preprogrammed, automatic, or otherwise something that doesn't require you to consciously focus on it.

Movement: Actions that require full movement mean you need to have a complete range of movement to take the action effectively. If you're bound or restricted in any way, you'll be at a penalty or even unable to perform the action at all (as per the conditions in the Restraining Tree). Partial movement requires very simple and subtle movements to perform; you can usually take them even while bound, but not if fully paralyzed. No movement means just that - you don't have to move at all to use the action.

Effect Durations

Most effects of actions don't last forever. Action effects are given a duration from the following list to determine how long the effect lasts. Note that some effects can be removed early by various means. Duration is something of an "in a vacuum" parameter, reflecting hard limits of persistence in the effect itself rather than accounting for all possible factors that would realistically influence how long it lasts. Learning something, for example, generally has no duration - you learn it and that's it. But this is only to say that once you learn something there's no hard limit enforced by the game rules on how long you know it, not that it's literally impossible for anyone in the game world to forget anything.

Fixed Duration: Fixed is a special duration modifier - an effect with a fixed duration cannot have its duration changed, and cannot be maintained.

No Duration: The effect has no duration; it ends immediately, and thus its effects only last for as long as they are maintained. An effect with no duration cannot have its duration changed and effects that have durations cannot have them reduced to the point that they have no duration, although it may have its maintenance changed.

In some cases, an effect with no duration creates an effect that duration doesn't rightly apply to - such as learning something or removing some other effect.

Round Duration: The effect lasts until the end of the user's next turn. In some cases, certain effects with round duration might specify additional rules by which they can last for a few rounds.

Scene Duration: The effect lasts until the end of the current scene. At GM discretion, if the character's team was defeated, detrimental scene duration effects may instead last until the start of the next scene. Likewise, once the main focus of the scene is over (for example, at the end of a battle but before moving to the next scene), a victorious team's detrimental scene duration effects might end a bit early.

Episode Duration: The effect lasts until the end of the current episode.

Adventure Duration: The effect lasts until the end of the current adventure.

Indefinite Duration: The effect lasts indefinitely; there might be events or effects that can end it, or requirements to keep it going, but it doesn't end on its own over time alone.

Effect Maintenance

Any effect with a non-fixed duration can also potentially be maintained. Some effects have maintenance by default, though others can only acquire it through powers. A maintained effect does not begin counting its duration until maintenance ends. Conditions with maintenance cannot be recovered from until maintenance ends. Maintenance must begin within one round of the action being performed, and once it ends cannot be renewed until the action is performed again. Maintenance automatically expires at the end of a scene.

Maintenance usually requires spending an action each round to maintain the effect.

No Maintenance: The effect cannot be maintained, and its duration begins counting down immediately.

Full Maintenance: Maintaining the effect requires spending a full action each round.

Concentration Maintenance: Maintaining the effect requires spending a standard action each round.

Attention Maintenance: Maintaining the effect requires spending a move action each round.

Sustained Maintenance: Maintaining the effect requires spending a free action each round.

Tasks

The game includes specific rules for achieving certain mechanical effects. However, these rules are primarily intended to give players a set of specific, tactical effects they can reliably achieve. They are by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of everything a character can do. When you want to do something outside of the listed actions, it's resolved as a task. Tasks are often used to resolve complex or longer-term goals.

Task Parameters: The GM decides the parameters of a task:

Action Parameters: Tasks usually have parameters just like actions. Most tasks are extended standard actions, although this can vary as suits the task. Requirements and range will vary based on what is involved, but should be pretty easy to eyeball. Tasks don't really have durations or maintenance.

Skill: Tasks generally involve a skill check (although some might use a combat stat or even a measure). The GM decides what skill or skills can be used for the task, although in some cases players may be able to substitute other skills if they have a creative way to make it work.

Difficulty: The difficulty of the task is a set DC determined by the GM, based on the difficulty of the task and other situational modifiers. If circumstances favor the character, the GM may also assign circumstance bonuses or even true bonuses on the check. Some tasks will be directly opposed by NPCs, and will have passive DCs of 11 + their own relevant skill as well as any set DCs. More complex tasks may also require a certain number of degrees of success to achieve, or may have scaling results based on the total degrees achieved. Finally, some tasks will be divided into a series of smaller tasks that you have to achieve, building towards the final goal.

As a rule of thumb, for a decent "scene-length" task, five degrees of success is a nice number to shoot for. For tasks where characters are in direct opposition, the default is one degree, plus an additional two degrees per either five ranks in a relevant skill, or per three points of Tenacity. For groups, use the highest total among the group. If NPCs are trying to complete tasks opposed by PCs, the Tenacity degrees are always the minimum required - the GM may allow other skills or circumstances to provide more required degrees, but an NPC can never complete a task against one or more PCs without achieving at least one degree, plus two per three points of Tenacity. Where characters aren't directly involved, one degree, plus two more degrees per five points of the DC above 11 is also a convenient calculation.

Results: While players may make suggestions (or, say, tell the GM they want to try to do something, with the GM then building the task around that), at the end of the day, the GM decides what the actual results of completing the task will be.

The Approach: Stats aren't everything! When characters attempt a task, how they go about doing it is called their approach. When you're trying to infiltrate a villain's lair, teleporting inside, scaling the wall and entering through a window, sneaking up, picking the lock, and slipping through the front door, smashing straight through the nearest wall, disguising yourself as someone who has a reason to be there, and the like are all approaches. Likewise, when you're trying to convince someone to do something, approaches may include offering them something they want in exchange, threatening something they care about unless they do what you want, staging an elaborate manipulation, presenting facts and evidence to convince them it's in their interests, making an impassioned plea or stirring speech, calling in a favor (or offering a future one), and on and on.

Your approach is critical. Of course, it can have an impact in terms of the set DC since different approaches may involve different modifiers, but there's more to it than that. The GM rates your approach as sufficient, reasonable, or insufficient when you make it, based on the circumstances surrounding the task. A sufficient approach means your approach was so appropriate that there's not really any question that it will succeed - if you offer someone something they really want and request something that doesn't cost them much, and they don't have any personal reason to spite or mistrust you, then it doesn't matter how socially savvy you are, there's no reason for them not to go along with it. Likewise, if the goal of the task is to get over a wall and you just, like, fly over it because hey you have that power, that's all there is to it. In some cases, the GM may let you roll a skill check anyway, to see if you can get a greater result with additional degrees of success.

An insufficient approach is one that just doesn't suit the circumstances at all. If you're trying to get information out of a captured foe and you threaten something it doesn't care about, it's not going to work. Likewise, teleporting past a wall that's shielded by a projection blocker just flat fails. An insufficient approach wastes the action, but doesn't generally cause the task as a whole to fail; you can try again with a new approach. In some cases, an approach may be outright detrimental towards the goal; if that happens, it might cause the task to fail or other consequences, although even then, you may wish to allow a skill check to mitigate it (if a character unknowingly says something really offensive to someone whose help they're trying to get, they or an ally might be able to make a Persuasion check to smooth it over, or maybe even an Insight check to realize they're about to cross a line and take it back before their character actually says it - although they could also do this mechanically by getting a Persuasion edge beforehand).

Be cautious about declaring approaches insufficient, especially if your reasoning amounts to the opposition being "just that good" or some such. Approaches should be judged on their circumstances. Yes, if an NPC is immune to fear, then obviously trying to cow it into doing something you want is insufficient - but even if it doesn't feel fear, that doesn't mean it doesn't have things it cares about that can be threatened. Don't use excuses like "He refuses to be intimidated" or "Her security is too good" or "They're just too prepared for that". If an approach is deemed insufficient, it should be because it doesn't make sense - "You're offering him money to betray his True Love? Not a chance." "The computer's on it's own hardwired network; it can't be hacked wirelessly, you'll need physical access." "There's no obstruction to provide cover or concealment within two-hundred feet of the installation, and there's full camera coverage; just sneaking up to the place isn't feasible."

That being said, even world-class skills aren't magic. Some things are just infeasible without an especially good approach. You're not going to get someone to betray something they deeply care about with social savvy alone, unless you come up with a really good way to make it work. You're not going to be defying the laws of physics with the Prowess skill alone, whatever your bonus. And some things are just too big to be resolved as tasks; you shouldn't allow players to achieve major episode or adventure goals with single tasks. These are largely scene-scale things. Maybe a series of tasks can work to resolve an episode-scale goal. Adventure-scale goes should require, well, actual adventures! Or maybe downtime actions.

Of course, in most cases, the approach will fall into the third slot: reasonable. It can work, but it's not certain. In this case, you roll your skill check. If you succeed, you add any degrees of success to your progress for the task. If you fail, you add none. Once your total degrees of success equal the total required to complete the task, you succeed. Some approaches may be especially good or bad, and start you off with bonus degrees or with a deficit of degrees you need to make up. You might even be able to add some bonus degrees as you go by "refining" your approach - for example, learning more about a person you're negotiating with and offering them things that they want more in exchange for what you want from them.

And as was alluded to, powers tend to be involved less in resolving tasks and more in offering approaches. A power isn't inherently an auto-win, but the right power certainly could provide a sufficient approach on its face. And of course, there are limits to what mundane skill can accomplish, especially in regards to more physical skills like Prowess and Stealth. Some tasks may deem any mundane approach insufficient, requiring an appropriate power as a prerequisite; no amount of Prowess is going to let you invade a flying city on its own, but if you have Flight you can at least try - although you might need to succeed a Prowess-based task to get through the mile-wide storm shield protecting it!

Failing Tasks: If you could just roll and roll freely until you succeeded, there wouldn't be much point to rolling at all, so all tasks should have a way to fail. If there isn't a way to definitively fail a task, the GM should just figure out how much time it should take, and have the PC make the relevant check. Each degree of success lowers the Time Rank by 1, and each degree of failure raises it by 1.

Failing a task generally means you can't try again; it's beyond you, or new circumstances have made it irrelevant, or so on. In some cases, you might be able to try again, but there's some consequence for failure that you'll be risking again.

A note about the failure conditions below: none of them use failing a check as a failure condition for the entire task. There's a reason for this. You want your players to be trying things, even if their skills aren't the best for it. Encourage action! Setting things up so the task will tend towards failure on its own, and they just have to succeed before it does, gets all hands on deck and everybody getting involved, rather than everybody but the character with the best skill sitting around doing nothing because they're afraid that if they fail a check they'll mess the whole thing up.

Contest Failure: In a lot of cases, you'll have some opposition actively working to counter your efforts, achieve their own goal first, or just frustrate your efforts. This makes the task into a contest. The opposing side gets their own actions and generally has their own task; if they complete their task first, you've failed. Usually, their task is going to be of similar difficulty to yours - it might even be the same task, or essentially the same but rolling against your skills as passive DCs.

You can use a contest even when the NPCs can't really do anything other than frustrate your efforts. For example, in an interrogation, even if the enemy can't really influence you or escape or anything, it can try to stonewall you as a task action round after round, until it gets enough degrees to have decisively frustrated your efforts.

Opportunity Failure: Sometimes, you only get so many chances to succeed. Once the task has begun, you only have a certain number of rounds to complete it. This isn't due to any particular in-game pressure; it's just that if you've had that many rounds and still haven't accomplished it, it's safe to say the task is beyond your abilities. Simple tasks often use opportunity failure, with one round, making it basically pass-or-fail.

Peril Failure: Sometimes there's a constant peril or hazard happening while you're performing a task. This is usually reflected by an Attack that targets you every round. You can keep going at the task until you succeed, or the hazard renders you unable to continue.

Time Failure: Sometimes you just need to complete the task in a certain amount of time. Each attempt takes a certain Time Rank, and if you run out of time, you fail, or something else happens that invalidates the attempt. Quickness lets you spend less time per attempt in this case, so this method only tends to work if it takes the characters' Quickness into account to at least some degree. If they have so much Quickness that they can make a vast number of attempts, the GM may as well just call the approach sufficient and move on.

Group Tasks: Sometimes, a task will just be one part of a larger scene, and one character will work on it while others do their thing. But often, the entire group will be involved in a task. Tasks aren't like combat though, where having more people outputting attacks will be a straight-up force multiplier. Sometimes it can, but in most cases, groups working together on a task are subject to at least some degree of diminishing returns.

Assisted Progress: Multiple characters can contribute to the goal, but they don't just stack progress full-force. Everyone rolls their checks normally, but they don't directly contribute towards degrees of success; rather, at the end of the round, a final check is rolled (generally by the player of the character with the highest check bonus, or by the GM if that's easier) to determine actual progress. Any of the characters who attempted to contribute may boost this roll with Hero Points. The check uses the highest bonus among the group. If it succeeds on its own merits, it gets a +2 bonus per degree of success the group generated on their individual rolls (degrees of failure do not detract from this bonus), allowing it to generate higher degrees of success. If it fails on its own merits, the group simply makes no progress that round.

Combined Progress: Everyone contributes to the task fully, adding up degrees of success until they make it. Obviously, tasks like this should have high degree requirements, tight time or opportunity limits, or a sufficiently equivalent opposition to ensure that sheer numbers alone don't allow the PCs to just crush the task.

Independent Progress: Everybody contributes towards their own total of progress; however, only one of them needs to succeed for the group to succeed. This is a pretty straightforward way to let all the rolls matter fully while still preventing numbers from throwing things, although unless there's a bit of "room" before a success it does create the possibility of victory through just throwing enough dice at the problem. Likewise, though, if there's too many degrees required, characters with lower skills may be discouraged since most likely their more skilled allies will accomplish the task well before they do. (On the flip side, there may be other ways to help their allies rather than making direct contributions, such as handling other things, getting information, Aiding their allies, getting an edge, etc).

Individual Progress: Everybody contributes to their own total of progress and succeeds or fails individually. This can be difficult for less-skilled characters; groups may wish to consider using inverse Aid actions for tasks like this, especially if a single character's failure could be detrimental to the whole group (such as getting caught infiltrating an enemy lair).

Triggered Effects

Many actions and abilities in the game have effects that trigger in response to certain actions or situations. You might get a bonus when attacked, penalize an enemy who targets an ally rather than you, make a reaction when someone does a certain thing, etc. While in general these sorts of triggered effects can work as stated, there are a couple corner-cases:

Intentional Oppositional Triggers: In some cases, you have actions that trigger a beneficial effect when an enemy attempts some detrimental action, or that cause a detrimental effect in response to an enemy using a beneficial effect. These sorts of triggers may not be intentionally provoked by the "wrong side". An ally can't make some weak attack on you to trigger some powerful bonus or reaction. An enemy can't make some weak attempt to assist you that fails and penalizes other attempts to aid you. And so on.

Overlapping Deterrents: Some actions seek to deter enemies from making certain choices. The special Manipulate function of the Intimidation skill, for example, penalizes enemies who attack characters other than you. Some characters may even have powers that are limited to opponents who attack characters other than themselves, or reactions that trigger when enemies do so.

Now, many deterrents are specific - they trigger if an enemy attacks a certain target, for example. And it's fine to force "no right answer" situations with those - if everyone on your team readies an action to attack if they get attacked, for example, that's fine. But when multiple allies are using deterrents that require a specific chioice to avoid the trigger - such as with the above examples for targeting anyone other than them - then as long as the enemy satisfies one deterrent, it satisfies all of them. So if one character challenges an enemy, another readies an action to attack if it attacks someone other than itself, and a third just has a power limited to enemies that attack someone other than them, as long as the enemy attacks any of those three, it's fine. If it attacks anyone other than one of those three, all three effects apply normally.

Power States

Inactive: An inactive power is unavailable entirely, and cannot be used or maintained until it is activated. Consider an inactive power like a computer that has been completely turned off - it's not doing anything until you can turn it back on.

You cannot maintain the effects of a power while it is inactive - however, if it has a duration, that still keeps it going even after you deactivate it. Powers that have special limits on their activation are considered inactive by default at the start of any scene. Other powers are considered active by default.

A power whose user no longer has access to it (because it switched to a new array slot, change its Variable configuration, ended a power stunt, etc) is considered inactive.

Toggling a power from inactive to active or vice-versa is an instant action. Each power is its own instant action.

Active: The power is usable but not in use. An active power is like a computer in sleep mode - you're not currently doing anything with it, but you just need to boot it back up to get going, and it may still be running programs from previous use in the background.

In-use instances of the power can be maintained normally as long as the power is active. Activating the power doesn't actually cause any of its effects to occur - it just means you can use the power, and previous uses can be maintained.

Toggling a power from inactive to active or vice-versa is an instant action. Each power is its own instant action.

In Use: To use a power, you take the action called for by the power's effect. As soon as you do, the power takes effect normally. For powers with a duration, you can still use the same power again next time you have an action available to do so (going back to the computer analogy, you can open multiple instances of the same program in different windows). The same effect from the same source generally won't stack with itself on the same target though - you can't use the same Environment twice on the same area to double up its effects, for example.

Concealment

Concealment defines how well you can perceive a given subject with a given sense. Your overall perception of a subject is considered to be the lowest Concealment rating among all of your senses, so a target with Full Concealment from your hearing but only Partial Concealment from your vision is considered to have Partial Concealment from you.

You need an Accurate sense to pinpoint things. Without one, everything has a minimum of Total Concealment for purposes of targeting.

You need an Acute sense to identify things. Without one, everything has a minimum of Partial Concealment for purposes of identification.

Partial Concealment: Partial Concealment means you can't really be made out clearly, but you're still detectable. You get a +2 circumstance bonus to Defense against attacks with Contact and Impose delivery from characters you have Partial Concealment against, and observers can only make out broad details about you (exactly as if their sense were not Acute). You get a +2 circumstance bonus on Stealth checks aganst characters you have Partial Concealment from, and a subject having Partial Concealment generally rates an impediment to set Perception DCs (so, they increase by 10).

Full Concealment: Full concealment means you and your movements are obscured, but your overall position is still known or discernable. You get a +5 circumstance bonus to Defense against attacks made with Contact and Impose delivery from characters you have Full Concealment against, and observers can only make out the roughest details about you (as if their sense were Vague). Further, you can attempt to make Surprise Attacks against characters you have Full Concealment against, when using attacks with Contact delivery. You get a +5 circumstance bonus on Stealth checks aganst characters you have Full Concealment from, and a subject having Full Concealment generally rates an obstacle to set Perception DCs (so, they increase by 20).

Total Concealment: Total concealment means you are completely undetectable. Opponents you have Total Concealment against cannot target you with Contact- or Impose-delivered actions at all (as if their sense were not Accurate), cannot make out any details about you at all, and are automatically considered Vulnerable against your Contact-delivered attacks unless they have Uncanny Dodge or some way to ignore your Concealment.

Cover

Targets may also hide behind solid objects to get Cover against attacks. Cover doesn't inherently make the target harder to detect, just harder to hit and hurt.

Partial Cover: Partial cover means at least half of your body is blocked by cover. You get a +2 circumstance bonus on Defense and Resistance against attacks with Contact, Flash, or Infuse delivery.

Full Cover: Full cover means your body is almost entirely blocked by cover. You get a +5 circumstance bonus on Defense and Resistance against attacks with Contact, Flash, or Infuse delivery.

Total Cover: Total cover means you are entirely blocked off from your opponent. Opponents cannot target you at all, even with Afflict- or Impose-delivered attacks.

Destroying Cover: If desired, a character can attack an object providing cover in an effort to blast through it to hit the target on the other side. It attacks the object normally. If it causes at least a Breach to the cover, reduce the cover value by one level for purposes of the attack, and resolve the attack against the target. If it fails to at least Breach the cover, it doesn't affect the target at all. Breached cover doesn't provide less Cover for purposes of future attacks (unless it previously provided Total Cover, in which case it downgrades to Full), but useless or destroyed cover is entirely removed.

Objects Providing Concealment: In many cases, intervening objects will make a subject harder or even impossible to detect - it doesn't matter how high your Perception is, you can't see someone on the other side of a solid wall! If the object is providing Total Cover to the subject, and is able to completely block a sense, it automatically provides Total Concealment as well (and technically if it only provides lesser amounts of cover it provides Total Concealment to whatever part of the character is behind it, but that's not really a distinction that matters in play).

If the object doesn't fully block a sense, though, it provides lesser amounts of Concealment. For example, a solid wall would provide Total Concealment to vision, while tinted windows might provide Full Concealment to those inside and Partial Concealment to those outside. A tempered glass window, though durable enough to provide Cover, is transparent, so it wouldn't provide any Concealment to vision. However, it might provide Total Concealment to smell. Meanwhile, even a mere hanging curtain could provide Total Concealment to visual senses, but wouldonly offer maybe Partial Concealment to smell.

Meanwhile, hearing would probably only face Full Concealment from most walls, and Partial Concealment from most doors and windows. A curtain probably wouldn't hinder hearing much at all. And all of these might be lowered a step if you put your ear to the object in question. But a sound-proofed wall (or simply a sufficiently thick and solid one) would provide Total Concealment from hearing.

Finally, an object may provide lesser or limited Concealment if it doesn't really obscure the character's position. If there's a tiny wall that the character hides behind, it's pretty obvious where the character is, so it doesn't really have Concealment. A character wearing a full-body hazmat suit or something might be treated as having Full Concealment for purposes of identification, but not for targeting. And so on.

Environments

Environment effects are areas that aren't simply clear, stable, uncluttered terrain. Simply being within an environmental effect subjects a character to certain modifiers, often annoying or detrimental ones.

In the real world, spending an extended period of time in a sufficiently hostile environment is dangerous or even lethal in and of itself. And it's not that that strictly isn't the case in an M&M game. It's just...keeping track of exactly how long characters can go before they collapse from heat stroke or something is kinda uninteresting. Narratively, yes, characters who are stuck wandering the desert for days or weeks on end could certainly die from heat exhaustion. And being forced to spend a dangerous amount of time in a hostile environment is an excellent reason for a complication to spring up (the characters collapse from the unrelenting heat, only to be found and dragged off by some nomads, who nurse them back to health but expect them to...) This is also the best way to handle long-term things like poisons, diseases, hunger, thirst, and lack of sleep - they rarely actually come up, but when they do, they're best treated as complications rather than simulations. From a mechanical and tactical standpoint, though, the threat of an environment isn't in the environment itself, but in how it affects the characters during the other challenges they face while within. For environments that are extremely dangerous such that even a short time within them might be deadly (and as such, their threat can be added directly into other short-term challenges) see Hazards.

There are several different environmental effects, each with two levels - basic and advanced. All environmental effects also have a rank, determining the severity of the environment. Typically, the higher-level environments will also have higher ranks than the lower-level environments, but not always. It might not technically be cold enough to increase the level of the environment, but factors like high winds, snow, or lack of sunlight could increase the rank above just a straight temperature below 0 on an otherwise clear day.

Environments can be limited in certain ways, or even do different things in different cases. For example, a river might have Basic Restrict Movement for everything but swimming in general, and then Basic Impede Movement for swimming when against the current, and Basic Enhance Movement for swimming with the current.

Note that the Enhance and Impede Effect don't apply for individual descriptors. As always, the sheer number of descriptors would make trying to flesh out environments like that way too complicated. But if the GM feels a given environment might make a descriptor stronger or weaker, the same rules can be applied largely on the fly. Those environmental effects are more intended for more supernatural enhancement and suppression of specific powers, like holy ground enhancing powers with divine origins and impeding powers with unholy origins.

Environmental effects are categorized as follows:

Bestow Movement: The environment allows anyone within to move at their normal speed with certain additional Movement utilities, up to a maximum Speed rank equal to the Environment rank. The advanced effect actually increases Speed rank to half the environment rank, if normally lower.

Block Projections: This is a rare environment, typically caused by supernatural effects, but not always - a lead-lined structure, for example, would have a Block Projections effect. Any objects in the area are able to block any effects that would normally pass through or otherwise ignore objects, such as Piercing or Remote Senses, Permeate Movement, Phasing powers, Projected Communications, passage by Insubstantial characters, and so on. Cover from these objects applies against Afflict and Impose attacks. A basic projection block allows a Force check, DC 20 + the environment rank, to bypass this protection. An advanced block does not. Depending on the nature of the environment, certain projections might be allowed.

Cover: The environment is filled with large objects that people can hide behind - such as a forest or cluttered warehouse. Anyone in the area can spend a maneuver to gain Partial Cover, or to get around cover that an opponent gained (this is a separate maneuver from actually moving). With the advanced effect, this becomes Full Cover. The level of cover any character has from the environment is also passively increased by one step per Distance rank worth of the environment between it and its attacker. Someone with Total Cover from this environment typically also has Total Concealment, unless the cover isn't opaque for some reason. The cover has a Resistance rank equal to the environment rank.

Enhance Effect: The environment augments powers with a certain effect, source, or origin, adding a +2 circumstance bonus to a single stat, measure, or skill involved that is less than the environment rank, up to a maximum rank equal to the environment rank. The advanced effect provides a +5 circumstance bonus instead. Depending on the nature of the environment, more than one type of power might be augmented.

Extend Movement: The environment makes a certain mode of movement - such as ground speed, flight, swimming, etc - easier, increasing its Speed rank by half the environment rank and reducing any set Prowess DCs that might be required for difficult movement by the full environment rank. The advanced effect applies to all modes of movement. Depending on the nature of the environment, additional modes of movement might be affected (or certain modes of movement might be excluded from the advanced effect).

Extend Projectiles: The environment makes it easier for projectiles to pass. The area functions as one Distance rank smaller per two environment ranks for purposes of ranged effects passing through it. For example, a ranged effect passing through 900' (Distance rank 5) of Extend Projectiles 4 would only spend 250' (Distance rank 3) of its available range. For the advanced effect, characters within the environment suffer a -1 penalty on Defense against ranged attacks with Contact delivery per four environment ranks.

Extend Sense: The environment extends a single sense type - such as visual, auditory, olfactory, etc. For purposes of calculating sensory range, reduce the effective Distance rank of any distance through the environment by half the environment's rank. So something 900' away (Distance rank 5) through a rank 6 Extend Sense (Visual) environment acts as if it were only 120' away (Distance rank 2) for purposes of detecting it with visual senses. For the advanced effect, the environment also halves the starting Distance rank. Depending on the nature of the environment, additional sense types might be affected.

Hamper: The environment can hinder people in some way. The first time in any given scene that a character is exposed to the environment it must roll a Resistance check (DC 11 + environment rank) or suffer a tier 1 condition based on the nature of the environment while within. With the advanced effect, a character who fails the check by two degrees suffers the tier 2 condition instead. The results of the check are retained for the entire scene, even if the character leaves the environment and re-enters later, but the condition only applies while within the environment. Hamper environments should also have an attack mode and delivery mode.

Impede Movement: The environment makes a certain mode of movement - such as ground speed, flight, swimming, etc - harder, reducing its Speed rank by half the environment rank and increasing any set Prowess DCs that might be required for difficult movement by the full environment rank. Teleport and Permeate cannot be affected by Impede Movement. The advanced effect applies to all modes of movement except Teleport and Permeate. Depending on the nature of the environment, additional modes of movement might be affected (or certain modes of movement might be excluded from the advanced effect).

Impede Projectiles: The environment makes it harder for projectiles to pass. The area functions as one Distance rank larger per two environment ranks for purposes of ranged effects passing through it. For example, a ranged effect passing through 900' (Distance rank 5) of Impede Projectiles 4 would spend half a mile (Distance rank 7) of its available range. If this causes the effect to exceed its range, it fails (or possibly suffers check penalties for long range, for effects that require checks and don't exceed their range by more than two Distance ranks). For the advanced effect, any ranged attacks with Contact delivery that pass through the environment take -1 on Accuracy per four environment ranks.

Impede Sense: The environment impedes a single sense type - such as visual, auditory, olfactory, etc. The area functions as one Distance rank larger per two environment ranks for purposes of calculating sensory range. For example, something 900' (Distance rank 5) away through Impede Sense (Visual) 4 would appear half a mile (Distance rank 7) away. The advanced effect also fully doubles the initial Distance rank (not the distance itself, the actual rank), if it is positive. This penalty may apply only to things within the environment, or it may apply to things that you perceive through the environment (darkness, for example, only makes it harder to see things that are in the darkness - if you're in the dark you can see someone who is in the light just fine - but fog will make it harder to see things if you're in the fog, they're in the fog, or even just if there's fog between you and them).

Restrict Movement: The environment requires a certain mode of movement to pass through, typically an appropriately Adapted movement, and characters lacking that movement mode are considered Restrained while within. However, characters without the appropriate movement mode can make a Prowess check to struggle along, though they count as Restrained and Hindered twice while doing so. The set DC of this check is 6 for rank 1 environments, and then each three additional ranks increases the DC by 5. Additional degrees of success can mitigate some of the penalties; see the Difficult Movement option of the Prowess skill. For the advanced effect, characters without the appropriate movement mode can't move through the environment at all.

Restrict Sense: The environment provides Partial Concealment against a chosen sense, but the set DC modifier is equal to the environment rank rather than a flat +10. The advanced effect instead provides Full Concealment, but the set DC modifier is twice the rank rather than a flat +20. Naturally occurring Restrict Sense environments can have a second advancement that instead provides Total Concealment. As with Impede Sense, this may affect sensing things within or through the environment. Depending on the nature of the environment, additional sense types might be affected.

Suppress Effect: The environment hampers powers with a certain effect, source, or origin, subtracting 2 from a single involved stat, measure, or skill involved in the effect which is is less than the environment rank. The advanced effect imposes -2 if the trait is lower than than twice the environments rank, and -5 if it is lower than the environment's rank. Depending on the nature of the environment, more than one type of power might be suppressed.

Example Environments: Some example environments are given below. Ranks listed as X are simply based on the scale of the environment (how cold it is, how dense the forest is, how strong the gravity is, etc).

Thick Forest: Basic Cover X, Advanced Impede Movement X, Advanced Impede Sense 0 (Visual; Through Area).

Underwater: Basic Restrict Movement 1+ (Adapted [Swimming]), Advanced Impede Projectiles 8, Advanced Impede Sense 0 (Visual; Through Area). At significant depths, or if the character can't breathe water, it might also be subject to Hazard effects, and the Impede Sense may gain ranks as there is less and less light; figure two ranks per Distance rank below the surface as a rule of thumb.

Extreme Heat: Basic or Advanced Hamper X (Physiological; Impaired/Disabled). Damagingly high amounts of heat can cause Hazard effects.

Extreme Cold: Basic or Advanced Hamper X (Physiological; Restrained/Bound). Damagingly high amounts of cold can cause Hazard effects.

Bright Light: Basic or Advanced Extend Sense X (Visual).

Mist: Advanced Impede Sense 4 (Visual; Through Area).

Fog: Advanced Impede Sense 8 (Visual; Through Area).

Rain: Advanced Impede Projectiles 1, Advanced Impede Sense 0 (Visual, Auditory; Through Area, Lessened 10 [Only increases Distance rank by 50%]), Advanced Impede Sense 4 (Olfactory; Through Area).

Low Light: Basic Impede Sense 5-10 (Visual; Within Area).

Darkness: Advanced Impede Sense 5-10 (Visual; Within Area).

Total Darkness: Double Advanced Impede Sense 0 (Visual; Within Area).

Wind: Scaling levels of (in order of priority) Basic Impede Projectiles, Advanced Impede Projectiles, Basic Impede Sense (Hearing, Smell; Through Area), Advanced Impede Sense (Hearing, Smell; Through Area), Basic Impede Movement (Flight), Advanced Impede and Extend Movement (Excluding Flight, Limited to movements against/with the wind). And once the wind's strong enough for all that you can start in on Hazard effects. Seriously, wind can get nuts.

Radiation: Hamper X (Energy; Varies). Especially dangerous levels of radiation may also be Hazards.

Low Gravity: Advanced Bestow Movement X (Leaping), Basic Extend Projectiles X.

High Gravity: Advanced Impede Movement X, Basic Impede Projectiles X.

Zero Gravity: Basic Bestow Movement 28 (Flight, Restricted [Only to keep moving in a direction you were already moving]).

Diminished Space: Advanced Extend Movement X, Basic Extended Projectiles X, Basic Extend Sense X (All).

Extended Space: Advanced Impede Movement X, Basic Impede Projectiles X, Basic Impede Sense X (All).

Hazards: Especially dangerous environments or situations - such as falling, having a building collapse on you, molten lava, getting soaked in arctic weather, lightning bolts, tornadoes, and so on - are called Hazards. Hazards, for the most part, are simply Attack and/or Maneuver actions performed by the environment itself. Hazards have a rank, which is used for both the Hazard's Force stat and its rescaled Prowess skill. However, unlike normal attacks and maneuvers, Hazards do not make Accuracy checks or initial Prowess checks - they automatically hit. All Hazards have an attack mode. And especially dangerous Hazards may even have extras, while lesser ones may have flaws (such as Resistible [Defense] for those that can be dodged).

There are three types of Hazards. Immediate Hazards, which take effect once and are done. Onset Hazards, which allow a minute of exposure (more if you have the Stamina feature) before taking effect, and then repeat each round until the subject escapes. And Constant Hazards, which simply take effect each round until the subject escapes.

In many games, Hazards inflict lethal damage by default, even when characters do not. Even when they don't, though, Onset and Constant Hazards will just keep attacking every round, so once you're knocked out they could very well start inflicting lethal damage.

Some sample Hazards are below. However, and this is important, Hazards are situational, not tactical! What this means is, while it may be possible to force an enemy into a Hazard the exists (or trigger a hazard based on existing circumstances, such as causing a collapse by damaging a structure), you may not consistently generate Hazards using normal actions and powers so as to attack with an inflated rank, ignore your usual attack modes, and so on. The classic example would be using a Maneuver action to throw an enemy straight up into the air so as to trigger a fall - that doesn't work, but you may certainly perform a normal Attack that you describe as throwing the enemy into the air and causing it to fall. Now, on the other hand, if you're fighting on the edge of a cliff, that's a situational hazard that already exists in the scene, and you can absolutely use a Maneuver action to throw the enemy off and cause them to take excessive fall damage from their plummet.

Collapse [Immediate, Physical]: Attack (Dazing Tree; Additional [Restraining Tree]). Rank is equal to the Mass Rank of the collapse.

Dangerous Radiation [Onset, Energy]: Attack (Impairment Tree). Rank and extras can vary based on the radiation.

Falling [Immediate, Physical]: Attack (Injury Tree) Linked Maneuver (Trip). The rank is equal to 4 + twice the Distance Rank fallen, to a maximum of 16. Each two points of the Growth feature raises the rank of the fall (including its maximum) by 1, and each two points of the Shrinking feature reduces it by 1. Light or heavy gravity may also weaken or strengthen falls, and falls onto hazardous objects might add additional Extras.

Falling Object [Immediate, Physical]: Attack (Dazing Tree; Resistible [Defense Additional]). The rank is equal to the Mass Rank of the object + the Distance Rank the object has fallen. The bonus for Distance Rank caps at 6.

Lightning [Immediate, Energy]: Attack (Injury Tree; Additional 2 [Dazing Tree, Vulnerability Tree]). Rank is usually 10.

Molten Lava [Continuous, Energy]: Attack (Injury Tree; Brutal 2, Secondary Effect 3, Additional [Restraining Tree]). Rank is usually 12.

Suffocation [Onset, Physiological]: Attack (Impairment Tree). The rank begins at 1, and increases by 1 each round since onset.

Tornado [Continuous, Physical]: Attack (Dazing Tree) Linked Maneuver (Can potentially Grab, Trip, or Launch). Rank is at least 8.

Slam [Immediate, Physical]: Attack (Dazing and Injury trees). A slam occurs when characters or vehicles accidentally collide with each other (as always, hazards can't be used tactically; if you want to slam into someone intentionally, resolve it as a normal attack, or even as a Stunt with a Side Effect flaw). Both subjects are affected. The hazard's rank is the higher of the Force, Speed, or Mass rank of the subject that caused the collision, with a +1 bonus for each of the other two that are at least half that rank, and a +2 bonus for each that is the same rank. If the subjects were moving in the same direction, deduct the lower Speed rank from the hazard rank. If they were moving in opposite directions, use both subjects Force, Speed, and Mass to determine the rank. In the case of a vehicle, passengers also suffer the effects if the vehicle fails its Resistance check, but the rank is capped by twice the points the vehicle failed by.

Combat

Initiative

Unlike most scenes, in combat it can be especially important to know who hits first. At the start of combat, everybody rolls initiative to determine what order they act in during each round. This is generally a Prowess check. However, the Improved Initiative advantage can add to your initiative roll. Turns are taken in order from highest initiative to lowest, and once everyone has taken a turn, a new round begins at the top of the order. You may delay your turn until later if you wish; this doesn't change your initiative order in future turns, but you can't delay past the end of the round. If you wish, though, you can give up your turn entirely to change your place in the initiative order in following rounds to the top of the order.

By default, each character makes its own initiative roll. However, it is also possible to "group" initiative together so that one entire team acts, and then another team. In this case, just average the initiative modifiers for each group and roll once to see who goes first. Within a group, characters can resolve their actions in any order, or even split their turns up so they take one action, let some allies act, and then take remaining actions. When grouping initiative, you can't delay individual turns (and you'd never need to, since you can take them in any order), although you can give up your turn if you don't want to act in the current round.

A sort of "partial group" initiative is also doable, where the NPCs roll initiative as a group, and each PC rolls individually. Any PCs who beat the NPCs can act (in any order), then the NPCs act, then all PCs act, and it just alternates from there. So essentially, the PCs who beat the enemy group get one additional turn.

Automatic Initiative: If a character suddenly initiates hostilities with a direct attack when no one else is really expecting a fight to break out (such as a group teleporting in to attack, or someone throwing a punch in the middle of a negotiation), such characters receive automatic initiative - they simply go first, and then other initiative is resolved from there. If it's important, initiative can be rolled between those with automatic initiative. Note that the Seize Initiative advantage provides automatic initiative, so if you use it you can potentially go before even such sudden attacks.

The big rule here is that the enemies have to not be expecting it at all. If the enemies know you can teleport, and expect you to attack them (maybe because they've taken some hostages in your town), just teleporting in to attack won't get you automatic initiative. When an enemy knows (or at least strongly expects) that you're coming, the only way to get automatic initiative is to come from an angle they don't expect. But maybe if you teleport into the room they are keeping the hostages, and suddenly launch an attack from there...

Surprise: When you can catch an opponent entirely off-guard, you have a chance to achieve surprise. Typically, this is because you sneak up on it and don't reveal yourself until the moment of your attack. However, it can also be because the opponent believes you to be an ally (or at least, a non-threat) before you attack, or something else. You could even get a surprise round by being ready to fight and striking first when an enemy is expecting that they should be able to get a surprise round (such as spotting an ambush and moving in as if oblivious, only to suddenly attack). Surprise involves a few steps, which depending on which succeed may result in various degrees of surprise.

First, you have to qualify for automatic initiative. Obviously if the enemy expects your attack, you can't surprise them.

Then you have to make a check. Each character who is in a position to achieve surprise may roll a Stealth check against a passive DC of 11 + the highest Perception among your enemies. Stealth vs. Perception is the default, but depending on the approach, the GM may call for other checks; if you're pretending to be a non-threat or an ally and suddenly strike, it would be Deception vs. Insight, for example. If you succeed the check, then you get 40 HP worth of free surges which must be used during the first round of combat. These bonus surges represents the advantage of surprising your foes - you might use an Action surge to take an additional action while your enemies are trying to gather their wits, or Edit in some useful preparations, or get Inspiration to reflect having spent some time studying the enemy, add a Bonus to your opening attack, or so on. You can still only use one active surge per round, though.

In addition, each character who is in a position to be surprised must then roll a Perception check of its own. During the first round of combat, it is Vulnerable against any enemy whose Stealth check to achieve surprise it fails to at least equal. If it fails to meet or beat any of its opponents' checks, it is also considered Dazed during the first round of combat. As above, Perception and Stealth are the defaults, but other skills may be used depending on the approach.

Note that depending on how the rolls go, it is possible for some enemies to be caught Vulnerable even against characters who don't get the bonus surges, or for characters to get bonus surges but not catch some or even any of their enemies Vulnerable.

Surprise involves capitalizing on the opening, so a group can't simultaneously achieve surprise and be surprised; if two groups unexpectedly stumble upon each other and for whatever reason are immediately hostile, they just roll initiative normally. Likewise, you can't achieve surprise during a battle already in progress. You might be able to use Stealth to catch foes Vulnerable, and you can certainly hold your initial action until a choice point in the initiative order if your enemies are unaware of you, but an enemy already fighting is too on its guard for full surprise benefits to accrue.

Attacks

An attack is defined by three things. First is its delivery mode - how the attack is targeted at an opponent. Second is its attack mode - how the attack actually causes its effects to the target. And finally are its conditions - what sort of penalties it imposes upon the target.

Some forms of attack are available to pretty much anyone. Just about anybody can throw a punch, pick up something hard, sharp, or heavy and whack an enemy with it, or try to grab a foe, toss it around, or knock it to the ground. These basic forms of attack are all included in basic actions, and have specific, default delivery modes, attack modes, and conditions. However, in a game about people with superpowers, there is a much wider variety of ways to attack opponents.

A special attack lets you define the options an attack uses. You can acquire special attacks in two ways. First, any Attack power you possess is automatically defined as a special attack - you may assign its options when you purchase it. Second, you may purchase the Special Attack advantage, gaining one special attack that you can use with basic Attack actions each time you purchase it.

When creating your special attacks, you may use any delivery mode, attack mode, and conditions you deem appropriate to your character.

Delivery Modes

There are five different delivery modes, representing broad differences in how you can get a power to a target and how an unwilling target can avoid the power - in other words, what an Accuracy check means. The delivery modes also include some notes about what sort of characters might be better at avoiding such effects. This is not exclusive, nor is it automatic. Take these notes as suggestions for purposes of deciding if you might want some level of immunity to such delivery modes - for example, a speedster may wish to consider, but is not automatically granted nor required to take, some level of immunity to the Contact delivery mode.

The five delivery modes are as follows:

Afflict: The effect is delivered by for the most part supernatural means, without any real "physical" form to dodge or block. Realistically, there shouldn't really be any way for the target to actively defend barring some sort of active supernatural defense mode of their own...but smite realism, we're playing superheroes! An Afflict effect is generally felt by the target as a sort of encroaching "wrongness" that it can actively resist. This resistance tends to be physically reflected by sort of "tensing up" against the effect. Afflict delivery is for attacks that simply impose effects on others, such as magical curses or reality alterations, but really any superpower that simply does things to people can be represented by Afflict delivery.

While the "tense up" defense will work, the fact does remain that appropriate active defenses are likely going to do a better job. Characters with the means to actively detect and counter such supernatural effects - such as a wizard who can use countering spells to foil enemy curses - may be better at avoiding Afflict Delivery. Precognitive senses or similar capabilities may also prove helpful in detecting the threat early.

Defending against an Afflict-delivered attack requires no movement and partial focus - you need to be conscious, but not to actually move at all. Making an Afflict-delivered attack requires partial movement and full focus - the default for Afflict-delivered attacks is that they're primarily but not entirely mental actions, and generally require things like a wizard's chants and gestures, or hand motions to direct the power, or the like. Afflict-delivered attacks are not subject to Cover less than Total or to Concealment of any level - as long as the target is within range and you have some clear line of effect to it, you can afflict it just fine.

Contact: To deliver the effect, you have to get the source of the effect to make physical contact with the target, and generally, the more solid the contact the better. This can mean hitting someone with a fist or weapon, shooting them with a projectile, catching them in a grab or snaring them with a web, or even just touching them to deliver some nasty effect or hitting them with some ray or beam or whatever.

Characters with high speed - allowing them to dodge or block faster or more effectively - are often better at avoiding Contact delivery attacks, as are those with external defenses, such as forcefields, that can absorb the hit in their stead.

Defending against a Contact-delivered attack requires full movement and partial focus - you need to be able to dodge, block, maneuver, and so on. Making a Contact-delivered attack requires the same - you have to be able to aim, strike, and so on. Contact-delivered attacks are subject to Cover and Concealment - you can't hit what you can't see, and if your attack hits something else it'll likely be wasted on it.

Flash: The effect is delivered more-or-less instantaneously, generally either without some tangible effect to really "dodge" or simply manifesting instantly over an area so there's not really time to get out of the way. However, there's just enough warning to allow for defensive action immediately before it takes effect - such as holding one's breath before a gas grenade goes off, shielding one's eyes just before a sudden flash or light, steeling oneself against an oncoming pain wave, or even moving out of the target area before the attack is delivered. Flash delivery is most common for area attacks or for tangible effects that just suddenly appear all around the target.

Sheer speed is less important against Flash attacks than preparation, alertness, and reaction time, so characters with enhanced or precognitive senses, or keen tactical acumen, usually have the best defense against them.

Defending against a Flash-delivered attack requires partial movement and partial focus - you might need to drop to the ground, cover your ears, hold your breath, or the like. Making a Flash-delivered attack requires the same - you might have to meet the enemy's gaze, toss a grenade, or the like, so it doesn't take a lot of effort, but it takes some. Flash-delivered attacks are subject to Cover, but not Concealment - obstacles can block whatever's being delivered, but even when they're not full Area attacks Flash attacks tend to affect a small area around the target, so being unable to see them doesn't matter much, and while being surprised by a Flash attack can be a bad thing, being unable to see the attacker doesn't actually do much to impede a defense.

Impose: Similarly to Afflict, an Impose-delivered effect doesn't generally have an actual visible or physical source to "dodge" or "block", but it's something that can be consciously recognized and countered. Whether that means actively steeling one's will against a psychic invasion, recognizing an opponent's attempts to analyze your fighting style and switching up to counter it, or forcing yourself to disbelieve a traumatic phantasm or ignore a tantalizing sensation - Impose-delivered attacks are opposed in the mind.

Logic, willpower, and clarity of thought are the tools used to defend against Impose-delivered attacks. Characters with strong minds or extreme personal discipline are going to be the most resistant to effects delivered in this way.

Defending against an Impose-delivered attack requires no movement and full focus - it's all done in the mind, but it requires serious mental effort. Making an Impose-delivered attack requires the same, since it's a purely mental contest. Impose-delivered attacks are hindered if the subject has Concealment, but they don't catch targets Vulnerable if the attacker has Concealment, and are not subject to Cover less than Total - you need to be able to accurately perceive the target to affect it, but as long as you can do that, it doesn't matter what obstacles they try to hide behind or what your relative positions are as long as you have some clear line of effect to them, and the target being unaware of your position is irrelevant since it all happens in the mind.

Infuse: The effect is largely persistent or reactive, perhaps an aura or lingering zone, a pervasive stench, or the like. Many Infuse effects have extras to make them lasting - such as Aura or Zone Area, or Reaction - but they don't have to; if they don't, it simply requires some manner of intent to cause them to affect someone in their range. Defending against an Infuse attack is usually about dealing with it as you encounter it - you might hold your breath or plug your nose, steel yourself against pain, or the like. The difference between Infuse and Flash, though, is that Flash happens suddenly, whereas Impose is a persistent effect that you might blunder into, or that might just need some time to "build up" to affecting you.

Discipline, calmness, and endurance are key to defending against Infuse-delivered attacks. Characters who can shrug off hardships or calmly withstand difficult situations may have some level of immunity to them.

Defending against an Infuse-delivered attack requires neither movement nor focus - it can be done on instinct, even when paralyzed or unconscious. However, making them requires the same - the attack is already "there" so you don't really need to do anything major to make it affect someone, normally. Infuse-delivered attacks ignore Concealment for good or ill, but are subject to Cover, since the obstacle can shield the target from at least some measure of the effect.

Attack Modes

There are ten different attack modes, representing how an attack delivers its effects - or in other words, what a Resistance check means. As with delivery modes, certain characters may be better able to resist certain attack modes, but these are just suggestions for what sort of characters may wish to purchase some degree of immunity.

The ten attack modes are as follows:

Energy: Effects that have some sort of reaction in and of themselves that can cause damage or other results. These attacks can be due to directed energy, energetic reactions from physical substances, or even "negative" effects reflecting a lack of energy. Fire, cold, electricity, acid, light, darkness, sound, radiation, and so on are all examples of Energy attacks. However, this attack mode is specifically about energetic reactions - things like telekinetic force, gravity, or even just concussive energy blasts that are used to physically batter people or throw them around use the Physical attack mode (or perhaps Positional or Material if being used to force or restrict movement).

Resisting an Energy attack is about being able to physically withstand the forces at work, so characters who are extremely physically tough and hardy usually have the advantage. Armor that is shielded against energy is also strong, but characters who rely on more mundane armor may lack some protection against Energy attacks.

Material: The attack involves a physical material (or "solid" energy) that somehow hampers or interferes with the target. Be it trapping them in a dome of force, tying them up with ropes, binding them in webbing, or even just grabbing them physically, shoving them off-balance, or knocking them down.

Resisting a Material attack means you're able to just ignore the restriction, so strength and size are usually the driving factors, although you could also just get lucky and wind up in a position where it doesn't hinder you much (such as some webbing just splattering on your chest rather than binding your arms and legs).

Mental: The attack directly alters the target's mind or thoughts. This can range from psychic blasts and telepathic mind control to extreme emotional coercion.

Resisting a Mental effect involves the target's unconscious will withstanding your attack, keeping it from having too much psychological impact even if active mental defenses have been overcome, so the same strength of mind or will that helps you avoid Impose delivery will usually also be helpful in resisting Mental attacks.

Mystical: The attack affects the target in some entirely supernatural way. Laying magical curses on a target, attacking its spirit or aura, manipulating its luck or fate, rewriting its history, and so on. Basically, any sort of "weird" attack form that even might not seem to interact with the target directly in a normal way fits the Mystical attack mode.

Resisting a Mystical attack involves whatever metaphysical aspect of the target is being affected - its spirit, luck, fate, historical inertia, whatever - resisting the power brought to bear through its own metaphysical "mass". Characters touched by destiny, blessed by the divine, guarded by spirits, or otherwise metaphysically advantaged are usually harder to affect.

Physical: The attack involves physical forces - typically causing direct harm through the transfer of kinetic energy via high-speed physical impact. In other words, hitting things. However, physical attacks can also involve things like direct kinetic (or telekinetic) strikes, "concussive" energy blasts, gravity manipulation, and so on.

Resisting a Physical attack involves the target withstanding the force through sheer toughness, or at the very least "rolling with it" to minimize the harm caused. Raw physical durability, impervious armor, and the like are generally what you want to protect against Physical attacks, although a combination of raw speed and agility and amazing reflexes can also help.

Physiological: The attack affects the target's body on a more physiological level. Poison, disease, nervous or cellular attacks, blood loss, suffocation, fatigue, and so on are all examples of physiological attacks.

Resisting a Physiological effect involves the body's natural systems opposing the effect, or simply withstanding them through superior personal health (as distinct from raw physical toughness - having skin like iron won't protect from disease, but having a strong immune system absolutely will).

Positional: The attack alters the target's position or orientation in some way, leaving them at a disadvantage. Positional attacks often have reduced durations, although they don't have to - they may also make it a struggle to recover your position. Most undesired maneuvers count as Positional attacks. Knocking an enemy off-balance (or knocking them down), forcing them into a corner, maneuvering to expose their back, and so on are all examples of Positional attacks.

Resisting a Positional attack usually involves agility more than speed, although the latter can be a factor (and may especially be a factor in recovery). Being big, strong, heavy, or extremely stable can also help, as you become very hard to move against your will.

Sensory: The attack affects or works through the target's senses - blinding lights, deafening sounds, nauseating smells, entrancing beauty, and so on are all examples of sensory attacks.

Resisting a Sensory effect is usually a matter of tolerance; senses adapted to extreme inputs will generally resist sensory effects better. Of courses, having weaker senses in general that just can't pick up on the full measure of the effect can also help. Sensory attacks generally have the Sense-dependent flaw, discounting their PP costs at the cost of making it easier to block them by shielding one's senses.

Tactical: The attack is less about directly hampering the target, and more about gaining some personal tactical advantage over it. Many Tactical attacks have the Selfish flaw, meaning the conditions inflicted only apply against you, but they don't have to if your advantage can be shared with your allies. Tactical attacks include things like anticipating your opponent's actions, creating a cunning plan to overcome its defenses, or divining its weak points.

Resisting a Tactical effect is a function of cleverness, flexibility, and even unpredictability. Characters who are themselves tactical geniuses, or able to react quickly to changing circumstances and cover their weaknesses and openings, may be more resistant to Tactical attacks.

Transformative: The attack directly alters the target's form. This can mean outright shapeshifting, but it can also mean destructive transformations (such as transforming a portion of the target's body into something which really shouldn't be inside the body, or even transforming part of the target into "nothing" or dust or ash). Transformative powers are in many ways a more "physical" version of the same principles as Mystical powers.

Resisting a Transformative attack involves the target's resisting the transformation through semi-physical semi-metaphysical means - sheer personal toughness isn't really a factor, but a strong body can have an impact. However, characters who are, themselves, mutable in form are often highly resistant or even outright immune to hostile transformations (often, not always; in fact, some characters with highly mutable forms might be especially vulnerable to external transformations. It's often a matter of control.)

Conditions

Conditions are the effects that attacks inflict (although some other actions and situations may also impose conditions). All penalties imposed by conditions are considered condition penalties.

Conditions are assigned a tier from 0 to 4. Tier 0 conditions cause individually minor, but stackable, penalties, and are used to wear down targets who are able to resist more severe conditions. Tier 1 conditions impose a notable but not severe combat penalty. Tier 2 conditions cause a major combat penalty, significant enough that a character so afflicted should strongly consider escape or surrender if it lacks the opportunity to recover. Tier 3 conditions make it functionally impossible for the character to contribute effectively to further combat. Tier 4 conditions are generally especially powerful or composites of lower conditions.

Many conditions are grouped into related trees, each containing one condition of tiers 1 through 4, in order. Most special attacks simply impose conditions from a specific tree. You may build "custom trees" as well, picking and choosing different conditions for each tier. Even when using a custom tree though, effects that increase or reduce the tier of a condition always shift it based on its original tree. So you can have a custom tree that causes Vulnerable/Staggered/Paralyzed/Broken, for example, but if the character took Staggered and then reduced its tier back to 1, it would go down to Dazed.

In the case of rules that call out a specific condition, the character is assumed to have that condition if it has any higher-tier conditions from the same basic tree, even if it was imposed as part of a custom tree. So for example, if a rule calls out some special effect for Dazed characters, it also applies to Staggered, Stunned, and Unconscious characters.

Miscellaneous Conditions

The following conditions aren't part of any trees, although those of tier 1 or higher can be added to custom trees at the listed tier. Many game rules reference Bruises for simplicity, but any tier 0 condition imposed by an Attack action can be affected by any mechanic that refers to Bruises. Tier 0 conditions stack; they don't cause condition penalties.

Recovery

Unlike most effects, conditions can sometimes be removed early. This involves a process called recovery.

Removing Conditions: Characters remove conditions using a resource called Recovery Points. Recovery Points can be gained from Tenacity checks, the Speed Recovery action of the Treatment skill, Recovery Immunities, and certain power. Any time you gain Recovery Points, you can spend them to downgrade conditions. A tier 0 or tier 1 condition is removed entirely when it is downgraded. Higher-tier conditions get lowered by one tier, which can then be downgraded again later (or at the same time if you have enough Recovery Points). Downgrading a condition costs a number of Recovery Points equal to the 5 + 5 per tier of the condition.

You must remove all lower-tier conditions possessed of a given duration before you can remove any higher-tier conditions that have the same duration.

You don't keep a single "pool" of Recovery Points to spent - you spend them immediately to lower the number of points still required to downgrade a condition. For example, say you have two Bruises (5 RP each to remove) and a Stagger (15 RP to downgrade to Dazed). You get 18 Recovery Points. Those get used to remove both Bruises, and the other 8 go to the Stagger, which now only needs 7 more RP to downgrade. If you get 12 more RP next round, you lower the Staggered to Dazed and the remaining 5 RP lower the Dazed cost from 10 to 5. Next round you get 13 more RP, removing the Daze, but unless you've gained more conditions in the interim, the remaining 8 RP are simply lost.

Recovery Timing: You can only recover from certain types of conditions at certain times; any any given time, you may only spend your Recovery Points on conditions of a specific duration or lower. In addition, recovery only works against conditions imposed with Attack actions (or the equivalent, such as Hazards). Conditions imposed by other means can't be recovered from.

During an active scene, you may only recover from scene duration conditions. During a non-active scene or between scenes, you can recover from episode duration conditions. During downtime you can recover from adventure duration conditions.

Tenacity Checks: At the end of each turn, scene, or episode, you may make a Tenacity check to try to gain Recovery Points for conditions with the relevant duration. This is a non-action, and the check is made against a calculated DC of 16 for checks made at the end of a round, 21 for checks made at the end of a scene, and 26 for checks made at the end of an episode. In addition, any time an enemy hits you with an Attack action, it may set an active DC for your Tenacity check for that round equal to 11 + its own Tenacity.

If your Tenacity check succeeds, you gain 10 Recovery Points, plus one additional Recovery Point per point of success. However, if you have a tier 3 or higher condition, you cannot gain Recovery Points for successful Tenacity checks at the end of each round.

Lethal Damage

By default, attacks are assumed to deal nonlethal damage - they won't kill or permanently injure characters. This assumption is even made for attacks that would normally be very capable of causing lethal harm, such as blades and bullets. However, some attacks may be able to cause lethal damage instead.

When an attack deals lethal damage, it has three advantages. First, lethal conditions cost twice as many RP to remove early.

Second, if the Resistance check against the attack comes up as a natural 1, the target must roll it again. A success causes no further effect, but a failure adds any points of failure to the original check's points of failure to determine the total degree of failure. A natural 1 on this resistance check requires another reroll, and so on. Even worse, if the attack has the Improved Critical advantage, its ranks are added to the natural result that triggers these additional rolls (so with Improved Critical 2, you have to roll again on a natural 1-3). Immunity to Critical Hits negates this hazard.

Finally, if the target fails its Resistance check against the attack by two degrees, it becomes Dying in addition to any other conditions inflicted. If the target fails by three degrees, it instead becomes Critical. If the target fails its Resistance check against a lethal attack by four or more degrees, it dies instantly.

Inflicting Lethal Damage: How easy lethal damage is to inflict varies by game, but three options are suggested here. Note, however, that in all cases these rules are for when PCs are involved - PCs are being attacked or making the attacks. For NPC vs. NPC, lethal damage can freely be inflicted at GM discretion.

Four Color: Lethal damage is extremely rare and dramatic. All forms of damage are assumed nonlethal outside of explicit GM Fiat for something completely unsurvivable. Even when a character is explicitly subject to lethal damage, such as while Defenseless or Wounded, it only suffers lethal damage if the attacker specifically chooses to inflict it. In any scene where an enemy even attempts to inflict lethal damage upon a PC, that PC receives 40 Hero Points immediately (and this cannot be invoked by Fiat - the PC must already be susceptible to lethal damage due to being Defenseless, Wounded, etc). PCs should be extremely discouraged from attempting to inflict lethal damage, and if they do so, and especially if they successfully kill an opponent, there should be major role-playing and reputational backlash. A hero killing someone would be a horrific and extremely rare event.

Modern: Lethal damage is uncommon, but not actually difficult to achieve. Attacks are nonlethal by default. Environmental hazards with a Force of 5 or higher default to lethal, however, and any incidental attacks received while subject to lethal damage (such as Secondary Effects or Area attacks) are automatically lethal if they have a Force of 5 or higher, unless Precise (in which case the attacker can still choose to keep them nonlethal). Direct targeted attacks against characters subject to lethal damage are still nonlethal unless the attacker chooses otherwise. PCs who are subject to lethal damage can be targeted with it without any Hero Points awarded. In some cases, certain especially vulnerable opponents may be automatically subject to lethal damage at GM discretion unless the attack has the Precise extra or the character holds back (-2 Force for the attack). A character can also choose to use lethal force, making its attacks lethal even against characters who wouldn't normally be subject to lethal damage from its attacks. In any scene that a PC is attacked by one or more characters doing so, it receives 20 Hero Points at the end of the scene as a complication. If a PC chooses to use lethal force during a scene, it does not receive any Hero Points for enemies doing so. Use of lethal force should be an option of last resort, and may draw greater than average role playing or reputational backlash, especially if clear need wasn't established. In general, the populace probably expects that deaths in superheroic combat are rare, probably far moreso than for police or soldiers, but they can happen.

Gritty: Lethal damage is the norm. All attacks with a Force of 0 or higher deal lethal damage automatically. Attacks with a Force from -1 to -3 are usually nonlethal, but cause lethal damage if they generally pierce the body (such as sharp-force trauma or ballistic attacks), or if they are an attack form the target has a specific weakness to. Attacks with a Force of -4 or less are nonlethal. The Precise extra lets you choose whether you inflict lethal or nonlethal damage with an attack. Killing is treated more-or-less like it is in the real world - a serious matter and certainly not something that's likely to be tolerated wantonly, but if an authorized superhero kills a dangerous supervillain in the heat of battle, it's not much different than a police officer killing an armed suspect in a shootout or a soldier killing an enemy combatant in a war. When superheroes and supervillains fight, nobody will be particularly surprised if deaths result.

Actions

Aid: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Round. Maintenance: None.

You can help an ally perform a task. Roll a check using the same stat as the ally is using (at GM discretion, you might be able to use another relevant stat, such as performing a "good cop bad cop" routine with Intimidation and Persuasion), against a calculated DC of 6 + the ally's stat. If you succeed by one degree, you grant a +2 circumstance bonus to their stat for a set duration of one round. If you succeed by three or more degrees, the bonus becomes +5. Multiple Aid actions to the same stat stack degrees of success, not points of bonus awarded. Once the character performs an action that benefits from the bonus, any maintenance of this effect automatically ends and the duration expires.

If an action involves multiple stats (such as Attack using both Accuracy and Force) you can boost any one of them (the Additional Extra on an Aid power could let you boost more). You use the same stat as you are trying to boost - you can't use Accuracy to boost an ally's Force, for example.

You may only aid actual actions - for example, you can't aid an ally's defenses, resistance checks, or Tenacity checks (but the Defend action can help with the first two, and Treatment can be used to help an ally recover from conditions faster). You also can't aid passive DCs set by the ally, though you could aid actions that set active DCs.

To Aid an action, you must be in a position to take the same action yourself and coordinate with or otherwise assist your ally in doing so, but you can use different powers and effects to do so (for example, a telepath could Aid a paragon's punch by distracting its target with a psychic blast). The aid action has the same base type, class, range, and requirement parameters as the action you are aiding, although powers can modify these normally. You may Aid all types of actions, including downtime actions.

The Aid effect allows you to add extras to your Aid actions. In addition, any power that can apply to the base action you are aiding can likewise apply to Aid actions in support of it.

Inverse Aid: In some cases, characters can perform inverse aid, where one character leads an effort that normally, everyone would have to do individually. In these cases, everyone takes the action normally, but only one character (whoever has the best stat) rolls the check, and its results apply to the entire group. All other characters roll Aid checks, but they don't grant any bonuses. Rather, for each character that fails, the main character takes -2 on its check.

Inverse aid generally shouldn't be used where individual efforts would otherwise all contribute towards a goal or characters can work together to do the job better. Rather, it is used where normally everyone would progress separately, but one character failing could cause a setback for the entire group. Sneaking through an enemy lair with Stealth, making your way through difficult terrain with Prowess, or using Deception to all go undercover in a hostile environment, are examples where inverse aid should be used rather than resolving each character's efforts individually.

Attack: Type: Standard. Class: Active. Range: Close. Requirements: Varies, but typically full movement and partial focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You attack a target in close range. A default Attack action uses the Contact delivery mode and the Physical attack mode, and as such requires full movement and partial focus. However, if you have special attacks, you can use one of them instead, replacing the delivery and attack mode and thereby changing the requirements. All conditions inflicted by the Attack action default to scene duration.

Make an attack roll using your Accuracy stat against an active DC of 11 + the target's Defense Stat. If you hit, unless the target is immune to the attack entirely, the target automatically receives one Tag (that is, an instance of the Tagged condition) per degree of success, to represent the opening in its defenses.

The target then makes a Resistance check against a passive DC of 11 + your Force stat. If it succeeds by at least two degrees, it suffers no further effect. If it succeeds, but only by one degree, it also suffers one Bruise per degree of success on your initial attack check. If it fails, it takes the Bruise(s) and suffers a condition from the Dazing tree of a tier equal to the degree of failure. Again, if you have any special attacks, you may use them to inflict conditions from their tree rather than the Dazing tree. If the attack inflicts lethal damage, it causes conditions from the Injury tree rather than the Dazing tree.

If the target suffers Bruises, you may replace any Bruises or Tags inflicted with other tier 0 conditions of your choice. You can't "double up" on the same condition, though you may mix-and-match. So if you get two degrees of success on your Accuracy check, you could inflict the normal 2 Tags and 2 Bruises, or 1 Tag, 1 Bruise, and 2 Hampers, or 1 Tag, 1 Hamper, 1 Sap, and 1 Hindrance, or 2 Muffles and 2 Disruptions, etc. But you couldn't inflict more than 2 of any given tier 0 condition. If the target doesn't suffer Bruises, you can't convert Tags to other conditions; all you can do against an enemy that resisted that well is open their defenses up.

If you impose a condition that the target already has (from an Attack power, not other sources) and that is part of a base condition tree, they combine together, becoming a single instance of the next higher-tier condition in the tree (so if you Daze an already Dazed target, it becomes Staggered, Stagger an already Staggered target and it becomes Stunned). This only applies if it's the exact same condition, although the Cumulative extra offers more flexibility. The conditions must have the same duration to do this; otherwise the higher duration condition simply overlaps the lower duration one, removing it. If you wish, rather than combining them to a higher tier, you can leave the condition the same but increase its duration by one step. Finally, this only works if both conditions are individual, not if one is part of a more complex condition. For example, you could stack Restricted with Restricted to get Bound, and Dazed with Dazed to get Staggered, but you couldn't stack the Dazed portion of Restricted with a regular Dazed to get some weird hybrid "Restricted but Staggered rather than Dazed" thing.

A character may only be subject to one condition from a given tree at any one time. Lower-tier conditions of the same tree are overwritten. The one exception is if the character has or receives a lower-tier condition with a higher duration; in that case, when the lower duration, higher-tier condition is removed, it only downgrades to the lower-tier one (unless whatever removed it would have also removed the lower one). For example, if a character who has an episode duration Daze receives a scene duration Stagger, it might be noted as: Staggered (Scene; Dazed Episode). So when the scene duration Stagger ends, the episode duration Daze picks back up.

The Attack effect allows you to make Attacks with Extras applied (and each Attack power you possess is, itself, a special attack).

Attacking Objects: Characters get a +5 heroic bonus on attacks made against inanimate, unattended objects.

Charge: You can charge at an enemy in a more reckless attack. You take a -2 penalty to Defense until the start of your next turn, but you may move up to your speed before making the attack. You must be able to move in a relatively straight line to charge, and you must be able to accurately perceive your target from your starting point. If you have the Move-by Action advantage, you can keep moving past the enemy with remaining movement after attacking, but you must continue the relatively straight line of the charge.

Critical Hits: If an attack rolls a natural 20, you may choose to forego the critical bonus to the check to inflict a critical hit. If you do so, the attack gets a +5 critical bonus to its DC. Alternately, you can forego this bonus to use Extra Effort without accumulating fatigue. This still counts as your 1/round use of Extra Effort. Your Extra Effort may only be something that directly affects your target - so you could power stunt a different attack power, or take another action that targets that opponent, but you couldn't recover from a condition affecting you or take another action that targets someone else.


Counter: Type: Varies. Class: Reaction. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You attempt to prevent an action as it is being performed. A Counter has the same type, range, and requirements as the action you are trying to counter, and functions as if you were performing that action. However, the action gains the reaction class, and the counter negates the effects of the action against its targets, rather than imposing it upon them. You must declare your Counter immediately after the initial action is declared. The Counter action can also be modified by any powers that can apply to the action you are countering. So if you are countering an Attack, you can apply an Attack power you possess to your Counter action. Note that you target the character you wish to protect, not the action itself or the character performing it.

Roll a check using the same stat or skill as the action you are countering calls for (this is Accuracy when countering attacks, since Accuracy is the stat used in the check), against an active DC equal to the check result of the character performing the action. If it did not roll a check, the DC is 11 + its stat or skill. If you succeed, the target of your counter ignores the action.

You may also use the Counter action to end the maintenance or duration of a power effect, or to prevent any further repetitions of its effect. You can't undo the results of powered actions, but you can end the effect itself - for example, removing a Bestow power, ending a Defend power, negating a Zone Area Attack, preventing Secondary Effects or Homing powers from repeating, etc. In this case, the Counter is a one-shot standard action. To do it, you yourself must have a power that is appropriately opposed to the power you are countering. For example, you might put out a fire with a blast of wind, water, or cold, or by using a flame control power of your own to diminish the flames. You might spray chaff to disrupt a heat-seeking missile, or turn it away with technopathy. And so on. While creativity is encouraged, if you can't come up with a reasonable way to counter the power with your own, you can't make the attempt. If the power is active on multiple targets, you only negate it for the target of your Counter.

You may also use the Nullify effect to make Counters with extras applied against any valid action.

Clashes: A Clash is a special type of counter that is only used to negate Attack actions. It doesn't target the people you are protecting - it targets the incoming attack itself. And unlike most counters against attacks, it involves Force rather than Accuracy. Your counter clashes violently with the enemy's attack. This could reflect two fighters locking blades, a beam war, an intense psychic duel, or the like. The original Attack action has its Accuracy and Force stats replaced by your own if yours are higher. Any extras that applied to your Counter are added to the attack, and the Selective extra is removed from it. The modified attack is now considered the clash attack.

You don't make a normal Counter roll. Rather, both you and the original attacker roll a Force check. If you succeed by at least two degrees, the upgraded attack doesn't just fail, it is retargeted at the original attacker. If you fail by at least two degrees, the attack targets you. If the clash attack has an Area that the original attack didn't, the area is focused or centered on the main target.

If your rolls are within four points of each other, but not a tie, the clash attack gains in strength but does not resolve. Increase it's Accuracy and Force stats by half the difference; round Accuracy increases down and Force increases up. This is a true bonus.

If the roll is a tie, the clash attacks both you and the original attacker.

At the end of the round, and of each round thereafter until the clash attack is made, repeat the opposed Force check with the same results.

Maintaining a clash takes effort. Both characters involved must spend an action on their turn to maintain the clash. Normally, this must be a full action. If it's a standard action, you take -2 on your roll at the end of the round. If it's a move action, you take -5. If it's a free action you take -10. And if you don't spend an action at all, your roll is treated as an automatic total result of -10. You don't have to start spending actions until you've regained the actions that initially resulted in the clash (typically next round, possibly the round after next for the character who performed the clash, since the reaction spends its next turn's action).

Characters involved in a clash get a bonus to Defense equal to the clash's bonus to Accuracy, and a bonus to Resistance equal to the clash's bonus to Force, against other attacks while the clash lasts.

Additional characters may assist a clash using the Aid action to boost the Force checks of either target.

Clashes are dangerous and unpredictable, pure power vs. power counters, not reliable tactical actions. Trying to coordinate a clash with an ally so as to somehow catch a third party with an overpowered area effect or the like is likely to fail catastrophically at the GM's discretion.

Defend: Type: Standard. Class: Active. Range: Close. Requirements: Special. Duration: Round (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

When you Defend, roll a d20 and add your Defense stat. If the result is higher than the normal DC to hit you, the result is now the DC to hit you for the rest of the round. If not, instead add your Resistance stat to base die roll; the result is now your minimum possible result on Resistance checks for the rest of the round.

Defending also causes you to treat lethal damage as nonlethal.

If your target does not fail any Resistance checks during a round that you make a basic Defend action, unmodified by any powers, you may Defend it again next round as a free action, as your opponents fail to knock you off your guard. This opportunity continues until your target fails a Resistance check or you Defend someone else.

The Defend effect allows you to add extras to your Defend actions.

Defending Allies: You may Defend for another character in close range, rather than for yourself, providing them the full benefits of the Defend action. When doing so, your Defense and Resistance stats are capped by the higher of your Power Level or the target's relevant stat, and receive any penalties intentionally taken by the target to its own Defense and Resistance stats. Penalties or hindrances imposed on the target by others do not apply, although those on yourself still do.

Interpose: Type: Free. Class: Reaction. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You attempt to defend an ally (or noncombatant) who has been hit by an attack. As part of interposing, you can move up to your speed; you must end within close range of the attack's target to interpose. If you can't get into close range of the target, but can get between the target and the attacker, you can still perform a partial interpose.

Roll a Defense check against an active DC equal to the attacker's attack check. If you succeed, the original target is no longer targeted by the attack, and you may displace it to a new position in close range of you. The attacker may choose to target you instead or to forego the attack. If you succeed by two degrees, you may force the attacker to target you if you wish. The attacker does not roll again or make any new choices; it simply resolves the attack as if you were the original target. This may still mean you get hit; your Defense roll does not replace the normal DC to hit you.

If you fail to beat the active DC, you might still be able to perform a partial Interpose. If your check beat the DC required to hit your ally, you get in the way of the attack, although a Selective or Phasing attack might ignore you. The attack hits you instead of your ally; your active defenses have no impact, and results are still based on a comparison to the ally's Defense. However, you roll the Resistance check against the attack, and any conditions the ally has that would worsen its effects don't apply (although conditions you have might!)

If you fail to beat either DC, the attacker can choose whether it hits you or the original target, and you may not Interpose again for the rest of the round.

If the attack already targeted you, you suffer both effects. In theory, you may be able to Interpose for multiple allies against the same attack if you can qualify for it, but this means you take the attack for each one!

The check to Interpose counts as a Resistance check for purposes of improving it with surges. In addition, if you do improve the Interpose check with a surge, the same surge also applies to your Resistance check against the attack. You get a +10 heroic bonus on checks to Interpose for innocent bystanders, much weaker NPC allies (such as low-level police officers), and any NPC who you have an established positive relationship with from your background or complications.

Maneuver: Type: Move. Class: Active. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None unless otherwise noted.

You may perform one of the following maneuvers as a move action. You may also roll a Prowess check against a calculated DC of 16; if it succeeds, you may perform one additional maneuver per degree of success.

In some cases, terrain, obstacles, or even other characters may be interfering with your movement or with certain types of maneuvers. In this case, you have to make a Prowess check to maneuver at all. The DC is usually a set DC based on the circumstances, or an active DC set by interfering opponents. If you succeed, you can make one maneuver per degree of success (if the DC is below 16, you still need to beat DC 16 to get additional maneuvers).

If you wish to affect an unwilling target with a maneuver, your Prowess check must beat a passive DC of 11 + the target's Prowess, and the target may negate the attempt with a rescaled Prowess check against a passive DC of 11 + your rescaled Prowess. This is considered an attack using the Contact delivery mode and the Positional attack mode. Both active and passive immunities can potentially apply, treating the regular Prowess check as an Accuracy check and the rescaled one as a Resistance check. You can only affect a given target with a maximum number of maneuvers equal to the degrees by which you beat its passive DC.

Most maneuvers are considered "basic" maneuvers, but a few are listed as "advanced" maneuvers. You must increase the action type of the Maneuver action by one step (so, making it a standard action) to perform an advanced maneuver, and most other actions and options that allow you to perform maneuvers only allow basic maneuvers. You may only use one advanced maneuver per action, regardless of the number of maneuvers you can perform in that action.

Some maneuvers can be performed as reactions as well; in this case, you perform the Maneuver action as a reaction (using up your next round's move action as normal), but may only use maneuvers specified as reactions. Alternately, when you perform a Maneuver action normally, you can "save" one or more available maneuvers to use for reaction maneuvers before your next turn; in this case, they don't interfere with your next turn's actions at all.

Finally, some maneuvers have a maintenance type listed; you can maintain them normally, but you must remain within range of your target to maintain them. If at any point the target is no longer within range from your current position, maintenance immediately ends. Ending maintenance on a maneuver instantly ends the duration. You can maintain multiple maneuvers with one action, unlike most maintained actions.

The Exert power allows you to perform Maneuver actions with extras attached.

Catch (Reaction): You can catch a launched or falling target. You must be strong enough to lift the target as a light load. Your Prowess check must beat a calculated DC of 1 + twice the Speed rank the target is moving at (treat the Speed rank of falling characters as equal to the Distance rank fallen, to a max of 5). If the target was being launched as an attack, you must also beat an active DC equal to the attacker's attack roll. If you succeed, you catch the target; for objects, you are now attending it. For characters, you are holding them, and you negate any Disrupt, Trip, or Unbalance maneuvers that were performed as part of the same action.

If the target was falling, or launched as an attack, you may lower the Force of the attack by 4, and then divide the remainder among the two of you however you choose (if the Force becomes negative, you just choose which of you resists it). Each additional Catch maneuver applied lowers the Force by an additional 4. If the Force goes below -5, it causes no harm whatsoever.

Disarm: Cause an opponent to drop a held or loosely worn item (i.e. an object with the Removable [Disarm] limit). In the same maneuver, you can either pick up the object, pass it off to an ally, or launch it up to a Distance rank equal to your Strength rank minus its Mass rank. This maneuver targets the object, but the object defends as if it were the character attending it. If the target has multiple such objects, you may disarm all of them simultaneously unless they have the Individual feature. If they do, you must spend a separate maneuver to disarm each one.

Disrupt (Sustained): You put the target at a disadvantage, causing two tier 0 conditions of your choice (they may both be the same condition).

Drag: Bring one or more targets with you when you move (this does require a separate maneuver to actually move though). You can move as many targets as you can carry in this way, and if you are fast enough, you can break up your movement, running back and forth to collect new targets, deposit them at a new location, and then go back for others. You don't need to use this maneuver to bring along targets you are already grabbing or holding.

Escape: End the maintenance of one maneuver on yourself or a target. Your Prowess check must beat an active DC of 11 + the Prowess of the character maintaining the maneuver.

Grab (Advanced, Sustained): You attempt to grab hold of the target. This combines the effects of both an Interfere and Unbalance maneuver, but has Sustained maintenance and uses the Material attack mode rather than Positional. You must remain within range of your target to maintain the grab. In addition, your weight is counted against your target's carrying limits, which may cause it to be Immobilized; its weight also counts against yours unless the grab is ranged or you have the Improved Grab advantage. Either of you may substitute your Strength rank for your Mass rank when determining the weight applied. Even if the target can still move, you automatically move with it when it moves (and it can move with you when you move, if you are strong enough to carry it).

While a target is grabbed, you may spend maneuvers to inflict tier 0 conditions upon it without making attack rolls. Each maneuver spent imposes one tier 0 condition, with a scene duration. The target may make a Resistance check, DC 16 + your Force stat, to resist the conditions. Degrees of failure on this Resistance check have no further effect. This is considered an attack with the Contact delivery mode and Physical attack mode.

If you spend three maneuvers rather than one to initiate a Grab, or successfully perform a Grab on an opponent you have already grabbed, it becomes Bound rather than Restrained. This only works if your Grab has rendered the target Immobilized due to effective weight.

Interfere (Reaction, Attention): Choose a target, which may be yourself, another character, an object, or an area. In the case of an area, at base it covers an area of whatever you can reach, but you can extend its distance by a Distance rank equal to your Speed rank, either halved (rounded down) or reduced by one per dimension you are extending, whichever results in the lower total. For example, if you're Speed 10, you can target a 900' line, a 120' square, or (assuming you can fly or otherwise move vertically freely) a 60' cube.

You may interfere with any or all Maneuver actions that involve the target at all - those it makes, those made against it, those made upon it, those made to get near it or pass through it, etc. You can also interfere with any free actions that involve moving or manipulating the target - so you can interfere with attempts to, say, push a button or open a door. You don't have to interfere with any given Maneuver; you can interfere with an enemy's own maneuvers while letting through an ally's attempt to maneuver the target into a worse position, for example. Your Prowess check for this Maneuver action becomes an active DC for any maneuvers you interfere with.

Characters with Strength ranks that exceed your own reduce the active DC by 5 per Strength rank higher for purposes of actually moving or otherwise getting past you - leverage and finesse can make up for a lot, but someone much stronger than you is still probably going to blow right through you. Other purposes, such as keeping them away from a character or object, are unmodified, since you can maneuver the subject away from them rather than trying to check their own movements.

Jump: You jump up to a maximum Distance rank equal to the lower of your Strength rank or your Speed rank, minus your Mass rank. Jumping counts as movement for purposes of top speed. If you spend a maneuver moving prior to jumping, you double the distance. Your jumping height is up to one-fifth your jumping distance.

Launch: You send the target flying up to a Distance rank equal to the points you succeeded by minus 2. The maximum distance you can launch a target is your Strength rank minus its Mass rank (if the target isn't resisting and nothing else is setting a DC, you can simply launch the target the full distance). Launches are generally imprecise; the target can end up anywhere within the Distance rank you're launching them in roughly the direction you launched them. To place a target fairly precisely, halve the points of success for determining Distance rank, and your Prowess check must beat a calculated DC of 8 + twice the Distance rank. The target is effectively launched at a Speed rank equal to the Distance rank.

As an advanced maneuver, you can make an Attack action with the launched target when launching precisely. First, make the launch attempt, further capping the Distance rank you can launch the target by your Range rank. If you succeed to launch the target all the way to a second target, make an Attack against that target, which is considered ranged. This attack uses the Contact delivery mode, and either uses the Physical attack mode and causes conditions of the Dazing tree, the Positional attack mode and conditions of the Vulnerability tree, or the Material attack mode and conditions of the Restraining tree. If the attack hits, both the launched target and the attack target must make Resistance checks. If a target fails its Resistance check, you may exchange two tier 0 conditions that attack would otherwise inflict to instead affect that target with a Disarm, Disrupt, Trip, or Unbalance maneuver.

Move: Move up to your speed.

Pick Up: Pick up an unattended object. You may pass it off to an ally in range in the same maneuver if desired.

Stand: Remove the Prone condition from yourself or a target.

Trip: Impose the Prone condition upon a target (becoming prone yourself is a free action).

Unbalance (Sustained): You put the opponent in a poor position, causing it to function as Restrained.

Manipulate: Type: Standard or Move. Class: Basic. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Round (1 round per degree of success). Maintenance: None.

You can use your interaction skills to briefly mess with opponents. Doing so is a standard action, but you can make the attempt as a move action by taking a -5 penalty on the roll. Roll a check with one of your rescaled interaction skills (Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion). The DC is 11 + the target's rescaled Insight, or the same rescaled skill as you used. Manipulate actions are considered attacks which use the Impose delivery mode and the Mental attack mode.

You can manipulate groups by taking a penalty on your roll. Manipulating a group of characters three or more ranks below you can be done freely. A group only two or more ranks below imposes -2 penalty. A group one or more rank below is -5. A group of characters that includes those of equal rank imposes -2 per target of equal rank, with a minimum total penalty of -5. You can't manipulate multiple targets in the same action as you try to manipulate a target of higher rank than you. In a mixed group, use the highest penalty.

A success on your check imposes a condition or hindrance based on the social skill used, which lasts for one round per degree of success, and only applies against you.

Deception can impose Vulnerable against you. Intimidation can imposed Impaired for all checks made against you. Persuasion can impose Weakened against you. (The Set Up advantage lets you specify other characters in place of "you").

In addition to the above conditions, each interaction skill has a special option that they can use Manipulate for, described in that skill. Also, especially high degrees of success can force opponents to surrender, flee, stand down, or otherwise cease combat. The number of total degrees required is 3 for opponents at least three ranks lower than you, 5 for opponents of lower rank, 8 for opponents of equal rank, plus 2 per rank higher. For each of the following advantages your side has (at the moment, counting only characters who are not currently suffering from tier 3 or higher conditions), lower the required degrees by one; for each that the opposing side has, increase the required degrees by two:
-Outnumbers the opposing side at least 2:1.
-Has a significant advantage of power over the opposing side.
-Has a clearly superior tactical position over the opposing side.
-Opposing side has received substantially more damage (or other hindrance).
-At least one person on the side has performed a particularly impressive feat (such as dropping a powerful opponent) in the past round.

Characters of rank four or higher are never required to cease combat due to a Manipulate action, but if one succeeds by the necessary threshold, it might mean it's a sensible idea.

The Illusion effect allows you to make Manipulate actions with extras applied.

Outclass: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Movement varies, full focus. Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained.

You use your skills to gain an advantage over those of lesser ability. Roll a skill check using a skill of your choice and retain the result. You gain an edge with that skill over anyone whose DC your check beats; the passive DC for any given character is 11 + that character's opposing skill. You also set an active DC for Outclass attempts against you that use the opposing skill, equal to your total check result + 1 (so if you tie an opponent, neither of you have advantage over the other). If you gain an edge over an opponent, you learn their current DC so you can judge how willing you are to spend points.

Each skill has its own benefits when you have an edge over others, defined in that skill's entry in the Skills chapter. Some options may require you to "spend" points of your edge, effectively lowering your check result going forward; doing this is a non-action. This also lowers the active DC. Once you spend enough points to go below a given character's DC, you lose your edge. Likewise, if they attempt an Outclass action that sets their DC equal to or higher than your check result, you lose your edge.

Certain options may also vary based on your "degree of edge", the number of degrees of success by which your current check total beats the target DC by. Your degree of edge may lower as you spend points of edge.

Since characters of lower rank halve points of success and double points of failure, they double the cost to use edge options that cost points. Characters of higher rank halve such costs against their lessers.

If you wish, you may expend your Outclass action to try to lessen an opponent's edge. By ending maintenance on the action, choose one opponent whose passive DC your check is higher than, regardless of if you are higher than its active DC. Its check result (for an Outclass action with the opposing skill) is reduced by 2 per degree higher. You may divide these points of reduction among multiple opponents with equal or lower DCs.

Outclass is not a one-shot action; you may make new attempts whenever you have actions to spend. Multiple Outclass attempts with the same skill don't stack; the new roll replaces the old one and maintenance of the old one ends (though you can use this end of maintenance to lower opponent results as above).

Deception requires no movement and is opposed by Insight.
Expertise require partial movement and is opposed by Expertise.
Insight requires no movement and is opposed by Deception.
Intimidation requires partial movement and can be opposed by either Intimidation or Persuasion.
Investigation requires no movement and is opposed by Investigation.
Perception requires no movement and is opposed by Stealth.
Persuasion requires partial movement and can be opposed by either Persuasion or Intimidation.
Prowess requires full movement and is opposed by Prowess.
Stealth requires partial movement and is opposed by Perception.
Treatment requires full movement and is opposed by Treatment.

Ready: Type: Varies. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: Round (Fixed). Maintenance: Attention.

You can hold an action until a specific trigger occurs, and then act in response to that trigger as an instant reaction (which interrupts the provoking action). Doing this requires spending an action of the same type you wish to perform in response, so readying an Attack is a standard action, for example. This requires full focus in itself, but no movement; however, actually performing the action requires all its normal requirements. Maintenance automatically ends as soon as you take the reaction.

If your readied action is an attack, affects the character who triggered it in some way, and both successfully hits and the target suffers at least a Bruise, the triggering character loses the action it was trying to perform. Alternately, you can forego preventing their action to immediately re-ready the action as a free reaction, allowing it to trigger again later in the round.

Readying does not change your place in the initiative order.

Stance: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial focus. Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained.

You can take up a stance that gives you a constant benefit. A character may only be in one stance at a time (though the Additional extra can expand this), and can only change stance once per round. Taking a stance, changing a stance, or leaving a stance is a move action.

You may choose a default stance if you wish, and you may also change your stance between scenes. Changing stance only requires an action when you actually do it during a scene.

Maintaining a stance requires non-trivial effort, increasing any set DCs the character has to roll against by 5 as a Distraction modifier, except for skills used by the stance (for example, if using the Blend In stance, you wouldn't increase any set DCs for Stealth checks).

Accurate Attack: While in this stance, in any round that you make an Attack action, you can take up to a -2 penalty on the Force of the attack to gain an equal bonus to its Accuracy.

Active Defense: While in this stance, in any round that you are targeted by an Attack action, you can take up to a -2 penalty on your Resistance against attacks to gain an equal bonus to your Defense against attacks.

Defensive Attack: While in this stance, in any round that you make an Attack action, you can take up to a -2 penalty on the Accuracy and/or Force of the attack to gain an equal bonus to your Defense and/or Resistance until the start of your next turn.

Defiant: While in this stance, you get 5 additional Recovery Points from successful Tenacity checks.

Let's Talk: While in this stance, you are not subject to automatic initiative from people you are in conversation with, but also cannot gain automatic initiative against them. When someone else initiates hostilities against you or your allies, you may add your Persuasion rank to your initiative roll. If this allows you to act before your enemies, you may take a single bonus action of any action type that uses an interaction skill before taking your normal combat turn. You retain the heightened initiative for your regular turn as well, and potential enemies are considered aware of this stance, so it may discourage enemies from being the ones to initiate hostilities, knowing you will get a substantial initiative bonus if they do.

On Alert: While in this stance, any passive DCs set by your Perception skill increase by 5.

On Guard: While in this stance, you are not subject to surprise or to automatic initiative. If neither of those would apply against you at the start of combat, you also get a +5 circumstance bonus on your initiative check.

Poker Face: While in this stance, you get a +5 circumstance bonus on Deception for purposes of setting passive DCs against Insight checks.

Power Attack: While in this stance, in any round that you make an Attack action, you can take up to a -2 penalty on the Accuracy of the attack to gain an equal bonus to its Force.

Prepared: Any upgrades you have with the Activation limit default to on rather than off. However, if activating any of the upgrades would normally require a higher action cost than move, that is the action cost you must pay to change your stance from this one.

Reckless Defense: While in this stance, any time you make an Attack action, you may expose yourself to additional danger to gain an immediate advantage. You may take up one Tag and/or one Bruise automatically, with scene duration. If you take a Tag, you get +2 to your Accuracy for the attack. If you take a Bruise, you get +2 to your Force. You may not use Reckless Defense when making an Unanswerable Attack, and note that Tags and Bruises received in this way count as intentionally taken penalties for purposes of allies Defending you.

Running: While in this stance, the Move maneuver lets you move twice your speed rather than just your speed. Your top speed is unchanged, as is movement from other actions.

Rushing: While in this stance, your Quickness rank is increased by 1 for purposes of the time required to perform tasks. Other functions of Quickness, such as speed of thought and perceptions, or performing Extended actions, is unaffected.

Stalking: While in this stance, if you have at least a certain level of Concealment at both the start and end of your turn, you are considered to have that level of Concealment throughout your entire turn, even if you take actions that would cause you to lose the Concealment in the process.

Stalwart Defense: While in this stance, in any round that you are targeted by an Attack action, you can take up to a -2 penalty on your Defense against attacks to gain an equal bonus on Resistance against attacks.

Stand Out: When you take this stance, choose some impression you want to make on people, such as seeming dangerous, mysterious, authoritative, etc. NPCs of a rank at least four lower than your own will automatically have that impression of you. Each five ranks of Intimidation increases the maximum rank affected by one.

Suspicious: While in this stance, any attempt to deceive, mislead, or otherwise manipulate you automatically requires a Deception check against an active DC of 11 + your Insight skill; you don't need to actively use Insight to try to detect deception or manipulation. If their check fails, you know they are attempting to manipulate you.

Take Cover: While you are in this stance, any attacker against whom you would otherwise have partial cover, you instead have full cover against.

Hero Points

Hero Points are a special resource that, effectively, allow players to bend the rules in limited ways. They are a player resource - individual characters don't get Hero Points. The GM also doesn't receive Hero Points, although the GM may grant NPCs some of the benefits of Hero Points by awarding Hero Points to the affected players, which is called invoking GM Fiat.

Each player begins each adventure with 100 Hero Points. The GM may modify the starting total as suits the nature of the game; higher values make the game more over-the-top and heroic, with the PCs generally able to overcome opponents significantly more power than themselves. Lower values makes for a more grounded game.

Spending Hero Points

Players can spend Hero Points on any of the following options, collectively called surges. Some surges are designated as active. A given player may only use one active surge in any given round.

Action: You can spend Hero Points to take additional actions on your turn (or to take a reaction off-turn without spending any of your next turn's actions). You may take an instant action when you've already taken that instant action on your turn for 20 HP. You may also take an additional move action for 20. You may take an additional standard action for 40 HP. Taking a bonus standard action, or a bonus move or instant action that targets somebody other than you, is an active use of Hero Points.

In addition, between scenes, episodes, or adventures, you can spend 40 HP to take an immediate bonus downtime action.

Bonus: You can spend Hero Points to get a circumstance bonus on a die roll, or negate a penalty on a roll you are making. You must do so before rolling. If the results of the check (not necessarily the degree of success or failure; some checks won't actually give greater results for greater degrees) would have been the same without the bonus, the Hero Points are refunded. Getting a minor bonus (+2), negating a minor penalty, converting a minor bonus to a major bonus (+5), or converting a major penalty to a minor penalty, costs 10 HP for skill checks, 15 HP for Resistance and Tenacity checks, and 20 HP otherwise. Getting a major bonus outright, or negating a major penalty outright, costs twice that (20, 30, or 40 HP).

If the check is for an action that targets a character other than you, this counts as an active use of Hero Points.

Edit Scene: You can "edit" a scene to grant your hero an advantage by adding or changing certain details. For example, a hero is fighting a villain with plant-based powers in a scientific lab. You deduce the villain may be weakened by defoliants, so you ask the GM if there are any chemicals in the lab you can throw together to create a defoliant. The GM requires an Edit Scene to add that detail and says the right chemicals are close at hand. Now you just have to use them!

How much players are allowed to "edit" circumstances is up to the individual GM, but generally Hero Points should not be allowed to change any event that has already occurred or any detail already explained in-game. For example, players cannot "edit" away damage or the effects of powers (Hero Points already allow this to a limited degree, see the following). The GM may also veto uses of editing that ruin the adventure or make things too easy on the players. This option is intended to give the players more input into the story and allow their heroes chances to succeed, but it shouldn't be used as a replacement for planning and cleverness, just a way to enhance them.

Between adventures, you may make more substantial edits that have lasting (though generally less tactical) impacts on the setting itself, such as declaring that your character has made progress on some background goal (such as a breakthrough in research or a promotion at its day job), declaring how the media or public reacts to the events of the past adventure, establishing the existence of some NPC, group, location, or other setting detail, etc. As always, the GM has discretion over what sort of edits are appropriate.

Editing the scene costs 20 HP.

Inspiration: You can spend 20 HP to get sudden inspiration in the form of a hint, clue, or bit of help from the GM. It might be a way out of the villain's fiendish deathtrap, a vital clue for solving a mystery, or an idea about the villain's weakness. It's up to the GM exactly how much help the players get from inspiration and how it manifests, but since Hero Points are a very limited resource, the help should be in some way significant.

Mitigate: You can spend Hero Points to mitigate an attack immediately upon receiving it, reducing all degrees involved in the attack (degrees of success on the Accuracy check, degrees of failure on the Resistance check) by 1, to a minimum of 1, and preventing the attack from combining conditions into higher tiers or durations, even if the attack is Cumulative. Mitigating an attack costs 30 HP per degree reduced.

Negate Attack: You can spend 30 HP when an attack hits you to roll a Defense check with a +10 Heroic bonus, against an active DC equal to the attacker's Accuracy check result. If you succeed, the attack becomes a miss. Even if you fail, your roll becomes a new active DC replacing the normal DC to hit you, if it is higher, so it may lower the degrees of success. This check can be modified by other surges as if it were a Resistance check.

Recover: You can spend 40 Hero Points to reduce the duration of an effect upon you by one step. In the case of indefinite effects you may only do so immediately after receiving the effect, and you may not reduce the duration of the Dead condition in this way.

Request Support: You can spend Hero Points to call in aid from an established NPC with a positive relationship towards you or otherwise a reason to help. Your expenditure secures aid for a single specific activity. Primarily, this is for calling in someone to handle things that your team might not be able to do, such as using a specific power or skill on your behalf. This only lets you call in established NPCs, not make up some arbitrary NPC at the drop of a hat (although with the Connected advantage, you could spend Hero Points for that). This also isn't necessary to get aid from NPCs already present and active in the scene, only to bring them into the scene (or get them involved in the action when they would otherwise let you handle it, run away, take cover, etc). The NPC has to be willing to help you.

Calling in an NPC to handle some minor background activity (something you could probably handle about as well if you weren't busy elsewhere) costs 20 HP. Calling in an NPC to handle a more significant activity or do something you couldn't do (or couldn't do nearly as well) yourself costs 40 HP. In both cases, this assumes it's something the NPC can just go ahead and accomplish; they don't need to make any rolls and aren't at any risk. If the GM deems the activity difficult or significant enough that the NPC might not be able to handle it, you have to call in the NPC for direct assistance.

Calling in an NPC for direct assistance - having it act normally during the scene with its own actions, stats, and so on - costs HP equal to one-tenth the NPC's Power Value. The NPC is treated as one rank lower than normal (this doesn't lower its Power Value for purposes of the HP cost). The GM generally controls the NPC - it will perform competently, but you can't direct its every action (the GM may allow you to control it to make its own job easier, if it wishes).

If you want an NPC to assist in combat, you must call in direct assistance.

Reroll: You can spend 20 Hero Points to reroll a skill check, 30 HP to reroll a Resistance or Tenacity check, or 40 HP to reroll any other type of check, after you have seen the results. You must do so before any follow-up or opposing checks are made. Your reroll gets a +10 Heroic bonus.

If the check is for an action that targets a character other than you, this counts as an active use of Hero Points.

Retry: After performing a one-shot action, by spending 10 Hero Points, you are allowed to try again, effectively ignoring the one-shot class for the prior attempt. You don't immediately get a new attempt, you must still spend any actions and time required and otherwise be able to entirely retry the action, but you are able to make a new attempt as if you hadn't previously failed. This does not negate any other consequences you might have suffered for failing your prior attempt.

If you spend the Hero Points immediately after failing, simply keeping the opportunity open to try again later, this is a normal use of Hero Points. If you spend the Hero Points after the fact, when you want to try again, it is an active use.

Reveal: You can spend Hero Points to reveal new capabilities in the midst of play! If you have PP or VP left over, you can spend HP to spend them in the midst of a scene, at a rate of 1 HP per 2 PP or VP spent. These expenditures are permanent. You may not "unspend" your PP or VP this way so as to alter your capabilities, you only spend leftover points. Revealing new capabilities is an active use of Hero Points.

Stunt: You can spend Hero Points to gain new temporary capabilities. These capabilities last for the rest of the scene. Stunting is an active use of Hero Points.

Performing a stunt costs at least 20 HP. For each 20 HP spent on a stunt, you can do one of the following: add +1 to a chosen stat, add +3 to a chosen measure that is below the soft cap or +1 to a measure that is above the soft cap but below the firm cap, raise a chosen skill to +10 (you don't actually grant the skill a bonus, you just set its bonus to +10), gain one non-Fortune advantage, or gain 10 PP or VP worth of powers or utilities, other than array slots. When adding PP to powers, you may also swap an equal number of PP of extras on that power for different extras, if you wish. All bonuses are considered trait bonuses, but you can double the cost to make them true bonuses if you really need to push things.

Alternately, you can add a new slot to an array for a number of Hero Points equal to the array's PP value, allowing you to design an entirely new power using the array's full point value. The new power must fit with the general theme of the array.

At GM discretion, the cost of a Stunt may be halved if you somehow use situational details of the scene to make it possible. For example, if you shoot a gas tank to add Explosion Area and some additional Force to your attack, it could halve the stunt's cost. However, doing this means you can only use the stunt for as long as that detail makes it possible - if that's the only gas tank in the area, you won't be able to use the Stunt again later in the scene!

Earning Hero Points

Players can earn Hero Points during the adventure in a variety of ways. The following are guidelines for when rewards might be assigned. Complications, GM Fiat, and Villain Points always provide rewards, although the GM may modify how significant the rewards are to suit the nature of the game. All other guidelines are suggestions only, and may not be things the GM wants to use for all games. Likewise, the GM may choose to give out rewards for situations not listed here, if it suits the game or the GM's style.

GM Fiat: NPCs don't receive Hero Points. But sometimes, the GM may want to bend the rules against the players to serve the story. This calls for GM Fiat.

GM Fiat is typically pretty straightforward - an NPC performs a surge, and in return, the PC that was affected receives the appropriate Hero Points. So an NPC who gets unlucky and botches an early Resistance check might Mitigate the effect to allow for a more satisfying combat, earning the attacker 30 HP. Or an NPC might take an extra standard action to up the pressure, and the character who was targeted gets 40 HP.

Edit Scene and Inspiration can be used through GM Fiat, although it's something of a blurry line discerning when they're appropriate. The GM already decides what the scene is like and what the NPCs know. However, when the GM makes such a decision that isn't particularly likely and is clearly to a PC's detriment, GM Fiat is appropriate.

If the Fiat affects multiple PCs, or doesn't directly affect any PCs but still makes their situation harder (such as an enemy using a bonus action to Defend), the points should enter a temporary pool that any player can draw from. At the end of the scene, if there are still temporary Hero Points in the pool, they get divided up among the characters as the group deems (generally, players with lower totals should be prioritized).

In some cases, the GM may wish to go beyond the bounds of what even a Hero Point can do, such as outright auto-succeeding a check rather than just rerolling it, or guaranteeing a villain's escape even when the PCs have it beat to rights, or the like. In these cases, a good rule of thumb to take the most similar surge and either double its value (if it mainly affects a single character), or assign its full value to all players (if it's a major act of Fiat that affects the entire party). Guaranteeing a villain's escape, for example, is most like an Edit Scene or maybe a Stunt, so 20 HP to all players (on top of any rewards for the challenge itself, of course!) is generally appropriate.

The GM is totally entitled to use Fiat on a PC's behalf as well, if it feels doing so would suit the game. Unless this is to the detriment of another player somehow, no rewards are earned; the GM just Fiats for the PC and moves on. Likewise, when it's purely NPC on NPC, the GM can Fiat freely.

A word of warning though - you shouldn't use Fiat "tactically" the way PCs can use Hero Points. GM Fiat is a tool to bend the rules when it serves the story, not a resource for NPCs to use to achieve their goals. Ideally, you also shouldn't use Fiat to outright negate player actions - for example, it's often better to Mitigate an unlucky early Resistance check, rather than completely Rerolling it, so that it still has some effect.

Villain Points: But...what if you want a bad guy to be able to bend the rules tactically? Well, that calls for Villain Points. Major antagonists can receive a pool of Villain Points that they may use the same way PCs use Hero Points. The GM must declare a villain's Villain Points at the start of the scene (so the players know they're there), although they need not be tied to a specific villain - they're a pool that any enemy NPC in the scene can draw from. The GM can freely assign any number of Villain Points to a scene, with one limit - the total pool of Villain Points assigned cannot exceed total number of Hero Points that the players have at the start of the scene (and usually, it will be substantially lower). Villain Points must be declared at the start of the scene; the GM can't go back and add more later.

NPCs may spend Villain Points freely; players don't get Hero Points when they spend them. However, once the scene is over, every player receives Hero Points equal to half the total Villain Points that were assigned to the scene - even if they didn't all get used! If the PCs lost, they instead each receive the full total. So Villain Points can stack the odds in the bad guys' favor - but doing so gives the PCs ample resources to use later.

Villain Points cannot be assigned in the climactic scene of an adventure - these sort of climaxes are exactly where the PCs should have the narrative edge. Of course, a climax is a climax, so the GM may feel a bit more free to use Fiat to make sure the villains go down swinging!

Mechanical Complications: When complications have a direct mechanical or tactical effect, the best thing to do is treat them as conditions. Take the tier of the condition and add +0 for a round duration, +2 for scene duration, and +4 for episode duration. Subtract 1 if the complication can be recovered from as if it were an Attack action. If the total comes out to 0, the complication is worth 5 HP. 1 is worth 10, 2 is 20, and each point beyond is another 20.

So, for example, say a PC with a Phobia of spiders is fighting a spider-themed enemy. The GM might have the PC become Influenced (tier 1) for the entire scene (+2), preventing it from approaching or using close effects on the spider-villain due to its fear. Or its fear might render it Disabled (tier 2) until it is able to gather its courage (scene duration, +1). Or perhaps its fear leaves it hesitant (Stunned) or prompts a panicked flight (Controlled - forced to flee) for one round. Any of those would be worth 40 HP. Or it might get 80 HP by being forced to flee outright (effectively Controlled with scene duration). Or 20 HP if it's Disabled for one round. And so on.

Sometimes rather than directly hindering the character, a complication will deny it access to some of its traits for a time. These tend to be called "power loss" complications. Power loss complications are often more granular than just applying Hampering or Suppression Tree conditions; they might affect only certain specific traits. A power loss complication should generally award 1 Hero Point per 2 PP or VP worth of traits made unavailable for a scene. If the traits are only unavailable for part of a scene, only award 1 HP per 5 PP or VP. And if the traits are unavailable for multiple scenes, the PC gets the award each time.

Note that if a specific array slot is removed, the HP is calculated based on the VP cost of the slot, not its PP value. If an entire array is removed, the HP is calculated based on the PP value of the array, not the VP cost of the slots (since the slots are pretty much worthless once the value of the array itself is lost).

PCs generally get Hero Points for mechanical complications at the end of the scene the complication applies in - Complications give you problems now in exchange for resources later. Complications that occur in the climactic scene of an adventure award Hero Points for the next adventure. If the player is out of Hero Points (or nearly so), the GM may choose to award the Hero Points immediately - in essence, giving the player the resources to keep going in exchange for making the challenge even harder.

When creating a complication that may have mechanical effects, the player may set a cap on the HP value that can come up from it - not all complications will cause severe effects, after all! One character might have a fairly mild phobia of spiders that can only produce complications worth up to 20 HP. But another might have an extreme phobia that could cause complications worth up to 80 HP, or even with no cap at all!

NPCs can (and should!) also have complications, but they don't get Hero Points (or Villain Points) for them. Rather, when players successfully exploit them, they may design an appropriate mechanical ramification within the complication's HP cap. They have to spend HP to trigger the complication - but the entire group can divide the cost among them, and players may bring their Hero Point totals below 0 for this purpose, effectively "pre-spending" future Hero Points, since the complication exists even if the players don't currently have the points to pay for it.

Narrative Complications: Complications that don't really directly impact the character directly, but lead to more personal problems, are considered narrative complications.

As a rule of thumb, award 5 HP for some annoyance or embarrassment that might not be ideal, but doesn't really cause meaningful hindrance. Award 10 HP for problems that are more narrative hindrances than actual setbacks - they might make a certain activity a bit tougher, or mitigate a previous accomplishment to some degree, but won't really cause a setback in itself. 20 HP is good for a minor setback, something that actually makes the activity itself slightly but noticeably harder to achieve, such as undoing a prior success or creating a new obstacle to overcome. Generally, such setbacks are things that can be fixed or overcome with an appropriate action. 40 HP is good for notable setbacks, something that undoes a significant achievement, adds a fairly serious obstacle, or otherwise makes the goal significantly more difficult to achieve. Setbacks that make the encounter way harder may offer rewards to multiple PCs or even the entire group.

Such rewards are generally appropriate for short-term goals - those that can be achieved generally in a single scene. Goals that might take a whole episode to achieve might award double. Goals that might take a whole adventure to achieve not only award double, but the reward should be given to all PCs. Note that larger-scale goals also mean larger-scale setbacks. Where scene-scale goals might have setbacks that can be fixed with individual actions, episode-scale goals may require entire scenes to resolve their setbacks, and adventure-scale goals might require entire episodes. However, these additional scenes and episodes should themselves offer more opportunities to gain Hero Points!

For example, if your Enemy suddenly arrives to join a fight against you, it makes the fight significantly harder - it's a serious setback, worth 40 HP. If, after finally defeating and imprisoning your Enemy, it breaks out of prison, that's a setback that completely undoes a long-term goal, well worth a doubled reward of 80 HP. On the other hand, if the climactic boss of an entire adventure gets broken free, that's undoing an adventure-scale achievement that the entire group was involved in - everyone should get an 80 HP reward for that setback.

While narrative complications can come up more-or-less arbitrarily, they are most likely when the character fails at something. Treating setbacks as narrative complications is a way to make botched rolls, failed skill checks, and even outright defeats have a negative impact on the scene or story without feeling punitive or discouraging attempts - sure, the characters suffer a setback for their failure, but they also get more resources to help them rise to the challenge later!

Challenge Complications: Generally speaking, if a character's complications are the reason for the challenge of a scene, that character should receive 40 HP at the start of the scene.

Challenge Rewards: Some GMs, especially those running more high-action games, may offer challenge rewards. Every time the PCs complete a challenge-oriented scene (a battle, a chase, a difficult puzzle or complex social interaction, etc), all participants receive 40 HP. Especially easy or difficult challenges may offer lesser or greater rewards at GM discretion - a good rule of thumb (for combat challenges, at least) is to scale the HP based on the relative Power Values of the opposition, so if the enemy group has a Power Value half again that of the group, the challenge is worth 60 HP for each participant.

By default, players get Hero Points on completing the challenge, regardless of success or failure. But you can do it differently. Some GMs may only offer challenge Rewards for challenges the PCs win (creating a feeling of using early successes as stepping stones to eventual major accomplishments), or even only for those they lose (creating a feeling of having to struggle and face setbacks early on but eventually getting it together to save the day at the end). Or the result of the challenge may influence the reward, with victories or losses both providing rewards, but of different amounts.

The GM may also add a bit more tension to individual challenges - especially those that might otherwise be less difficult - by instituting a soft limit on Hero Points, with players that spend more than the given total receiving reduced challenge rewards or even none at all. Generally speaking, a Hero Point limit equal to one-tenth of the opposing side's Power Value is a good rule of thumb, but the GM can modify the numbers to suit the challenge and the needs of the story; if you want to add some tension to an otherwise fairly minor fight, you might impose a soft limit of 0 - only granting a challenge reward if characters don't spend any Hero Points at all. Major climactic challenges shouldn't use this option though - those are the sorts of encounters where you want the players to spend their Hero Points with abandon!

Careful use of challenge rewards and Villain Points can serve as a sort of hint about how many resources players should invest into an encounter. If there's a soft limit and Villain Points on the table, it probably means that even if the bad guys achieve their objective, it's building to a bigger plot and giving you the opportunity to stop them more dramatically later! That said, GMs should take some caution when using these options - it's one thing if the villains have a narrative advantage to build up to their main plot so the PCs can dramatically stop them at the last moment, but when something serious is on the line, the PCs should be the ones with the narrative edge.

Role Playing Rewards: The GM may grant rewards for good role playing. Doing something especially entertaining or that really showcases the character is usually worth 5 or 10 HP - and don't hesitate to hand out role playing rewards when players try new things or step a bit outside their comfort zones! Players might also receive 10 or 20 HP if they intentionally make bad or risky decisions for role playing purposes - because it's what their character would do, in essence, even if they know better. If such choices put the character in a really risky or bad situation, the GM may even assign 40 HP. 40 HP rewards are also appropriate for dramatic events that display or result in clear character growth.

Importantly, though, role playing rewards should never be given for role playing that annoys, hampers, or otherwise lessens the fun of other players. Yes, a dark, brooding vigilante is both taking a significant tactical hindrance and acting true to characterization by sneaking off to fight an enemy alone - but if it results in the GM trying to split attention between two scenes, or other players having to sit out (or, perhaps more fairly, that player having to sit out of the scene the rest of the group is doing), it's not worth anything like a reward. On the flip side, if the vigilante sneaks off and the rest of the group get to rush to its rescue and be awesome, that is worth a role playing reward.

Thematic Rewards: Thematic rewards are similar to role playing rewards, but rather than being about playing the character true or entertainingly, it's about playing true to the intended themes of the game. It means doing something funny in a comedic game. It means taking risks and foregoing tactical advantage to save innocent lives in a four-color hero game. It means playing up fear and despair in a survival horror game. And so on. The criteria for judging the reward is generally the same as for role playing rewards.

Player Rewards: At the end of the day, rewards are used to reward certain behaviors, and that doesn't always have to strictly mean in-character things. While bribing your players with Hero Points is not advised, when players help out with the game, it can certainly be worth spotting them some HP. This could be for anything from looking up a rule or correcting a GM mistake, to helping new players with their characters, to things like hosting the game, bringing snacks, etc. Rewarding players for making the game better for everyone or your job as a GM easier is just good sense.

Stunt Rewards: Sometimes a character attempts something awesome. Some GMs may want to give these actions a better chance of success with stunt rewards. Just doing something descriptively really cool might be worth 5 or 10 HP, but larger rewards should require creatively using the situation in some awesome or especially clever way, or accepting some cost or risk to set up or attempt the stunt, and may require the points be spent on the action itself rather than saved for later. Stunt rewards are at the end of the day about awesomeness and creativity - don't expect a stunt that has been used in the past to garner rewards if duplicated later.

Similar to stunts, in a more tactically-oriented game, you might get rewards for good strategies, especially those that the core game rules don't actually cover mechanically. These sort of rewards are likely to be repeatable, since good tactics usually are. (Of course, you can expect your opponents to try to make it harder for you).

Goof Rewards: Face facts - GMs mess up. Regularly. If you mess up in a way that hinders a PC, don't stress it, but some HP is a nice way to make up for it. The size of the reward can scale based on how much the PC was hindered - 10 HP for minor goofs is a solid rule of thumb, but 20 HP is good for goofs that caused the PC to waste an action or other significant resource, and 40 HP is usually best for long-standing goofs that might have caused a hindrance across multiple scenes. Goof rewards are also nice to give when a player corrects a goof you made that was to their benefit.

Extra Effort

Sometimes a PC can push itself beyond its normal limits to accomplish extraordinary feats. This is called using Extra Effort. Extra Effort effectively functions like a mechanical complication as described above; the character takes a certain condition, and as a result, the player gets some bonus Hero Points. Conditions taken due to Extra Effort cannot be lessened, suppressed, or negated before their durations expire.

Extra Effort works a bit differently though, because it's initiated by the player. The player declares they want to use Extra Effort and how many HP they want, and designs a mechanical complication to pay for it, which the GM might veto or modify based on the situation. The conditions take effect at the start of the player's next turn, so it has a bit of a grace period to make use of its new HP unhindered.

In most cases, the above guidelines for mechanical complications work fine. However, the GM may modify them based on the situation; the conditions have to actually result in hindrance for the character to earn the Hero Points. If you're near the end of a scene and your surge will likely finish it, it'll probably have to last into the next scene or something to work. Likewise, if you have multiple characters, you might need to take more severe conditions to any one to get the same amount of Hero Points. And so on.

Conditions from the Fatigue tree are generally a solid default, not causing any major maladies themselves, but making other conditions the character has or might receive more severe. But they aren't the only options for Extra Effort. A character with a "superpowered evil side" or the like might suffer Influence tree conditions. A character who is heavily exerting its power might suffer Suppression tree conditions. A character who is sacrificing its own health might take Injury tree conditions. And so on.

In theory, you could even go beyond the normal limits of mechanical complications. This isn't usually recommended, since it can result in a lot of downtime which generally isn't fun. But you could, for example, suffer a condition with an adventure (+6) or indefinite (+8) duration. Treat outright death as tier 5 for this purpose, so a full-on Heroic Sacrifice would give you 240 HP to facilitate going out with a bang! In these cases, the GM may choose to delay the effects of the conditions to the end of the scene rather than the start of the character's next turn. As always, though, the GM should exercise discretion, only allowing these sorts of extreme Extra Effort when it is especially dramatic or appropriate.

Objects

Objects interact with certain rules differently than characters.

Object Defenses

Objects generally don't defend themselves actively, but they possess Defense stats to represent how difficult it is to land a really solid hit on them. Typically, an object has a basic Defense score of -10 minus twice its Size Rank (typically, this means its largest dimension, although the GM may use a smaller dimension in some cases - shooting a foot-thick rope is going to be easier than shooting an inch-thick rope, but shooting a 500' long rope isn't really any easier than a 50' long one). When attacking an inanimate object, you receive a minimum result of 5 on your attack roll. So an object more-or-less the size of a human (Size Rank -2) has a Defense of -6, meaning the DC to hit it is only 4.

An object that is being held or carried by another character uses that character's Defense, and objects capable of moving to avoid attacks have a Defense score six higher than normal.

Objects have Resistance scores based on their material, structure, and sturdiness. Generally speaking, a solid object one inch thick (treat as Distance Rank -8, with two inches as -7, four inches as -6) has a base Resistance score of 0, modified by its material. Each additional Distance Rank of thickness provides +1 Resistance. Each halving of thickness imposes -1 Resistance. Some common materials are:

Material	Resistance	Material	Resistance
Paper	-3	Soil	-2
Glass	-1	Rope	0
Ice	1	Hardened Plastic	2
Wood	3	Stone	5
Iron	7	Reinforced Concrete	8
Steel	9	Titanium	10

These rules for calculating an object's Defense and Resistance are for mundane objects; significant objects are often much more durable.

Objects generally do not have Tenacity scores and don't make Tenacity checks; they don't naturally recover from conditions early.

Object Immunities

Like characters, though, objects often have varying levels of immunity to certain attack forms, typically object immunities, occasionally innate immunities. The default attack mode immunities of objects depend on their capabilities as follows, but specific objects can have more specialized immunities:

Energy and Physical: Objects have no inherent resistance to the Energy and Physical attack modes. In fact, these two attack modes can inflict a special condition tree upon objects. When attacking an object with one of these attack modes, you can forego the normal conditions the attack would inflict (or one set of them, for Attack powers with the Additional extra) to instead cause conditions from the Object Damage tree.

Material: Objects that are completely immobile have...a sort of innate immunity to Material effects, since they can't be restricted. They can still be affected by Material effects, which can impede the efforts of other characters to move or use the object, but the object itself isn't hindered in any way. Objects that don't move on their own but have internal moving parts or simple external ones have object immunity to Material effects in the same manner - most forms of restriction won't hinder the object, but some kinds can gum up the works. Objects whose functions involve external movement have no inherent resistance to Material effects.

Mental: Most objects have innate immunity to Mental effects, lacking any sort of mind to influence. Objects capable of processing information in some way, such as computers, have object immunity to Mental effects - they don't have minds in the traditional sense, but powers such as technopathy can influence their programming. The object immunity works even up to artificially intelligent objects. However, truly sentient objects that do possess full-fledged minds of their own have no inherent resistance to Mental effects.

Mystical: All objects have object immunity to Mystical effects, since many of the metaphysical traits that characters can be assumed to have objects generally don't. That said, there are plenty of weird Mystical powers that could affect objects fine too.

Physiological: Most objects have innate immunity to Physiological effects, lacking any sort of physiology to affect. Objects with complex internal workings, though, only have object immunity to Physiological effects. Living plants also have the object immunity, since they do have a physiology which certain powers can affect, just not anything like a human one. Biological objects that do have some form of human-like physiology have no inherent resistance to Physiological effects.

Positional: Inanimate objects usually have innate immunity to Positional effects that cause conditions. Positional effects that simply move the object around can still affect them, but if you don't move, you probably won't be hindered by being moved. Animate objects are affected by Positional effects normally, and objects with moving parts but that don't move under their own power have object immunity. At GM discretion, certain large inanimate objects may receive Object Damage from Positional attacks, rather than being immune to them (tipping over a building won't "unbalance" it or anything, but could very well result in catastrophic structural damage!)

Sensory: Most objects, having no senses, have innate immunity to Sensory effects. Objects capable of taking in sensory information, such as cameras, only have object immunity - they're still likely to ignore a lot of effects that would affect a human's senses (or affect a person through their senses), but some can work.

Tactical: Objects that are incapable of action have innate immunity to Tactical effects; it's not exactly difficult to anticipate or plan for what a rock is going to do, but also not exactly useful. Objects that are capable of action generally have object immunity to Tactical effects; ploys and such won't really work on objects, but predictions can. That being said, many objects may have some additional vulnerability to Tactical attacks that do affect them - it's especially easy to anticipate or plan around, say, a weapons system that operates on an automatic program.

Transformative: All objects have object immunity to Transformative effects. The default assumption for a Transformative power is that it operates on people and the stuff that makes up people. But broader Transformative powers can easily affect objects too.

Object Conditions

Object damage tends to be the most efficient way of dealing with inconvenient objects, but regular conditions can work too, depending on the type of object. Objects respond to conditions differently as follows:

Dazing Tree Conditions: Dazing tree conditions really only apply to objects with active functions.
Dazed: The object deactivates upon receiving the condition. Reactivating it is at least an active move action, unless the action to reactivate it would normally be higher.
Staggered: The object deactivates every round. Reactivating it is at least an active move action.
Stunned: The object deactivates and cannot be reactivated while the condition lasts.

Distraction Tree Conditions: Most objects have no ability to think and thus can't be affected by these conditions. Objects that process information and act autonomously can potentially be affected by these conditions normally.

Hampering Tree Conditions: Objects with natural traits can be affected normally by conditions of the Hampering tree.

Impairment Tree Conditions: Impairment tree conditions only affect objects that have functions that involve checks, or are used as part of a check.
Impaired: Any Accuracy checks or skill checks made by or with the object take -2.
Disabled: Any Accuracy checks or skill checks made by or with the object take -5.
Impotent: As Disabled, and the maximum possible result is one degree of failure.

Injury Tree Conditions: Objects take reduced effects from Injury tree conditions, but they still work to represent heavy damage.
Injured: The object takes -2 on Resistance, and receives one additional Bruise any time it takes Bruises.
Wounded: As Injured, but the penalty is -5 and it also receives one additional Breach any time it takes a Breach.
Maimed: As Wounded, but any points of failure on the object's Resistance checks are doubled for purposes of determining degree of failure.

Influence Tree Conditions: Only objects that have autonomous or programmed functions can be affected by Influence tree conditions. Your commands take precedence over regular commands of the same level, but commands from higher-level users can override your own.
Influenced: You gain access to the object's public functions - you can make it do the sorts of things that anyone with physical or remote access could get it to do. So basically, any functions that aren't protected by security measures.
Compelled: You gain access to the object's user functions - you can make it do the sorts of things that an authorized user with proper security credentials could get it to do. Typically, this allows you to access but not change information - you could view a camera feed, for example, but not change it.
Controlled: You gain access to the object's admin functions - you can make it do the sorts of things that an administrator or other individual with high-level access could. This often means being able to edit data, such as deleting files or looping a camera feed.
Commanded: You gain full control over the object's functions.

Fatigue Tree Conditions: Objects are immune to the Fatigue tree. They typically lack Tenacity stats and while some objects can certainly run out of fuel, there are better ways to represent that than Fatigue conditions.

Lethal Conditions: Objects are not living beings; they are immune to lethal conditions.

Obscuring Tree Conditions: Most objects don't have senses and thus can't be affected by Obscuring tree conditions. Objects that process sensory data can be affected by them normally.

Restraining Tree Conditions: Restraining tree conditions basically work like they do on characters (although since they tend to involve Impairment and Vulnerability tree conditions, those use their altered rules).

Suppression Tree Conditions: Objects with supernatural traits can be affected normally by conditions of the Hampering tree.

Vulnerability Tree Conditions: Vulnerability tree conditions generally only affect autonomous objects, but will impose the same effects on them as on characters. Objects that provide Defense bonuses can have those bonuses weakened by Vulnerability conditions (-2 for Vulnerable, -5 for Defenseless, negated for Exposed).

Weakening Tree Conditions: Objects that can be used as weapons or that have powers can be affected by any aspect of Weakening tree conditions relevant to the object.

Miscellaneous Conditions: Miscellaneous conditions affect objects normally, assuming they have the capabilities being affected (immobile objects won't be affected by Hindered or Immobilized, Hesitance won't do anything to objects, etc).

Significant Objects

Many objects can more-or-less count as descriptors from a mechanical standpoint; their functions, while undoubtedly useful in the game world, aren't really all that important to the game itself outside of certain niche situations. Yes, there may one day come a time where you have to bring the sacred water of a magical fountain to a dying loved one to save them, and you suddenly become very happy that you have that "World's Greatest Superhero" mug, but the vast majority of the time, having a mug is not going to matter to the plot, and it would be nonsense to try to charge points for all the miscellaneous objects a character might feasibly have reliable access to.

Significant objects, on the other hand, have concrete mechanical effects - typically features, but they can also provide other traits.

Acquiring Significant Objects: Objects are just a form of container. You purchase whatever traits you want, and assign them to an object container.

Characters Using Objects: While there are features that add more security to an object, for the most part, one of the things that most sets objects apart from normal traits is that anyone can use them. Characters can loan an object to allies, and it can be stolen by enemies. There are three types of relationships between characters and objects:

Occcupant: Vehicles and installations (and occasionally, though rarely, devices) can have occupants, which means any character who is inside the object. So, passengers in a vehicle, guests (or invaders) in a building, etc.

Owner: Since most significant objects are purchased by characters, the owner is the character who has actually spent points on the object. Significant objects have the same PL and rank as the owner, and their stats are generally based on the owner to some degree.

User: The user is the character currently making direct use of the object. For vehicles, this means the driver or pilot. Installations may have different users for different functions, although some may have a single "user" who operates the installation's functions from a command center or the like.

Losing Significant Objects: One of the big things that separates significant objects from regular powers is that they can be taken away; objects generally have some level of the Removable limit. Some objects may have features to make this harder, though. Significant objects are never permanently removed; they should be repaired, recovered, or replaced in time. If a significant object is truly impossible to get back, any resources spent on it are refunded at the end of the episode and may be respent.

An object that is intentionally loaned to another is not considered lost, and doesn't count as a complication for the owner. A device that is borrowed by an ally without permission also generally doesn't count as a complication.

Object Type: Significant objects come in three main types, described in more detail below: devices, vehicles, and installations.

Objects as Characters

Things like robots, golems, animate weapons, autonomous vehicles, sentient computer systems, even undead, occupy a kinda gray area between characters and objects. Some can be built as regular objects, but if you actually want to play as such a construct (or if you want them to be able to act fully autonomously) they have to be built as characters.

Such characters don't get any special benefits or hindrances by default. They might have Complications to reflect some of the normal vulnerabilities of objects. Likewise, they may wish to purchase immunities that reflect their less-biological nature. They don't need to purchase features that would protect them against their object-related Complications; they can freely designate how easy or hard it is to bypass their security, only earning HP when enemies actually do so.

Mundane Items

Mundane items are various miscellaneous objects that probably don't have significant mechanical effects or plot-relevance. Characters can generally be assumed to have reasonable access to such items given a bit of time to get them and access to a place where they might be - there's no problem with a character having, say, a winter jacket at home or popping into a store to buy one.

Mundane items tend to be of niche usefulness at best, but occasionally they can be critical. A pencil and paper is not all that useful in a superhero's usual adventures...until you have to slip a note under a door for some hostages you're trying to rescue.

Generally speaking, there's not much problem to just conveniently assuming characters have reasonable mundane items on hand for non-plot-related purposes. If it's important, though, the Be Prepared option of the Expertise skill can be used to declare you have ready access to mundane items relevant to your fields. If need be, you can always declare you have a mundane item on hand with Hero Points as a form of Edit Scene.

Basic Gear

Not all of a character's equipment is significant. Basic gear represents equipment that can be plot-relevant, but is more-or-less expected in the setting. For example, even if the character doesn't have a super-slick headquarters or secret base, it probably has a basic apartment, house, or other place to live. In many modern settings, characters can be expected to have cars, cell phones, personal computers, and so on. In sci-fi settings, characters might even be expected to have flying or space-worthy vehicles! The qualification of basic gear is that it is more-or-less ubiquitous in the setting - it's the sort of thing that you would expect even most civilians to have. Naturally, this means it almost never includes highly specialized tools, weapons, and so on.

The GM decides what basic gear is available. Basic gear functions normally, having appropriate features and even powers, but the GM can freely render it inoperable at will, by whatever contrivance (out of battery, no fuel, computer malfunction, whatever), without awarding any Hero Points for any complication. Basic gear is more for plot convenience than actual tactical usage. If you want reliable equipment, spend points on it.

Generally speaking, basic gear doesn't use the owner's full PL and rank. It usually rates a rank lower than the owner, and has a set PL appropriate to the setting (PL 0 for devices, PL 2 for vehicles, and PL 4 for installations is a good rule of thumb).

Tools and Workspaces

Some skills are things you can do with no material assistance. It doesn't take any fancy gear to make a strong point or run faster. However, some uses of some skills aren't things that a person can just do themselves. They require the right tools.

Tools are portable objects that are used to perform a skill. They are designed with the skill in mind. It is possible to get by with materials not intended for use of the skill but which can still be used for it. These are called improvised tools, and when forced to make do with them, actions that require tools increase any set DCs by 5 (if you lack tools entirely, the increase is usually 10, and these modifiers may be doubled for actions where tools are critically required, and some actions may absolutely require tools and not be performable without them at all).

Some skill uses, however, require more than what most people are able to reasonably carry around. Workspaces are the installation version of tools; an entire, generally fixed setup that has more-or-less everything you need to use even the most advanced functions of the skill. "Improvised" workspaces also exist, which aren't really set up to use the skill, but have enough stuff that's relevant enough that they can do in a pinch for functions that require workspaces, for the same +5 to set DCs.

The Improvised Tools advantage negates the penalty for using improvised tools and workspaces.

Naturally, not all tools and workspaces are equal. The Specialization advantage can be added to a device to represent a tool so well-designed for a specific purpose that it confers a circumstance bonus on checks, and multiple applications of the Workspace feature can likewise provide a bonus on skill checks related to the workspace.

Devices

Devices are the most basic type of significant objects - personal, portable objects that provide functions and powers for their users. Devices primarily include things like tools, weapons, armor, accessories, and so on. Small, highly-maneuverable vehicles, though, like motorcycles and hoverboards, work better as devices than outright vehicles.

Devices generally have the Removable (Attack, Take Away) limit. Hand-held or loosely-worn devices also generally have the Removable (Disarm) limit. A device without the Removable (Disarm) limit is not easy to take away in the heat of combat. A device without the Removable (Attack) limit is virtually indestructible. A device without the Removable (Take Away) limit is built into the character, summonable at will, or otherwise impossible to effectively remove.

A device's stats can never be used by a character - even if you're wearing a full suit of completely indestructible armor, you are still subject to damage normally (though presumably that armor, in addition to being indestructible itself, provides its user with some impressive defense-boosting powers).

Devices are assumed to be easily portable and readily accessible - in other words, the default assumption is that the character does have access to it. A character forced to forego a device due to circumstance (such as having to leave your weapon behind due to security) qualifies for a Power Loss Complication if the device would be useful during the scene.

Vehicles

Vehicles are more complex than devices. The defining point of a vehicle is that it is large enough to contain its user and probably other passengers entirely. Vehicles can offer a level of inherent protection that devices do not, but they are less convenient and reliably accessible.

Expertise (Vehicles): Many vehicle rules involve the user's Expertise (Vehicles) skill. Vehicles is a broad proficiency; characters may also have specific Expertise proficiencies such as Land Vehicles, Sea Vehicles, Air Vehicles, or Space Vehicles, or niche proficiencies such as Cars, Trucks, Sailboats, Motor Boats, Ships, Planes, Jets, Helicopters, etc. "Vehicles" is simply used here for simplicity.

When piloting a vehicle, your Prowess skill is capped by your Expertise (Vehicles) skill.

Vehicle Limits: Vehicles tend to be large and unwieldy. They generally aren't effective indoors. They also generally only operate in one type of terrain, and take some effort (typically three distinct maneuvers; see Vehicle Security below) to get turned on and ready to go. And, of course, a vehicle isn't personally portable; you have to leave it somewhere once you exit it, and get back to it next time you want to use it. All told, unlike with devices, the default assumption is generally that a character may or may not be able to use its vehicles.

Vehicles must take the Removable (Attack, Take Away, Vehicles) limits. Vehicles can be attacked directly (but are generally pretty durable), and can be unavailable for various arbitrary circumstantial reasons (out of fuel, inclement weather, etc). The Vehicle limit covers most of the general hassles of vehicles, such as the fact that it isn't as portable as a device, that it is only suitable for use outdoors, the time it takes to get in and turn the vehicle on, that it often requires Expertise (Vehicles), etc. You don't get any Hero Points when these issues crop up.

Vehicle Defense: Unlike devices with the Removable (Attack) limit, vehicles calculate their Defense scores like mundane objects: -10, minus twice their Size rank. This means most idle vehicles are trivially easy to hit, especially since an idle vehicle counts as an inanimate object. A mobile vehicle has a Defense stat equal to its user's Defense, capped by the user's Expertise (Vehicles) skill. Note that larger vehicles impose Expertise (Vehicles) penalties on their users. This also means vehicles can't trade their Defense for Resistance. They may, however, buy additional Resistance normally, up to normal PL+5 maximums. This Resistance can also be Limited (limit value 10) to only the frame or only the windows, if desired.

Vehicle Security: A typical vehicle has two default security measures to prevent unauthorized use. First, there are locks on the doors to preclude entry into the vehicle. Second, the engine has to be turned on. The vehicle includes a physical key which can both unlock the doors and turn on the vehicle. Unlocking a vehicle door (with the key) is a maneuver. Getting into a vehicle is a separate maneuver (which includes any necessary matters like opening the door, buckling a seatbelt, etc, although for large vehicles, it may take additional movement to get to where you need to go). Turning the vehicle on (with the key) is a third maneuver. The reverse of all these actions are also maneuvers.

Using the key to access the vehicle (both for unlocking the doors and starting the engine) is technically an Expertise task with no difficulty modifier (so, a set DC of 1) and no proficiency required. This usually doesn't matter as even an untrained character can make such a check automatically and since it's just a maneuver it can be retried freely with more Maneuver actions. However, distractions, impediments, and other set DC modifiers can make it harder, and occasionally cause delays.

Accessing the vehicle without a key requires the Hack action of the Expertise skill (requiring a proficiency like Technology, Security, Thievery, etc). The DC is 16 by default, but the owner can substitute 11 + its Expertise skill if this is higher and it has an appropriate proficiency, and some object features can make it more difficult.

Vehicle Movement: Most vehicles purchase Speed and Strength measures, allowing them to travel at high speeds and transport large volumes of cargo and passengers. Without these powers, a vehicle will only move at a normal ground Speed of 0 (30'). Land-based vehicles count as dragging their loads using wheels, so they have a capacity limit three Mass ranks higher than their Strength. Water-borne vehicles are especially effective at transporting cargo, and have a capacity limit four Mass ranks higher than their Strength. Airborne vehicles use their normal Strength. Thus, without any additional ranks in Strength, a ground-based vehicle would have a capacity of 400 pounds, water-borne of 800 pounds, and airborne of only 50 pounds, before reducing their speed.

Vehicles designed to move through naturally hazardous environments are assumed to come with appropriate life support functions.

Vehicle Size and Space: Vehicles default to being Size rank -1 (somewhere between 7 and 15 feet in their largest dimension). Additional Size ranks are purchased as with the Growth feature, with four ranks of Growth to one Size rank. That said, vehicles aren't usually perfectly proportionate; each Size rank will more-or-less quadruple the vehicle's total space.

The big advantage of vehicle size is that it means more space. Vehicle space can be broadly allocated three ways - passenger space, cargo space, and open space. Space is measured in units, as shown below:

Growth	Size Rank	Space
-3	-1	4
-2	-1	6
-1	-1	8
0	-1	12
1	0	16
2	0	24
3	0	32
4	0	48
5	1	64
6	1	96
7	1	128
8	1	192
9	2	256
10	2	384
11	2	512
12	2	768
13	3	1,024
14	3	1,536
15	3	2,048
16	3	3,072
17	4	4,096
18	4	6,144
19	4	8,192
20	4	12,288

Each unit of space is generally enough to hold one human-sized occupant reasonably comfortably, or two tightly (fitting into a vehicle tightly renders a character Restrained). The different types of space mean different things though. Passenger space is designed for passenger comfort and safety - seats, seatbelts, and so on. Characters who aren't in passenger space can be thrown around by difficult driving. Characters properly secured in passenger space count as Restrained, but get a +5 Heroic bonus on Resistance checks against any slam or fall the vehicle is involved in. Storage space is meant for cargo, and might be sectioned off from passengers, or even secured or secret, and one unit of storage space can be divided up into multiple small compartments. Open space is clear enough for passengers to stand up and move about, although generally speaking, for a good range of movement it can only be about half full. If it's at its normal capacity, people can still move about some, but not very freely (count as Hindered). Above normal capacity (packing in tightly), there isn't much room to move at all.

Especially large vehicles (Size Rank 0 or more) can also have rooms (see Installations below). Vehicles with a Size Rank of 0 or higher can be attacked like Installations, targeting only a single part to bust inside or disable a particular function, rather than attacking the vehicle as a whole. When doing so, that section of the vehicle counts as an inanimate object as long as the attacker is moving at least as fast as the vehicle. However, unlike Installations, non-Area attacks can still target oversized vehicles normally.

However, size is not without its costs. Each rank of Growth the vehicle possesses imposes a -1 penalty on the user's Expertise (Vehicles) skill for any purposes related to controlling the vehicle (including the cap on vehicle Defense and Prowess).

Vehicle Cover: By default, a vehicle provides Total Cover, but no Concealment, to its occupants. Most vehicles can be targeted in two ways - the frame, or the windows. The windows are targeted individually, and damage to them has no impact on the vehicle itself, but they are more fragile - they count as two ranks lower than normal, so a Major vehicle's windows count as Mundane. This makes them a much better target for trying to punch through the cover provided by the vehicle to hit those within. The frame uses the owner's rank as normal for significant objects, but damage to the frame is straight damage to the vehicle.

Note that vehicle cover isn't in any way selective. Occupants must either use weapon systems installed in the vehicle, take actions that target those within the vehicle, or lean out the windows or the like to target (in the latter case, this degrades their cover from Total to Partial).

Difficult Driving: Vehicles can be difficult to maneuver. In any round that a vehicle is used to perform a difficult feat of maneuverability, all occupants except the user must make a Prowess check, DC 11 + the vehicle's Speed, or be Staggered and Impaired that round due to the rough movement (this changes to Stunned and Disabled if they are fitting tightly). Occupants that aren't properly secured in passenger space will also get thrown around if they fail their check, and sustain one Bruise per degree of failure beyond the first. Difficult feats of maneuverability include anything that requires a Prowess or Expertise (Vehicles) check. In addition, giving a vehicle your full Defense stat is considered a feat of difficult driving; if you want to avoid the difficult driving risk, the vehicle's Defense is reduced by 5 (to a minimum equal to its base Defense).

Acceleration: While the game glosses over the physics of superhuman movement speeds for normal powers, many vehicles have to deal with something at least vaguely approximating physics. Typically, each of the following actions during movement will involve accelerating and/or decelerating, lowering the vehicle's effective speed for the entire movement by 2: Starting movement when not already moving, turning (up to ninety degrees), or coming to a stop at the end of movement. With an Expertise (Vehicles) check, DC 6 + the vehicle's Speed rank, you can reduce such Speed penalties by one per degree of success.

Losing Control: You must take the Move maneuver at least once each round to control the vehicle. If you fail to take this action and have not brought the vehicle to a stop, the vehicle just keeps moving next round, in...more or less the same direction as it was, but it may drift to either side. This can risk crashes and other hazards.

Crashing: A vehicle that is Broken or Ruined risks a crash - the user must make an Expertise (Vehicles) check, DC 16 + the rank of the attack that disabled it. On a success, a Broken vehicle stalls, and a Ruined vehicle has a mitigated crash. On a failure, the vehicle crashes. The effects of a stall, mitigated crash, or crash depend on the type of vehicle. The effects of crashes are not limited by PL.

Land-based: On a stall, the vehicle stops functioning, but the user can guide it to a safe stop. On a crash, all occupants are subject to a slam hazard based on the vehicle's Speed and Mass ranks. On a mitigated crash, each degree of success on the check lowers the slam's rank by 2.

Water-based: On a stall, the vehicle stops functioning but still floats. On a crash, the vehicle begins sinking at a Speed Rank of -2 (6' per round), and water begins filling the vehicle at a Speed Rank of -4 (1' per round). Each Breach the vehicle has suffered increases these Speed Ranks by 1. On a mitigated crash, the Speed Rank at which the vehicle sinks and fills is reduced by 1 per degree of success.

Air-based: On a stall, the vehicle begins gliding towards the ground. It stops functioning, but keeps moving forward at its previous speed, descending at a Speed Rank of 0 (30' per round). The user can guide it a bit, but not much, certainly not enough to make a proper turn. On landing, the vehicle and all within are subject to a slam hazard. If the user makes an Expertise (Vehicles) check, DC 16 + the vehicle's Speed, the rank of the slam is halved. On a crash, the vehicle plummets towards the ground, still moving forward at its previous speed but descending at Speed Rank 5. On impact, the vehicle and all within are subject to both the above slam and a fall from its initial altitude. On a mitigated crash, rank of both the slam and the fall are reduced by 2 per degree of success.

Space-based: On a stall, the vehicle stops functioning, but the user can guide it to a stop. On a crash, the vehicle just keeps moving in whatever direction it had been moving at the same speed until it is stopped by some other force. On a mitigated crash, you can lower the Speed by up to 2 ranks per degree of success.

Tunnelling: On a stall, the vehicle stops functioning. On a crash, it also causes a collapse, sealing back the way it came. On a mitigated crash, the collapse is delayed for two Time Ranks per degree of success, allowing passengers an opportunity to escape. The collapse generally extends a Distance Rank equal to the vehicle's Speed rank.

Installations

Installations are for fixed locations - typically structures, but they can also be just specific areas. Installations aren't portable or movable at all - a structure that is capable of moving is just a really big vehicle. Since installations can't move, the default assumptions is that they aren't available. Characters generally can't benefit from their installations during a mission, unless the mission is centered on the installation itself (such as an attack on the heroes' base). For this reason, installations generally don't offer HP when destroyed or unavailable, since they aren't usually actively used anyway. However, an installation that is turned against you, such as if an enemy takes it over and you have to force them out, is generally treated as a narrative complication.

Installation Powers: Installations don't buy powers normally and don't take the Removable limit. Rather, installations have access to some especially potent features which can be used to grant them or their occupants powers at a very low cost.

Installation Size: Installation size is determined as with vehicles, although Installations start at Growth 4 (Size rank 0), and Installations don't use passenger space. Many Installation-oriented features are classified as rooms. A room generally requires at least 8 units of open space per person you want to be able to use the room at once (rooms are considered to have half space for determining maximum occupants, but to actually make active use of the room's functions requires more space than that, or duplicates of necessary features).

Installation Defense: Installations are inanimate objects, but they are quite durable, having both Defense and Resistance equal to the owner's PL (which can be traded off against each other up to normal PL+5 limits). An installation doesn't have a single overall condition - each part of the installation is effectively distinct. Each door, window, security camera, section of wall (generally measured in 6' increments, Distance Rank -2), and so on is targeted separately. However, an Area attack that can cover at least a quarter of the installation's structure can deal damage to the installation as a whole, as well as damaging every section within the area (roll one resistance check for the Installation, and apply the results to all affected sections as modified by any Resistance differences between them).

Installations aren't equally strong at all points. There are five main classes of object making up installations:

External Walls: The outer frame of the structure. External walls have a Major Resistance Bonus (+5 Resistance) against attacks.

Internal Walls: The interior of the structure. Internal walls have a Minor Resistance Bonus (+2 Resistance) against attacks.

External Doors: Doors, gates, and the like allowing entry into the structure. External doors use normal Resistance.

Internal Doors: Doors allowing passage to different rooms within the structure. Internal doors count as one rank lower (so a Major installation's doors count as Elite).

Windows: Windows are the most fragile structures of an installation, counting as two ranks lower (so a Major installation's windows count as Mundane).

Installation Security: By default, an installation has a lock on its external doors that can be opened by a physical key as an active move action (with the same token Expertise check as vehicles). Without the key, the DC to use the Hack action to bypass the lock is 16, or 11 + Expertise if the owner has an appropriate proficiency.

Internal doors have simple locks. By default, these are simply unlocked from the inside. The Technology DC to overcome security on internal doors is five lower than for external doors.

Windows can either be not designed to open, or designed to open from the inside. The locks can't be opened from the outside without at least causing a Breach to the window, since they can't be physically accessed (although certain powers might be able to access the locks from outside, in which case no check is required to unlock them).

Generally speaking, unlocked doors and windows can be opened and closed as part of the action to move through them. Unlocking and opening or closing and locking a window or door (with the key) is a single maneuver.

Skills

Skills are purchased with SP. You can get 10 SP for 1 PP.

General Skill Rules

Untrained Skill Checks: Generally, if you attempt an action requiring a skill you don't have at least one rank in, you make a skill check as normal, you just don't have a skill bonus to add to the roll. Most uses of Expertise do, however, require an appropriate proficiency to use, but you can use them even if your actual Expertise skill is 0.

Rescaled Skills: In some cases, power matters too. Some actions, typically those that use skills but have an effect on combat, call for rescaled skills. A rescaled skill replaces your normal skill bonus with your Power Level, with a +2 bonus per 5 ranks in the skill; so a high skill is still valuable, but it's not an overwhelming advantage against an opponent of similar level, but who just so happens to have not invested heavily in the skill.

Interaction Skills: Certain skills, called interaction skills, are aimed at dealing with others through social interaction. Interaction skills allow you to influence the attitudes of others and get them to cooperate with you in one way or another. Since interaction skills are intended for dealing with others socially, they have certain requirements.

First, you must be able to interact with the subject(s) of the skill. They must be aware of you and able to understand you. If they can't hear or understand you for some reason, you have a -5 penalty to your skill check. There is an additional -5 penalty on creatures that lack human-level intelligence, such as animals. Mindless subjects are immune to interaction skills.

You can use interaction skills on groups of subjects at once, but only to achieve the same result for everyone. So you can attempt to use Deception or Persuasion to convince a group of something, or Intimidation to cow a crowd, for example, but you can't convince some individuals of one thing and the rest of another, or intimidate some and not others. The GM decides if a particular use of an interaction skill is effective against a group, and may apply modifiers depending on the situation. The general rules for interaction still apply: everyone in the group must be able to hear and understand you, for example, or you suffer a -5 on your skill check against them. Mindless subjects are unaffected, as usual.

Gaining Information: In many cases, skills can be used to gain information. Sometimes, such information may be important to the plot, so you don't want players to miss it entirely, but you also don't want a savvy criminal to leave behind obvious clues, or for a failed check to have no meaning. Likewise, sometimes, enemies may wish to set up tricks or traps for those looking into them - but you don't want PCs to be unable to trust their information-gathering skills.

So, information gathering checks are not made secretly. The player rolls its die openly, and gets to know if it succeeded or failed. If it succeeds, obviously, it gets the information it's looking for. If it fails, it might not get any information, or the GM can choose to give it information anyway.

When doing this, the GM provides the true information (or at least, the minimal amount of it necessary for the plot), but also provides one piece of false information per degree of failure. The players know that at least one of the results is true - but they don't know which. So failing a check to gain critical information won't grind the story to a halt, it just means they'll have to run down more leads (or maybe they'll guess which is right the first time).

There are certain actions (such as the Deception use of Outclass or the Falsify Evidence action of Investigation) that allow characters to do similar things to intentionally mislead people looking into them, but since they involve active skill use and intentionally misleading evidence, they provide more flexibility in how much information can be given.

Deception

Deception is the skill of getting others to believe what you want them to believe. It covers things like acting, bluffing, fast-talk, trickery, and subterfuge, but also simply convincing people of things through logic or rhetoric. You use Deception to convince others of things - whether they are true or not.

In general, you are not required to roll a Deception check just because you are telling a lie, feigning innocence or ignorance, or otherwise acting sketchy or putting up a false front. Characters do not receive an automatic chance to recognize such subterfuge. Characters must actively try to see through false intentions, generally by either taking the Suspicious stance or trying to gain an Insight edge.

Of course, generally speaking, the GM does know when the PCs are actually putting on airs. It is the GM's job to keep its knowledge separate from the NPCs' knowledge - NPCs should only use Insight when they have a reason to be suspicious or on guard, and if they fail to find any evidence of dishonesty, should generally accept the character's false face within reason. On the flip side, concealing ill intentions only gets you so far - it won't get you into a secure area without actual authorization, for example.

Deception can be used for any of the following.

Edge: When you have a Deception edge over others, you can turn failed attempts to gain information about you to your advantage, if you wish. If someone fails an attempt to gain information about you with an active use of Insight, you may give them information anyway, as much or as little as you want, which may be as true or false as you want. If you wish to, you can guarantee that a certain number of these pieces of information are of a certain level of veracity (for example, "at least one of these things is true" "One of these things is true, but two are false" "At least one of these things is at least partially true" etc). The information you give about veracity must be completely true (to the best of your knowledge, at least - but if you aren't sure that something's true you can't actually declare it as true, though you could say you believe it to be true), if you give those tips you can't fake them, but it's up to the subject to sort out which pieces of information match which levels of veracity, and you don't have to give a level of veracity for all (or even any!) of the information, and you don't have to reveal any information at all if you do not wish to. Inspiration and similar effects cannot be used to confirm or refute which pieces of information match which levels of veracity.

If you have two degrees of edge, you may also do this when they succeed an active Insight attempt, or when they fail a check to gain information about you or any of your traits with an Informative sense. If you have three degrees of edge, you may do this even on successful uses of an Informative sense. Alternately, if you are able to do it on a success, you can simply give no information at all, effectively becoming immune to such actions unless or until they overcome your edge.

You may spend one point of the edge when you make a claim or statement, and anyone who you have an edge over knows how truthful the statement is, at least to the best of your knowledge (to a rough degree; they'll learn if it is definitely true, probably true, mostly true, partially true, a little bit true, etc). They receive no information about what part of the claim or statement might be untrue or where any untruth might come from. Since you have to spend a point of edge to do this, they also don't know if you chose not to spend a point on a statement because it isn't true, or because you just don't feel that making them certain of its truthfulness is worth expending the edge (especially since higher degrees of Deception edge are very nice to have!) This doesn't require them to believe you - they may be uncertain that your knowledge is accurate, seize on a partial untruth to doubt the key point, or even just reject your claim out of sheer stubbornness. It also doesn't require they act on this knowledge. But whether they choose to believe or act on it or not, they know it; it is mechanically confirmed. This also means that they cannot truthfully violate this knowledge - if you say something completely true, even if they don't believe it, if they try to tell someone else the opposite later, it pings as an intentional lie to any actions or powers that would detect such (likewise if it's probably true than their opposing statement would ping as a probable lie, etc). Naturally, the less true the statement is, the less of an impact this has (if it's partially true, and they don't know which part, they can get away with opposing any given part without getting pinged, as long as they don't oppose the whole statement).

Convince: Type: Standard. Class: Extended (Task). Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Episode. Maintenance: None.

You can use Deception to convince an NPC to do or go along with something, following the rules for a task. To do this, your approach has to involve convincing the NPC in some way - for example, making it believe it's a good idea, presenting evidence that encourages this course of action, tricking it into doing it accidentally, etc.

A successful check on a sufficient approach allows you to choose one of the following benefits for each degree of success. If you roll on a reasonable approach and get more degrees of success than are needed to complete the task, excess degrees can also be used for these:
-Choose one claim you made or piece of evidence you presented that was considered reasonable in the context of the approach; the NPC will take that claim as proven true in the future unless presented with undeniable evidence to the contrary.
-Choose one action or decision that comes about as a result of the influence; the NPC will believe taking it was its own idea, not suggested by you.
-Choose one offer you made as part of your approach; the NPC will take you at your word that you will make good on it for at least the rest of the current adventure (otherwise, the NPC may require you to fulfill your side of the bargain before it goes along with you, or at least provide some sort of collateral or down-payment).

Disguise: Type: Move. Class: Extended (Time Rank 7). Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: Episode. Maintenance: None.

You can use makeup, costumes, and other props to change your appearance, or that of somebody else who remains in range for the entire time (give or take some movement to grab tools and the like). Your Deception check result determines the effectiveness of the disguise, setting an active DC for Perception checks that must be made to notice something off about the disguise. However, characters do not automatically receive Perception checks to see through a disguise. As with normal lying and false fronts, characters only make a check to see through a disguise if they have reason to be on guard or suspicious - seeing through a disguise requires an active use of Perception (specifically, a Scan action). A successful check reveals you aren't who you appear to be, but it takes a three-degree success for someone to actually recognize you (assuming they already know your appearance).

Note that while Perception is used to see through a disguise directly, Insight edge can also be used against disguises (disgusing yourself as someone else would be recognized as dishonest).

You only use Disguise when you are specifically altering your appearance to seem to be someone else. Simply putting on a costume or uniform to appear as, say, a delivery-person, or a police officer, or a soldier, or whatever, doesn't involve any checks or cost any actions, although if you act suspicious people might confront you or examine you with Insight (Insight edge can still recognize these things as dishonest), and you can still be recognized by people who know your face. Likewise, no Disguise action is required to simply conceal your identity with a mask or the like, but doing so won't trick others into believing you're someone else.

Creating a disguise at all takes some skill; your check result must beat a set DC or the attempt fails. By default the set DC includes +5 for the inherent difficulty (making it DC 6), going up by 5 for each major alteration to your appearance (such as dramatically altering your apparent height or weight, disguising your gender, appearing as a different species, etc). Creating a disguise also critically requires appropriate tools (makeup, costuming, etc), so the DC increases by 10 if you lack those, or by 5 if you have to make do with an improvised version. Other negative circumstances may further increase the DC.

If you are impersonating a particular individual, anyone who knows that individual gets a circumstance bonus to Perception checks to notice something off: regular associates get a +2, while friends get a +5. Characters who share a close personal relationship with the individual get a +5 circumstance bonus, and also receive a free attempt to see through the disguise immediately the first time in any given scene that they interact with you (they are also very likely to make active attempts to see through it if you do something they wouldn't expect).

Distract: Type: Move. Class: Basic Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: Attention.

You can distract a target character or group. Roll a Deception check against a passive DC of 11 + the highest Insight among the group. If you succeed, the target focuses on you for as long as you maintain the distraction. It takes -5 on Perception against characters other than you and takes -2 on any active checks it attempts to roll against characters other than you, and these penalties apply again for each two degrees of success beyond the first. It also can't take intentional Reactions in response to characters other than you.

If you take a -5 penalty on the check, you can get it to focus on someone other than you who it is already interacting with in some manner (talking to, fighting, etc). With a -10 penalty, you can get it to focus on someone it isn't already interacting with or even nothing at all. In these cases, you can't maintain the distraction, so it only lasts for a round (although the person you get it to focus on may maintain the distraction if they want).

Any sort of attack or danger in the target's vicinity from a character other than the one it is focusing on breaks the distraction automatically.

Innuendo: Type: Free. Class: One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can use Deception to send covert messages using word-play and double-meanings while apparently talking about other things. Roll a Deception check against a set DC. The DC has a difficulty modifier based on how complex the information you're trying to convey is, and may have other modifiers as suits the situation. Conveying some simple information, such as letting on to an ally that you're leading an opponent along or giving a subtle signal or the like, adds 5 to the DC. Complex messages or messages trying to communicate new information add 10 or 15, respectively. If you fail the check, the recipient can make an Insight check against the same DC + 1 per point you failed by to catch on anyway.

Only intended recipients understand the true meaning of the message by default. However, characters with an Insight edge may recognize innuendo as "off" and potentially learn more about it with higher degrees of edge.

Pre-established messages, such as codewords, have no difficulty increase, and there is a limit to how much information even three degrees of Insight edge can get about them - you can't learn what the actual message is, there's just not enough information to deduce it, but if the code word is meant to trigger some action you could learn that. Establishing a prepared code "on the fly" can be done as an Edit Scene surge.

Manipulate: You can use Deception to perform Manipulate actions as explained in the Actions chapter, rendering the target Vulnerable to you on a success.

Alternately, you can cause the target to fail to notice or to misinterpret some detail about the situation, relative to you. You can't conceal blatant effects and actions from the target. This may cause the target to blunder into a hazard if it misses you with an attack, believe you to be Vulnerable while you are actually Defending, or even get a false read on an information gathering ability that it uses on you while the effect lasts, if its check fails to beat an active DC equal to your check result (use the rules for Deception edge for determining how you can provide false information). The exact results of such a trick are left to the discretion of the GM and the creativity of the players, but as a rule of thumb, this should mainly only cause modest tactical blunders unless there is some specific situational feature that can be exploited for a more serious result. Once an NPC has been burned by a particular trick, further attempts to trick it in the same way in the same scene take a stacking -2 penalty.

Expertise

Expertise is a broad skill encompassing knowledge and training in a variety of specialized fields, particularly professional disciplines and scholarship. Expertise is considered one skill, but in and of itself only really represents your general learning ability and aptitude. To use most of the functions of Expertise, you need to purchase proficiencies, a type of feature. Proficiencies are areas of skill or knowledge, such as Architecture, Cooking, Current Events, Law, Politics, Singing, and Theology. For each proficiency you have, you can use your Expertise skill for tasks, actions, and checks related to that field. If you lack a proficiency, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't attempt the task, but you treat your Expertise skill as 0. Some tasks may require, critically require, or absolutely require a relevant proficiency at GM discretion; without one, set DCs may be higher. In some cases, you might be able to use a related proficiency as an improvised replacement, to reduce the requirement modifier.

All characters are automatically proficient in "common knowledge" - general stuff that most people in the setting would know, from formal education, pop-cultural osmosis, or the like.

For each rank of Expertise you purchase, you get one proficiency free. If you wish, you may trade these bonus proficiencies back in for 2 FP each, but you can't convert these bonus FP back into VP.

In the game rules, Expertise is often listed with a relevant proficiency in parentheses, effectively treating them sort of like a sub-skill. So driving, for example, refers to Expertise (Vehicles) checks. Note also that proficiencies, like descriptors, are not meant to be specific or exclusive; Expertise (Cars) could be used when the game rules call for Expertise (Vehicles), for example - if you're driving a car. More narrow proficiencies do generally provide advantages over broader ones.

Expertise covers all areas except those tasks specifically covered by other skills. So, for example, a police detective is going to be trained in Investigation (and probably Insight and Perception) in addition to Expertise (Law Enforcement), the same for an intrepid reporter with Expertise (Journalism). A trial lawyer is going to want skill in Insight and Deception (and probably Persuasion) along with the training in the law that comes with Expertise (Law).

Expertise allows the following actions, although not all options will be practical with all Expertise skills:

Edge: When you have an Expertise edge over others, if one of your proficiencies is directly relevant to the situation, you get a +2 critical bonus on any skills you use against them, actively or passively (this includes other uses of the Expertise skill). For example, if you have Expertise (Law Enforcement) you could get the bonus against members of law enforcement or against others when performing law enforcement related tasks. If you have Expertise (Vehicles) you get the bonus while driving. And so on. With three degrees of edge, the bonus improves to +5.

You may spend points of Expertise edge to gain the benefit of 5 Hero Points each, but only for purposes of skill-based surges against characters you have an edge over, and only in situations where one of your proficiencies is directly relevant.

Apply Knowledge: Type: Move. Class: One-Shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can apply your knowledge practically, coming to conclusions relevant to your proficiencies based on information at hand. For example, someone with Expertise (Art) might be able to look at a painting and know who the artist is or even tell if it's a forgery. Someone with Expertise (Business) might use it to gauge how a recent villain attack might affect the stock market. A survivalist could tell you whether water is safe to drink or plants safe to eat. A scientist can examine forensic evidence. And so on. Make an Expertise check against a set DC based on the difficulty of the question and other circumstances; if another character has attempted to conceal some or all of the information (such as the fact that a painting is a forgery), your check needs to beat an active DC equal to its own Expertise check result to get the information concealed. One degree of success gets you the basic gist of the most relevant information. Two degrees of success also provide you with some specific details, and allow you to ask the GM one question to clarify or expand upon the information gained, or learn about a related subject. Three degrees of success provides all relevant information related to the topic at hand, and allows two further questions. Each additional degree of success allows one additional question.

Be Prepared: Type: Move. Class: One-Shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: None. Duration: Episode. Maintenance: None.

You can make an Expertise check to declare you have on-hand or otherwise readily accessible some item related to your proficiencies, even if there's not much reason for you to have been carrying it around or keeping it nearby. For example, a survivalist might have rope, a mechanic might have a spare car battery, a police officer might have handcuffs, etc. Roll an Expertise check against a set DC based on how plausible the item would be for you to carry on-hand and other circumstances. Typical difficulty modifiers are as follows:

+5 DC: Common items that such a professional would almost certainly have at hand (such as a survivalist having a knife).

+10 DC: Things that a professional probably has on hand on the job, but might not carry around day to day (such as a police officer having handcuffs or a flashlight).

+15 DC: Things that a professional probably keeps relatively nearby on the job or at least on hand in its usual workspace, but maybe not something it would carry around (such as a chef having some particular kitchen utensil).

+20 DC: Specialized tools that might be on-hand for specific tasks, but probably not regularly (such as a police officer carrying binoculars or a survivalist from a temperate locale having a heavy winter jacket).

+25 DC: Things that, while related to the job, would be extremely abnormal for the character to have available without specifically expecting to have need of it (such as a thief happening to have a uniform for a specific company it suddenly needs to infiltrate).

There may also be impediment modifiers if the object would be particularly inconvenient to carry around. If something has happened in the scene that should have ensured you don't have such an object (such as trying to declare you have a weapon when you've passed through metal detectors), it should count as an obstacle modifier. If someone has specifically searched you earlier in the scene, you also oppose an active DC equal to their Perception result, and items that would be especially difficult to conceal from a search may take impediment or obstacle modifiers on top of that.

You may only make one attempt to Be Prepared in a given scene; its one-shot nature applies just in general, rather than to any specific item. However, you may attempt to declare you have multiple items at once. In this case, the GM should calculate the DC based on the plausibility of having all of them. In some cases, such as when the character would logically carry them all together (such as a doctor having bandages, gauze, gloves, and alcohol all as part of a first aid kit) this won't even increase the DC. In other cases, where they're a bunch of unrelated items, the DC should be increased further. If you score multiple degrees of success, you can "expand" your initial declaration later in the scene, as long as it wouldn't push the DC past what you initially rolled.

If you are incapable of action, then with your approval another character may spend its move action to fuel this action for you; if you're a doctor and you're unconscious and bleeding out, an ally might for example search you to see if you have medical supplies on you, spending its move action to fuel your use of Be Prepared.

This sort of check is only required if there's not an obvious in-character reason to have the item at hand. If a police officer is on duty, of course it has its handcuffs, flashlight, and similar accoutrements. If a survivalist is going camping, of course it has the necessary supplies. If the character has time to to grab stuff from home, head to a store, or requisition supplies, it can gain access to them without a check. This is strictly for pulling out supplies at a moment's notice.

Hack: Type: Standard. Class: Extended. Range: Close. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Indefinite. Maintenance: None.

You can circumvent security measures related to your proficiencies, bypassing them. This might let you enter a building without the cameras noticing you, circumvent a wizard's wards, steal an item without setting off an alarm, pick a lock on a door, disable a trap, or gain unauthorized access to a computer or vehicle. While typically a close action, some security measures, such as computerized security connected to a wifi network or the internet, may be able to be accessed remotely. Hacking generally requires a Time Rank equal to half the security system's DC, rounded down, minus 1. So a DC 21 security system would require Time Rank 9, or one hour, to hack.

Many types of security systems are bought as features, and have DCs based on the features. A character can also set up a security system as an extended standard action; the time required depends on how elaborate the system is, but its DC is equal to 11 + the character's Expertise skill. Any equipment a character owns that qualifies for its proficiencies can also be assumed to have this security DC at a minimum.

Note that if other characters are aware of your attempt and have access to the security system, they may attempt to Counter your attempt.

If your check succeeds, you can choose one of the following benefits per degree of success:

Bypass Security: You are able to bypass most security measures, ignoring them. This gives you access to things, but not control of them. For example, you can see what a camera sees, but you can't spoof it. You can access files on a computer, but not edit them. You can disable a trap, but not set it to trigger against others. You can circumvent wards, but not tap their power yourself. And so on. If the security was simply preventing use of a secured object, such as a vehicle, you may now use the object normally.

Commandeer Security: If you have already bypassed security, you may now commandeer it, effectively gaining standard control. You can spoof what a camera sees or disable the feed for others, edit files on a computer, reset a trap, make use of an enemy's wards, etc. If others are trying to use the secured object too, you must establish an Expertise edge for your commands to take precedence.

Conceal Traces: You conceal all traces of your hack so others will be unaware of it, at least until they see evidence of it. If you wish, you may "pre-spend" your first degree of success to conceal evidence of your hack while you work as well; in this case, anyone with a relevant field who might notice it while you're working (such as a computer security expert or program running a scan) has to beat a passive DC of 11 + your Expertise skill to notice you hacking (obviously, in some cases, this doesn't work; if you're physically picking a lock, you'll need to use Stealth or Deception to avoid notice while you work). If you end up failing the check, though, you fail to conceal evidence of the attempt. Otherwise, the active DC to detect your hacking once it's complete is equal to your check result.

Disable Item: You render an item useless until fixed (which requires a Repair Object action with an active DC equal to your check result, and a Time Rank equal to half your check result, rounded down, minimum 1).

Quicken Hack: You complete the task one Time Rank earlier.

Restructure Security: You fully restructure the security. You must first Bypass and Commandeer it. You are now considered the controller of the security; for others to access it, they have to completely hack it anew. Until they do, they can't oppose your Commandeer commands with their own, even if they have an Expertise edge over you.

Impress Others: Type: Free. Class: Basic. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You can use your Expertise to impress others - assuming they are interested in the field at least. This can mean using the Expertise skill directly to perform some impressive task - such as cooking a meal, painting a picture, singing a song, or performing a dance - or simply wowing people with your knowledge. Make an Expertise check against a set DC based on the difficulty of the task you are attempting and its circumstances, while the degree of success determines just how well you perform it (one degree is a solid performance, but higher degrees are more and more impressive; that being said, higher DC tasks are, themselves, much more impressive - for a given roll, it's usually safe to say that a higher DC task that succeeded by fewer degrees is still more impressive than a lower DC task that succeeded by more degrees). In some cases, this can let you use Expertise to Aid an interaction skill check, or even completely substitute your Expertise for an interaction skill in certain special conditions. It may also be done as an opposed check for contests of expertise, such as a dance-off or talent show.

While not technically a one-shot action, later attempts to impress don't necessarily cancel out previous failures, and generally the first attempt is what's going to make the strongest impression. If it's an actual contest, most likely each character will only get one attempt (although some contests may do a best-of-X sort of structure).

The requirements depend on what you're doing, but generally always require at least partial movement and partial focus (and full focus is common).

Perform Task: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Varies. Maintenance: Varies.

You can perform mundane (or not-so-mundane) tasks related to your proficiencies, that aren't otherwise covered by other skills. For example, a sailor could use its expertise to tie a strong knot, navigate by the stars, pilot and repair boats, and so on. You make a check against a set DC based on the difficulty and other circumstances. The parameters of the action also vary based on the type of task; this is essentially a catchall action, and its possibilities are pretty much endless.

Recall Fact: Type: Non-Action. Class: One-shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can recall knowledge relating to your proficiencies off the top of your head. This doesn't let you learn things that are only known to select individuals - it has to be knowledge that has been disseminated to professionals in the field. Roll an Expertise check against a set DC based on the obscurity and complexity of the information. Common knowledge - the sort of thing that is taught in school, known to many laypeople and pretty much everyone with skill in the field - is DC 6. Professional knowledge, stuff that's known to most professionals in the field, is DC 11. Information that is widely known to those who are specialized in a relevant portion of the field (for example, something that wouldn't be known by most doctors but would by most surgeons) is usually DC 16, or 21 for advanced stuff that is unlikely to be known at all by laypeople. New information that has yet to be widely disseminated is usually DC 26 or higher, depending on just how obscure it is. Degrees of success provide the same results as with Apply Knowledge.

Even without a proficiency, you can use Expertise to try to recall something you experienced as a general-purpose check for your memory. You don't have to do this unless it's something you as a player don't remember, but your character might. As a rule of thumb, a good set DC is equal to the Time rank minus fifteen for something that was fairly significant (i.e. plot-relevant). Less significant things will probably have impediment or even obstacle modifiers to the DC to reflect that they didn't stand out as much.

If you fail the check, you might still be able to learn the information with some research (a downtime action).

This is a non-action - you can just ask the GM for information relevant to your proficiencies and roll a check if necessary to see what you know. The GM may also call for characters to roll checks to recall relevant information when it comes up in a scene.

Repair/Sabotage Object: Type: Standard. Class: Extended. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

More craft-oriented proficiencies can be used to repair damage to appropriate objects - such as Expertise (Carpentry) letting you fix damaged wooden structures, Expertise (Mechanic) letting you repair machines and vehicles, Expertise (Art) letting you restore old paintings, etc.

This requires an Expertise check against a set DC. There is a difficulty modifier to the check based on the severity of the damage. General wear-and-tear or routine maintenance is +0. Bruises are +2. Breaches are +5. Repairing a broken object is +7. Repairing a ruined object or creating a new one from scratch is +10. The difficulty modifier is also increased at GM discretion based on how complicated the object itself is to create or repair. A successful check fully repairs the object.

A decent rule of thumb for calculating the Time rank required to repair an object is to use its Volume Rank (using a minimum of one foot per dimension) plus the rank of its highest-ranked stat or function plus 2 for an object with only Bruises, 4 for Breaches, 6 for Broken, and 8 for Ruined or for creating a new object. Halve the modifier for conditions and function for simple objects that don't have much complex machinery, moving parts, or the like. For very large objects though, only the damaged area should be taken into account when determining Volume Rank. For example, a car that's roughly Volume Rank 7, Speed 5 would take Time Rank 12 (8 hours) to maintain, a day to repair all Bruises, four days to repair Breaches, two weeks to get it back in working order if it's completely broken, and two months to build from scratch. A section of stone wall (Resistance 8, halved for a simple object) that's 5' long, 10' tall, and 3' thick (Volume Rank 8) would take 8 hours to maintain, 16 hours to repair Bruises, a day to repair Breaches, two days to fix if Broken, and four days to build from scratch. Repairing an entire 120'x80' four-story stone castle that's been subject to damage all over would take 1.5 years for maintenance, 3 years for Bruises, 6 years for Breaches, 12 years if it's Broken, and 25 years to build.

Note that creating objects can provide a fluff excuse for acquiring traits based on such objects, but they are not free - you still have to purchase them with PP (or power stunt them) to actually use them in play. For more "narrative" items, such as a basic car to get around with off-screen, though, no points are necessary.

Sabotaging an object works similarly, allowing you to deal Object Damage to appropriate types of objects directly with an Expertise check as an Extended standard action. Roll an Expertise check against a calculated DC of 11 + the object's Resistance - the object's current Bruises. If you fail by two degrees, you cause no effect. If you fail by one degree, you cause a Bruise. If you succeed, you cause one tier of conditions from the Object Damage tree per degree of success. Sabotage includes concealing your results, so others won't generally notice it automatically, though active uses of Perception that beat an active DC equal to your check result will notice it. A character who attempts to use the object may notice the damage before-hand if a passive DC of 11 + their Perception skill exceeds your check result. Naturally, the sabotage will be discovered if the damage to the object actually impairs its function!

Insight

You can tell someone's true intentions and feelings by paying attention to things like body language, inflection, and your own intuition. You can use Insight for any of the following purposes.

Edge: When you have an Insight edge over others, you automatically and accurately detect whether things they say or do are "honest", "off", or "dishonest". Honest means everything is just how it appears - they're telling the truth, they're really feeling like how they're acting, they're not pulling a fast one, they're not under duress, etc. "Off" means things are mostly like they appear, but there's something sketchy going on - they might be telling a partial truth, playing up a reaction, acting under some duress, presenting accurate information but with intent to mislead, speaking in code, or the like. "Dishonest" means things aren't as they appear - they're lying outright, faking a reaction, not themselves (mind controlled, an illusion, someone else in a disguise), staging a false scene, etc.

With two degrees of edge, you get a general sense of why something is off or dishonest. So, you'd learn if they're telling a partial truth, speaking in code, lying outright, actually someone else in a disguise, etc.

With three degrees of edge, whenever you detect something that is off or dishonest from them, you can spend a point of edge to learn the answer to a question about whatever you flagged as off or dishonest, to the best of their knowledge. This can include the true information! (As best they know it, anyway.) It can also include things like, who is controlling them, why they are trying to mislead you, what they are trying to trick you into doing, etc.

Your check result to gain Insight edge counts as a minimum on any other Insight checks you are called to make.

While Insight has a limited number of individual actions compared to most skills, you can spend points of Insight edge to learn a variety of things about someone you have an Insight edge over. Each point of edge spent lets you do one of the following:

Discern Reasoning: The answer to one question about their revealed or demonstrated motivations during the scene (why they would respond a certain way, what they want, why they're here, how they're feeling, etc).

Gain Understanding: You learn a single Complication they have that relates to the current scene or conversation. Complications that are deeply secret cannot be learned in this way.

Predict Reaction: You learn how they would react if you did or said a certain thing.

Predict Response: You learn what their response (insufficient, reasonable, or sufficient) would be to a given approach to a social task.

Read Beliefs: You learn whether the answer to a specific question, as best they know it, is true, false, or unknown to them. You (or someone else) must ask or at least allude to the question, but they don't have to actually answer you - you read it in their reactions, but you can only learn true, false, or unknown. However, the question must be relatively specific; "Is the doomsday device in your house?" works, but "Is the doomsday device somewhere to the north" does not. Basically, you have to narrow your guess down to a single one of a large subset of options, you can't use this to run binary searches on a complex question.

Consider: Type: Move. Class: One-shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can take a moment to consider whether something is a good idea with an Insight check against a calculated DC of 11. If you succeed, the GM points out any facts you already know (but might not be considering) that might suggest whether or not this is a good idea. On a two degree success, the GM points out reasonable deductions one could make on the subject based on the information you have at hand. With three degrees, the GM brings up potential repercussions that you could reasonably expect. With four degrees, the GM provides some details on what other circumstances would have to be in play that you may or may not know about for those repercussions to come up. With five degrees, the GM comes out and tells you whether it's a good idea or not, as best as it can predict, and giving some clarifying information if it's a more complex question. All information the GM provides must be accurate, but below a five degree success could potentially be misleading if there are factors in play that you have no way of knowing about.

Evaluate: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained.

You begin consciously evaluating the trustworthiness of others. Roll an Insight check against a passive DC of 11 + the Deception skills of those around you. You get a rough evaluation of the general mood and motivations of anyone whose DC you beat - for example, you might learn that they're bored and only present because they're obligated to be, or angry and looking for a fight, or directly hostile towards you personally, etc. Additionally, while this action cannot give you an Insight edge over others, it sets an active DC to gain a Deception edge over you equal to your check result.

Intuit: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You get an intuitive sense of someone you're interacting with (or watching interact). Roll an Insight check against a passive DC of 11 + their Deception skill. If you succeed, you may gain a piece of information about them as if from spending a point of Insight edge. You don't actually have to have Insight edge over them to do this - it's an entirely separate action (and only a move action at that), although you can use it to "save" points of your actual edge. If you get multiple degrees of success, you gain additional pieces of information equal to each degree, cumulatively. So one degree gets you one piece of information, two degrees gets you three, three degress gets you six, etc.

Intimidation

You are adept at provoking intense emotional responses to get what you want. Obviously, fear is the most common, but any strong emotion will work.

Intimidation can be used for any of the following:

Edge: When you have an Intimidation edge over others, they count as either Impaired against you, or Impaired against characters other than you, you choice, in any round that they do not expressly act on their current feelings towards you (you can't dictate what they do, but they have to act on how they feel). This worsens to Disabled for purposes of the Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and Persuasion sills. If you have at least three degrees of edge, it becomes Disabled baseline and Impotent for social skills.

You may spend one point of the edge to force a character you have an Intimidation edge over to make a direct, significant, and relevant reaction to something you do or say. You can't choose how they react, but they have to react. For example, if you insult them, they can't just sit there and ignore it or laugh it off. They can insult you back, argue the insult, punch you in the face (or try to), demand you shut up, stand and walk away (or storm off in a fury) whatever - but they don't get to just keep their composure. Likewise, if you ask them a question, they have to answer it - they can answer truly, lie, make something up, try to give an answer that's to their advantage, whatever, but they can't just be silent, change the subject, or say something vague or unrelated. Different situations may allow different reactions - a relevant reaction to a question intended to gain information demands a direct (though not necessarily true) answer. But a question intended to accuse someone of something could cause them to start stammering uselessly or make a counter-accusation to try to deflect suspicion.

Note that if the reaction isn't true to the character's current feelings, it will take penalties from the passive edge effects for not acting on its feelings.

Disturb: Type: Move. Class: One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You can cause brief hesitation in other characters, not enough to get them to actually back down, but enough to give you a momentary edge. This can be from a threat, calling out your reputation, or simply with a threatening glare or snarl. You can't attempt to Disturb targets in combat, so you have to have some opportunity to interact more socially before initiative is rolled.

Roll a rescaled Intimidation check against a passive DC of 11 + the target's rescaled Insight or Intimidation, whichever is best. If you succeed, the target hesitates before interacting with you. It automatically receives a result of 0 on initiative if combat starts during the scene. Any actions it takes that would interfere with you outside of combat are also hesitant, allowing you to resolve actions first.

A successful Disturb action can cause up to one hesitation per degree of success, at which point it expires.

Dominate: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You can establish sheer social dominance. This can range from staring a challenger down, to badgering someone into silence with sheer volume and aggressiveness, to putting someone in their place with an epic insult, etc.

Roll an Intimidation check against a passive DC of 11 + the target's Insight or its highest interaction skill, whichever is best. If you succeed, everyone who witnesses it becomes immune to all uses of interaction skills by that character for the rest of the scene, effectively ending their ability to contribute to social challenges. If you fail, and the target responds with its own Dominate attempt against you before the end of the next round, it gets a +2 critical bonus per degree of failure on your attempt.

A Dominate attempt that succeeds by two or more degrees may also cause a character to back down, lose its cool, react emotionally, flee in terror, attack you physically, break down crying, and so on - higher degrees of success should generally prompt more extreme reactions. This always happens to Minions and Mundanes - and you can dictate exactly how they respond, within reason, such as getting a suspect to confess to a crime, a witness to break down on the stand, a tough to visibly cow and back down, etc. It also happens automatically to Elites, but the GM gets to decide how they respond unless you succeed by three or more degrees, so they don't have to break down completely. Major and Boss characters don't necessarily have to react this way, but you can spend 40 Hero Points to force a Major NPC to do so (though again, you need a third degree of success to choose their reaction). PCs and Bosses are never required to react in such a way, but at GM discretion a PC who does so may earn Hero Points, especially if their response might cause them trouble later.

Incite: Type: Standard. Class: Extended (Task). Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Episode. Maintenance: None.

You can use Intimidation to incite an emotional response in an NPC to get them to do or go along with something, following the rules for a task. To do this, your approach has to involve some sort of play on their emotions - a threat to something important to them, tempting them with something they desire, encouraging them, inspiring them, getting them so angry they just snap, etc.

When using Intimidation in this way, a successful check on a sufficient approach allows you to choose one of the following benefits for each degree of success. If you roll on a reasonable approach and get more degrees of success than are needed to complete the task, excess degrees can also be used for these:
-The NPC gets a +2 circumstance bonus on one roll it makes in its attempt to do what you want.
-Choose one threat you made that was believable in the context of the approach; the NPC will assume you capable of carrying out the threat for the rest of the episode absent undeniable evidence to the contrary. If you spend three degrees on this, it instead lasts for the rest of the adventure!
-Beyond what you actually wanted the target to do, it has some strong emotional reaction, which can be more intense with more degrees of success. You can tell the GM what you want it to do and the GM will decide how many degrees is appropriate. For example, if you're threatening someone it might cower in fear, soil itself, or even faint.

Manipulate: You can use Intimidation to perform Manipulate actions, rendering the target Impaired against you on a success.

Alternately, you can challenge the target, encouraging it to focus on you. The target suffers a -5 condition penalty on attack rolls against targets other than you, and it takes a -5 condition penalty to Defense against your attacks in any round that it doesn't either target you with an action, or if it can't do so, at least work towards being able to target you (such as moving closer or attacking a barrier separating it from you). If you challenge a target who has already been challenged by someone else and succeed, all challenges are fulfilled as long as it focuses on any of its challengers, per the rule for overlapping deterrents. However, a previous challenger can allow their challenge to lapse once you make the new one, if desired.

Terrorize: Type: Full. Class: One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: Indefinite. Maintenance: None.

You can use Intimidation to engage in extended psychological warfare. You can't terrorize targets as a general action - first you have to defeat them in some clear and meaningful way, in the GM's judgment. This could (and usually does) mean in combat, but there are other options - humiliating them in their field, socially dominating them, even doing things like robbing or brutally interrogating them. Regardless, this is an effort of more than a single action - it should be a scene-length task or challenge. Another big point is that you have to make them feel helpless against you, and you have to be over-the-top about it. This doesn't mean you have to act brutal and cause severe physical or emotional trauma! More "heroic" Terrorize attempts can involve humiliating an opponent, or just completely outmatching them in some manner and making it extremely clear how superior you are.

If you do this, roll a rescaled Intimidation check, against an active DC set by the target's Resistance, Tenacity, rescaled Intimidation, or rescaled Insight, whichever is higher; they roll a check with the opposing stat to set the DC. Immunities and vulnerabilities to the Mental attack mode apply. If you succeed, the target permanently has its character rank reduced by one against you in the future. If it's normally a Major character, you treat it as merely Elite. Even a Boss can be Terrorized down to Major or lower status! If you defeat a target multiple times in different scenes, you can Terrorize it each time, lowering its rank further with each attempt. This applies for all purposes relevant to rank, not just combat - it can give you several potent social advantages against the target as well. Generally speaking, NPCs should also have their behavior modified by Terrorize attempts, acting less confident or outright scared when you are present in the scene.

You may Terrorize a target on behalf of your entire group, if they were all involved in the target's defeat, and they may Aid such attempts. You can also Terrorize multiple defeated foes at once.

If a character who you have Terrorized is able to defeat you in some significant way, the effects of all previous Terrorize actions automatically expire and it regains its full rank against you. If it was only able to do so with significant help or special circumstances, it must make a new opposed check to throw the effects off.

PCs can be Terrorized, but it's hard to keep a hero down. A PC receives 40 Hero Points any time it is successfully Terrorized, and again in any scene where it is forced to operate at a lower rank due to prior Terrorize attempts. A PC can immediately end the effects of a Terrorize attempt by spending 80 Hero Points per rank reduced. Naturally, this can mean just flat noping a Terrorize attempt by paying 40 Hero Points instead of receiving them...but sometimes it's more dramatically satisfying to throw it off when you're faced with the opponent again and go on to deliver an epic beat-down of your own.

Investigation

You know how to study clues, gather information through interviews and surveillance, and analyze evidence to help solve crimes. Investigation can be used for the following purposes.

Edge: When you have an Investigation edge over others, any time they use a skill-based action to get information about or from you, you learn the same type of information about or from them, as if you had used the same function of the same skill with the same degree of success. They may forego their information to prevent you from getting the same information, if they wish. With two degrees of edge, this also applies if the skill is a special use provided by an advantage (such as Assessment or Well Informed). With three degrees of edge, you can also use this ability when they use powers to get information about you. This can apply to any type of information gained through the relevant mechanics.

You may spend one point of edge to take an instant action that lets you obtain information about a subject you have an Investigation edge over, even if you've already used that action that round. You may spend three points to take a move action that does so. You may spend six points to take a standard action that does so. If the action in question has any effect other than gaining information, that effect doesn't occur. Likewise, if the action would normally affect multiple characters, it only applies to those who you have an edge over.

Assess Behavior: Type: Standard. Class: Extended, One-Shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can look at patterns and behaviors - things that a person has done - and use that information to come to useful conclusions regarding them. The key difference between using Investigation to Assess Behavior and using Insight is that Investigation works by looking at things the person has already done, while Insight involves getting a sense of them through face-to-face interaction.

You have to assess a particular thing the subject has done - a lie it has told, a crime it has committed, a job it has taken, a choice it has made, whatever. You have to have some information regarding the activity and its circumstances - just knowing that someone, say, stabbed a guy isn't enough. You have to visit the crime scene, talk to the victim or witnesses, look over police evidence, etc, to get a reasonably-cohesive picture of the situation. As a rule of thumb, the Time Rank required is 8, although it can vary by circumstances at GM discretion. Roll an Investigation check against a passive DC of 16 + the target's Deception skill. It is much easier to assess patterns of behavior than individual actions - The DC is reduced by 2 per instance of the behavior you have information on, up to a maximum penalty of -10. If new instances of the behavior happen later, you can make a new attempt, effectively resetting the action's one-shot status.

If you succeed, you get some insight into the character's motivations behind the action itself - why it did it, or why it did it a certain way. With two degrees of success, you gain some insight into what the manner of taking the action says about its personality or background. With three degrees of success, you can learn something that might allow you to make a reasonable (and, for narrative purposes, correct) guess about something the character might do in the future, such as where it might stage its next crime or who it might go to for help.

Assess Behavior is limited to insights that could reasonably be gained from considering the actions taken or patterns established, and you may need additional information (through Expertise to Recall Facts or Investigation to Gather Information for example) to really get the full details, but the Assess Behavior action should at the very least tell you what to look for. For example, with a three-degree success you might figure out that the suspect's end goal is killing someone who broke its heart, and then you could use Gather Information to learn about prior romantic relationships the suspect had to figure out who it would be going after (and, naturally, arrive just in time for a dramatic standoff).

Assess Clues: Type: Move. Class: One-Shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can study physical evidence to determine what it means and whether it is relevant to a matter at hand. Investigation doesn't let you find or notice things that are hidden - for that, use Perception. However, once you've found the clues, you can figure out which ones are relevant, which ones don't matter, and even which ones are red herrings. Failing the check won't give you false information, it just means you have to come to your own conclusions.

As a move action, roll an Investigation check. As long as you beat a calculated DC of 11, the GM informs you of any details of the current scene that are relevant - such as important to the plot, clues to a mystery, foreshadowing, etc. "Details of the scene" can be pretty much anything - objects, setting details, things that NPCs have said or done, pieces of information you've learned, etc. You must already be aware of the details to get this information though.

You might also determine what the relevance of these things are. Each such detail has a set DC based on how obvious its relevance is. Typically, this is at least DC 16, but it may be higher for more obtuse clues, and it can be as low as 11 (guaranteeing it if you rolled high enough to recognize relevance in the first place) if the relevance of the clue is obvious to anyone who is aware it's relevant in the first place. If you are lacking important information to understand the context, there may be requirement modifiers added to the DC, though once you get that information, a previous failure could retroactively become a success, giving you a "flash of insight" as you learn the critical piece of the puzzle.

If a character is taking steps to avoid leaving clues, they can also set a passive DC of 11 + the higher of their Deception, Investigation, or Stealth.

The GM determines how much information a clue gives. The Assess Clues option essentially lets a PC get on the same page as the GM with regards to what something means. Rather than speculating on whether the murderer leaving the weapon behind is supposed to be taken as a warning, a mistake, a sign of remorse, whatever, an Investigation check reveals what it actually means in the context of the situation. If the clue does provide meaningful information, you may also ask the GM one clarifying question regarding what you learned per degree of success beyond the first.

Falsify Evidence: Type: Move. Class: Extended, One-Shot. Range: Close. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You actively work not to just conceal evidence of something, but to send people down the wrong path. You set an active DC for any Investigation checks to learn about the events of the current scene (or some other specific event you're concealing evidence of) equal to your own Investigation check result.

If an investigating character beats your DC, they get accurate information as normal. When you take this action, you may choose what happens when someone fails to beat your DC - either they can receive no information, or they can receive some or all of the accurate information, in addition to any additional amount of information you wish to provide, which may be true, false, or irrelevant to any degree you wish - in essence, they learn multiple different possibilities regarding what happened, only one of which is the correct one. They know they failed the attempt, and so they know that not all of the information is correct, but they do not know which possibility is the correct one, and may not use Inspiration or similar effects to narrow it down. You may provide as many false possibilities as you wish (although of course, those that do not fit the situation or are easily refuted by other evidence won't have much influence). Investigators also don't necessarily get to know that this false information was intentionally planted or just a selection of incorrect possibilities (after all, you can sometimes get those on a failed check to gain information - if desired, the GM can reveal only one false possibility per degree of failure, so players can't determine whether the evidence was intentionally falsified or not).

There is, however, a risk to falsifying evidence. An investigator who beats your check learns the extraneous information too - but is aware it was planted intentionally. With two degrees of success, they learn what bits of each extraneous possibility are true and which are completely fabricated. With three degrees of success, they find some clue to the identity of the person who falsified the evidence!

Gather Information: Type: Standard. Class: Extended, One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement (though in practice you'll probably need full movement to go from person to person), full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You know how to make contacts, collect gossip and rumors, question informants, and otherwise get information from people.

By succeeding at an Investigation check, you can gather information from a group of people. This might mean a community around where a crime was committed, a group or organization that an individual you're investigating is a part of, a network of contacts that might have information on a subject, a selection of experts in a field, and so on. In-game, the Time Rank that is required to canvas an entire group is equal to the "Mass Rank" of the group (treating one pound on the table as one person) plus 11. If the people are all relatively near each other making it easy to go between them, reduce the Time Rank by 1. If they're fairly spread out and require a good amount of travel to go between them, increase the Time Rank by 1 (or more, at GM discretion). If you can talk to them more-or-less all of them at once, halve the Time Rank.

You can only gather information that is widely available throughout the group. Of course, that doesn't mean it has to have been officially disseminated. News, gossip, rumors, and the like can all allow information to spread throughout a group even if it really shouldn't.

The DC is based on how protected the information is (treat as a set DC, so other modifiers may apply). DC 6 is for information that is open knowledge, not secret at all. DC 11 is for information that isn't really secret, but also isn't something members of the group would normally discuss with outsiders. DC 16 is for information that the group has a specific reason not to share. DC 21 is for information that is strictly supposed to be secret. And DC 26 is the minimum for information that is officially classified or confidential. Extremely sensitive information may have DCs of 31 or higher! For each degree of success past the first, you can ask one question to clarify or expand on the information gained.

If a specific individual is actively working in the background to keep the information secret (such as the group's leader making its members distrust outsiders, or a criminal threatening the neighborhood, or a commander working to build group loyalty and unity to protect secrets, etc) it sets a passive DC of 11 + its Intimidation skill.

Even if the group as a whole doesn't have access to the information you're looking for (that is, it's an actual secret that only specific individuals are privy to), they might know who does. In this case, the Gather Information check reveals who among the group you can talk to for more information. Getting it out of them then requires more personalized methods, such as interaction skills or simple role playing.

Interview: Type: Standard. Class: One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You can get useful information from people. Interviewing is not about getting people to spill secrets or talk with you in the first place - you want the interaction skills for that. Rather, once a character is providing you with information, you are proficient in interview techniques that will help them remember details, increase their accuracy of recall, and so on.

Roll an Investigation check against a calculated DC of 16. For each degree of success, the person you are interviewing will remember one additional useful detail, or be able to correct an inaccuracy or clarify a vague statement.

In some cases, where a character is willing to be helpful but can't in and of themselves provide useful information, a single Investigation check against a set DC (usually based on how hard it would be for the interviewee to remember details) may be required to get the useful information out of them, with a success simply meaning they are able to give you what you need. A good example is working with a sketch artist to create a rendering of a suspect - with a successful Interview check, they can provide accurate enough details to create the sketch (although an Expertise [Art] check may be required as well to actually commit the sketch to paper or computer accurately enough to use for identification).

Refute Information: Type: Standard. Class: One-Shot. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can check up on information you've been given, consulting with contacts, databases, references, and so on to try and find something that refutes the claim. This is an Investigation check. There's generally a set DC based on how difficult it would be to refute the claim, but if anyone is actively trying to prevent such efforts (such as backstopping a cover identity or spreading disinfortmation on the internet) they set an active DC of 11 + their own Investigation skill. The GM does not reveal the DC. If you succeed the check, and the information is false, you find something to refute it. Otherwise, you find nothing to refute it. So you can't know for certain whether the information is true, but you can be at least as confident in it as you are in your Investigation roll.

Perception

Perception determines your awareness and clarity of senses. While the GM always describes aspects of the surroundings that are obvious, you use Perception to detect things that are not so obvious, but may still be important. You can use Perception for any of the following:

Edge: When you have a Perception edge over others, they cannot surprise you and they downgrade Total Concealment to Full Concealment against you in any round that they target you, or someone or something that you can accurately perceive, with an action (note that if they target themselves while they have Total Concealment, you can't accurately perceive them, so it doesn't downgrade, although if they target themselves while you can see them and then get Total Concealment it would downgrade). In addition, you are able to follow them wherever they go until you lose the edge, or they get a Distance rank from you equal to the higher of your Scope or Speed, +4. The bonus increases by 2 for each additional degree of edge. You can't follow them any faster than normal though, so they might well get too far away for you to effectively chase. Finally, anyone who you have a Perception edge over who takes any sort of action that is relevant to you in some way when they don't have Total Concealment from you, you notice taking the action.

Your check result to gain a Perception edge counts as a minimum on any other Perception checks you might be called to make.

You may spend one point of edge to ignore a penalty or condition imposed by Concealment on a character you have a Perception edge against for one action.

Pinpoint: Type: Move. Class: Active. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: None.

If you currently lack an Accurate sense (or a target has Total Concealment from your Accurate senses), you can attempt to use other senses to pinpoint targets, lowering their level of Concealment from Total to Full for one round. Doing this is a move action, and it doesn't work if the target also has Total Concealment from the sense you are using. But you could try to use hearing to pinpoint an invisible opponent, for example.

Roll a Perception check against a passive DC of 11 + the target's Stealth skill. If you succeed, you pinpoint the target as if it had Full Concealment rather than Total for one round. Be warned, all the normal limitations of the sense you choose still apply. If the sense isn't Acute, you might not be able to identify who is who. If the sense isn't Ranged, you'll take massive penalties for distance. And so on.

Scan: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial focus (may also require partial movement to scan all around with a non-Radius sense). Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained.

You can actively scan around for things that aren't immediately obvious. Roll a Perception check. You detect anything with a DC to detect that your check beats. In addition, while this action can't give you a Perception edge over someone, it sets an active DC to gain a Stealth edge over you.

Search: Type: Full. Class: Extended. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial movement (although in practice you'll probably need full movement to move about an area you're searching), full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can conduct a thorough search for hiding things - checking all potential hiding places in a room, patting down a target for concealed weapons, and so on. Searching an area or object of a given Size Rank (roughly the Distance Rank of its largest dimension) takes a Time Rank equal to twice the Size Rank + 4. So searching a normal person (Size Rank -2) would take a full round (Time Rank 0), while searching a football field (give or take Distance Rank 4) would take about eight hours (Time Rank 12). The GM may reduce the Time Rank by up to 2 if the area is especially small in other dimensions or light on possible hiding spots, or increase it by up to two if it is roughly equally large in a second or third dimension or especially cluttered.

You search the entire area, so Distance rank isn't a factor when conducting your search. Roll a Perception check with a +10 heroic bonus, and a true bonus equal to half your Investigation rank. You detect anything with a DC to detect that you beat. In addition, if the area you search includes people with a Stealth edge, and you beat their check result, you fully end their maintenance, revealing them to everyone.

Such searches are thorough, but not necessarily neat. If you want to conceal evidence of your search, you have to spend an additional Time Rank, at which point the evidence of your search becomes a background element with an active DC to detect of 11 + the higher of your Investigation or Stealth skill.

Watch: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained.

You keep a close lookout for something. You might be guarding a location, keeping an eye out for anyone approaching or trying to enter it. Or you could surveil a location to keep watch for people entering or leaving. You might be looking out for certain specific individuals. Or just paying close attention to a particular conversation. Roll a Perception check with a +10 heroic bonus when you take this action; you detect anything with a DC to detect that you beat, if it is something you are watching for. This also sets an active DC to gain a Stealth edge against you, but only for the things you are watching for.

Anything that you are specifically watching for treats suspicious actions as obvious actions for purposes of losing a Stealth edge.

The benefits of the Watch action don't apply against subjects who have Total Concealment from you.

Persuasion

You're skilled in dealing with people, from etiquette and social graces to a way with words and public speaking, all of which helps to get your point across, make a good impression, negotiate, and generally win people over to your way of seeing things.

Edge: When you have a Persuasion edge over others, they must behave politely and respectfully towards you and your allies or count as Disabled for purposes of Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and Persuasion. If they do choose to take the penalty, others witnessing the interaction will generally react more negatively towards them and more positively towards you. In addition, if they (or their allies) initiate hostilities against you, your allies, or people under your protection, they receive an automatic initiative result of 0. If you have two degrees of edge, they are also considered Impaired and Weakened until you no longer do so. If you have three degrees, they are instead considered Disabled and Crippled. These penalties only apply if they or their allies initiate hostilities; if you or your allies do, they fight normally. Naturally, most NPCs will strive to avoid starting combat in this situation unless they hold a substantial personal advantage.

You may spend one point of edge to prevent, undo, smooth over, or otherwise negate some social misstep you or an ally make that would otherwise lead to offense, hostility, or some other negative reaction from one or more characters you have an edge over. You may do this after the GM describes the reaction. If you have an edge over everyone who would react negatively, you may retcon the faux pas entirely. Otherwise, you smooth it over for those you have an edge over, but others may still react negatively.

Exchange: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You can give a target something or do something for them and trigger a sense of reciprocity, prompting them to offer something back in return. Roll a Persuasion check against a passive DC of 11 + the target's Insight or Persuasion. If you succeed, the target will feel subconsciously obligated to return your generosity, taking a -5 condition penalty on any attempts to use interaction skills against you or oppose your use of interaction skills until it does so or the scene ends. The return of generosity need only be as "valuable" as the thing you offered in the first place.

A target can attempt to politely refuse the gift; if it does, it may set an active DC equal to its own Persuasion check. Naturally, if the gift is something it can't give back (such as a service you performed or information you provided) this option isn't available.

If what you gave them is really significant - like if you saved the target's life or the life of a loved one, offered something it deeply desires, or gave it something that is clearly deeply important to you - the effect may last for the entire adventure, or may even last indefinitely until repaid if the GM feels it significant enough.

If the target offers back something more valuable than what you offered, they can target you with an Exchange action in the doing.

While Exchange is useful for getting trades of items or favors, it is also usable to trade information. By telling the target something about yourself, you can prompt an Exchange where it reciprocates. The more personal or secret information you offer, the more you can expect to receive back.

For each degree of success beyond the first, the target feels obligated to reciprocate one additional time before the penalty is removed, although after the first reciprocation it lowers to -2. Successive reciprocations also don't have to be of quite the same worth.

While you may make multiple Exchange attempts in the same scene, you have to give up something of sufficient value each time.

Manipulate: You can use Persuasion to Manipulate, rendering the target Weakened against you.

Alternately, you can distract the target, such as prompting it to start monologuing or arguing, pay attention to you, or just by being a bloody pest. This prevents the target from taking intentional reactions while the Manipulation lasts and imposes -2 on Perception and Insight against characters other than you. The target may choose to reduce the duration by "accidentally" spilling some useful information, if its player desires, reducing the duration by one round for each bit of information let slip.

Negotiate: Type: Move. Class: One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can get someone to reveal what it would take to get them to do something, or what they would be willing to do to get something. Roll a Persuasion check against a passive DC of 6 + the target's Deception skill. On a successful check, they truthfully reveal what sort of trade they would consider ideal - a no-question, this is what they want, if you could provide it they would do what you want and be thrilled about optimal result from their perspective. If you fail, they may choose whether or not to respond, and whether or not to do so truthfully. You know whether you succeeded or failed, but if you fail you don't know if their response is genuine. They reveal what they would deem a fair and satisfactory trade; obviously, they might prefer to get more if the option presented itself, but this is a result they would be happy with.

If you succeed by two degrees, they reveal what they ideally want, but you also coax from them what they would deem a favorable trade - an exchange that might not be as good for them, but they would still be perfectly satisfied with.

If you succeed by three degrees, you also manage to get them to reveal the minimally acceptable trade - an exchange that might not be all they want, but which they still deem of sufficient value to make the trade.

You may focus the trade towards a specific thing - an amount of money, a return favor, an exchange of information, etc. Or you can let the NPC select freely. Naturally, if you focus towards a specific thing, that may not be a thing the NPC is willing to trade on at all, or at least not for this purpose.

Once you learn what they want, you can use it to automatically achieve a sufficient approach on a Request action. If you merely promise what they want rather than giving it to them, it might count as only a reasonable approach instead. You halve any points of success on the Request action if using the minimally acceptable trade.

While there is no hard mechanical enforcement for the Negotiate action, it is guaranteed true, so it should generally be reliable. Otherwise there would be no point to the action! Circumstances may change, certainly, but unless there's some specific reason for a deal to fall through, the NPC should abide by it faithfully. Failing to follow through with a negotiated deal may well cause personal and reputational backlashes.

Parley: Type: Full. Class: One-Shot. Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None.

You can talk your opponents into briefly foregoing combat - long enough to at least try to resolve your differences peacefully (or negotiate a surrender, evacuate the injured, whatever). As a full action, roll a rescaled Persuasion check against a DC of 11 + the highest rescaled Insight or Intimidation skill among the opposing side. If you succeed, the opposing side is open to parley.

Until the start of your next turn, every opponent who gets a turn must either delay their turn, or, if desired, take their own Parley actions against your team (binding you as they are bound on a success). If they don't do so, the parley fails, but any of your allies get a critical bonus on all rolls against the opponent who broke the parley equal to +2 per degree of success on your Persuasion check for one round per degree of success - so it's a good idea not to break parley! If anyone on your side takes any further hostile actions, the enemies will take their delayed actions immediately thereafter. However, they can take other actions, such as healing, defending, aiding, readying, and so on. So calling for a parley can offer a certain tactical advantage even if it's not going to go through, even if only some breathing room.

If your next turn comes up and the parley hasn't broken, combat ends and the scene immediately ceases to be an active scene, freeing you up to talk down your foes, negotiate surrender terms, clear up misunderstandings, and so on. You also treat your check as an attempt to gain Persuasion advantge over your foes, to further discourage renewed hostilities. However, unlike an Outclass action, your check does not also set an active DC - meaning it is possible for your opponents to also gain a Persuasion edge against you.

If peace cannot be reached, and the other side is the one to renew hostilities, your side gets a +1 circumstance bonus per degree of success on the initial Parley check on all combat stats in the first round of renewed combat, on top of the effects of Persuasion edge.

If neither side wishes to renew hostilities due to concerns about the parley bonuses (which might well happen if both sides successfully Parley-bound each other), then they'll just have to figure out some other way to resolve their differences. Although note that a well-targeted Intimidation check to Dominate could provoke an enemy into attacking and thus breaking Parley for their side.

Only one Parley can be attempted in any scene by any side, since it's a one-shot action. However, if an initial parley check fails, the opposing side may later accept it on one of your future turns. If they do this, treat it as if the original check was made against DC 11 for purposes of determining effective degrees of success (minimum one degree) as you obviously have leverage now. This also means the enemy cannot counter-Parley to discourage your aggression.

Request: Type: Standard. Class: Extended (Task). Range: Interaction. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Episode. Maintenance: None.

You can use Persuasion to request an NPC to do or go along with something, following the rules for a task. To do this, your approach has to involve some sort of personal reason for them to do it. For example, owing them a favor (or calling one in), offering an exchange, negotiating, playing up a sense of duty, friendship, or obligation, etc.

A successful check on a sufficient approach allows you to choose one of the following benefits for each degree of success. If you roll on a reasonable approach and get more degrees of success than are needed to complete the task, excess degrees can also be used for these:
-Choose one offer or concession you made; the NPC will accept a somewhat lesser version than what was discussed, or offer you a partial refund, etc.
-Choose one offer or concession the NPC made; it will provide a somewhat better version than what was discussed, or go a bit above and beyond in the execution.
-You can save the degree, and later during the scene, spend it for a +2 critical bonus on a social skill against that NPC (either for a check or for setting a DC). You may only spend one such degree per check.

Prowess

Prowess represents your overall physicality, be it from strength, agility, athletic ability, whatever. You can use Prowess for any of the following.

Edge: When you have a Prowess edge over others, they are unable to intentionally move out of your attack range (you may choose to lower your effective range for this purpose to keep them in a more confined area, if desired) unless they are immune to your attacks. They can enter your attack range from outside, move around within it, and so on, but they can't leave. In addition, if you have a Prowess edge over somebody who is both in your attack range and in the same environment as you, you can force them to treat the environment as two ranks higher for detrimental purposes, and two ranks lower for beneficial purposes, per degree of edge (to a maximum of double the normal rank and a minimum of rank 0).

You may spend one point of edge to negate one maneuver taken by a character in your attack range who you have a Prowess edge over.

Difficult Movement: Type: Free. Class: Active. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full movement, partial focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: Sustained.

You can roll a Prowess check to ignore the effects of the Basic Restrict Movement environment effect - climbing, swimming, balancing, struggling through thick underbrush, forcing through heavy gravity, and so on. The set DC varies by the difficulty of moving (that is, the rank of the Environment Effect, perhaps with other modifiers), typically DC 1 for really simple stuff (such as swimming in calm water or climbing a ladder), DC 6 for average things (swimming in mildly choppy water, climbing a rope or tree), DC 11 for things that require some athleticism (swimming in rough water, climbing a rough wall), DC 16 for things that require serious athleticism (climbing a brick wall, swimming in stormy seas), and higher for things that require extreme athletic ability. You are Restrained and Hindered twice when engaging in difficult movement. If you succeed by two degrees, you're not Restrained and only Hindered once. By three degrees, you can move your full speed.

The free action only lets you ignore the restriction; you still need to use some other action to actually move.

Feat of Prowess: Type: Free. Class: Active. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can use Prowess to perform impressive physical feats. Typically, this is more a bragging rights "I look this cool pulling this off" check, but the GM may occasionally award some circumstance bonuses for creative uses. The GM either sets the DC based on the difficulty of the stunt being attempted, or your Prowess result is simply a numerical measure of how cool you are. The degree of success is a measure of how well you performed the stunt.

Free Maneuver: Type: Instant. Class: Active. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

As an instant action in any round that you haven't yet performed any maneuvers, you can roll a Prowess check. The DC is 21 normally. If anything is interfering with your maneuvers, you roll against the normal DC but with a -10 penalty. If you succeed, you can perform one maneuver, plus one per two degrees of success beyond the first, but can't perform any more maneuvers that round. If you fail, you can still attempt to maneuver normally.

Initiative: Your Prowess skill is used as your base modifier for initiative checks to determine turn order in combat. This can be improved further with the Improved Initiative advantage.

Maneuver: The Prowess skill is critical for many functions of the Maneuver action.

Mitigate Hazard: Type: Free. Class: Reaction. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

When you are subjected to an Immediate Hazard that operates as an Attack, you can make a Prowess check with a DC of 6. For each degree of success, its Force is lowered by 1. This doesn't apply against Hazards that operate as maneuvers, but you can oppose them with rescaled Prowess anyway.

Stealth

You are skilled at avoiding detection. You can use Stealth for any of the following.

Edge: When you have a Stealth edge over others, you avoid detection from people who were not previously aware of or paying attention to you. You can do this in various ways - you might blend with a crowd, act like you belong somewhere, move stealthily from cover to cover, tail someone quietly, wait in a hiding place to stage an ambush, etc. As long as you maintain your edge, they won't notice you; they might not see you at all, if you're actively hiding or taking advantage of poor conditions of visibility, or they might just gloss over your presence. Once somebody does notice you, you can't avoid their notice in this way any more. With two degrees of edge, you improve any Concealment or Cover you have against the subject by one step (this doesn't give you Concealment or Cover if you don't already have any, though). Improving cover and concealment works even against characters who are aware of you.

You immediately end maintenance, losing your edge, if you do something suspicious or obvious. You may spend two points of edge to retain maintenance after doing something suspicious. You may spend ten points to retain maintenance after doing something obvious.

Something suspicious means targeting an object that you are not attending with an action, approaching a location under guard or that you aren't authorized to enter, briefly revealing yourself (such as darting quickly across an empty space or peeking around a corner), and other minor actions that might get you noticed or detected. If you retain maintenance, the action goes unnoticed entirely.

Something obvious means using a Noticeable power, targeting a character other than yourself with an action, shouting something, stepping clearly into the open, or other things that are basically guaranteed to draw attention. If you retain maintenance, the action goes unnoticed to anyone it isn't particularly relevant to (such as bystanders, but not say the target or its allies). To those it is relevant to, the action gets noticed but it isn't immediately obvious that it came from you; you might slip back into hiding before they're aware of who did it, or they might just not notice who did it. You might be able to use a Manipulate action with Deception to trick observers into believing it came from someone else.

Conceal: Type: Move. Class: Extended. Range: Close. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: Indefinite. Maintenance: None.

You can conceal an object from detection. You need some sort of reasonable hiding place to conceal the object, and the Time rank required is equal to the object's Size rank + 4. Roll a Stealth check; you set an active DC to detect the object equal to the check result. If the object is moved from the hiding place, the duration of this action ends.

Elude: Type: Full. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You elude pursuit or detection. You may attempt to Elude whenever you have Total Concealment from all opponents who are aware of your presence. Roll a Stealth check against a passive DC of 11 + the highest Perception skill among them; your Concealment gives you no bonus on this check. If you succeed, your opponents are no longer aware of your presence, and you also treat your check as an Outclass action to gain a Stealth edge (and set a DC against Perception edge).

Obscure: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial movement, partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You conceal an action from notice. You may only conceal actions that require partial movement or less, can't conceal actions involving a Noticeable upgrade, and you must perform the action you are concealing immediately. Roll a Stealth check against a DC of 6 + the Perception skill of any observers. The DC becomes 11 + the Perception skill of anyone who is targeted by the action, or attending an object that is targeted by it. Anyone whose DC you beat doesn't notice you taking the action, and doesn't notice any results of it assuming the results are subtle and not readily obvious (picking someone's pocket or planting something on them, sure - attacking them, not so much). If you obscure a free action, the duration of the Obscure becomes Scene (Fixed), so you can continue taking that free action without being noticed for the rest of the scene.

Anyone who you successfully Obscure an action from counts as Vulnerable against that action.

Successfully obscuring a suspicious action while you have a Stealth edge prevents it from lowering or negating your edge, but if it was a free action the duration of the Obscure goes down to Round (Fixed).

Surprise Attack: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

In some circumstances, such as when you have Full Concealment, you may qualify for Surprise Attacks. When you do, you may take the Surprise Attack action immediately prior to making an attack and roll a Stealth check against a passive DC of 11 + the Perception skills of any potential targets or observers. Anyone whose DC you beat is considered Vulnerable with regards to the attack.

Treatment

You're trained in treating injuries and ailments. Treatment generally requires at least medical supplies, and sometimes even full-stocked workspaces, so set DCs may be increased if you lack those. If your subject has a particularly unusual biology (an alien, for example) they may have impediment or even obstacle modifiers depending on how unusual it is. You can use Treatment for any of the following options.

Edge: When you have a Treatment edge over others, your Tenacity counts as two higher for purposes of setting Tenacity DCs by attacking them, and their Tenacity counts as two lower for purposes of setting such DCs against you. This changes to +/-5 if you have at least three degrees of edge.

You may spend one point of edge to apply the benefits of your Treatment edge to an ally who you can interact with for one round, or to convert an instance of lethal damage against you to nonlethal.

Aid Recovery: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: Round (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can use Treatment to perform the equivalent of an Aid action that boosts a character's Tenacity check at the end of its turn.

Medicate: You can substitute Treatment for Expertise for all purposes applicable to the Medical proficiency, recalling or researching treatments or cures for diseases and ailments, where such exist, performing medical procedures, acquiring specialties or proficiencies, having tools available, diagnosing ailments, and so on. If you have more narrow medical proficiencies, you may substitute Treatment for Expertise with them and get the normal bonus.

Speed Recovery: Type: Standard, or Downtime. Class: Basic or Extended, One-Shot. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

Roll a Treatment check against a set DC that starts equal to the target's current Tenacity DC minus 5. If you succeed, you grant the character one Recovery Point per point you succeed by.

For the active scene recovery timing (allowing you to remove scene duration conditions and lower), this is a basic standard action that requires medical tools.

For the normal scene or between scenes timing (episode duration), this is an extended standard action that requires a Time rank equal to three times the tier of the target's highest-tier condition, critically requires medical tools, and requires a medical workspace.

For the downtime timing (adventure duration) this is a special downtime action that absolutely requires medical tools and critically requires a medical workspace.

Treatment can also be potentially used to change an indefinite condition to a complication - see the Overcome Complication downtime action.

Revive: Type: Full. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can attempt to revive a character who just died. Roll a Treatment check against a calculated DC of 21, with a -5 penalty per round the character has been dead (don't count rounds where Revive attempts were made for purposes of determining the penalty). If you succeed by three degrees, you revive the character. If you succeed by two degrees, the DC lowers by 5 and you can try again next round. If you succeed by one degree, the DC stays the same and you can try again next round. If you fail by one degree, the DC raises by 5 and you can try again next round. If you fail by two or more degrees, the character can't be saved by anyone with equal or lower Treatment skills.

Any conditions the character has suffered at the time of its death become indefinite unless it receives further medical attention. This care must begin within a Time Rank of 5 plus half its Resistance. You can extend this by one Time Rank per degree of success on a DC 21 Treatment check made as a separate Revive action. The medical attention itself requires a Treatment check a set DC of 6 + 5 per tier of the condition, critically requires medical tools, requires a medical workspace, and is considered an extended full action with a Time rank required of three times the tier of the condition. A Healing power can be used to provide this sort of medical attention simply by spending the action and making the check, without any time or requirements.

Any conditions successfully treated become adventure duration rather than indefinite, and the duration is reduced one step per two additional degrees of success on the attempt.

Stabilize: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None.

You can roll a Treatment check to stabilize a Dying or Critical character. Roll a Treatment check against the character's current minimum Tenacity DC (typically 16, but may be higher for Critical characters), which requires medical tools. On a success, you grant the target the Treated condition, or the Stable condition if you are using a medical workspace. For each two degrees of success beyond the first, you also remove one accumulated failure against death this scene, so if the character becomes Dying or Critical again later it regains some of its buffer (alternately, you can exchange one of these to provide Stable rather than Treated, effectively buying off the requirement of a medical workspace to do so).

Stabilizing a Critical character makes the requirements critical, rather than normal requirements. This also means it takes two "removed failures" to upgrade Treated to Stable without a workspace.

Downtime Actions

Downtime actions represent long-term activities and projects that characters might be working on. You might build relationships with NPCs, work on some task, create a lasting legacy, track down a villain, or all manner of other things.

Designing Downtime Actions

While there are a few downtime actions with specific rules, most of them follow the same general guidelines. When you want to perform a downtime action, you tell the GM what you're trying to accomplish, and the GM devises the action using the following parameters:

Skills: Each downtime action uses one or more skills (or, occasionally, measures, combat stats, or even straight PL, but skills are the most common). Building a relationship with an NPC can probably use any of the social skills, or Expertise if you have a field that they have an interest in. Inventing some elaborate device would use Expertise (Technology). Exploring an area would probably use Prowess. Tracking down a villain would likely use Investigation. And so on. If multiple skills are allowed, you can use the highest.

DC: Each downtime action has a DC to make progress; each time you take the action, you roll a check with the appropriate skill against the DC. If you fail you simply don't make progress. If you succeed you do. Typically, the DC is a set DC based largely on the difficulty of the action. If the action is something that an NPC would be opposing, it might also have an active or passive DC of 11 + a relevant skill for the NPC.

Milestones: When you succeed a check for a downtime action, you gain a number of successes equal to your degrees of success. At a certain number of successes, you achieve a milestone. Milestones are achieved at 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, and 100 successes (and in theory can keep going at 150, 250, 500, 1,000, and so on, but in practice it's unlikely that they'll ever get that high).

At base, a milestone means you've made some significant progress or achievement in the downtime action. Each time you achieve a milestone, the GM assigns a certain use of or situation for a single surge, that relates directly to the action. Your downtime actions give you bonus pools of Hero Points that you can use for any purposes you have unlocked. You get a number of effective Hero Points equal to the action's DC minus 1 for each success. So a DC 11 action would give 10 effective HP per success, for example. If the action relates directly to certain NPCs, the GM may choose for a given surge option to be usable on their behalf rather than for you; if it does so, you may also spend your own Hero Points on their behalf in this way. If you wish, you may choose to artificially raise the DC for a downtime action, so as to earn more Hero Points per success (although this is rarely useful beyond the lowest DCs).

For example, say you've achieved five successes on a DC 16 downtime action to build a relationship with an NPC. You have 75 HP available through the action, and you've achieved three milestones, so you get three options for spending it. The GM says you can use the Reroll surge for rerolling the NPC's resistance checks, the Action surge for making additional attacks against enemies that have targeted or threatened the NPC, and the Action surge for giving the NPC additional move actions to use to escape a battle, get to cover, and so on. Now, when fighting in defense of the NPC, you can spend HP from this downtime action, rather than your own HP, to make extra attacks against enemies going after it. Further, you can spend both these HP and your own to reroll the NPC's resistance checks, or give it extra move actions to use to get to safety.

The Hero Points gained from downtime actions do not refresh. You can continually build up more and more by continuing to make progress on the downtime action, but once they're gone they're gone for good.

In addition, though, each milestone represents some significant bit of in-character progress, determined by the GM. Some downtime actions simply require reaching a certain milestone to "complete" the task, and lesser milestones may indicate some breakthrough on the way. Others may be more indefinite things with certain significant benefits or changes coming about when milestones are reached. The GM can determine what milestones mean when first creating the action, or simply assign results once they've been achieved.

1-success and 3-success milestones are generally for fairly quick and easy accomplishments, things that you can probably achieve between episodes, or overcoming opposition by minor NPCs. Example: Researching the answer to a modestly complex question, performing a modestly substantial favor for someone.

5-success and 10-success milestones are typical for accomplishments that you might achieve over the course of a few episodes or maybe an adventure, or overcoming opposition by major NPCs. Example: Tracking down or redeeming an average (but significant) villain, earning a promotion at a job, writing a thesis.

15-success and 25-success milestones are typical for accomplishments that will probably take at least a full adventure to accomplish, or overcoming opposition by plot-central NPCs. Example: Collecting enough evidence to win a court case against a major villain, making a scientific breakthrough, winning a local election, reforming a city-wide organization.

50-success and 100-success milestones are major goals that might take the entire game to accomplish. They can often have nation-wide or even region-wide repercussions.

Milestones rated at over 100 successes are grand-scale achievements that might require an entire game with a whole team working together on them, and could very well have global ramifications.

While the exact results of milestones are chosen by the GM, you should certainly provide input as to what sorts of things you want to accomplish and what sort of surges you want to use. The GM decides if they're appropriate and how high a milestone you need to reach for a given result, but tailoring a downtime action to what the player wants to accomplish with it is a good thing. Of course, sometimes surprises are nice too!

Taking Downtime Actions

Each player may take a certain number of downtime actions between episodes. Usually, this is between two and four, depending on the amount of downtime (one downtime action per Time rank above 13 is a good rule of thumb). You just declare what action you take (or ask the GM for the parameters for a new action you are considering taking) and roll the skill check to determine progress.

Whenever you take a downtime action that directly builds off something you accomplished in the preceding episode, you get a +5 circumstance bonus to the check. For example, if you rescued an NPC in the preceding episode, you could get +5 to downtime actions to improve your relationship with that NPC. If you discovered a clue to a villain's whereabouts or captured one of their lieutenants, you could get +5 to attempts to track them down. The accomplishment has to directly improve the action - capturing a villain might give you the opportunity to redeem them, but wouldn't provide a bonus. However, if you managed to create some sort of personal connection with the villain, or convince it that it was wrong about something, or talk it down from a plot or the like, that could justify a bonus.

The GM may also add automatic progress (i.e. bonus successes) to downtime actions due to actions or accomplishments during adventures, or may "unlock" certain special downtime actions if the PCs do or accomplish certain things. Bonus successes gained in this way are like those from Quickness; they only progress advancement of milestones, not the action's HP. The GM should especially consider this for "plot-relevant" downtime actions; the characters might get some downtime progress every time they complete an episode that centers around progressing that plot point, so that they don't have to spend their own downtime actions progressing it, but they can achieve the goal faster if they do. This also ensures progress from downtime won't be "wasted" because of progress from plot - they work together rather than overlapping.

Multiple Players and Downtime Actions: Sometimes multiple players will all want to work together on a downtime action. This is fine; each one makes their own checks and progresses the action normally (you can also spend a downtime action to Aid an ally's downtime action). Any of the players involved may draw upon the action's Hero Points for relevant purposes, although in some cases it may be good form to check with others involved before spending the shared resource.

Failing Downtime Actions: If you fail a downtime action, you get a +5 bonus on your next attempt, and you gain a number of regular Hero Points (not tied to the action itself) equal to half the number the action would have gained on a one-degree success. The bonus stacks with each repeated failure, and resets on a success. So even if you don't have the skill for it, you can gradually make progress even on difficult downtime actions (and get some additional Hero Points to use in the meantime), it just takes a lot longer.

Example Downtime Actions

Guidelines for several Downtime Actions are given below, but it must be stressed that these are guidelines. They'll serve solidly in a lot of cases, but GMs should feel encouraged to create custom options or otherwise think outside the box.

Accomplish Task: You work towards some plot-related task. This is something of a catchall for general tasks, typically with distinct end-points; there's usually a specific milestone that results in task completion (giving some sort of lasting benefit or setting impact), while the ones leading up to it are indicators of significant progress.

Example: Billionaire supergenius Maestro Mentallo wants to build a satellite to look for the distinct energy signature that has been found on the summoned creatures created by his enemy the Recruiter. This would be a daunting task for Downtime Actions, but Maestro has the Inventor advantage, so the GM figures that building a custom satellite is doable in normal Downtime. The GM says Maestro must use Expertise (Technology) to build the satellite, with a DC 21 check to make progress. Completion will be at the 25-success milestone, although fortunately Maestro has enough Quickness to speed that along substantially. The GM sets the following milestones for the task:

1 Success: Maestro creates a handheld device that can scan for the energy signature, allowing him to use Inspiration to determine if Recruiter summons are present in a scene.
3 Successes: Maestro's device is refined to detect additional forms of energy, allowing him to Stunt various energy-detection powers.
5 Successes: Maestro installs a larger-scale device on the top of his skyscraper that can scan the city for Recruiter summons, allowing him to Edit Scene so his team can arrive at a location threatened by them in the nick of time.
10 Successes: Maestro launches a prototype satellite to scan the city, allowing him to use Inspiration to determine if Recruiter summons are present in the city, and detect their location if outdoors and above ground.
15 Successes: Maestro installs a network of detection devices in key locations, allowing him to Edit Scene to declare details about the surroundings of any scene involving Recruiter summons, since his network limits their options for effective operations.
25 Successes: Maestro completes the satellite. As a result of completing the downtime action, Maestro and his team will be automatically alerted whenever a Recruiter summon shows up and get their location if outdoors and above ground. And since they get ample warning, Maestro can now Request Support from the local SIDE forces for any scene involving Recruiter summons.

Build Legacy: Build Legacy is similar to Accomplish Task, in that it's something of a catchall. However, while Accomplish Task is for plot-oriented things and generally has a set endpoint, Build Legacy is more personal, and often indefinite. As you achieve greater milestones, your legacy becomes more and more developed, and your options for using it expand.

Example: Super-speedster Josh Miles has learned that it's silly to discuss how fast he is quantitatively - he's just objectively fast, and the question is how much slower everything else is. And he wants people to know it. He wants to go down in history as the Fastest Man Alive. To this end, in his downtime, he starts finding other speedsters to race, speed-based challenges to complete, and so on, to establish his legacy. Rather than use a skill here, the GM determines that Josh can use his Speed measure for this Downtime Action, and the DC to make progress is 26. The GM comes up with the following milestones:

1 Success: Josh has begun earning a reputation for his speed, and can now get a Bonus on Intimidation checks against other speedsters or similar mobility-oriented characters.
3 Successes: Josh has started developing a fanbase, and can now Edit Scene to declare that a certain minor character is a fan and get some benefit from it (such as VIP status or a favor or such).
5 Successes: Josh is widely publicly accepted to be the fastest person in the city of Adaros. He can now Reroll opposed checks that involve a direct comparison of speed, including initiative checks.
10 Successes: Josh is widely publicly accepted to be the fastest person in the Adaran region of Ilessia. He can now get bonus Actions to move.
15 Successes: Josh is widely publicly accepted to be the fastest person in the country of Ilesssia. He can now get a Bonus on opposed checks that involve a direct comparison of speed, including initiative checks.
25 Successes: Josh is widely publicly accepted to be the fastest person on the continent of Aldonis. He can now get a Bonus on Prowess checks to make free or additional maneuvers.
50 Successes: Josh is widely publicly accepted to be the fastest person in all the world of Aranth, earning the title Fastest Man Alive. He can now stunt additional Speed, Quickness, personal Exert powers, or Movement utilities. In addition, as a special result of this achievement, when using Hero Points from this downtime action to Stunt additional Speed, Josh no longer needs to pay double to treat the bonus as a true bonus.

Build Relationship/Reputation: You can build a relationship or reputation with or among a certain person or organization. This uses Deception, Insight, Intimidation, or Persuasion generally, or could use Expertise if you have a proficiency that is related to the subject or that they have an interest in. The DC varies based on how powerful (personally, politically, socially, financially, whatever) the subject is. Generally, the DC is 6 for characters or groups notably less powerful than you, 11 for those a bit less powerful, 16 for those roughly equal in power, 21 for those a bit more powerful, and 26 or more for characters or organizations substantially more powerful than you are. Characters and organizations that you already have a long-standing relationship with due to being a feature in your Complications or backstory grant you a +10 Heroic bonus on the check.

Common surge options for milestones are Request Support, Stunting to gain some function of their capabilities (such as an inventor building you a device), or various tactical surges that you can use when protecting them, fighting alongside them, or on their behalf.

Example: Cyborg super-soldier James Rook has to get periodic tests and checkups from Dr. Erikson, the super-scientist who created his cybernetic body, and his daughter and assistant Lena. He takes these opportunities to assist them with things and interact socially as well, serving as a Build Relationship action. The Eriksons may not be combat beasts, but they're both skilled scientists who are capable of a lot of things in their fields - the GM rates them give-or-take as powerful as Rook, so the base DC is 16. However, they're part of his backstory and Complications, so he gets a +10 Heroic bonus on the check. As milestones accumulate, his personal relationship with them improves, perhaps turning Dr Erikson into more of a father-figure while Lena may develop into a close friend or perhaps something more, and he can gain surge options like Stunting inventions or upgrades they create for him, allowing them to Reroll resistance checks, getting Bonuses on technology or science related checks to reflect their advice, or taking bonus Actions when defending them.

Disrupt Organization: You can infiltrate, sabotage, wage media/political/social warfare against, or just straight up attack the holdings of an enemy group. The skills you can use vary based on your methodology - you might use Stealth or Prowess for an infiltration or sabotage, Intimidation for a terror campaign, Deception or Persuasion for a social campaign, Expertise (Business) for a financial campaign, or just use your straight PL for direct attacks. The DC varies based on the strength of the organization as a whole, but 11 + the series PL is always a good basepoint for serious organizations.

Milestones represent significant disruptions, and give you surge options that you can use for things like Inspiration regarding the group, or various tactical options that you can use while opposing or fighting them "on screen". And in most cases, high enough milestones can even bring down an organization outright (or at least weaken them to the point that you can finish them off with a final climactic encounter).

Example: Superheroic summoner Gestalt wants to learn about the Defiant attack on his previous ACC team a few years ago. To do this, he needs to infiltrate their parent organization, the Reclaimers, despite their hatred of Dreamers like him. While the average Reclaimer isn't anywhere near a match for Gestalt in combat, infiltrating them with his powers won't be easy - the GM says he can use Deception, Investigation, Persuasion, or Stealth, against DC 21. The Reclaimers are a national organization and a major part of the setting, so the GM says actually bringing them down entirely would be a prohibitive 250 successes, but that's not really what Gesstalt's going for in any case; he's looking for information. His first milestone lets him surge for Inspiration against the Reclaimers to assist with his investigation, and additional milestones will increase his rank in the organization, giving him access to more information as well as surges that he can use if he does wind up facing them in combat.

Explore/Fortify Location: You can explore, secure, or otherwise improve or become more familiar with an organization, giving you benefits within. Typically this involves Expertise, Perception, or Prowess. The DC depends on the size of the location: 6 + two times the Distance Rank of its largest dimension. Milestones generally let you add specific details to the location, as well as granting surges you can use while within.

Example: The vine-man Mandragora spends much of his time working in the Glade - a huge tropical park in the city of Adaros. The GM says he can use his Expertise (Nature) skill on an Explore Location action to represent his familiarity with it. The Glade takes up an entire Adaros megablock - a full square mile - so the DC is 22. When some Ten Wolves thugs stage an attack in the Glade - seeking to draw out Mandragora himself - he can use this downtime action to conserve his Hero Points as he uses his plant-controlling powers to turn the flora of the Glade against them.

Hunt Enemy: You can track down a villain! This typically uses Investigation, but Perception and possibly even Expertise could also work in certain circumstances. The DC is 11 + the best of the villain's Deception, Investigation, or Stealth. Hunting down minor villains usually only requires 1 or 3 successes. A typical significant villain is usually 5 or 10. Major, adventure-scale villains are typically 15 or 25. And campaign-level villains could take as many as 50! Once you have reached the necessary number of successes, you can force an encounter with the villain. In addition, milestones might reflect neutralizing certain resources the villain has, and of course give you surges you can spend HP from this downtime on when dealing with the villain or its minions.

This downtime can also be used for villains whose locations you know but who are protected by other things, such as breaking up the network keeping them untouchable by the law, or gathering enough evidence to bring them to trial successfully. This may, of course, modify the skills being used.

Example: The mimic Copycat has decided it's time to hunt down the Recruiter. Using the precognitive powers he took from Magnus Mindrider, he pits his Perception against the Recruiter's Stealth of 20. He needs to make DC 31 checks to make progress, and accumulate 25 successes to track him down.

Overcome Complication: While it's natural for characters to outgrow their complications over time, some might be things that the character wants or needs to take an active effort to get past. Overcoming a complication should usually entail a DC of 11 + the series PL. Tenacity is typically the stat used. Skills might be usable to overcome some complications though, such as using Deception or Persuasion to overcome a negative reputation.

The first milestone for overcoming a complication always provides a special surge option - when the GM invokes the complication against you, you may spend HP from this downtime action to negate it. This costs equal HP to what you would have received, and you do not actually receive the Hero Points from the complication. Alternately, you may allow the complication to apply normally, but transfer up to an equal number of Hero Points directly from this action to your normal Hero Point pool, on top of the ones you receive for the complication. Further surges will usually give you options for when you're faced with situations involving the complication.

At an appropriate milestone (usually ten successes, but this can vary for especially significant or minor complications), the complication is overcome completely and removed from the character's sheet. This should be a pretty big deal, and give the character some significant narrative advantage over simply removing the complication over time without any resource investment (and if it's a narrative advantage that leads to a replacement complication, even better). For example, an alcoholic who overcomes its addiction might make amends with its estranged family, being welcomed back into their lives - and gaining new Relationship and/or Responsibility Complications. In some cases, you might be able to continue working at the action to gain some new benefits, growing out of your previous weakness.

You can also use the Overcome Complication action for turning indefinite conditions into regular complications (meaning that instead of constantly penalizing the character, they only impose penalties when specifically invoked by the GM, and may have lesser effects depending on the situation). In this case, the DC defaults to 11 + 5 per tier of the condition (in the case of tier 0 conditions, it's 11 + the number of tier 0 conditions you're converting at once), and you need to hit the 1 success milestone for tier 0 conditions, 3 successes for tier 1, 5 for tier 2, 10 for tier 3, and 15 for tier 4. If you are performing the action for another, you can use a Treatment check (otherwise the character is assumed to be getting normal medical treatment, and uses its own Tenacity for the check). In either case, this absolutely requires access to medical tools and a medical workspace. Unlike when removing adventure duration conditions, this is a regular downtime action, not a special one, so you accrue surge options and Hero Points to spend on them normally.

Example: When nanotech cyborg James Wilson learned that his enemy, Dreamcatcher mad scientist Adair Gaertner, implanted code that started changing his nanotech enhancements - including opening up several severe security holes that make him much easier prey for skilled technopaths - he began seeking ways to excise the code. In this case, the GM decides that rather than use the standard DCs, the DC is based on Gaertner's Expertise (Technology) skill (+18), so DC 29. Normally, this action would use Expertise (Technology) checks, but one of Wilson's powers allows his nanites to augment the powers and technology of others, and Wilson does have mental control over his nanites. Given that, the GM allows him to use his Tenacity with a +5 bonus (effectively for getting the maximum bonus with an Aid action) to make the rolls. As he works, he can use his successes to cancel out Complications such as technopaths using the security holes to affect him, and gain surges that he can use against other enemies' technology as he learns what sort of security holes to look for and exploit. Once he succeeds completely, he can continue progressing this downtime action to further improve his ability to understand and attack technology, or protect himself from enemy hackers and technopaths.

Prevent Problem: You do something to make sure something else doesn't happen. For example, you might train a team to stop low-end supercrimes, or set your relationships up in a secure, secret location to make sure they don't get attacked, or the like. In addition to accumulating surges and bonus HP that you can use when actively working to prevent the problem on-screen, milestones for this downtime action provide a special option - any challenge that comes about as a result of the problem you are trying to prevent earns you a bonus 5 HP per milestone at the start of the scene (similar to - and stacking with, where applicable - the bonus for a scene being based on one of your complications). If the GM wants the thing you're trying to prevent to just arbitrarily happen off-screen (such as your loved one just getting captured outright by Fiat), you get 10 HP per milestone achieved. The skills used depend on how you go about the matter, and the DC is based on how broad the problem is. Preventing a problem that would be part of one of your Complications imposes -5 on the check, because you're shutting off avenues for the GM to bring your Complication into play, which is kinda counter-intuitive.

Example: After his sister Julia was kidnapped to try to influence his father, Major General Harrison Gallows, despite the utter insanity of targeting a high-ranking military official through his family, matter-disintegrating super-spy Aidan Gallows decides that measures must be taken to ensure that won't happen again. He wants to reach out to his IN-SIDE contacts and get discrete but capable surveillance placed over his sister's home to ensure no further threats against her can succeed. Protecting a single target is a pretty narrow goal, so the GM sets the base DC to 16, but Julia is one of Aidan's Complications, so he takes -5 on checks to make progress. Since Aidan is using his IN-SIDE contacts and resources, the GM lets him use either Persuasion or Expertise (IN-SIDE). If later on Aidan is present at an attack on his sister, he is well-equipped to defend her, receiving bonus HP and surges from this downtime action (representing assistance from the operatives in place), a direct HP gain from milestones achieved, and his normal HP award from the Complication! And if the GM ever wants to pull another "Surprise! Your sister got kidnapped!" on him again, he'll have to award extra Hero Points to do so - again, on top of the normal expected Hero Points for targeting his Relationship Complication. It's pretty safe to say that Julia will be safe...unless the GM really wants to "fatten up" Aidan's Hero Point total for some climactic battle, of course.

Redeem Villain: You can redeem a captured villain over time, getting them to turn away from their evil ends (in a villain game, you might instead be able to corrupt a kidnapped hero). This generally uses Deception, Insight, Intimidation, or Persuasion, but if the villain is more "insane" than "evil", Expertise (Psychiatry) or Treatment can also work. The DC is based on how significant the villain is and how intrinsic its villainous ways are to its character - villains who aren't really bad at heart, they just turned to evil to accomplish a specific task, are only DC 11. More rank-and-file, in it for the money type villains are DC 16. Your average villain who has some significant background event that drove them to evil are DC 21. Villains who enjoy it, for whom their villainy is a major facet of their personality, who do evil purely for its own sake, or who believe they are in the right can be DC 26 or even higher!

Redeeming the villains - getting them to forego their evil and at least make a strong attempt at living inside the law, not hurting others, and so on, requires achieving a certain milestone, typically 1 success for mooks, 3 successes for elite mooks, 5 successes for rank-and-file villains, 10 for notable antagonists or Rivals, 15 for recurring villains or Enemies, and 25 for major campaign-scale villains. If you can accumulate an additional milestone, you fully convert the villain - not only will it cease doing evil, but it is willing to start using its skills and powers for the benefit of others to make reparations for its past acts. It might even become a full-fledged hero!

Surges from milestones usually involve getting bonuses against the villain, making it easier to deal with them if they escape before being redeemed or allowing you to get information and such from them more easily.

Redeemed villains will not return to villainy of their own will unless it is absolutely necessary for some driving personal goal, and even then only if the return all but guarantees accomplishing that goal. Note that any inherently villainous motivations (such as vengeance or a love of evil for its own sake) the villain possessed will be removed as part of the redemption and replaced with more wholesome ones, so this isn't especially likely. It is not impossible that it might be coerced to do evil though. A converted villain will never return to evil of its own will and will strenuously resist any attempts to force it. In any event, if you ever find yourself in conflict with a villain you redeemed gone back to evil, your team immediately gains a pool of bonus Hero Points (which expire at the end of the scene) equal to half the current HP value of this downtime action. This does not actually spend the HP of the action itself, and you may still use them normally. You get the full HP value against a villain you've converted. If you ever begin a Relationship Building action with a redeemed or converted villain, it starts off at a milestone two steps lower than the milestone you reached on this action, and you can spend HP from this action on its surges as well.

Example: Prophet the hero-priest knows what it is like to find yourself doing harm rather than good and the difficulty of returning to the light, and sees it as part of his mission to help others turn away from the darkness. After his team captured the Storm Runners - a trio of young adults with storm-based powers and not much forethought - he knew that these three were not really evil, just misguided. He begins visiting them in prison to try to turn them away from evil. They aren't the worst of villains, but they are fairly selfish and egotistical, so the GM sets the DC at 16 but knocks the successes required to redeem them from 5 to 3. Converting them still requires 10 successes though.

Research Subject: You can research a subject, gaining information about it. The DC is based on the obscurity or security of the subject using normal difficulty guidelines (or it may use the Deception, Investigation, or Stealth skills of a character you are researching if they try to limit information about them getting out), and the check is typically Expertise or Investigation. The first milestone always allows you to get Inspiration about the subject, but later ones can give you broader options to represent more practical advantages from your research. Milestones may also provide specific breakthroughs or key pieces of information as the GM deems.

Example: Kate Simms, teleporting private investigator, has begun research on the primary villain of the campaign - the power-augmenting ritualist Tara Ellens. Kate's a great investigator, but Tara keeps her secrets close - she has a Level 3 Cipher immunity setting the DC to get information about her, making the DC 26, and Kate has to use Investigation since she's investigating a certain person. Her successes let her gain Inspiration about Tara, perhaps helping narrow down where she might be or what her next move might be, learning one of her powers or Complications, learning a piece of her background, and so on. At certain milestones the GM gives her additional significant information - perhaps the name of someone who is helping her, a way to counteract the augmentations she's been placing on Dreamer criminals, or the location of one of her safehouses. The GM decides this action can also be used as if part of a Hunt Villain action, and with 50 successes Kate can force an actual encounter with Tara - if she dares.

Train Special: This Downtime Action generally isn't available by default. Characters need to accomplish something special to make it available, such as overcoming a complication, completing a certain adventure, or being subject to some power-influencing effect. It makes their powers special in a way, a bit more mutable, and allows them to practice with their improved powers to gain certain benefits. The DC to Train Special is always 21, and the check is always a straight PL check. As the character accumulates milestones it gets more bonus HP and surge options as normal, but these tend to be somewhat advantageous compared to normal downtime actions since they are more about certain specific tactical options rather than circumstances.

Example: After absorbing a stone containing dangerous APEX radiation, the hydromorphic hero Waterworks experienced a strange angry euphoria in battle, which eventually culminated in her transforming into a giant water elemental that became known as the Maelstrom. Even after regaining control of herself, the APEX radiation altered her personality, pushing her more towards feral anger and prideful territorialism. But after spending months working on keeping control, she managed to get on even footing with the Maelstrom, overcoming the complication.

As a special benefit for spending the downtime actions overcoming that Complication, the GM opens up a new, special downtime action for her. The Maelstrom is still within Waterworks - she's even gained a Metamorph power allowing her to transform into a (somewhat weaker) version of it. By further training at harnessing and controlling her APEX power, Waterworks can use it to enhance her APEX-related powers.

At one success, Waterworks can get a bonus Action to transform into the Maelstrom. At three successes, she can Stunt the Reaction option on her Morph array slot - allowing her to transform in response to getting hit with an attack, and so benefit from both her natural high Defense and the Maelstrom's high Resistance against a single attack (a combo the GM wouldn't allow from a normal Reaction power, so it's kinda something special for the downtime investment). At five successes, she can stunt APEX powers. At ten successes, she can Reroll Resistance checks against mental influence, as the constant effort of controlling the Maelstrom makes such resistance second-nature. And at fifteen successes, she can also get Bonuses for such purposes. At twenty-five successes, she can get Bonuses to her Force by channeling the Maelstrom's APEX power through her attacks. And more options may become available as she achieves even higher milestones.

Special Downtime Actions

Some downtime actions have their own special rules, and don't receive normal HP, bonus surges, or milestones.

Acquire SP: As a downtime action with a calculated DC of 21, you may gain one Skill Point per degree of success, which you can spend raising your skills or acquiring new features normally. This almost always uses the Expertise skill since that represents learning ability and would also be used for things like upgrading an object or the like, but in some cases you might use a different skill, like Prowess to gain Might, Swiftness, or Stamina features. You can also use a skill to gain points to spend on the same skill. You cannot convert these Skill Points back into PP, but they are otherwise permanent acquisitions.

Example: Chain-controlling mercenary Kyton learned something interesting when fighting the augmented corpse-possessor Snatcher. Snatcher's undead minions were being controlled with spiritual "Chains of Command", literal ephemeral chains binding the disembodied possessor to his minions, which Kyton was able to use his own powers to manipulate. Wanting to learn more about this unexpected aspect of his powers, Kyton spends some downtime actions studying the arcane, using the bonus SP to pick up proficiency in magic.

Remove Condition: You can use Treatment to attempt to remove adventure duration conditions, as explained in the Speed Recovery action of the Treatment skill. This absolutely requires medical tools and critically requires a medical workspace.

Respec: You can spend Downtime Actions to revise your character sheet. No checks are required - for each Downtime Action spent, you may exchange up to 10 PP or VP of traits for others.

Take it Easy: Sometimes, a hero just needs to rest, relax, and have some fun. For each downtime action spent taking it easy, you gain 20 Hero Points.

Reinvigorated, you can then get back to work fresh. The next time you take a downtime action other than Take it Easy, you get a +2 bonus per Take it Easy action you performed. So if you spend three downtime actions taking it easy, you'd get 60 Hero Points and +6 on your next Downtime Action.

Example: All work and no play makes Cartoon Hero Avery tired, grumpy, and in desperate need of a drink. And that's no fun. With no critical matters pressing at the end of a particular episode, Avery spends two of his downtime actions to gain 40 Hero Points and a +4 bonus for the next Downtime Action he takes.

Train NPC: You can spend downtime actions to train NPC allies. The DC is 11 + the NPC's PL, and you can use a relevant Expertise, Intimidation, Persuasion, or your own PL. If you are training a specific trait, you can also use your own trait.

For each five successes, the NPC gains one advancement (this assumes normal advancement rules - +2 PP, +2 VP, and +1 to a stat per advancement, five advancements to a PL; if you use different advancements in your game, you may wish to revise the successes required). In addition, if the NPC has not spent all of its allotted PP or VP, you may spend 5 of each per success until they're all used.

You cannot bring the NPC's PL, PP, or VP total above your own. You cannot bring any of the NPC's traits above your own maximums for that trait. You cannot bring any of the NPC's skills above your own rank for that skill.

You may choose what traits the NPC gains, but the GM may veto or alter choices. Or you can let the GM pick the traits improved.

This downtime action also accumulates Hero Points at half the normal rate, but not surges; whenever the NPC is on screen, it may spend Hero Points from this downtime action on whatever surges it wishes, as if they were a personal Hero Point pool. This gives it a bit of an additional edge compared to other allied NPCs who may have been more naturally powerful.

You can train multiple NPCs at a time; add their Power Values together to determine their effective PL as a group (each five points of Power Rating above or below 0 means they count as +/- 1 PL from the baseline for a PC), but the DC increases by 5 due to the added difficulty of training multiple students and they share the Hero Point pool.

Example: ACC powerhouse Beth Cobbler has tremendous physical strength, but no combat training. She turns to the diamond-coated Declan "the Unbreakable" Reynolds for help with that. Declan spends his downtime actions training Beth, boosting up her well-below-PL Accuracy and Defense, adding some Extras and alternate powers to her Exert power, and so on. Over the course of several adventures worth of training, Beth goes from a PL 6 noncombatant to a PL 10 powerhouse almost as dangerous as Declan himself, and earns a hefty (albeit non-renewable) Hero Point total. The next time the Defiant try to attack the ACC, they'll be in for a surprise!

Advantages

Advantages cost 1 PP each.

Accurate Attack [Combat]: When using the Accurate Attack stance, you can swap up to five points from Force to Accuracy.

Active Defense [Combat]: When using the Active Defense stance, you can swap up to five points from Resistance to Defense.

Animal Empathy [Skill]: You have a special connection with animals. You can use interaction skills on animals normally, and do not have to speak a language the animal understands; you communicate your intent through gestures and body language and learn things by studying animal behavior. Characters normally have a -10 penalty to use interaction skills on animals, due to their inability to effectively communicate and lack of human-level intelligence.

Anticipate [Skill]: When you have an Insight edge over an opponent in combat, you can spend one point of the edge to learn what it intends to do on its next turn. If, when the time comes, it wants to do something else, it becomes Dazed that turn. If it already has a condition of the Dazing Tree, it instead increases its tier by one for that turn.

Assessment [Skill]: As a free action, you may roll an Insight check against a DC of 11 + the Deception skills of anyone you want to assess. If you succeed against any given target, you learn the target's Power Level. If you succeed by two degrees, you also learn the target's tradeoffs, if any. If you succeed by three degrees, you learn the target's exact combat stats, its available Attack Modes, and any Immunities it possesses. You may only make one attempt to assess a given target in a given scene.

In addition, if you have an Insight edge over a target (or successfully use the Intuit action against it), you may spend one point of edge to learn one piece of mechanical information about it - for example, you might learn whether or not it has a certain advantage, what one of its powers does, how many ranks it has in a certain skill, etc.

Assistant [Skill]: You may use your Expertise skill to Aid any skill check in for purposes and situations that relate to one of your proficiencies.

Attractive [Skill, Ranked (2)]: You're particularly attractive, which gives you an advantage in just about any social situation against those who would find your looks appealing. Once per scene, you may take the Outclass action for Deception, Insight, Intimidation, or Persuasion as a free action. However, the action's effects only apply against those who would find your looks appealing. When you use this option, you become aware of anyone in the scene who it applies to.

With two ranks in this advantage you are Very Attractive; any time you take an Outclass action for one of the listed skills, if you limit the effects to characters who would find your looks appealing, you may simultaneously attempt to do so with another of the listed skills. Both attempts use the same d20 roll, but their normal bonus.

You may also include Expertise in this list, but only for purposes of performance-related proficiencies.

While superheroes tend to be a fairly good-looking lot, this advantage is generally reserved for characters with particularly impressive looks.

Beginner's Luck [Fortune]: Whenever you make a skill check that you have no bonus on, you may spend 20 Hero Points to receive an automatic total result of 21. You must do so before rolling the check. When using Beginner's Luck, you are capped at one degree of success.

Commander [General]: When you use an Aid action, you may divide degrees of success among multiple allies if you wish, as long as they are all in range and have equal or lower DCs than your primary target.

Complex Stance [General, Ranked]: For each rank of this advantage, choose two stances. Whenever you are in either of those stances you are also considered to be in the other. If you can connect multiple stances to the stance you are in, choose one of them each time you take that stance; you can't combine more than two stances at a time through the normal use of this advantage.

If you have three or more stances that are all connected to each other, you may increase the maintenance of your stance to attended to benefit from up to three at once. Doing this also increases the distraction modifier to set DCs for the stance to 10.

Connected [Fortune]: You know people who can help you out from time to time. You may spend 20 Hero Points to establish the existence of a helpful NPC with a certain useful capability. You may broadly specify the capability the NPC possesses (such as "excellent lawyer", "technopath", "teleporter", etc), and the NPC should possess more-or-less equivalent competence to a theoretical PC who would possess that capability (so like, roughly similar PL to the PCs, similar investments in primary skills as the PCs display, etc). You may also specify why the NPC would be generally positively disposed towards you (friend from high school, helped them out of a jam, familial relation, etc). However, the GM decides the NPC's precise capabilities and personality. This advantage only allows establishing the NPC's existence and general willingness to provide you with reasonable assistance; from there, actually securing aid must be done in the usual way, with role playing, interaction skills, exchanges of favors, Request Support surges, and the like.

Contacts [Skill]: You always seem to know just who to talk to to learn what you need to know. Sometimes you already even know them! Whenever using the Gather Information action of the Investigation skill, you use half the Time Rank as if you were able to talk to the entire group together, since you only have to talk to the right people rather than a substantial portion of the group to get what you need to know.

Cunning Application [Skill, Ranked]: Choose a single use of a single skill, such as using Deception to Manipulate, Insight to Evaluate, or Stealth to Obscure. You may perform that use with a different skill of your choice, as long as it makes sense. You may take multiple ranks in Cunning Application to swap additional uses, but each additional swap costs a number of ranks equal to 1 + your current number of swaps. So, the first swap requires one rank, the second requires another two ranks (three total), the third requires another three ranks (six total), etc. This is based on total swaps across all skills, not just swaps to or from a given skill.

If you have an advantage or power that offers a new use of a skill or otherwise works with a certain skill (such as Well Informed) you may use Cunning Application to swap it to a different skill as well.

Alternately, you can choose one broad proficiency, two narrow proficiencies, or five specific proficiencies that you possess, and tie them to relevant skills other than Expertise. You may use those skills as if they were Expertise for purposes of those proficiencies.

Daze [Skill]: Whenever you successfully perform the Manipulate action, you also Daze the target for the duration.

Defensive Attack [Combat]: When using the Defensive Attack stance, you can swap up to five points from Accuracy or Force to Defense or Resistance.

Defensive Manhandle [Combat]: When taking a Defend action that targets yourself, if an enemy misses you, you can affect it with a single basic maneuver as an instant reaction, without any further checks. This is a free reaction against enemies at least two ranks lower than you. This can be an advanced maneuver if the attack misses by three degrees or more.

Defensive Manipulation [Skill]: When taking a Defend action that targets yourself, if an enemy misses you, you may make an immediate Manipulate attempt against that enemy as an instant reaction. This is a free reaction against enemies at least two ranks lower than you.

Defensive Roll [Combat]: Whenever you suffer Bruises from an attack made with Contact Delivery, you may reduce the number of tier 0 conditions the attack inflicts by 2 by allowing the enemy to instead affect you with a basic maneuver of its choice. You may do this only once per attack.

Disruptive Attack [Combat]: When you would normally Bruise an opponent, you may forego tier 0 conditions inflicted by the attack to instead affect the target with a basic maneuver of your choice for each two conditions foregone.

Eidetic Memory [Skill]: You have perfect recall of everything you've experienced. You may also take the Recall Fact action even for fields that you don't have proficiency in, using half your normal Expertise rank, but the Skill Mastery advantage doesn't apply when doing so, as whether or not you have been exposed to a particular fact outside your fields is essentially random. When using the Recall Fact action for fields you do have proficiency in, you get a +5 circumstance bonus on the check. You also add this bonus to any checks made to resist or recover from effects that would alter your memory.

Encourage [General]: You may use your rescaled Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion to encourage an ally in combat. This functions as an Aid action, but is a basic standard action, interaction range, requires partial movement and full focus, and has a fixed duration of one round. The bonus lasts for the entire round, not just one action, and the bonus applies to a single combat stat of your choice for the round - even Defense, Resistance, or Tenacity. However, the DC to Encourage is 10 higher than normal for the Aid action.

Established Team [General]: You are part of an established team, and some of your features are available to the entire team. Each team member with this advantage may use team features, and may assign some of their own features to the collective pool. Any number of features may be shared with the team. The following features may be assigned as team features:

-Features that give some manner of societal advantage, such as Alternate Identity, Fame, and Wealth, may be made into team features to allow the entire team to benefit from them. If the feature can scale in effect, the team's ranks are added together. So if four members of an established team each purchase Wealth 1, then instead of having four individual Wealth 1s, the team has a collective Wealth of 4.

-Proficiencies may be shared with the team, reflecting that the team members "pick up" some practical knowledge from each other as they work together. Characters use only one-third their normal Expertise rank when using a teammate's proficiencies, and do not receive heroic bonuses for more narrow proficiencies unless they have a broader applicable proficiency already, in which case they can roll with their normal proficiency and apply half the heroic bonus, rounded down (so +2 for a narrow proficiency, +5 for a specific one).

-Mundane equipment you purchase (that is, Removable devices with only features) can be shared with the team, allowing each member to carry the same items. This option doesn't extend to vehicles and installations, although multiple characters can pool points into those even without this advantage (it's just that the entire team would share one, rather than each member getting their own).

Evasion [Combat, Ranked [4]]: You get a +2 circumstance bonus to Defense against Area attacks. At rank 2, you also get a +2 circumstance bonus to Resistance checks against Area attacks. At rank 3, the Defense bonus increases to +5. At rank 4, the Resistance bonus increases to +5.

An attacker may ignore the Evasion advantage for one target of any given area attack, but to do so that target must be in the center of or otherwise the central focus of the attack.

Extraordinary Effort [Fortune]: You may use two active surges per round, but they must be different surges, and you must not only pay both surges' full cost, but also an additional half the cost of the higher-cost surge.

Fascinate [Skill]: You can hold the attention of others using any of your interaction skills, or with Expertise if you have a performance-related proficiency. You may not do this in combat or other dangerous situations. You can affect a single target immediately, or an entire group once they've been exposed to your speech or performance for at least a minute. Roll a check with the skill you are using, against a passive DC of 11 + any given target's Resistance stat (immunities to the Mental attack mode apply). Any target you succeed against focuses its attention on you, generally refraining from taking any significant action (anything that involves using a power or rolling a check) for as long as you continue. In addition, your skill check is used as an active DC for any Insight or Perception checks made by such targets during this time, if it is higher. Any sudden danger, breakout of combat, or similar major distraction will end the fascinate attempt, but fascinated targets receive an automatic result of 0 on initiative.

Fast Grab [Combat]: If you hit a target with a close attack and then take a Maneuver action as a move action, you may perform an advanced maneuver as if you had used a standard action.

Favored Environment [General]: You have an environment you're especially suited for exploring and fighting in. Examples include Residential Buildings, Commercial Buildings, Industrial Buildings, Streets, Alleys, Wooded, Underground, Mountain, Plains, Desert, Arctic, Outer Space, Under Water, Open Sky (meaning, both you and your opponent are flying above any terrain impediments), etc. Environmental factors such as heat, cold, darkness, cover, and so on do not count. While you are in your favored environment, you gain a +2 trait bonus to Accuracy, to Defense, or to your Prowess, Perception, and Stealth skills. Choose at the start of your turn which bonus you receive. The choice remains until the start of your next turn.

Favored Foe [General]: You have a particular type of opponent you've studied or are especially effective against. It may be a type of creature (aliens, animals, constructs, mutants, undead, etc.), a profession (soldiers, police officers, Yakuza, etc.) or any other category the GM approves. Especially broad categories like "humans" or "villains" are not permitted. You gain a +2 trait bonus to Accuracy, to Force, or to your Deception, Intimidation, Insight, and Perception skills dealing with your Favored Foe. Choose at the start of your turn which bonus you receive. The choice remains until the start of your next turn.

Fearless [General]: You are immune to mundane fear (including some uses of the Intimidation skill, but only those intended to provoke an actual fear response - it is entirely possible to, say, get across the negative repurcussions of a threat without actually scaring someone, for example, or to use emotions other than fear for most Intimidation actions). You also receive a +2 bonus on any Resistance checks against effects with the [Fear] descriptor, and you are completely immune to effects with the [Fear] descriptor that also have the Mundane flaw or that come from opponents of a lower rank than you.

Great Endurance [General]: You have a +5 circumstance bonus on checks to resist Onset Hazards, Continuous Hazards, and death from the Dying or Critical conditions. You have a +2 circumstance bonus on any Resistance checks made against effects that repeat over a duration, such as Attacks with extras like Cloud Area, Repetitive, and Progressive.

Group Manipulation [Skill, Ranked (2)]: When you perform a Manipulate action against a group of lower-ranked opponents, treat their rank as one lower for purposes of determining the check penalty. When performing a Manipulate action against a group of equal-rank opponents, reduce the effective number of opponents by one. You may take a second rank of this advantage to repeat the benefits.

Hide in Plain Sight [Skill]: When you take the Elude action, you may move a Distance rank equal to half your Speed rank, or your Speed rank - 1, whichever is lower. You may do so even if you don't currently have Total Concealment from all opponents, as long as you do by the end of your movement. If you do this and your Elude action succeeds, even opponents who were aware of your position at the start of the action don't know where you moved to.

Improved Critical [Combat, Ranked (4)]: You can now score a critical hit on a natural Accuracy check of 19-20, rather than just a 20. This only applies to critical hits, not other critical successes. Each additional rank lowers the required roll by one, up to a maximum of four ranks for a 16-20 threat range.

Improved Defense [Combat]: When you take the Defend action targeting yourself you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your Defend check.

Improved Grab [Combat, Ranked]: You can grab targets with only one arm, leaving the other free, allowing you to grab a second target simultaneously. You can also maintain the grab while using your other hand to perform actions. You do not count the target's weight against your carrying capacity while grabbing, unless you actually try to carry the target elsewhere.

With additional ranks, you can grab with other limbs (or perhaps you possess more limbs), allowing you to maintain one additional grab per rank simultaneously.

Improved Hold [Combat]: While you are grabbing a target, all maneuvers - including Escape - are treated as advanced maneuvers for it.

Improved Initiative [Combat, Ranked]: You have a +5 bonus to your initiative checks per rank in this advantage. You may sacrifice the bonus from the first rank to substituted your Power Level for your Prowess for initiative, if you wish.

Improved Interpose [Combat]: Once per round, you may turn a failed attempt to Interpose into a successful partial Interpose.

Improved Manhandle [Combat]: When you are performing maneuvers against an unwilling target, if your Prowess check allows you to perform more maneuvers than you can affect your target with, you may affect it with one additional maneuver. You must still beat its passive DC to affect it with maneuvers at all.

Improved Manipulation [Skill]: When you succeed a Manipulate action, it lasts for one additional round.

Improved Smash [Combat, Ranked]: When you attack an opponent, you can simultaneously attack any objects it is wearing or carrying that have the Removable (Attack) limit. If the opponent has multiple such objects, you can attack them all unless they have the Individual feature. If they do, you may attack only one object per rank in this advantage.

Improvised Tools [Skill]: When taking actions that have requirements, you treat minimal or improvised requirements as just as good as normal requirements.

Inspire [Fortune, Ranked (5)]: You can inspire your allies to greatness. As a standard action, you may spend up to 10 Hero Points per rank in this advantage. For each 10 Hero Points spent, all allies who can interact with you receive a +2 heroic bonus on all checks until the start of your next turn. You do not receive the bonus, and the bonus ends immediately if you suffer any tier 3 or higher condition.

Instant Maneuver [Skill, Ranked]: Choose one basic maneuver. You may perform that maneuver on a willing target as an active instant action.

Inventor [Skill, Ranked (2)]: You are able to create inventions as a special downtime action. This uses the Expertise skill and requires an appropriate proficiency, such as Technology, Magic, Science, and so on.

There are two steps to inventing - development and creation. Each is a separate downtime action. When you take the development action, roll an Expertise check, DC 21. For each degree of success, you can develop one invention. Your inventions are built as powers, and can have a maximum PP value no greater than your Expertise rank.

When you take the creation action, roll an Expertise check, DC 21. For each degree of success, you may create a specific invention you have already developed. For two degrees of success, you may create a "floating" invention which can be chosen from your list on the fly.

To use an invention in play, you have to expend it from your available creations, which allows you to use it for one scene. You may use multiple inventions in the same scene, but they are treated as being in an array; you can't use them all at once. Each creation may be a separate invention, or you may have just the one but each creation involves getting it necessary ammunition, fuel, energy, or whatever. If you want to have regular access to an invention, buy it as a normal power.

With two ranks in this advantage, you can also create plot device inventions; inventions that serve a specific story purpose but aren't mechanically designed. Each specific plot device is its own separate downtime goal, and functions as a normal downtime action rather than a special one. The GM decides the DC to make progress and the milestones required to complete the device (and surges and in-game results of milestones achieved) as normal for downtime actions. The plot device can be used to essentially solve a certain problem directly, or at least make it solvable (such as by weakening an otherwise undefeatable opponent to a level where the characters can stand a chance of beating it). The GM has discretion on what sort of plot devices are allowed. You must know what sort of problem you are trying to solve to create the plot device; you can't just prepare some arbitrary device and then use it when a problem comes up.

Simply coming up with a plot device isn't an automatic solution to anything. In general, you'll need to accomplish something for the device to work. This could mean collecting certain rare materials and power sources to actually create the device, getting a sample of enemy technology so you can reverse-engineer a counter, reaching the enemy mainframe to upload a plot device virus, and so on. A plot device isn't meant to circumvent an adventure entirely, just to change its nature - or even better, to create an adventure to solve an otherwise-intractable problem.

Generally speaking, a plot device should make an already-solvable problem concretely easier to solve (at the cost of downtime actions). If the plot device is required to solve the problem, it should also provide some additional or future benefit; otherwise it becomes a sort of downtime action "tax". Although generally the normal benefits of downtime action HP and milestone-unlocked surges will help with this.

Jack of All Trades [Skill]: You may take the Apply Knowledge, Impress Others, and Perform Task actions even for proficiencies that you don't have proficiency in, using half your normal Expertise rank, but the Skill Mastery advantage doesn't apply when doing so, as you simply don't have that level of skill in these fields.

Leadership [Fortune]: You may spend your Hero Points on behalf of your allies, or even give them your Hero Points directly to use later. You must be able to take free actions and to interact with the affected ally to do this.

Linguist [Skill]: You may use the Apply Knowledge function of Expertise to follow along with languages or dialects you don't know. This requires an Expertise check against a set DC of 11 for a language that is closely related to one that you know (such as two different regional dialects), DC 21 for a language that has similar roots to one that you know, and DC 31 for a language that is completely unfamiliar. A success lets you follow the general gist of a conversation and convey simple concepts. A two-degree success is enough to handle most casual conversations as long as people speak slowly and maybe give some occasional explanations. A three-degree success is enough to speak competently, though not fluently, in most casual conversations. A four-degree success lets you converse as if you were fluent. A five-degree success even allows you to "get" specific idioms and such, almost as well as a native speaker.

Move-by Action [Combat]: Any movement you take can happen before, after, or even during other actions you make; you don't have to use your movement and then perform the action, or waste any unused movement because you've ended that action and started another.

Power Attack [Combat]: When using the Power Attack stance, you can swap up to five points from Accuracy to Force.

Precise Attack [Combat, Ranked (3)]: Your attacks ignore Partial Concealment or Partial Cover (chosen when you gain the advantage). For two ranks, they reduce Full Concealment or Cover to Partial. For three ranks, they ignore Partial and Full Concealment or Cover. Total Concealment or Cover has any attack roll penalties reduced as per Full, but are otherwise unaffected. You may take Precise Attack twice, once for cover and once for concealment.

Prone Fighting [Combat]: You suffer no penalty to Accuracy or Defense from the Prone condition. You can stand from prone as a free action without attempting a free maneuver.

Ready For Anything [Skill]: Whenever you use a skill to set a passive DC, you may substitute your third-highest skill if it is better.

Reckless Defense [Combat]: When using the Reckless Defense stance, you can choose to take two Tags for +5 Accuracy, or two Bruises for +5 Force. You may not take the other form of condition and bonus if you do this.

Redirect [Skill]: When an opponent you have successfully affected with a Manipulate action attacks you (or whichever subject the Manipulate functions against, if you used Set-up to change it) and misses, you may use a free reaction to immediately end the effect to redirect the missed attack at a different target within range. The attacker makes a new attack check with the same modifiers as the first against the new target.

Second Chance [Skill]: Choose a single circumstance in which you use a skill (not a combat stat) to set an active or passive DC. When doing so, you may roll a check with that skill and use the result to set an active DC (so if you already rolled a skill check to do so this basically lets you roll twice and take the best, and if not you can use the skill check to set the DC if it beats the basic DC). You may take the Second Chance advantage multiple times, making a new choice each time (and no, you can't choose "using the Second Chance advantage to set an active DC" to make even more checks in the same circumstance).

Seize Initiative [Fortune]: You can spend 20 Hero Points to gain Automatic Initiative. You may only do so at the start of combat, when you would normally make your initiative check. If more than one character has Automatic Initiative, they all make initiative checks normally and act in order of their initiative result, followed by all the other characters who do not have it. You may roll initiative normally before using this advantage if desired.

Set-up [Skill, Ranked]: You can transfer the benefits of a successful Manipulate action to your allies. For example, you can use Deception and have your target Vulnerable against one or more allies, rather than you. Each rank in the advantage lets you transfer the benefit to one ally. If you have multiple ranks, you may keep the benefit for yourself at the cost of one available swap. The Manipulate requires its normal action, and the affected allies must be capable of interacting with you (or at least seeing the set-up) to benefit from it.

Sherlock Scan [Skill]: As a one-shot move action, you can look someone over, notice certain subtle physical clues and behavioral tics, and come to shockingly accurate conclusions about them. Roll a check using the lower of your Perception or Investigation skills against a passive DC of 11 + the target's Deception skill. For each degree of success, the GM reveals one clue you noticed and what it means about them (such as "there's a bit of dog hair high on their shirt - this suggests that they have a big dog at home and it's not very well-trained, since it jumps up on them when they arrive"). Even if realistically the clue you spot could mean one of several things, your deduction is always the correct one.

Skill Mastery [Skill]: Choose one skill. Whenever you make a check with that skill, you get a +5 heroic bonus. You may take this advantage multiple times, choosing a new skill each time. In the case of Expertise, you must be proficient in the field in question to gain the bonus.

Stalwart Defense [Combat]: When using the Stalwart Defense stance, you can swap up to five points from Defense to Resistance.

Special Attack [Combat, Ranked]: For each rank of this advantage, you gain an additional special attack.

Specialization [Skill, Ranked]: Choose a specific situation in which you might use a specific action of a skill, such as using Insight to Evaluate during a formal interrogation, Stealth to Outclass while in darkness, or Investigation to Gather Information by canvassing a neighborhood. You get a +2 circumstance bonus on those uses of that skill. You may a second rank in this advantage to raise the bonus to +5. You may take multiple different Specialization advantages, but no more than one for any given skill.

In the case of Expertise, the "situation" may be an entire broad proficiency, or a group of more narrow proficiencies that are all closely related.

Takedown [Combat, Ranked (2)]: If you inflict a tier 3 or higher condition on an enemy with an attack, you get an immediate extra attack as a free action against another character who is A) three or more ranks lower than you, B) within range, and C) adjacent to the previous target's location. The extra attack is identical to the first, although it always only applies to a single target. You can continue using this advantage until you fail to defeat a target or there are no more valid targets within range of your attack or adjacent to your initial target.

A second rank in this advantage allows you to attack non-adjacent targets, moving between attacks if necessary to do so. You cannot move more than your speed from one Takedown chain, regardless of the number of attacks you make. You stop attacking once you fail to defeat a target, run out of movement, or there are no more valid targets within range of your attack plus any remaining movement.

If your attack affects multiple targets, you start a single Takedown chain as long as you defeat any of them. You cannot make Takedown attacks against a target you have previously attacked within the same Takedown chain (or the attack that initiated it).

Teamwork [General]: You get a +5 circumstance bonus on Aid actions that target others. You don't get a bonus when Aiding your own actions.

Tracking [Skill, Ranked]: You can follow trails and track using a particular Accurate sense (choose one sense per rank of the advantage). Following a trail requires a Perception check against a set DC of 6 if the trail was made in the past hour (Time rank 9). For each additional two Time ranks since the trail was made, the difficulty modifier increases by 5. If some circumstance would cause the trail to stick around longer than normal, the difficulty modifier may not increment or may increment more slowly. On the flip side, circumstances that will cause the trail to erode faster may start increasing difficulty at a lower Time rank, and may even increase it every Time rank rather than every two.

Naturally, other modifiers may apply for circumstances that make the trail harder to find, adding impediment or obstacle modifiers. On the flip side, circumstances that would cause a trail to stand out distinctly may reduce the base DC to 1 or lower or even negate the need for a Tracking sense entirely - it doesn't take significant ability to follow a trail of footprints through the snow, for example.

A character actively trying to hide its trail, assuming it has a means of concealing its passage from the sense you use, can roll a Stealth check to set an active DC. However, it suffers a -10 penalty on this check if it is unable to track with the same sense as you are using.

Trance [General, Ranked]: Through breathing and bodily control, you can slip into a deep trance. This requires you to concentrate, taking a standard action each round, and remain immobile. While in a trance, you are fully aware of your surroundings, but you may use a trance in place of sleep. Any effects that require you to make saves over time - such as Repetitive or Progressive Attacks, Dying or Critical status, even things like hunger, thirst, and suffocation - are delayed indefinitely while you are in trance. While in trance, you may slow your breathing, heart rate, and other vital functions such that you appear dead to anyone who can't make a Perception check with an active DC of 11 + your Resistance stat. While in a Trance, you get +5 on Defense against attacks with Afflict or Impose delivery, but you take -5 on Defense against attacks with Contact or Flash delivery. Ending the trance is a free action, and you can maintain one for up to a Time rank equal to your Resistance rank plus your ranks in this advantage.

Ultimate Effort [Fortune]: Choose one attack mode or one skill. Whenever you use the Reroll surge on either a Resistance check against the chosen attack mode or a skill check with the chosen skill, before making the reroll, you may spend 10 additional Hero Points to simply treat your reroll as an automatic 20. This is not considered a natural 20. You may take this advantage multiple times, choosing a different attack mode or skill each time.

Uncanny Dodge [Combat]: You are especially attuned to danger. You are not caught Vulnerable by due to Surprise, Surprise Attacks, or Concealment. You can still be made vulnerable by effects that limit your mobility or distract you in combat, or to powers with similar descriptors; it's only these specific mechanical effects that you are immune to.

Weapon Break [Combat]: If you take a Defend action that targets yourself and an opponent misses you with a close range weapon attack, you can make an attack against the attacker's weapon as an instant reaction, following normal rules for attacking an attended object.

Well Informed [Skill]: You are exceptionally well-informed. When encountering an individual, group, or organization for the first time, you can see if you might have heard about them. Roll an Investigation check against a passive DC of 11 + the higher of the target's Deception, Investigation, or Stealth skill. You also face a set DC of 1 for characters who operate in the same city you live in and in a field related to yours (such as a cop knowing other members of law enforcement or established criminal, or a superhero knowing other superheroes or supervillains). The DC has a +5 impediment modifier if they are in an only tangentially-related field (such as a cop knowing a member of a hospital staff or a superhero knowing a cop or mundane criminal - there's some relevance there, but it's not really direct), or a +10 impediment if there's no particular connection between you (such as a cop knowledge a restaurant owner).

There are also difficulty modifiers if the subject lives or generally operates in a different area. As a rule of thumb, this is a +5 difficulty modifier if they live in a different city but the same general region, state, province, or so on, +10 if within the same country, +15 if on the same continent, +20 if on the same planet, +25 if in a local network of planets (such as a solar-system-wide community), +30 if in an interstellar community, +35 if in an intergalactic community, and +40 otherwise (note that the +40 modifier applies to anyone from another planet if there is no shared community or organization between them, even if from the same galaxy or solar system). The set DC may be lower for public figures and otherwise famous individuals or groups, and these are rules of thumb; the GM may use different modifiers depending on how interconnected different areas of a setting are.

If you succeed, the GM gives you a general overview about who the subject is, what they're known for, and other relevant information about them. Higher degrees of success may get you more, or more sensitive, information. If you beat the set DC, but not the passive DC, you still get information, but only "public" information - stuff they might want people to know about. If you roll more degrees of success than the GM has information to give you, you can ask a specific question about the subject for each additional degree. This advantage can potentially get you access to sensitive or even classified information, but not to outright secrets that only a few specific individuals would know (such as a hero's secret identity).

Well Informed only applies for relatively significant individuals - you don't arbitrarily know things about literally everybody you meet (the GM can answer a Well Informed check against unimportant NPCs with just "they aren't significant"). But you conveniently happen to have information about significant people or groups you come across in your adventures.

Effects

Effects are the foundation of powers. To create a power, you first purchase the desired effect, and then add any extras or flaws you want to the power. Each effect provides an action you can take; some simply let you add modifiers to existing actions, while others give special actions of their own. They have the same parameters as normal actions, as well as a cost parameter, which is the PP cost of purchasing the effect.

Powers have a minimum cost of 1 PP, after all modifiers have been applied. Some effects have a base cost of 0 PP; this is usually because the effect just duplicates an existing action, allowing extras to be attached to it. Essentially, the cost of such powers is based entirely on their extras. That said, if you want to just purchase the effect with no extras (so as to be able to add extras to it from flexible sources, for example), it costs 1 PP.

Aid: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Round. Maintenance: None. Cost: 0 PP.

The Aid power allows you to perform Aid actions with a power, thereby allowing you to add modifiers to your Aid actions. Remember that the Aid action's maintenance and duration end immediately once the bonus is used; an Aid power with a duration will still only boost one action, it can just "wait" until it's needed. To provide lasting bonuses, consider the Repeatable extra or the Bestow effect.

Attack: Type: Standard. Class: Active. Range: Close. Requirements: Varies, but typically full movement and partial focus. Duration: Scene. Maintenance: None. Cost: 0 PP.

The Attack power allows you to perform Attack actions with a power, thereby allowing you to add modifiers to your Attack actions. In addition, each Attack power counts as a special attack, allowing you do choose specific conditions inflicted and the attack mode and delivery mode used.

Bestow: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: Varies.

You can bestow some of your traits onto others. You may bestow traits on yourself as well.

When you gain the power, choose one set of traits you possess. You may select whatever traits you wish other than array slots (you may select traits within array slots, just not the slots themselves), but the base cost of this effect is equal to the total cost of the traits selected, treating VP as PP. The Diverse extra can let you select alternate sets of traits you can bestow without directly increasing the cost, and the Broad extra allows you to bestow any trait you possess.

You may choose "partial" traits, such as only a few ranks of a skill, or a power that is missing some of its extras or flaws, or traits that are normally in an upgrade without the limits of the upgrade (rating them at full cost). However, you can't change the choices you made or mix-and-match extras or the like. For example, if your only other power is Attack (Contact/Physical; Injury Tree; Burst Area, Selective) you could choose to only be able to bestow Attack (Contact/Physical; Injury Tree; Burst Area), but you couldn't bestow an Impose/Mental attack, or a Cumulative Attack, or a Burst Area Selective Defend power, or the like.

These are considered trait bonuses. When bestowing stats, you may bestow a total number of stat points (divided among all stats) equal to half your PL, plus any individual bonus stat points you bought with PP. So if you are PL 10 and bought +2 Accuracy and Force, you can bestow up to 5 stat points total, plus up to two additional Accuracy and Force, assuming you have a big enough Bestow.

You may add extras from one of your powers to one of the target's powers with the same effect.

The traits you bestow are considered "charged" for one round. After that, they have to be charged in some other way, or they are lost as if the duration and maintenance of the power ended. Each target's traits have to be charged separately, even if they were all bestowed simultaneously, with one exception. A Bestow power with the Area and Zone extras can charge traits for an entire zone as if it were a single character. If the power also possesses the Aura or Movable extras, it loses this ability unless it is also Augmented once per rank of Area.

You may keep a certain point value of traits charged inherently with this power. At any one time, you may charge a total number of points of bestowed traits equal to the base cost of this effect (so, basically, you can keep one set of traits charged at a time). If you wish, you can raise the base cost of the effect without adding more available traits to it; each such point lets you keep two more points of traits charged. So if you can bestow Flight (10 points) and pay 20 PP (10 for the traits you can bestow, 10 extra) for the effect, you can keep up to 30 points (three separate instances of Flight) charged at once inherently. If you deactivate this power (such as by switching to a different array slot) but it still has duration active, you do keep the powers charged. However, the traits themselves cannot be used by their recipients until you reactivate the power.

You may also use your points of charging to charge traits bestowed on you by others, if you wish.

There are other ways to charge traits. When you gain this power, choose one that you can use. The Diverse extra lets you choose more, and Broad lets you use all of them. You may charge different points of traits in different ways where applicable.

Action Charge: The target may charge points by spending actions. As a move action, the target can charge a number of bestowed points equal to half the total points you can charge. As a standard action, it can charge the full points. The charge lasts for one round.

Array Charge: You can tie the bestowed traits to one of the target's arrays, keeping them charged indefinitely. Each point that is active deducts one point from the array's value; if you bestow more points than the array has, they can't all be active at once. Remember, most arrays need their full point value to activate a slot, though dynamic slots can be used with partial points. The target chooses which points are active, swapping them whenever it changes the array.

Exchange Charge: You can tie the bestowed traits to one of the target's other traits of at least equal value, keeping them charged indefinitely. You must tie each trait to a trait of the same type (stat, measure, skill, advantage, power, utility, or feature). While the bestowed trait is active, the trait it's tied to isn't, and vice-versa. The target chooses which points are active, swapping them as an instant action, like changing an array.

Heroic Charge: Any player may dedicate Hero Points to charging traits. This doesn't spend Hero Points, but the player must currently have at least as many Hero Points as points of charged traits. The traits remain charged until that player spends Hero Points. If desired, the player can increase the Hero Point cost by one per 5 HP spent or per 5 points charged (whichever is lower) to retain the charge, provided it still has sufficient Hero Points to do so after the expenditure.

Offensive Charge: Choose one of your special attacks when you gain this power. If you use Diverse to get multiple charge options or Broad to get all of them, each special attack counts as a separate option. Each target who has received conditions from that attack during the current scene charges bestowed traits while the conditions last or until the scene ends, whichever comes first. Each tier of conditions imposed charges half the points that you can charge directly, as long as the recipient of the bestowed traits has an equal Power Rating. For each 10 Power Rating lower, reduce the effective tier by 1. For each 10 Power Rating higher, raie it by 1.

Sacrifice Charge: Choose an additional willing subject in range when you bestow the traits (you may choose yourself). You can tie the bestowed traits to some of that subject's traits, as per either Array Charge or Exchange Charge (choose which when you gain this option, taking it twice lets you use either).


Commune: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Varies. Maintenance: Varies. Cost: 0 PP.

The Commune power allows you to add modifiers to any actions that involve communicating with others - be it just regular free-action speaking, or actions that involve the Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion skills. Certain other actions, such as some artistic uses of Expertise, may also be affected. This can also include actions making use of Communication utilities. This power uses the parameters of whatever action it is applying to, modified by extras.

Concealment: Type: Free. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: Partial focus. Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: 10 PP.

While this power is in use, the character receives Partial Concealment constantly from vision. The Additional Sense extra can expand the Concealment to additional senses. Two degrees of Stealth edge can improve the Concealment normally, but opponents with a Perception edge can also degrade it normally. This power doesn't stack with any existing Concealment; only the best applies. Maintenance of this power automatically ends if you target a character other than yourself with an action, and this power cannot be used in any round that you target a character other than yourself with an action.

Choose which type of concealment (see the Clear Sense utility) your Concealment provides when you gain the power. The Diverse extra allows you to select multiple types.

This power can be Augmented in two ways, each requiring a separate purchase of the Augmented extra. One purchase can be used to improve the default Concealment to Full (you can't use two purchases to improve it further to Total; you need skill in Stealth if you want to achieve complete imperceptibility). A second purchase can be used to prevent maintenance from ending when targeting another and allow the power to be used in rounds where you target someone else. However, your Concealment still degrades by one step in any round that you target someone else with an action, returning to normal at the start of your next turn.

In addition, any extras on this power can be applied to actions that involve the Stealth skill. Such actions still use their normal parameters, modified by extras.

Create: Type: Standard. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: 20 PP.

You can form matter (solid, liquid, or gaseous, as appropriate to your descriptors) essentially out of nowhere. They may be made of solidified energy, "hardened" water or air, transmuted bulk matter, ice, stone, or some other medium, depending on the effect's descriptors.

You can form any simple geometric shape or common object (such as a cube, sphere, dome, hammer, lens, disk, etc.). The GM has final say on whether or not a particular object is too complex for this effect. Generally, your objects can't have any moving parts more complex than a hinge unless you have the Precise Extra. They can be solid or hollow, opaque or transparent, as you choose when you use the effect, limited by your descriptors and the GM's judgment. They can either hover in place and retain their shape as you created them, or respond normally to physics (a created liquid all splashing out to fill the area, a created gas spreading and moving with the wind, a created object falling, etc).

Your objects can be shaped following any of the following parameters:

1) A contiguous length (such as a wall) with a thickness of up to a few feet, a height of up to Distance rank - 1 + 1 per four ranks of Force, a length of up to Distance rank 0 + 1 per two ranks of Force, and a Mass rank equal to your Force + 5. The wall must be either stationary once created, or conjured onto a surface capable of supporting its weight.

2) A hollow sphere, dome, or similar with a thickness of up to a few feet, a radius of up to Distance rank -1 + 1 per three ranks of Force, and a Mass rank equal to your Force + 3. The object must be either stationary once created, or conjured onto a surface capable of supporting its weight.

3) A hollow cube or similar with a thickness of up to a few feet, a length per side of up to Distance rank 0 + 1 per three ranks of Force, and a Mass rank equal to your Force + 3. You may lower the total length of one dimension to raise another (so if you can make a cube 60' on a side you could also make one that is 20'x60'x100'). The object must be either stationary once created, or conjured onto a surface capable of supporting its weight.

4) Any contiguous object subject to the complexity rules above that fits entirely into a cube with a length per side of up to Distance rank -1 + 1 per three ranks of Force, and a Mass rank equal to your Force + 5.

5) A non-contiguous collection of objects subject to the complexity rules above that fit entirely into a cube with a length per side of up to Distance rank -2 + 1 per four ranks of Force, and a Mass rank equal to your Force + 3.

Each application of the Area extra increases all listed Distance ranks by 1 and Mass ranks by 2. The Mass ranks do, however, assume objects of the maximum available size, and may be much smaller for smaller objects. With the Precise extra, you can control the object's density to define any Mass rank of up to the listed value.

Created objects can be damaged or broken like ordinary objects. Objects you create have a Resistance stat equal to your Force stat. They also vanish if you stop maintaining them. You can repair any damage to a created object at will by using your effect again (essentially "re-creating" the object), but this has the normal one-round delay unless the Create is Augmented. Your created objects are stationary once you have created them, although other effects can move them.

A Created object takes one full round to form, manifesting fully at the start of your next turn. It is obvious that the creation is occurring during this time (unless the effect is Subtle), allowing people to maneuver in response to the creation. An Augmented Create forms instantly.

You may add other traits directly to your Created objects (such as immunities) by increasing the cost of the effect directly.

Create is a power that offers a variety of options based on how you use it. The typical uses are below, but the GM may allow other creative options.

Attacking: You can create a weapon to fight with. If the Create is Augmented, then as long as the object is a hand-held weapon, you can attack with it in the same action as you create it with (Created objects that provide other functions aside from just being a weapon to attack with have to be summoned and then used to attack in two separate actions, and non-Augmented Creates obviously can't be used to attack until they fully form). Create does not in and of itself provide any special advantages when used to attack, but any extras on the Create can be applied to attacks made with it - if you want to create a machine gun, you need a Ranged, Multiattack Create, for example. The Create power is not a special attack itself, but can use any of your special attacks.

Dropping: You can use Create to attack multiple targets by conjuring a heavy object in the air and dropping it on any enemies it fits over. This only works for options 4 or 5, since the other ones have to either be stationary or conjured onto a surface capable of supporting their weight. Unless you are able to keep the enemy under the object for a round, this usually requires an Augmented Create. This otherwise functions like use the Create to attack, but potentially against multiple foes at once.

Providing Cover: You can use a Created object to provide Cover - Partial, Full, or Total, depending on the size of the object relative to the people it is covering. However, a Selective Create cannot provide more than Full Cover. Create cannot be used to create functional "armor" or movable shields (although such conjured defenses could be the fluff rationale for other defensive bonuses and powers). A non-Augmented Create provides Partial Cover during the round it forms.

Providing Concealment: You can use a Created object to provide Concealment - Partial, Full, or Total, depending on how opaque it is. However, a Selective Create cannot provide more than Full Concealment. A non-Augmented Create provides Partial Concealment during the round it forms.

Blocking Movement: Created objects can be used to block passage as normal objects of their size and Resistance. Created liquids can be passed through by swimming (Prowess DC 6+your Force for difficult movement). This can also be used to trap opponents until the Created object is destroyed. However, any opponent within a Created object, or on the side of one that it doesn't want to be on when it is first conjured, can roll a Defense, Prowess, or Speed check against DC 11 + your Force. If they succeed, they can perform a Maneuver action as a reaction for purposes of escaping the trap or getting to the other side of the object. Non-Augmented Creates don't require a check to escape if the targets can move out of the area during the round it's forming, but if they don't do so, they can still make a check to escape at the moment it finishes forming.

Supporting Weight: A solid Create can support weight as if it had a Strength rank equal to its own Mass rank + 1.

Defend: Type: Standard. Class: Active. Range: Close. Requirements: Special. Duration: Round (Fixed). Maintenance: None. Cost: 0 PP.

The Defend power allows you to perform Defend actions with a power, thereby allowing you to add modifiers to your Defend actions.

The Augmented extra can apply to the Defend power. An Augmented Defend power applies any relevant extras (typically those that get added to powers that provide or improve a defense) to your basic, passive Defense DCs or Resistance checks. By adding Augmented twice, you can affect both.

Discern: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Varies. Maintenance: Varies. Cost: 0 PP.

The Discern power allows you to add modifiers to any actions that involve knowing, learning, or figuring things out. Typically, this means Investigation actions and some Expertise actions, as well as just general thinking and remembering. These powers can even be used when gaining information from a source, such as a book, database, or even a person - but it doesn't help with actions to convince someone to give you information in the first place. This power uses the parameters of whatever action it is applying to, modified by extras.

Enhance: Type: Instant. Class: Basic. Range: Personal. Requirements: None. Duration: None. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: 0 PP.

Choose one other power effect when you gain this power (you may use the Diverse and Broad extras to expand this selection). When you use this power, you enhance one power you possess with that effect. You may increase the base cost of this power to purchase extras that get added to the enhanced power. These extras don't apply any effects to this power (so if you make this power Broad, it doesn't provide the Broad extra to the enhanced power, for example, unless you purchase a second instance of it separately with this effect's cost). You may only enhance one of your powers at a time; if you use this power again to enhance a different power, the old one loses the effects. Points of extras gained from an Enhance power still count towards normal limits; in itself this effect is just an organizational tool for consolidating extras that can apply to, say, any of an array of powers with the same effect.

Note that Diverse and Broad Enhance powers let you apply the same extras to more types of effects, but do not let you select multiple sets of extras. Use arrays for that.

Environment: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: 10 PP.

You can change the environment in an area: raising or lowering the temperature, creating light, causing rain, and so forth.

Your Environment can either be centered on a willing target (or unattended object), moving with that target, or on a fixed point in space. If centered on a fixed point, it affects a radius of up to a Distance rank equal to your Range rank. If centered on a target, it affects a radius of up to a Distance rank equal to half your Range rank. At GM discreton, you might be able to affect other areas, modifying the Distance rank affected as per the Area extra (so for example, you might be able to create a cone of light that extends one Distance rank further).

You may only have one environment of up to the full size active at once. However, you can create multiple environments as long as their total radii add up to your maximum. So if you can create a single 500' radius environment, you can alternately have five separate 100' radius environments.

You may choose one advanced environment effect that you can create when you gain this power. The Additional Extra lets you add more environment effects, and the Diverse extra lets you choose more options that you can mix-and-match. You may substitute two basic environment effects for one advanced effect.

The environment's rank is equal to your Force rank except in the case of the Enhance Effect, for which it is equal to half your Force rank.

Where the end of an environment's description specifies "Depending on the nature of the environment, X may happen", you may add those things for 1 PP each. So, for example, since Impede Movement says "Depending on the nature of the environment, additional modes of movement might be affected (or certain modes of movement might be excluded from the advanced effect)" you could add additional modes of movement simultaneously affected (or excluded from the advanced effect) for one PP each.

If your Environment either has an opposing descriptor (such as light to darkness, cold to heat, etc) or opposing effect (such as Extend Movement to Impede Movement) to an overlapping environment, only the highest applies, but its rank (for purposes of effect, not area) is reduced by the rank of the suppressed environment within the area.

As a free action, you can also generate an environment that is much weaker than the listed effects, such as radiating a gentle warmth that doesn't cause any hindrance. These gentler environments can still counter opposing effects or descriptors.

A Selective Environment can never provide Total Cover or Total Concealment.

The Environment power cannot create hazards. For those, use Attack powers.

Exert: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Varies. Maintenance: Varies. Cost: 0 PP.

The Exert power allows you to add modifiers to any action that involves moving or physically manipulating things that isn't covered by a different power effect. Primarily, this means Maneuver actions, but it can also involve things like manipulating an object with certain uses of Expertise, or general free actions like picking stuff up or opening a door. This can also include actions making use of Movement utilities. This power uses the parameters of whatever action it is applying to, modified by extras.

When you gain an Exert power, choose whether it applies to actions targeting yourself and objects you are attending (making it more a personal mobility power) or other characters and objects (making it more a power to move stuff around). This is too binary a choice for Diverse to apply, but the Broad extra lets you to both. If you make a check to perform additional maneuvers, they don't have to all be of the listed type, but at least one does, and where applicable any extras on the power only apply to maneuvers that are. If the core parameters of the action are changed, however, all maneuvers taken must be of the relevant type.

Healing: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Close. Requirements: Full movement, full focus. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None. Cost: 0 PP.

The Healing power allows you to perform Treatment actions with a power, thereby allowing you to add modifiers to your Treatment actions. The type and class change depending on the action performed. Most Healing powers make use of the Simple extra to lessen the requirements for healing.

If the power Affects Objects, it can be used for the Repair Object action of the Expertise skill as well.

Healing can be Augmented. An Augmented Healing power treats the current recovery timing one higher per application of Augmented, but doing so makes it a one-shot action (so you can only heal at a higher timing once per character per scene, unless also Effortless or using the Retry surge).

Illusion: Type: Move. Class: Basic. Range: Ranged. Requirements: Full focus. Duration: Round. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: 10 PP.

You can control others' senses to create false impressions, illusions. This can range from visual images to phantom sounds, smells, or even radar, mental images, or false emotions. By default, Illusion affects vision. You may add additional senses to the illusion using the Additional Sense extra.

Illusions can be of any size so long as they fit entirely into a cube with a Distance Rank on each side equal to your Force rank minus 4. An illusion can be made up of multiple discrete things; it does not have to be contiguous.

Once an illusion is created it is static. By maintaining the illusion using a maintenance one step worse than normal the character can cause the illusion to do things actively, such as move or change. Improving an illusion's duration allows the illusion to act on a program even without the character paying any mind to it at all. A character can only effectively have the illusion "do" one thing at a time. Each rank of Quickness doubles the number of discrete actions the character can make the illusion perform at once. So, any character could create an entire unit of identical soldiers marching in formation. But making a unit of 32 soldiers all appearing to be fighting in a complex battle would require Quickness of at least 5.

By default, characters don't make checks to detect illusions as false. If a character takes an action that targets, affects, or interacts with an illusion, however, the user must make an immediate Deception or Stealth check, against a passive DC of 11 + the higher of the character's Insight, Investigation, or Perception skills. If the check fails, the character recognizes the illusion as false. Each action spent on the illusion requires a new check to reveal it as false.

Any active Insight, Investigation, or Perception check the character makes while perceiving an illusion may allow them to notice the illusion as false, if the check beats a passive DC of 11 + the higher of the user's Deception or Stealth. This DC increases by 5 if the illusion is not really part of what the character is focusing on (so a Perception check to scan an area the illusion is in wouldn't increase the DC, but an Insight check to evaluate a character while the illusion just happens to be nearby would).

A character might passively recognize an illusion as false in certain circumstances. The higher of their Insight, Investigation, or Perception must exceed the higher of the user's Deception or Stealth. Even then, it only works if the character is currently in the Suspicious stance, if it has a True sense, or if it has an Acute or Accurate sense that should be able to detect the illusion, but doesn't (for example, an illusion of a person moving around that doesn't make noise).

A character faced with clear proof an illusion isn't real (such as passing through an illusion that appears solid) needs no check - it automatically recognizes the illusion as false. If any viewer successfully uncovers an illusion and communicates this fact to others, they gain a +5 circumstance bonus on any traits involved in recognizing the illusion, and the illusion user must make an immediate check as if they had interacted with the illusion. Circumstances may grant additional modifiers to the check to uncover an illusion, depending on how convincing it is.

Illusions have no substance and cannot have any real-world effect. So they cannot provide illumination, nutrition, warmth, or the like (although they can provide the sensations of these things). Likewise, an illusory wall only prevents people from moving through an area so long as they don't try to walk through it, and an illusory bridge or floor is revealed as false as soon as someone tries to walk across it, and falls through it! That being said, illusions can provide concrete forms of influence over others, as follows. A given illusion can only do one of these things at a time, unless the Additional Extra is applied.

Craft Display: You can use illusions to create non-deceptive displays, such as projecting your voice at a distance, creating a glowing neon sign to draw attention, manifesting a map in the air for people to see, and so on. Such displays are generally obviously illusory (or at least, it doesn't really matter if they're real or not), but they provide some occasionally helpful utility. Power of illusion in no way conveys artistic ability; how good your displays look (sound, smell, whatever) would be a function of the Expertise skill in a relevant field. Creating illusions of this type is a free action rather than a standard action.

Disguise Appearance: You can use illusions to disguise something as something else, as with the Disguise action of the Deception skill. This treats the action's class as basic rather than extended, since you just instantly create the disguise, and illusions generally give you much more leeway in creating your disguises, since you can cloak the target's appearance outright. It also means modifiers on the Illusion power can apply to your Disguise action.

Manipulate Opponents: One of the most common uses of the Illusion power is to Manipulate enemies. When you perform a Manipulate action using an Illusion, you affect all characters who can perceive it, but with no penalty on your Manipulate check. Further, the manipulation effect lasts for as long as the illusion does. However, the effects of the Manipulation instantly end for any opponent who sees through the Illusion. You may perform manipulations that are relative to the illusion rather than to yourself, if desired, and the illusion is considered real for purposes of determining what is reasonable for a manipulation. Finally, when using Illusion to Manipulate, you may impose the Influenced (Illusion) condition in lieu of normal effects.

Provide Concealment: An Illusion can provide Concealment of any level over an area - but such concealment is indiscriminate (filling a room with illusory fog will hamper your sight just as much as your enemy's). Selective Illusions can conceal only certain people, but cannot provide more than Full Concealment. Absent a True sense, recognizing illusory Concealment as fake doesn't help any - it doesn't matter if you know the fog isn't real, you still can't see through it. Appropriate types of Clear senses can still see through it. Illusions can provide Blending, Distracting, and Overlap Concealment (see the Clear Sense utility); while they can create the impression of Cloaking or Medium Concealment, they can't actually directly remove a stimulus, they can just cover it up. For example, you can cast an illusion of the room you're in, only empty, covering the actual room that you and your allies are hiding in. This might look like you make yourself and your allies invisible, but you're actually just hiding behind the illusion - it's Overlap Concealment, not Cloaking. Illusions can't provide mobile, personal Concealment for specific targets; for that you need an actual Concealment power.

Nullify: Type: Varies. Class: Reaction. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: None (Fixed). Maintenance: None. Cost: 0 PP.

The Nullify power allows you to perform Counter actions with a power, thereby allowing you to add modifiers to your Counter actions without having to use a specific power appropriate to the action. For countering powers in effect, you can counter any power with the same source or origin as your Nullify. The Diverse extra lets you add others, and a Broad nullify can counter any sort of power.

An Augmented Nullify may also be used to attempt to negate an action or power outright by targeting the initiator directly. When doing so, you take a -1 penalty on your check per PL the target is higher than you, or get a +1 bonus per PL the target is lower.

Perceive: Type: Varies. Class: Varies. Range: Varies. Requirements: Varies. Duration: Varies. Maintenance: Varies. Cost: 0 PP.

The Perceive power allows you to add modifiers to any actions that involve noticing things. Typically, this means Insight and Perception actions, as well as just general perceptions (it generally does not mean Investigation actions, since that's more about knowing things or figuring things out, so generally covered by Discern). This can also include actions making use of Senses utilities. This power uses the parameters of whatever action it is applying to, modified by extras.

By default, the Perceive power only applies to vision. You can use the Additional Sense extra to apply it to more senses.

Transform: Type: Varies. Class: Basic. Range: Close. Requirements: Partial movement, full focus. Duration: Varies. Maintenance: Sustained. Cost: 10+ PP.

You are able to transform things into other things. You can transform just about anything, although the Restricted Extra can restrict what sorts of things you can transform.

Transform always has a base cost of at least 10 PP. You may raise this cost to allow more elaborate transformations. The Transform power isn't meant to be used as a generic power for performing any sort of transformation - transformation can be a descriptor that covers a wide array of powers. A whole-hog transformer will usually have more powers than a base Transform, often even Variable array slots for maximum flexibility (although stunting can also work if you only occasionally use more advanced transformative actions).

An unwilling target may make a Resistance check, DC 11 + Force, to negate the transformation (this uses the Transformative attack mode). When transforming objects, you are limited to objects with a Mass rank no higher than your Force rank. However, by making the effect an Extended action, you can affect larger objects; each Time rank spent raises the Mass rank you can affect by 1. Multiple non-cosmetic transformations of the same type don't stack; a new one transforms the target from its baseline. If someone else placed the original transformation, your attempt first resolves as a Counter action to try to overwrite it (using Force as the stat for the action). Cosmetic transformations can stack if they change the target in different ways, but overriding or undoing someone else's transformation requires the same check (if someone else turned the target's hair blue you could make it longer just fine, but you'd have to beat the existing transformation to turn it green, for example).

The Transform power itself allows you to make any of the following types of transformations. In all cases, Transform is limited to physical changes. You can't use a mechanical transformation to add or remove mental or social traits, for example, unless they are based on some physical trait (such as the Attractive advantage or some sort of Big Brain power or something). When it isn't clear whether a change is physical in nature, it falls to GM discretion.

Cosmetic Transformation: You make a change that has no really significant effect - changing something's appearance only, without any impact on its function or capabilities. This can be used to create a Disguise following normal rules (and using any extras on the Transform power), but otherwise has no mechanical effect. Making a cosmetic change is an instant action, and it has an Indefinite duration when used on an object, or a Scene duration when used on a character.

Mechanical Transformation: You can alter the target's physical traits, trading them around. You can alter a total number of points of traits equal to the base cost of the Transform effect. You can't add or expand array slots, but can otherwise edit any physical traits. If you are altering SP and FP (so you only alter 1 SP or FP per point of the Transform effect's value) this is an instant action with an Episode duration. If you are altering PP and VP, it's a standard action with Round duration. You can't add points directly; you must exchange points 1:1 (as always, you may trade PP for VP and SP for FP, but not vice-versa). You may remove points directly, and in fact, if you are only removing points, you can remove twice as many.

Tactical Transformation: You make tactical changes to make a task easier or harder. You may lower or raise a set DC by up to one point per two points of the effect's base cost, assuming physical changes can justify the altered DC. Making a tactical transformation is a move action with a Scene duration.

Utility Transformation: You alter the target in a way that doesn't strictly have a mechanical effect, but isn't purely cosmetic either - it has some significant in-world effect. This might alter an object's mundane functions, change descriptors around, give or remove some sort of in world value (such as changing lead into gold), and so on. Advanced or complex utility transformations may require Expertise checks to accomplish successfully at GM discretion. A utility transformation is a move action and uses Episode duration.

Extras

Some extras have low costs because they don't come up often, but they can be quite powerful when they do. These extras are marked as niche. A niche extra multiplies its cost by four when being used "on the fly", such as as part of a power stunt or Variable array.

Some extras use "rules for repetitions". These extras cause the powers to repeat in some way round by round. A given character may only have one instance of one repeating power active on a given target at a time. When you gain a repeating power, choose whether the repetitions require no input for you (they repeat automatically as a non-action, but you can't end them early) or if keeping the repetitions going use sustained maintenance. In either case, the repetitions only apply modifiers that are in place on you at the time of the repetition; modifiers that apply to the initial effect (such as a critical bonus or Aid bonus) don't persist. Likewise, repetitions do not require the power to remain active to trigger; you may switch to a different array slot and keep an effect repeating, for example, even if you have to maintain the repetition. A Counter of an appropriate descriptor can end a repeating power, whether it requires maintenance or not.

There are a few extras that cost VP rather than PP because they mainly make the power more versatile.

You do not need to use every extra on a power if you don't want to (refraining from using certain extras does not, however, allow you to likewise forego some of the power's flaws).

Absorb (10 PP): This extra can be added to any power that provides or improves a defense. Any effect foiled by the power is absorbed to empower the defender. Choose a single stat when you gain this power. When this power successfully foils an attack, you receive the benefits of an Aid action as a free reaction and with a scene duration, applying to the stat you chose and using the foiled attack's Force. You can "stock up" degrees of Aid success from multiple attacks, expending them on rolls as you choose. The Force check has a -5 penalty per rank the attacker is lower than the character.

Absorb can also be added to offensive powers. In this case, the reactive Aid triggers if the target fails its Resistance check against the power, and the Aid check bonus is equal to the points it failed by.

Accurate (1 PP): You can add Accurate to any power that involves two checks being made to determine results, such as an Attack, Defend, or Exert power. You get a +1 trait bonus to the stat involved in seeing if the action hits, but a -1 penalty to the stat involved in determining its effect (i.e. +1 Accuracy/-1 Force, or +1 Defense/-1 Resistance, etc).

Additional (10 PP): The Additional Extra causes a successful use of the power to have one additional result per application of this extra. The power has to be one that can have multiple different results. For example, an Attack power can inflict multiple conditions, an Aid power can boost multiple different checks, and so on.

For each application of extra, you can cause another result when you use the power successfully. If the result is chosen on power use, you simply choose from multiple possible results. For example, you might use an Aid power that boosts both Accuracy and Force, or both Defense and Resistance. An Exert power would let you perform two maneuvers (or more with a Prowess check). And so on.

If the result of the power is chosen when the power is gained, as with Attack, you must choose all options at this time. So for example, you can make an Attack power that inflicts both the Dazing and Impairment trees, or one that inflicts the Vulnerability tree and Weakening Tree, or one that inflicts the Dazing tree and a custom tree of Impaired/Staggered/Controlled/Unconscious, or whatever.

You can't select the same result twice unless you're doing something different with it; you could take the Move maneuver twice because you're moving to a different place each time, but you can't take the Dazing tree twice to stack conditions automatically. You could use Additional Healing to get two sets of Recovery Points to divide among two different conditions, but not to stack towards removing the same conditions. And so on. You can't use Additional to save on costs; Additional Bestow, for example, does nothing, because adding more traits to a Bestow power already has a specific cost of its own.

If an action can have multiple results, you choose which is affected when you gain the power. For example, you could use an Additional Attack power to cause additional Tags (which are lost if the target makes its Resistance check, since you can't use Additional to stack the same thing so you have to exchange them for different tier 0 conditions), additional Bruises (likewise, which have to be exchanged), or an additional condition tree.

In the case of Attack powers, you may also choose for each condition tree affected to use a different attack and delivery mode, if you wish (drawing from the options available to you as normal). You still make only one attack check and the target still makes only one resistance check, but immunities and weaknesses apply separately to each portion of the attack.

Additional Sense (1 PP; Niche): Some powers involve the use of certain senses, such as Concealment, Illusion, and Perceive. By default, those senses affect normal vision alone. However, with the Additional Sense Extra, you can allow them to affect additional senses or sense types. Each additional sense added requires one rank of the Extra, and adding an entire additional sense type (or expanding vision to the full visual sense type) costs 2 ranks. For 10 ranks, you can affect all senses.

You can remove normal vision from the senses the power affects as a two-point Quirk.

Affects Insubstantial (1-5 PP; Niche): Powers with this extra reduce the strength of any Insubstantial Standard Immunities by one step for 1 PP, two steps for 2 PP, and three steps for 5 PP. Objects created with such powers block projections as if they were in a Block Projections environment (with an environment rank equal to your Force rank). The 1 PP version has a DC of 11+Force, the 2 PP version functions as a basic environment, and the 5 PP version functions as an advanced environment.

Affects Objects (1-5 PP; Niche): Powers with this extra reduce the strength of any Object Standard Immunities by one step for 1 PP, two steps for 2 PP, and three steps for 5 PP. This modifier allows effects that normally don't work on objects to do so (it still works on creatures normally unless separately limited) - Attack conditions other than object damage, Healing, and so on.

Aggravated (20 PP; Niche): Effects with this Extra can trigger complications on the target even if you don't know about them. When using the power on a target, if the target has any complications that would be relevant to the action, it triggers them, even if it normally wouldn't. For example, an Aggravated Attack could hit a werewolf as silver, a vampire as sunlight, and a fire elemental as ice or water. An Aggravated Nullify could be used to set off an Accident complication if it succeeds. An Aggravated Commune could trigger Phobia and Temper complications even if you have no idea what the subject is afraid of or angry about. An Aggravated Discern can reveal Secret complications. And so on. You can specify what sort of complications you'd prefer to trigger or that form you'd prefer them to take. You must spend an appropriate number of Hero Points to trigger the complication.

Area (10 PP): This extra allows an effect that normally works on a single target to affect an area. If the effect requires any checks, make a separate check for each target. Each target also gets its own Resistance check or other opposed checks where such are allowed.

You may choose one of the following shapes when you gain an Area power. The Diverse extra can be used to gain multiple options that you can pick and choose from.

A close range Area power affects you as well if it is beneficial. It does not include you if it is detrimental. Ranged Area effects always include you if you are within the area (unless Selective).

You can apply the Area extra multiple times, improving the Distance rank that the area affects by one each time.

The Selective extra allows you to freely include or exclude targets within the area. The Precise extra allows you to shrink the area below its normal dimensions, but it still affects anyone within the smaller area.

You may build powers with smaller areas than even Area 1 allows for a lower cost. An area one Distance rank lower than stated costs only 6 PP. An area two Distance ranks lower than stated costs only 4 PP. An area three Distance ranks lower than stated costs only 2 PP. An area four Distance ranks lower than stated costs only 1 PP. In the case of Storm Area, each reduction to the area's radius also lowers the number of bursts by 1. Touch area cannot be diminished in this way.

Burst: The effect affects everyone within a 30' radius (Distance rank 0) of the targeted point. A close Burst extends 30' out from you, so larger characters will actually create somewhat larger bursts, but with more of an "eye" in the middle.

Cloud: The effect affects everything in a 15' radius (Distance rank -1) centered on a target point. The cloud lingers for one round, affecting everyone who enters the area during that time, and applying a second time at the start of your next turn to anyone who has not yet left the area. With multiple applications, you can increase how many times the cloud repeats, adding two additional rounds with the second application, four with the third, and continuing to double the repetitions each time. Cloud Area uses the rules for repetitions.

Cone: The effect affects everyone in a 60' long (Distance rank 1) cone that extends in a desired direction from the targeted point.

Cylinder: The effect affects everything in a 15' radius (Distance rank -1) cylinder that is 60' (Distance rank 1) tall, center on a target point. Cylinder effects that use Contact delivery are always treated as being from within 6' of Prone targets, and cylinders descend from above, so they might ignore some forms of cover. Each additional application increases both the radius and the height (you may choose to increase only one, but it still only increases by one Distance rank).

Explosion: The Explosion area can only be added to Attack powers, and cannot be made Precise, Selective, or in any way given more refined targeting capabilities. The attack affects a radius with a Distance rank equal to half your Range rank (rounded down). It has its full effect within a Distance rank equal to one quarter your Range rank (rounded down), and then takes -1 on Accuracy and Force per further Distance rank. Powers with the Explosion area function as if you had the Disruptive Attack advantage even if you don't. Each additional application of Area increases the full-power Distance rank by 1 and the maximum Distance-rank by 2.

Line: The effect affects everyone in a 120' long (Distance rank 2) line that extends in a desired direction from the targeted point. The line is 3' wide (Distance Rank -3). Additional applications of Area can increase both the length and the width, or can increase only one of them by two Distance Ranks.

Shapeable: The effect affects any fully contiguous area you desire, provided it fits entirely within a cube 30' (Distance rank 0) on a side centered on a targeted point.

Storm: The effect affects five 6' radius (Distance rank -2) bursts, placed anywhere you choose within range. Each additional application can either increase the radius of all the bursts by one Distance Rank, or double the number of bursts. Overlapping bursts do not stack the effect.

Touch: The effect affects anyone who touches you during the round it is used. This requires a few moment's contact, not a fleeting touch; touching someone long enough to deliver the effect is considered a maneuver (for beneficial effects, allies can use a maneuver to touch you). Anyone who touches you to target you with a move or higher action, or anyone you touch to target with such an action, is also affected.

Trail: The effect affects everything in a 60' long (Distance rank 1) path that extends in a desired direction from the targeted point. The path is 6' wide (Distance rank -2). Additional applications of Area can increase both the length and the width, or can increase only one of them by two Distance Ranks. The path can change direction freely.

Astronomical (1-3 PP; Niche): The power is capable of operating on an interplanetary scale. The Astronomical extra provides no benefit with regards to on-world distances - for operating on the same planet as you, it uses its normal ranges, speeds, and so on. The astronomical function is dependent on between-world factors - lack of atmosphere, quantum entanglement, wormholes, whatever. It's not just a pure increase to range, speed, or so on. Astronomical powers don't provide the user with any particular protection from the hazards of space.

One rank of Astronomical is sufficient to operate within the same solar system. Two ranks within the same galaxy. Three ranks anywhere in the universe. Strictly speaking, the character's normal Speed and Range stats do have an effect - they're massively scaled up, but in a relative sense, they are still applicable. So if you have Speed 10 and Astronomical Movement, you're still roughly 32 times as fast as a character with Speed 5 and Astronomical Movement. But getting into more detail is kinda pointless - you can still use Distance Ranks to consider relative positions and travel times, for example, but exactly what a Distance Rank means at these levels is best left to GM discretion.

You can't interact effectively with characters on a lower astronomical scale than yourself - everyone has to be "in synch" to really interact. You may freely operate on a lower astronomical scale of course - confine yourself to galactic-level scope, and you can fight or otherwise interact with other galactic-level beings effectively. But if you're operating on a universal scale, it's like trying to interact with individual atoms on a single dust mite that's flying past you on a hard wind.

Augmented (10 PP): Only some power effects benefit from the Augmented extra, as stated in each effect's description. The Augmented extra "unlocks" a greater use of the power in some way. The exact effects vary based on each effect.

Aura (10 PP): You may add the Aura extra to a power that already has the Zone extra. When you target the power, you must center it on a character or object. While the duration lasts, the power's area moves with this target. If the target is unwilling, the attempt to place it must be resolved as an attack using a chosen available attack and delivery mode.

Battering (10 PP): This extra can be added to an Attack power. If the attack inflicts any tier 0 conditions, it inflicts one additional tier 0 condition per application of this extra.

Broad (10 VP): Broad can be applied to any power that requires you to make a choice when gaining the power, either for its effects or its extras. You may change these choices freely with each use of the power. Broad does not apply to flaws.

Broad does not let you apply multiple choices simultaneously. For that, use the Additional extra. If you only want access to a small number of options, use the Diverse extra.

If the power calls for multiple choices, you must specify which the Broad extra applies to. However, you can then use the Diverse extra to let it apply to additional choices. So Attack (Broad [Condition Tree], Diverse 2 [Attack Mode, Delivery Mode]) would let you freely choose any condition tree, attack mode, and delivery mode each time you use the power.

Note that you may spend VP, rather than PP, to add the Broad extra to a power.

Brutal (10 PP): You may add the Brutal Extra to any power that opponents make checks against which have more severe effects if they fail by multiple degrees or points. The number of points they must fail by to receive another degree of failure is lowered by 1 per rank of the extra (for degrees), or for every five points they fail by they are treated as having failed by an additional point per rank of the extra (for points).

Brutal is capped at three ranks, resulting in one degree per two points of failure.

For example, a Brutal 2 attack would impose a tier 1 condition on a failure by 1-3 points, tier 2 on 4-6 points, tier 3 on 7-9 points, and tier 4 on 10-12 points.

Consume (10 PP): This Extra can be added to any power that provides or improves a defense. Any effect foiled by the power is consumed to heal the defender as a free reaction, granting a number of Recovery Points equal to half the attack's Force.

Consume can also be added to offensive powers. In this case, if the target fails its Resistance check against the attack, you gain a number of Recovery Points equal to 2 per condition inflicted, plus 2 per tier of each condition inflicted.

Contagious (10 PP): If a target is successfully affected by a power with this extra, it becomes contagious for the power's duration (powers without a duration are considered contagious as they get resolved, but once the effects have been fully applied, are no longer contagious). The first time a given character comes within 6' (Distance rank -2) of the target during the power's duration, it is automatically targeted by the power. If it is successfully affected, it also becomes contagious. If it is unaffected, it is immune to the contagious effects of that instance of the power. The power must cause the exact same effect to all potential targets, and if any given target is invalid, it cannot become contagious. Each additional rank of Contagious increases the radius of contagion by one Distance rank.

Contagious functions as a multi-target effect for purposes of effects with special rules regarding affecting multiple targets, such as Bestow and Luck Control.

Continual (10 PP): If you use this power again on the same target(s) next round, your check has a minimum natural result equal to the prior round's natural result, although if the prior result was a critical, the new check is not also critical unless it rolls a critical naturally. Rolls made by others against or in response to the power are not affected. A Continual power may be Countered to prevent the user from maintaining a single high roll.

Counterstrike (10 PP): This extra can be added to any power that opposes an action. If this power foils an action, you may take the same action against the initiator (using a valid active power if you have one available) if it is in range, as an instant reaction. If the initiator is at least two ranks lower than you, this becomes a free reaction. The action only affects the character who triggered the counter, even if it would normally affect multiple targets.

Cumulative (8 PP): Cumulative can be added to any Attack power. An Attack with this extra can combine its conditions with any Attack conditions of the same tree, resulting in a new condition one tier higher than the higher of the two. So a Cumulative Stagger can combine with a Daze to become a Stun, for example (and a Cumulative Daze could combine with a Stagger to become Stunned as well). A Cumulative Stun can combine with a Stagger or Daze to become Unconscious. And so on.

Dangerous (1 PP): This power is especially dangerous if it strikes solidly. It is treated as having one rank of the Improved Critical advantage per rank in this extra. The maximum effective ranks of Improved Critical remains 4.

Dimensional (1-3 PP; Niche): This modifier allows an effect to work on targets in other dimensions (if any exist in the series). You affect your proximate location in the other dimension as if you were actually there, figuring range modifiers from that point.

One rank in Dimensional can affect a single other dimension. Two ranks can affect any of a related group of dimensions (mythic dimensions, mystic dimensions, fiendish planes, and so forth). Three ranks can reach into any other dimension in the setting.

For many effects, you may need a Dimensional Perceive power to target them. Targets in other dimensions you cannot sense have total concealment from you.

This extra only allows you to affect targets in other dimensions than the "main" dimension of the game, from the main dimension. You cannot use Dimensional powers to target enemies in the "main" dimension from other dimensions (such as, by traveling to another dimension using a Dimensional Exert power and then attacking a villain in your city with Dimensional Attacks). The Commune, Discern, Exert (for purposes of moving back and forth), and Perceive powers are exempt from this limitation - you can use those to move or communicate to the main dimension from a different dimension, or to spy on people in the main dimension from another dimension.

Diverse (1 VP): You may add the Diverse extra to any power that has a list of options that you choose when you gain the power, or that includes an extra with such options (such as Area). For each rank of Diverse, you may choose another option. These options are not available simultaneously (for that, see the Additional extra), but you may choose which you use each time you use the power. If different options carry different costs, you must pay for the highest. You can't use Diverse to add any new effects, extras, or flaws, but Diverse is generally cheaper than entirely separate array slots, and as an extra can be added to a power in an array by spending the array slot's PP rather than spending VP directly.

Note that you may spend VP, rather than PP, to add the Diverse extra to a power.

Divisible (1 PP): The extra can be added to an action that can have multiple effects simultaneously, including any power with the Additional extra. The potential effects of the action can be divided among multiple targets. You must choose who is potentially affected by which portion of the action when you use it, and you don't have to divide it up if you don't wish to. So for example, if you have an Attack (Dazing Tree; Additional [Injury Tree], Divisible) power, you can either attack a single target and impose both the Dazing and Injury trees (and any tier 0 conditions), or have the Dazing tree and tier 0 conditions apply to one target and the Injury tree to a second, or Dazing to one and Injury and tier 0 to another, or split them up among three targets. Make separate checks for each target where required.

Effortless (5 PP; Niche): This extra can be added to any power that functions as a one-shot action. For each application of this extra, you can make one additional attempt with the power for the same purpose in the same scene before the one-shot limitation prevents further attempts.

Fast (10 PP): A power with this extra loses the extended class, allowing it to be performed with a single action at no cost in time. However, it gains the one-shot class if it does not normally have it.

Forked (5 PP): The power fully affects two targets of your choice within range. Each additional application of Forked doubles the number of targets.

Homing (10 PP): This modifier grants an attack an additional opportunity to hit. If an Accuracy check with a Homing effect fails, it attempts to hit again on the start of your next turn, including making another attack. Each rank of Homing doubles the number of rounds the attack persists through, so the second rank lets it make a total of four attacks (the original one, and then a new one at the start of your turn for the next three rounds), the third rank allows eight, etc. Once the attack hits, it resolves normally and all further repetitions are lost.

An attack that is still Homing generally is considered to not be fully resolved, so effects that trigger when the attack misses or is thwarted don't trigger until the final attack roll is made. If a given Homing attack misses by two degrees, though, defensive powers of this nature can then take precedence, likewise negating any remaining Homing capability (or, in the case of Reflect powers, even turning it back on its user!) Likewise, depending on descriptors, Homing may delay some functions of the attack until it resolves. A Homing Area attack, for example, could be a missile that will "home in" on a single target, and then once it hits or runs out of attempts it explodes and makes a single attack against anyone else in the area, or it could be a swarm of homing shots that all seek out targets in the original area until they hit or run out of attempts.

The Homing effect uses the same Accurate sense as the original attack to "track" its target, so concealment effective against that sense may confuse the effect and cause it to miss. If a Homing attack misses due to concealment, it has lost its "lock" on the target and does not get any further chances to hit. You can take Senses Restricted to this power, if desired (to create things like radar-guided or heat-seeking missiles, for example). If a Homing attack is countered before it hits, it loses any remaining chances to hit. The same is true if it hits a different target. Finally, a Counter action can end the repeat attempts.

Homing uses the rules for repetitions.

Immediate (30 PP): Immediate can be added to any power that involves a check and has greater results for greater degrees of failure or success. If the action involves multiple such checks, choose one that the extra applies to. If the result of the check comes out in favor of the action (attack check succeeded, skill check succeeded, Resistance check failed, etc), the check is immediately made again. If the check again comes out in favor of the action, the effective degree increases by 1 (regardless of how many degrees it won the latest check by) and the check is rolled again. Checks continue to be rolled until the check comes out against the action, or the action has achieved the greatest possible result (if there is no hard limit on how high the result can get, consider five degrees the maximum). This string of checks can also be broken by spending Hero Points; this can be done after the first check for 40 HP, after the second for 20, after the third for 10, and after any later check for 5 HP.

Increased Duration (10 PP): This extra increases the duration of a power by one step per rank; Round -> Scene -> Episode -> Adventure -> Indefinite. Powers that have no duration or a fixed duration cannot have their duration increased.

Increased Maintenance (5 PP): This extra increases the maintenance of a power by one step per rank; None -> Full -> Concentration -> Attention -> Sustained. Powers that have a fixed duration cannot have their maintenance increased.

Increased Range (1 PP): This extra makes a close power into a ranged power, allowing you to use your full Range rank.

Incurable (2-10 PP; Niche): Powers with this extra reduce the strength of any Recovery Standard Immunities by one step for 2 PP, two steps for 5 PP, and three steps for 10 PP. In addition, the number of Recovery Points required to remove or reduce conditions so inflicted increase by the PP cost of this extra.

Independent (20 PP): The power operates independently of you, ignoring any conditions or effects upon you, positive or negative. However, the power must have some sort of physical manifestation (such as a drone, summoned creature, or even a vehicle) which can, itself, be targeted by attacks and effects. Independent powers defend using half your own Defense and Resistance stats. They may function as objects or not as you choose. The power does not get its own actions, although you may spend your actions on it even while otherwise unable to take actions.

Indirect (2 PP): A power with this modifier can originate from a point other than the user, ignoring cover between the user and the target, such as walls and other intervening barriers, so long as they do not provide cover between the effect's origin point and the target. First you target the origin point as if this were a ranged power, following all normal rules (meaning Total Cover or Total Concealment between you and the origin point blocks it). Then, from the origin point, you target your intended target, using the power's normal range. Cover is calculated only based on the origin point. However, unless you have a means of perceiving from the origin point (such as Remote Senses), Concealment is still calculated relative to you.

Indirect powers can qualify for Surprise Attacks.

Insidious (2 PP): The effects of an Insidious power are not immediately obvious; they won't get noticed by the target (or anyone else) until they actually have an observable impact, such as penalizing a check, preventing an action, etc. The action itself is still observable (unless the power is also sufficiently Subtle), but it just appears to have no effect. You may choose for the action to appear to have a reduced effect rather than no effect if you wish. Characters who have a Perception edge over you will notice the effects normally.

Characters are entitled to retroactively use surges that can reactively improve defenses against an Insidious power once they become aware of its effects.

Characters can't use Recovery Points to remove conditions that they are not aware of.

Lingering (2 PP): This extra can be added to an Area power. The area lingers until the start of your next turn, affecting anyone who enters it during that time. Someone who was originally in the area is not affected again if they leave and reenter in the same round.

Linked (5 PP): You can use this power simultaneously with another power that also has the Linked extra. You may freely mix-and-match any Linked powers you have as long as both are active simultaneously, and you don't have to link powers for a given use if you don't want to. You may add the Linked extra to a power multiple times to allow you to Link it to multiple powers, but all powers must have enough ranks of Linked to combine with all the others. So if you want to Link two powers together, they both need Linked 1 (which will come to 10 total PP). If you want to Link three powers together, they all need Linked 2 (which will come to 30 total PP). If you want to Link four powers together, they all need Linked 3 (which will come to 60 total PP). And so on.

The powers do not share extras in any way; if you want both effects to have an extra, you must purchase it for both. However, if any Linked powers are ranged (either naturally or due to the extra), then they all are. If Reduced Range is applied to any of them, they all become Close range.

Similarly, flaws will discount each Linked power individually. However, each application of Linked increases the base cost of the effect by 5 for purposes of minimum power costs, so effectively you can't remove the Linked cost using flaws.

Linked powers must have different effects, and if they allow you to use the same action as another Linked power (such as an Attack Linked Create) you must either affect a different target or resolve one of them as an Aid to the other (or do something else with one of them).

When using Linked powers, you must still fulfill all requirements and all of their classes must allow them to be used in the current situation (you can't Link a non-reaction to a reaction to use it off-turn, for example). You must spend an action of the highest type among all of the Linked powers. The powers have their own durations and maintenance, but if you spend an action maintaining any Linked effects, you maintain all of them that can be maintained with an equal or lower action cost.

Movable (8 PP): You may add the Movable Extra to any power with the Zone Extra, or any power that creates some static object or emplacement, such as Create. Once the effect is placed, you can move or retarget it to elsewhere within its range (as calculated from your current position) as a move action for as long as the duration lasts. Where applicable, a Movable power uses your own stats (such as Prowess or Defense) to judge the effectiveness of its movement, deal with obstacles to its movement, and so on.

Multiattack (10 PP): A Multiattack effect allows you to hit multiple targets, or a single target multiple times, in the same standard action. Multiattack can apply to any effect requiring a check on your part (typically an Attack power, hence the name, but other powers that require checks on your part are valid). There are three ways in which a Multiattack effect can be used:

Single Target: This option is only useful for effects where you roll a check and, if it succeeds, the target makes an opposing check - typically, Attacks and Maneuvers. To use a Multiattack against a single target, make your check normally. If successful, add a critical bonus to the DC of the check your opponent makes; +2 for a two degrees of success, and +5 for three or more degrees.

Multiple Targets: You can use Multiattack to affect multiple targets at once. You affect each target individually, making a separate check for each. You suffer a penalty to each check equal to the total number of targets. So making a Multiattack against five targets is a –5 penalty to each check. If you miss one target, you may still attempt to hit the others.

Rapid Response: When you Ready an action to use a Multiattack power, you may take the readied action in response to multiple triggers that turn (effectively making it a free reaction instead of an instant reaction). Each time after the first, you take a -1 penalty on the check. So for example, you could Ready a Multiattack Attack to shoot anyone who attacks one of your allies. If three enemies do so before your next turn, you get to attack each of them back (and remember, a readied attack that succeeds can prevent the triggering action). Your first reaction is at your normal attack bonus, your second at -1, and your third at -2. You may also use this benefit on powers that naturally have the reaction class.

Penetrating (2-10 PP; Niche): Powers with this extra reduce the strength of any Resistance Standard Immunities by one step for 2 PP, two steps for 5 PP, and three steps for 10 PP. In addition, the number of points a Resistance check has to succeed by to prevent a Penetrating attack from imposing tier 0 conditions (normally 5) increases by the PP cost of the extra.

Persistent (5 PP): This power is harder than normal to Counter; it gets a +5 circumstance bonus to the DC to Counter it. In the case of a Clash, there is no bonus, but if your initial opposing Force check succeeds, even by one degree, you may choose to simply ignore the Clash attempt.

Phasing (20 PP): A Phasing power passes through obstacles on the way to the target. It ignores all forms of cover, including Total Cover and partial Interpose actions. Be warned that in some circumstances, Phasing may qualify as an unanswerable attack!

Potent (1 PP): You can add Potent to any power that involves two checks being made to determine results, such as an Attack, Defend, or Exert power. You take a -1 penalty to the stat involved in seeing if the action hits, but get a +1 trait bonus to the stat involved in determining its effect (i.e. -1 Accuracy/+1 Force, or -1 Defense/+1 Resistance, etc).

Precise (1 PP): You can use a Precise effect to perform tasks requiring delicacy and fine control, such as using a Precise Attack to spot-weld or carve your initials, Precise Ranged Exert to type or pick a lock from a distance, Precise Environment to match a particular temperature exactly, and so forth. The GM has final say as to what tasks can be performed with a Precise effect and may require a skill check (typically Expertise) to determine the degree of precision with any given task.

Progressive (20 PP): Progressive can be added to any power that has greater effects with higher degrees of success. Once a target is successfully affected by a power, each round at the end of its turn, the check that originally determined the effect of the power repeats. If multiple checks can determine results (such as with attacks), choose which this extra applies to on gaining the power. If the check comes out in favor of the power (Accuracy check succeeds, Resistance check fails, etc), increase the degree by which the power has affected it by one. If it comes out against the power, the progression ends. While the Progression is in effect, the power is treated as if it is being maintained, so its duration does not count down, but any effect that ends maintenance likewise ends the progression (effects that can't normally be maintained can still be Progressive, they just don't get any benefits of maintenance).

A given character cannot have more than one repetitive effect persisting on a given target at any one time.

Reaction (10 PP): A power with this extra gains the reaction class. You must choose what triggers the reaction when you gain the power. The Reaction extra doesn't benefit from Diverse or Broad; however, you can add more triggers for 5 additional PP each.

Reciprocate (10 PP): This extra can be added to any power that can oppose other actions. If the target is successfully affected by an action this power opposes, this power reciprocates damage as a free reaction. The attacker must make a Resistance check, DC 11 + your Force stat, or suffer one Bruise (or a different tier 0 condition you choose when you gain the power) per degree of failure. Note that this is a harmful effect and may be treated as an attack, so be cautious what sort of actions you choose to receiprocate damage against. Conditions gained from this extra have a scene duration and are treated as if they came from an Attack power. They also have an attack mode of your choice.

Redirect (10 PP): This extra can be added to any power with an extra that causes some reaction to occur when the power interacts with an attack (such as Absorb or Reflect). You may choose the target of the reaction (they must be within the provoking attack's range) rather than only being able to apply it to the attacker or defender.

Reduced Action (10 or 20 PP): For each rank of this Extra, you reduce the power's action type by one step (Full -> Standard -> Move -> Instant). Going from Full to Standard costs 10 PP, but any of the others cost 20.

Reflect (15 PP): This Extra can be added to any power that opposes other actions. Any effect foiled by the power is reflected back at the initiator as a free reaction, using the defender's relevant stats or skills but otherwise using the full normal effects of the power. Area effects are only reflected once, and if the same Area effect is reflected by multiple targets, it only applies once.

Reliable (5 PP): Checks you make with this power get a +1 heroic bonus per rank of this extra. If the check is not made with a stat or rescaled skill, then it gets a +2 heroic bonus per rank instead.

Repeatable (10 PP): A power with this extra repeats over time without further input from you. Each round at the end of your turn, the power repeats as if you had used it again, with all the same choices as the first time.

In the case of Attack powers, the attack only repeats if it hits initially, but you don't have to make a new attack check each time; the target just keeps making new Resistance checks.

Each additional rank of this extra causes the power to repeat over twice as many rounds. Repeatable 1 repeats at the end of your next turn. Repeatable 2 repeats at the end of your next three turns. Repeatable 3 repeats at the end of your next seven turns. And so on.

Repeatable uses the rules for repetitions.

Resurrection (10 PP): This Extra can be applied to the Healing power. A Healing power with the Resurrection extra can bring back the dead. This requires an elaborate ritual or prolonged power use; using the power takes a Time rank equal to half the Time rank that the target has been dead for. At the end of this time, roll a Treatment check against a DC of 11 + 5 per two Time ranks the target has been dead; a success returns the target to life, a failure means it cannot be resurrected by anyone with a Treatment rank less than or equal to your own (this counts as being due to the one-shot class, so Effortless Healing or Retry surges can potentially be used to make new attempts). The target must spend 40 Hero Points to return to life; if it does not have any Hero Points, it can only return to life with GM Fiat. Other PCs may spend Hero Points for dead PCs, and a PC may spend its own Hero Points for the resurrection of a character who is part of one of its complications or otherwise personally important to it.

If the Healing power also Affects Objects, it can restore Ruined objects, treating Ruined as just a regular Object Damage condition it can heal following normal rules. This doesn't cost Hero Points.

You may apply the Resurrection Extra multiple times; each time you do, the target is treated as if it had been dead for two fewer Time ranks.

Normally, Resurrection requires the body to be more-or-less in-tact. For +2 PP, it can work even on a heavily mutilated body. For +3 PP, it can work even on very sparse remains, such as a single bone or finger or something. For +4 PP, it can work even on bare remnants, such as a pile of ash or a few drops of blood. For +5 PP, it can work even if the character's entire body has been destroyed (this also lets it restore Destroyed objects if it Affects Objects).

Reversible (1 PP): You can undo any effects caused by a Reversible effect at will as a free action, such as reversing conditions imposed by attacks or removed by healing. In the case of effects that affected multiple targets at the time of use, you must reverse the effects for everyone - Reversible is not a substitute for Selective (but a Selective Reversible power can be reversed selectively).

Ricochet (1 PP): You can ricochet or bounce an attack effect with this modifier off of a solid surface to change its direction. This allows you to attack around corners, overcome some forms of cover and possibly make a Surprise Attack against an opponent. It does not allow you to affect multiple targets. The "bounce" has no effect apart from changing the attack's direction. You must be able to define a clear path for your attack, which must follow a straight line between each ricochet. Each rank in Ricochet allows you to make twice as many bounces before it hits, so Ricochet 1 bounces once, Ricochet 2 bounces two additional times (three total), Ricochet 3 bounces four additional times (seven total), etc. Ricochet attacks can qualify for Surprise Attacks.

You can also add Ricochet to a Line Area effect to allow it to change direction each time it reaches a target or strikes something solid, up to once per allowed bounce, to create a sort of "Chain Area" effect.

Secret (1 PP): Secret powers can't be detected by Tactical senses unless the user has a Perception edge over you. You can apply the Secret extra up to three times, with each additional application increasing the required degrees of edge by one.

Selective (10 PP): An effect with this extra is discriminating, allowing you to decide who is and is not affected by it. This is most useful for Area effects. You must be able to accurately perceive a target in order to decide whether or not to affect it (you can set a default for targets you can't accurately perceive; if you're throwing a fireball into a horde of enemy mooks but some of them are invisible, you could default to affecting targets and just selectively avoid your allies, whereas if you're blasting into a room with hostages, you might default to not affecting targets and selectively affect those enemies you can see). Generally speaking, Selective is only necessary for effects that have substantial effects on multiple characters. For a degree of selectivity in terms of affecting only part of a single affected target, use the Precise modifier.

A Selective power can bypass a partial Interpose (Selectively ignoring the character who gets in the way). If it is an Area power, though, it may only do so if the Interposing characters was initially within the Area and Selectively excluded; if they jump in from outside, it doesn't work.

Sensory Link (5 PP): You can add this extra to any power that gives you a connection to another character's mind - such as some uses of the Communication utility or attacks that cause certain Influence conditions. You can see through the target's eyes instead of your own, swapping between whose vision you use as a free action once per round. The target's senses override your own when you're using them, making those senses Unaware with regards to your surroundings unless your target can also perceive them. An unwilling target can block you out with a Resistance check (DC 11+Force), and if it does so using this extra functions as a one-shot action. If it fails to do so, its attempt to block you out functions as a one-shot action! You may add the Additional Sense extra to share more senses than vision.

You may take this extra multiple times to simultaneously perceive through multiple characters' senses (and you may dedicate one of these uses to perceiving through your own). You may also dedicate a use of Sensory Link to allowing (or forcing) a target to perceive through your senses.

Simple (2 PP): You may lessen any one requirement for using this power by one step per rank in this extra. So full movement can become partial movement can become no movement. You may also dedicate ranks of this extra to lessening any miscellaneous requirements (which might increase set DCs if you lack them) that the action might have, with one rank taking an absolute requirement down to critical, then to normal, and then removing it. If an action needs different levels of the same requirement for different functions (such as Speed Recovery's tool requirement) this lowers all of them.

Split (1 PP): You can use a power with the Split Extra on multiple targets simultaneously, but with a lower chance of success. Each rank of Split allows you to affect twice as many targets. Any check you make takes -2 per doubling of targets; alternately, you can give any checks the opponent makes against you +2 per doubling. So a Split 3 power can affect one target at full strength, two targets at -2, up to four targets at -4, and up to eight targets at -6. You can't add Split to a power that doesn't involve a check.

Subtle (2 or 5 PP): A subtle power has no obvious display. Subtle powers always qualify for Surprise Attacks. Actions you take with Subtle powers don't get noticed unless they qualify as suspicious or obvious (see the Stealth edge), or the observer has Perception Advantage over you. For 5 PP, Subtle also halves the cost to retain maintenance of the Stealth edge when taking suspicious or obvious actions with the power, and obvious actions taken in this way go entirely unnoticed.

Sweeping (10 PP): Sweeping functions much like Multiattack, but rather than use the power repeatedly, you use it across a wide sweep. Sweeping can be added to any power that naturally allows others to make a check against it.

Sweeping Targeting: As with Multiattack, you can use your wide sweep to affect multiple targets. This prevents you from focusing your full power on a target though, so others get +1 on any checks made against the effect (such as Resistance checks) per target you affect.

Glancing Effect: When you attack a single target with a Sweeping attack (or otherwise using a power where you roll a check and then your opponent rolls a separate check), even if you can't score a solid hit you might be able to land a glancing blow. If you fail your check by only one or two points, it still counts as a success, but the target gets +5 on its check against the power. If you fail by three to five points, it counts as a success, but the target gets +10 to its check.

Wild Sweep: When you Ready an action to use a Sweeping power, you may take the readied action in response to multiple triggers that turn. Each time after the first, others get a +1 on checks against that use of the power. So for example, you could Ready a Sweeping Attack to strike anyone who attacks one of your allies. If three enemies do so before your next turn, you get to attack each of them back (and remember, a readied attack that succeeds can prevent the triggering action). Your first target rolls a normal resistance check, your second target rolls at +1, and your third target rolls at +2. You may also use this benefit on powers that naturally have the reaction class.

Tracing (2-10 PP; Niche): Powers with this extra reduce the strength of any Defense Standard Immunities by one step for 2 PP, two steps for 5 PP, and three steps for 10 PP. In addition, the DC to Interpose against a Tracing attack increases by the cost of this extra.

Triggered (2 PP): You can "set" an effect with this modifier to take effect under particular circumstances, such as in response to a particular danger, after a set amount of time, in response to a particular event, and so forth - chosen when you gain the power. Once chosen, the trigger cannot be changed.

The circumstances must be detectable by your senses. You can acquire Senses Restricted to your triggered powers, if desired. The place you set the trigger is assumed to have your own senses - you don't have to actually be personally present. Setting the effect requires the same action as using it normally.

A Triggered effect lying in wait may be detected with a Perception check (DC 11 + your Stealth skill). Triggered effects can be Countered (disarmed) with a relevant Expertise check (DC 11 + your Expertise skill).

You may have one trigger per rank of this extra ready at any one time. Triggers persist even if you deactivate the power.

You can apply an additional rank of Triggered to have a Variable Trigger, allowing you to change the effect's trigger each time you set it.

A triggered power can't be set on a character unless it is being set on its target, effectively delaying it from taking effect (but while it's latent, its duration and maintenance have yet to begin).

Only one triggered effect can trigger in response to a given situation, and the user cannot likewise take a reaction in response to that situation.

Any given beneficial effect can only be set to trigger on one target at a time from the same user, and any given subject can have only one triggered beneficial power pending at a time. The Additional extra can expand these limits.

Triggered powers can be set on a movable object, but in this case, the trigger must involve some form of intentional interaction with the object; you can't set a trigger for, say, when an opponent looks at your shield or is hit by your sword, but you can set a Trigger against someone who tries to disarm you or use your weapon against you. Triggers set on immobile objects, locations, and so on can have pretty much any trigger, subject to GM approval.

Once a triggered power is set, it is completely independent of you. You could deactivate the Triggered power without preventing it from going off later. You could even deactivate or use different Senses powers - the trigger will retain whatever senses you had active at the time of setting it. The activation of a trigger also doesn't affect you in any way - it doesn't allow (or force) you to activate the power, swap to its array slot, etc. Bonuses and conditions on you don't apply to the triggered power, either at the time it is set or at the time it triggers.

Variable Descriptor (1-2 PP): You can change the descriptors of an effect with this modifier, varying them as a free action once per round. With rank 1, you can apply any of a closely related group of descriptors, such as weather, electromagnetic, temperature, and so forth. With rank 2, you can apply any of a broad group, such as any mental, magical, or technological descriptor. The GM decides if a given descriptor is appropriate in conjunction with a particular effect and this modifier.

Withstand (10 PP): This Extra can be added to any power that provides or improves a defense. While under the effects of that power, any attack that would normally inflict tier 0 conditions inflicts one fewer such condition per application of this Extra.

Zone (0 PP): By default, an Area power that has a duration applies to everyone in the area and then lasts for all those targets while the duration lasts, whether or not they leave the area, and doesn't affect anyone who enters the original area later during the duration. The Zone extra changes this; the power lasts over the area for the duration, and applies to any valid targets as long as they remain in the area, ending immediately for anyone who leaves the area. For an additional 10 PP, you can get both effects; anyone who enters the area at any time during the duration receives the benefit, and the benefit lasts for the full duration even if they then leave the area.

Some powers have special effects regarding Zone areas. These only apply while the target remains within the zone, even if the +10 PP cost is applied to get both effects.

Flaws and Limits

Flaws and limits are both negative modifiers that can be added to powers to lower their costs, but they work in slightly different ways.

Flaws always apply to powers, and are effectively inverse extras. They make the power directly less effective. Flaws directly reduce the total PP cost of extras applied to the power by a fixed amount. A flaw cannot reduce the base cost of the effect itself, and nor can it reduce the power's total cost below 1.

Limits are attached to a certain type of container called an upgrade. Upgrades can contain traits of any type - powers, skills, advantages, features, utilities, you name it. You invest a certain number of points (PP, VP, SP, or FP) into the upgrade, and assign whatever limits you want; each limit has a value. For every 10 points invested into the upgrade, it gets bonus points of the same kind equal to the limit value. For example, if you have an upgrade with a limit value of 5 and you invest 10 PP, you would add 5 PP to the upgrade. So effectively, the upgrade has 15 PP available; with the 10 PP you invested, you can buy 15 PP worth of traits. However, you can't reduce the cost; you couldn't buy 10 PP of traits for only 5 PP.

Limits don't directly weaken an action. Rather, they add costs, requirements, limitations, and downsides to using the traits. That's why the containers are called upgrades; the traits within them are off by default, and when you fulfill whatever requirements are called for by their limitations, they activate, upgrading your normal traits. Note, however, that upgrades don't let you bypass your normal maximums.

There is a cardinal rule of flaws and limits: they have to actually hinder you! The GM should veto any flaw or limit that doesn't seem like it will matter in play, and require flaws and limits that don't wind up mattering in play to be revised. The GM may also choose to reduce the value of flaws and limits that seem like they won't matter as much as they otherwise would based on the traits they are applied to. For example, Distracting (Vulnerable) isn't much of a flaw for an upgrade full of non-combat traits, because Vulnerable isn't likely to matter much in non-combat challenges. Distracting (Impaired) on the other hand might. When adding flaws to powers that are created "on the fly", like with a Variable array slot, the flaw has to be a hindrance in the current situation. You can't limit a power to the specific type of enemy you're fighting, for example.


Activation (Limit 1+): An upgrade with this limit requires a basic action to activate before any of its effects are usable. If the upgrade requires a move action to activate, this is a limit value of 1. Standard action is 2. Full action is 3. Once the upgrade is activated, it can be used freely until deactivated. The Prepared stance allows you to dedicate your stance to maintaining activable powers between scenes, if you wish.

Advantaged (Limit 1 or 5): An upgrade with this limit only applies against those who don't have a chosen skill's edge against you (limit value 1) or against those you have a chosen skill's edge against (limit value 5).

Buildup (Limit 1+): An upgrade with this limit requires some buildup before use. The upgrade begins each scene with a charge a number of points below 0 equal to the limit value (so limit 4 would start your charge at -4), and it can only be used while the charge is 0 or higher. If you wish, you can also have each round of use drain charge, increasing the limit value by 2 per charge drained per round of use.

Choose an action you can take to build the charge; each time you take that action during the scene, you gain one charge if it's a move action, two charges if it's a standard action, and three charges if it's a full action. If the action has to succeed to build the charge, you gain one additional charge per check involved. If you simply have to "burn" the action to build the charge, without gaining any other effect from it (so, you just build the charge as a move action or whatever) double the charges gained. If the action is improved by the upgrade with this limit, it doesn't build charge.

Rather than choosing an action you have to take, you can choose some event outside of your control, such as opponents taking a certain action, targeting a certain character, etc. Every round that that event occurs at least once, you get three charges. If the action is especially common or avoiding it would impose a notable tactical hindrance on opponents, it may be worth only two charges at GM discretion, and something that will happen essentially every round would be worth one charge (buildup 1/round is valid). On the other hand, actions that the GM expects will be very rare may be worth more charges.

For example, say you want to play a martial artist who uses "finishing moves" to make more powerful attacks. You might have an upgrade that adds extras to your attacks with Buildup 12 (Start -4, Drain -4, Gain by Attacking). So you start with a charge of -4, gain two each time you attack (since that's a standard action), and lose four charge each round you use the upgrade. Effectively, this means that every third attack you make can be one of your finishing moves. If you only gain charge when you hit, you'd gain three charges per hit rather than two per attack. If you only gain charge when your opponent fails a Resistance check, you'd instead gain four charges each time you successfully damage an opponent.

Capped (Flaw -10): You may apply this flaw to a power that has a scaling effect with higher degrees of success (or higher degrees of enemy failure against it), such as Attack, Aid, or Healing. There is no benefit for rolling a high natural result (such as a natural 20) with a power that caps degrees of success, and there is no penalty for rolling a low natural result (such as a natural 1 against lethal damage) with a power that caps degrees of failure. More importantly, the power is capped at achieving only one degree of success or failure.

If the power requires multiple checks that have scaling effects, choose one for the flaw to apply to (for example, with an Attack power, choose if you cap the result of your attack roll or of the target's resistance check). You may affect both if you wish by applying the flaw again.

Powers whose degrees can "stack" over time, or create some stacking effect, are capped at two degrees rather than one (you can apply Capped an additional time to reduce the cap to one degree). However, they cannot stack beyond those two degrees. For example, a Capped Accuracy check not only can't impose more than two Bruises upon a target, but it can't bring a target's total number of Bruises above 2. A Capped Resistance check not only can't impose a tier 3+ condition, but it can't stack a character's existing tier 2 condition to tier 3, even if it's also Cumulative.

If you wish, you may instead choose one or two (as appropriate) degrees of success that can apply, ignoring all others. For example, an Aid power could be "capped" to only the third-degree success; a 1-2 degree success would do nothing, but a 3 or more degree success would grant the normal maximum +5 bonus. Likewise, an Attack (Capped [Resistance]) could be capped to degrees 2 and 3; a two or three degree failure will cause their normal conditions, but a four-degree failure will be reduced to only three degrees, and a one-degree failure won't do anything except cause Bruises; it won't even stack with another tier 1 condition to raise the target to tier 2.

Complex (Flaw 2 PP): You increase any one requirement for using this power by one step per rank in this extra. So no movement can become partial movement can become full movement. At GM discretion, you may also dedicate ranks of this extra to adding some miscellaneous requirements (which might increase set DCs if you lack them) that the action might have, or upgrading its requirements to critical or absolute.

Complicating (Limit 10): The first time in a scene that you activate this upgrade, the GM gains some free Hero Points that it may spend to invoke surges or complications against you without making use of Fiat. You can define what sort of surges and/or complications can be triggered by this limit, subject to GM approval. The GM keeps the Hero Points until it has used them, although you may spend your Hero Points to buy them off if you wish. The GM gains Hero Points equal to the points invested in the upgrade.

Conditional (Limit 5 per tier): You may only use this upgrade against targets who have a certain condition (and so this upgrade may only contain traits that can be used against other characters). For example, only Vulnerable targets, only Dazed targets, etc. This has a limit value of 5 per tier of the condition.

You can also use Conditional to restrict the effects to targets who you have personally placed under the effects of a certain action that imposes some effect that isn't a specific condition, which is a limit value of 5. You must choose either something that requires a standard action to perform, or will require a reasonably challenging check. For example, you could make an upgrade Conditional to use on targets who you have Aided, Defended, Manipulated, or so on.

Finally, also as a limit value of 5, you can make the power usable only on a target who you have attempted a certain action against in the previous round, such as an enemy you attacked last round. The action chosen must take a standard or full action to perform.

Contingent (Limit 10): The upgrade is only active in situations where you take a certain action that requires a check, and get a certain result (success or failure). For example, you might have a Healing power Contingent to making a successful attack, or an Area extra that is Contingent on hitting an initial primary target, or an Exert power Contingent on failing a check to resist an attack. The check has to be one that either isn't in your control or that requires at least a standard action to attempt, although a check that requires a move action to attempt can be taken with a limit value of 5. If your check modifier is two or more points closer to the triggering result than your PL (so, two lower than PL if it's contingent to failures, two higher than PL if contingent to successes) the limit value is halved.

The results of the check generally last for one round. At GM discretion, though, checks that can only be attempted once in a given span of time can last for that span. So for example, if it's something that you can only attempt once per scene (or in the GM's judgment are likely to only be called on to attempt once per scene), a success may give you access to the upgrade for the rest of the scene.

You can add multiple ranks of the Contingent limit to increase the degree required by one each time. You can also add Contingent to traits that already require certain successes or failures to raise the number of degrees required. If you do this, and the traits have scaling effects based on degrees, they count as one degree lower per rank of Contingent.

Costly (Limit 10): You have to spend Hero Points to activate the upgrade. By default, you must pay Hero Points equal to the points (PP and/or VP) initially invested in the upgrade to activate the upgrade for one scene. If you wish, when creating the upgrade, you may quarter the Hero Point cost to only be able to activate it each round, or you may quadruple the Hero Point cost to be able to activate it for a full episode. You may increase the limit value by proportionately increasing the Hero Point cost.

If you use Costly as a flaw, consider the invested points to be 20.

Distracting (Limit 5): Choose a tier 1 condition when you gain the upgrade; as long as the upgrade is active, you suffer that condition. When you deactivate the upgrade, the condition automatically ends. It cannot be removed by any means while the upgrade is active. You can increase the tier of the condition by 1 to double the limit value (or choose a tier 0 condition with a limit value of 2), and you may add multiple conditions (as long as there isn't significant overlap in their effects) by adding together their limit values.

Disruptable (Limit 5): If you fail a Resistance check while using this upgrade, it automatically deactivates and you must activate it again on your next turn. Disruptable is generally only appropriate for defensive powers that you want to be active off turn, powers that have some cost to activate, or powers which can cause problems (like falling) if they suddenly deactivate.

Empathic (Flaw -20): You can add this flaw to any power that imposes or removes detrimental effects upon others. You suffer any effect that you successfully place or remove. When placing effects with a duration, the effect upon you lasts for as long as the effect upon the target does. This flaw ignores all forms of Defense and Resistance, including immunities and related powers, but recovery works normally where applicable.

Fades (Flaw -10): Each time you use a power with this flaw, future uses take a -1 penalty on the rank of a single stat, skill, or measure relevant to the power (the rank itself doesn't change, it's just penalized for future uses of this power). You may apply Fades multiple times, incrementing the loss of ranks per use. So Fades 2 drains 2 ranks per use, Fades 3 drains 3 ranks per use, etc.

Generally, you recover your ranks at the end of the scene. At GM discretion, powers that will only be used rarely may recover ranks more slowly. You may also be able to establish a more specialized or granular recovery method.

Feedback (Flaw -10): You suffer damage when a manifestation of your effect is damaged. This flaw only applies to effects with physical (or apparently physical) manifestations, such as Create or Illusion, or to powers placed on targets (in which case, damaging the target triggers the feedback). If your power's manifestation is damaged, you take one Bruise per degree of failure on its Resistance check. At GM discretion, when you gain the power, you may choose a different tier 0 condition that you suffer.

Focused (Limit 2): This upgrade takes significant focus to use. You may only apply this limit to an upgrade that provides or improves a single type of action. While the upgrade is active, you take -1 per two points of limit value on all stats, skills, and measures for actions other than the one being provided or improved by this upgrade. This penalty only applies to your own actions, not to defenses and passive DCs you set.

Full Power (Flaw -1): You must use the power at its full strength every time. This generally means you can't lower its rank or forego extras when you use it, but it can also have other impacts depending on the power. You always have to use the power at it's maximum strength - so for example, a Full Power Exert would require you to move the maximum distance any time you use it, or exert your full strength when using it to move things, etc. You can still turn the power entirely off if you wish, but if you want to use it, it's at full power.

Increased Action (Flaw -10): The power's action type increases by one step per rank of this flaw (Free or Instant -> Move -> Standard -> Full).

Invested (Flaw -20): You may apply the Invested flaw to any power which provides a benefit to another and lasts for a duration - typically an Bestow power. While the power is active, you are effectively removed from play - you transform into a device they are using, or fuse with them, or possess them, or otherwise are no longer active in the game, although you might be able to communicate and perceive with or through them. You cannot be targeted by actions, good or bad, but if the power is Countered you reappear in close range of the target and suffer from a Dazing condition of a tier equal to the degree of success on the Counter attempt, with a round duration. You may consider yourself to be concentrating on the power, and thus most Invested powers also take Concentration maintenance. You may only have one Invested power active at once.

Lessened (Flaw -1 or -5): Choose one numerical trait involved in this power; you take a -1 penalty on that trait per rank of this flaw for purposes of the power. Typically, this is a -1 flaw. When applied to Accuracy or Force for an Attack power, or Defense or Resistance for a Defend power, the first five ranks of the flaw are worth a -5 discount instead. This flaw cannot bring the trait in question below 0.

Limited (Limit Varies): An upgrade with this limit is only usable or applicable in certain circumstances. The circumstances must be outside of your control - essentially, they only come up when the GM elects to incorporate the situation into the scene. The limit value is based on how like the situation is to come up. Typical benchmarks are:

Limit 2: The GM technically can exclude the situation, but it's largely going to be expected for most relevant challenges in the game. Example: Only against zombies (in a zombie apocalypse game); only in urban environments (in a game where the PCs are heroes protecting a city).

Limit 5: The GM can exclude the situation, but it's safe to assume it will come up fairly regularly, or the GM may have to go a bit out of its way to exclude it, or excluding it may limit the GM's options. Examples: Only against opponents of equal or greater PL; only against opponents who have attacked someone other than me since the end of my last turn; only against human opponents.

Limit 10: The situation is about equally likely to come up as not; the GM may wind up including or excluding it without really thinking about it. Examples: Only while outdoors/indoors; only during the day/at night; only against opponents of lower rank; only against {some broad classification of enemies, such as unliving opponents, animals, outworlders, etc}.

Limit 15: The situation is something the GM probably has to intentionally include; it may come up occasionally, but probably not regularly. Examples: Only against {some fairly specific category of enemies, such as undead, carnivorous animals, aliens, etc}; only against {opponents of a specific rank}; only against enemies who Power Attacked me last round.

Limit 20: The situation is something the GM has to go out of its way to include. If it comes up, it's probably not randomly. Examples: Only while under water; only against zombies/wolves/martians; only on weekends.

Limit 30: The situation is extremely narrow, something that not only does the GM have to go out of its way to include, but it would start to seem weird if it happened more than a couple of times. Examples: Only during the full moon; only against members of a small specific group; only during a heat wave/blizzard.

Limit 40: The situation is so ludicrously narrow it would honestly be a shock if it ever came up. Examples: Only during a blue moon/solstice/equinox/eclipse; only against a single specific character; only after witnessing the death of a friend.

Locked (Limit 1 or 2): You may add this limit only to traits that carry some downside or inconvenience when in use. You may not turn the trait off by your own will (though it could be disabled through appropriate conditions or power loss complications). If it is currently inactive somehow, and you are able to activate it, you must do so before taking any other actions. Traits that have an explicit mechanical downside treat this as a limit value of 2; if the downside is just an inconvenience or potential complication, the limit value is only 1. Since Locked traits cannot turn off, they cannot be part of an array or have other flaws or limits that involve turning them off or removing them, such as Activation or Removable.

Medium (Limit 10): Medium can be used with any traits that operate over a distance, such as ranged powers or Movement, Senses, or Communication utilities. The power only works across a certain medium - such as trees, water, power lines, a single contiguous and uniform surface, and so on. You must be in close range of the medium to target the power through it, and the end point or actual target must also be within close range of the medium to be affected. You do not gain any additional ability to perceive through the medium (although includingSenses utilities in the upgrade can help with that).

Unless the power doesn't normally need to pass through the space between the start and end points or can otherwise ignore obstacles in the way, the medium must be contiguous. If it can ignore the space or obstacles in between, they do not.

For example, a Movement (Flight; Medium [Trees]) utility lets you move in three dimensions - but you have to move through a contiguous group of trees, along the canopy for instance. Movement (Teleport; Medium [Trees]) on the other hand lets you take a move action to step into any tree in close range, and step out of any other tree within a Distance rank equal to your Speed rank, whether or not there's a contiguous path of trees connecting them.

Mundane (Flaw -5 to -20): This flaw can only be added to powers that might be affected by character rank. Your character rank is treated as one lower with the power. As a 10-point flaw, it is treated as two lower. As a 20-point flaw, it is treated as three lower. You can't take this flaw at a level that would lower your effective character rank below Minion.

Noticeable (Limit 1): An upgrade with this limit is clearly noticeable while active. Using the upgrade will always attract attention, and no powers in or improved by the upgrade can have the Subtle or Insidious extras. In addition, the noticeability of the effect means that observers will be able to tell generally what it does (so like a Noticeable defensive upgrade probably results in some visible armor, tough hide, forcefield, or the like that makes it clear that you are now better defended, and relatively how much better you are defended).

One-Shot (Flaw -10): This flaw adds the one-shot class to the power.

Passive (Limit 10): You cannot activate this upgrade in any round that you targeted someone else with an action. This upgrade immediately deactivates if you target someone else with an action. Passive is generally only appropriate for defensive powers that you want to be active off turn, powers that have some cost to activate, or powers which can cause problems (like falling) if they suddenly deactivate.

Proportional (Flaw -5): You may add the Proportional flaw to any power which receives multiple types of benefits from the same stat - such as how Create gets its size and its Resistance from your Force. Choose one of the benefits per rank in the flaw (you must take this flaw at least twice); you have to divide the stat among them.

Quirk (Flaw -1 or Limit 1): A Quirk is some minor nuisance attached to an effect. It should be a significant enough problem to be worth the points, but it's usually a fairly minor hindrance, or something that you're in control of most of the time. Quirk (Only while wielding a weapon) for example. In some cases, the GM may deem an especially consequential Quirk as worth 2 or 3 points.

Reduced Duration (Flaw -10): This flaw reduces the duration of a power by one step per rank.

Reduced Maintenance (Flaw -5): You may apply this flaw to any power that has maintenance. The maintenance is reduced one step per rank (Sustained -> Attention -> Concentration -> Full -> None).

Reduced Range (Flaw -1): This flaw changes a ranged power to a close power. If applied to a close power, it reduces the targeting range to only 6' per rank of Range. If applied twice to a close power, it negates the effect of the Range measure on that power entirely. This flaw cannot be added to a close power more than once per rank of Range.

Removable (Limit 0+): Your power can be temporarily removed by circumstance or enemy action. There are a few possible options for how the power can be removed; you may select any you wish to apply, adding up their limit values. Options with a limit value of 0 don't give any bonus points, but count as a Power Loss complication when they come up.

Attack (1-4): The power can be directly attacked as an object. The power's Defense and Resistance stats are equal to your PL, and may be traded off against each other as normal (to a max of PL + 5 for either one). You may increase the limit value of this choice by 1 to lower the object's starting stats by 5 each time, up to a maximum limit value of 4 for -15 to Defense and Resistance. One attack can damage any or all of your objects at the same time unless they have the Individual feature. An opponent can't damage you and your objects simultaneously unless it has the Improved Smash advantage. For purposes of powers that attack multiple targets, you and any objects you are carrying are considered the same target, with which get attacked being a separate choice made after you are targeted in the first place.

If your power is an object but does not have this limit, it's functionally indestructible. There might be certain specific means of destroying it, but they would count as a complication.

Condition (1-2): Choose a single condition; you can't use the power while you have that condition. A tier 2 condition has a limit value of 1; a tier 1 or 0 condition has a limit value of 2. It's fairly obvious what sort of conditions can preclude the use of the power. You can't select a condition that would already preclude the power, and you lower the limit value by 1 if the condition would already weaken the power in some way.

Disarm (1): The power is a held or loosely worn object, and thus can be taken away by the Disarm maneuver. One successful Disarm maneuver can disarm any or all of your objects at the same time unless they have the Individual feature.

Vehicle (3): The power is built into a vehicle. Vehicles are large and unwieldy, and may not always be readily available. See the Vehicles section of the Objects chapter for full details.

Take Away (0): The power can be taken away in certain specific circumstances; it might be a suit of armor that you may not be able to wear in public and can be removed if you are unconscious or the like, or you may only be allowed to use it when on authorized missions, etc. Likewise, certain specialized powers might be able to take it away from you, such as the Transform power or a Teleport utility. This doesn't have a limit value; it functions as a Power Loss complication when you can't use the power.

Requirement (Limit 5): You can only use the upgrade in rounds where you spend an action or effort in a certain way. You must fulfill the requirement before you benefit from the upgrade; essentially the upgrade deactivates at the start of your turn each round, and reactivates when you fulfill the requirement (although if you fulfill the requirement immediately it just remains active). For example, only in rounds where you spend a move action moving, or a standard action attacking, a standard action concentrating on some specific power, or the like. The requirement cannot be inherently satisfied by the power itself (including by being Linked or Synchronized); you can't take an Attack power that requires you to attack or a personal Exert power that requires you to move, for example, nor can you Link a power requiring an attack to an Attack power, and so on. You may, however, apply a Requirement to a power that will generally involve the action, as long as there's a potential consequence for losing it; Flight or Permeate that requires you spend a move action moving is valid, since it means you can't just hover in place or wait inside a wall or something. But Speed that requires you to spend a move action moving isn't, because well, you already stopped.

Resistible (Flaw -2, -5, or -10): As a -2 PP flaw, you can add another attack or delivery mode to an Attack power, but the power uses whichever is most beneficial for the target. For example, a Physical/Mental power would count as Physical against an enemy with a weakness to Mental, or as Mental against an enemy with immunity to Mental. For example, a poisonous snake might have Physiological as its Attack Mode - the poison is what's really doing the damage. However, that snake can't inject any poison if it can't pierce the target's skin in the first place, so it could add Resistible [Physical] as a -2 PP flaw, and then if the target is especially resistant to physical attacks, it can apply those resistance to its defense.

As a -5 PP flaw, you can add a skill check of your choice that is required for the power to work, against a passive DC of 11 + the opposing skill as defined in the Outclass action. For example, you could make a Sneak Attack power that requires a Stealth check against DC 11 + the target's Perception, in addition to any normal attack rolls and resistance checks.

As a -10 PP flaw, you add an entire additional Accuracy check required or Resistance check allowed, using a chosen attack or delivery mode. The most favorable result for the target is taken. Done this way, the snake might have to make a Contact Accuracy check, and then the target gets both a Physical Resistance check and a Physiological Resistance check, taking the better of the two.

Beneficial powers that are made Resistible allow opponents to ignore their effects if resisted (if there is no way for an opponent to feasibly resist the effects, the power cannot be Resistible). This flaw can also add Accuracy, Resistance checks, or skill checks to powers that don't normally require them.

You can apply Resistible multiple times, adding new options or new required checks each time.

Restricted (Limit 1+): You can apply Restricted to traits that normally have multiple different modes of use, options you can choose from on use, or things you can do with it. This is for actual options for using the trait, not situations it can be used in (that's more for Limited). If you exclude individual options, this has a limit value of 1 per option excluded. If you can use it for a fairly broad set of possibilities (no more than half of all the possibilities it could otherwise be used for) it has a limit value of 5. If you can use it only for a narrow set of possibilities (no more than a quarter of the possibilities it could be used for) it has a limit value of 10.

For example, you might take a Senses utility that is restricted to only targeting powers (limit value 5) or only for targeting a specific power (limit value 10). You could take Quickness restricted to only mental or only physical actions (limit value 5) or only to a specific action or subset of actions (limit value 10). You could take an Aid power that is restricted to only boosting combat actions (limit value 5) or only Attack actions (limit value 10). And so on.

In some cases, certain traits have primary functions, and then supplemental functions as well. For example, Force and Accuracy are mainly combat stats, but they also set power and array caps. Incurable/Penetrating/Tracing are mainly for piercing immunities, but also offer supplemental effects. This may require a bit of GM judgment, but removing the "primary" function of a trait like that should be limit value 10, while removing the "secondary" option should only be limit value 2.

Selfish (Flaw -10): You can apply Selfish to a power than can normally be benefit both yourself and others, such as Healing or Aid, or even some types of Attack (in the sense that the conditions it inflicts benefit both you and any allies who are fighting that opponent). Only you receive any benefit, not others. So for example, Selfish Healing could only be used to heal you, while a Selfish Attack would inflict conditions that only apply against you.

By reducing the discount to -5, you can instead have a Selfish power that benefits yourself and any companions you have, rather than just you.

Selfless (Flaw -10): Selfless operates like Selfless, but in reverse - the benefits of the power apply for others only, but not you.

If you wish, you can take an additional -5 discount to further restrict your power to companions only (but still not including you).

Sense-dependent (Flaw -2, -5, or -10): The power requires the subject be able to perceive some manifestation with a certain sense. This is a -5 PP flaw on offensive powers, but only -2 on beneficial powers. Any check made to use or delivery the power takes a -2 penalty if the target's relevant sense isn't Acute. The penalty becomes -5 if the sense is Vague or the user has Partial Concealment from the target. The power fails automatically if the target doesn't have the relevant sense or the user has Full or Total Concealment from it. Characters concerned about Sense-dependent powers may intentionally apply Concealment to some of their senses as a free action on their turn, although this may require the use of a hand or something depending on the sense in question (averting or closing your eyes is easy enough; covering your ears or plugging your nose is a bit more complicated in the heat of battle).

Attack powers that impose the Obscuring tree (and don't restrict it to senses other than the one used) raise the penalty of this flaw to -10, since the power's effect will be making the flaw that much more substantial.

By lowering the flaw value by 1, you can choose which sense you affect on using the power.

Short (Flaw -2): This flaw can be added to a power with maintenance or a scene duration. The power's maintenance and duration automatically expire after five rounds. Each additional rank of this flaw lowers the limit by one round.

Side Effect (Flaw -10 or -20): Using a power with a Side Effect requires you to roll a Resistance check against a DC of 11 + your Force when you fail to use the power successfully (Side Effect 1) or whenever you use the power (Side Effect 2). You suffer conditions from a chosen Condition Tree on a failure, as if from a successful Attack power, except these conditions always have a scene duration and cannot be removed early by any means.

Source (Limit 10): The upgrade is only usable if you are in close range of some sort of source for it, such as water, exposed blood, sunlight, natural earth, and so on. If you leave close range of your source, the upgrade deactivates. For powers where you can "charge up" with a source and then use the powers freely, consider the Fades or Buildup limits.

Synchronized (Flaw -1): This power is essentially part of another power. If any of a group of Synchronized powers are deactivated or countered, all of them are. If any maintenance or durations in a synchronized group of powers end, all of them do. Powers that repeat are considered to have a "duration" for as long as they repeat for this purpose, so if another power is countered they stop repeating and once they run out of repetitions powers they are synchronized to end. If they take actions or checks to activate, none of them fully activate until all are activated. Most synchronized powers are also Linked. As with Linked, each power gets Synchronized to each other power, so if you synchronize two powers the total discount is -2, if you synchronize three the total discount is -6, etc.

Tiring (Limit 10): At the end of any scene in which the upgrade was active, you gain a tier 1 condition from a specified condition tree. If you already have the tier 1 condition, it upgrades to tier 2, then tier 3, then tier 4. These conditions have an episode duration and cannot be removed, suppressed, or mitigated early. You can take Tiring multiple times, setting the starting condition one tier higher each time.

Uncontrolled (Limit 5 or 10): Choose one significant choice involved in using this power. That choice is outside of your control. Typically, this means the GM makes that choice rather than you. The GM can hamper your tactical usage of the power in this way, but can't actively subvert your usage of it without invoking an appropriate complication. For example, if you allow the GM to choose who you target with an Attack power, the GM can target an enemy who would be strong against it, but can't target one of your allies, an innocent bystander, or some random object or terrain feature unless invoking a complication.

Alternately, the choice may be based on some random roll or on a specific circumstance. In these cases, the GM may lower the Limit value if it doesn't deem the rules the power operates under to be sufficiently restrictive.

Typically this limit has a limit value of 5. If the uncontrolled choice is "whether or not this power is currently active at all" it instead uses a limit value of 10 (in this case, though, you determine whether or not it is active before you try to use it in the first place, so if it isn't you can do something else).

Unreliable (Limit 10): Each round you wish to use this upgrade, roll a d20. If you roll 11 or higher, the upgrade is usable that round. Otherwise it isn't. If you spend Hero Points to reroll this check, it automatically succeeds, thanks to the +10 heroic bonus.

Utilities

Utilities are a type of trait which are purchased directly with VP. Utilities come in several types. Each type has a list of utilities which you may purchase individually.

You can't add extras to utilities. However, many utilities can be complemented by relevant powers, such as Commune, Discern, Exert, and Perceive.

Arrays

Arrays are a type of container that let you have multiple mutually-exclusive sets of traits that you can switch between. Strictly speaking, the utility is the array's slots; arrays have a PP investment as well as a VP cost for their slots.

When you create an array, first you invest a certain amount of PP. This is the array's value. At any one time, you may have up to a total PP value of traits in the array active equal to the array's value.

To add traits to the array, you purchase one or more slots. Each array can have a maximum number of slots equal to 3 plus one per three points of Accuracy (rounded down). Slots are filled with traits of your choice, with each slot having a maximum PP value of traits equal to the array's value. You can exchange PP for SP normally in an array, but you can't invest VP into an array; if you want to add other utilities to an array, you spend the PP of the array as if it were VP. Array slots, or some of the traits within them, can be limited normally. If an array slot lowers stats, skills, and measures, this reduction is counted towards the slot's point total, not the character's actual PP. An array can't be used to lower your Accuracy below the total required for all of your arrays.

Skills and advantages have their costs quadrupled in an array (penalties to skills do not have their refunds quadrupled).

Once you've purchased your slots, you can change which ones are active as an instant action. Each array has a separate action to change it, so you can change multiple arrays in the same round. You may have multiple slots active at once, so long as their individual point totals add up to no higher than the array's full value. You don't have to use every trait in a slot, but you don't get a "discount" if you leave some inactive; you always count the slot's full point total against the array's value (though the Dynamic utility changes this).

A default array slot costs 1 VP per 5 points of the slot's total, rounded up. But you can add the following adjustments to slots to modify the cost of the slot by the listed total.

Combining (Special): Some or all of the points of this slot go towards directly improving a different array while this slot is active. This slot costs VP equal to the total VP cost that it would have taken to add those points to that array in the first place. So if it adds 10 PP worth of traits to every slot in a five-slot array while active, this slot would cost 10 VP. This cost replaces the base cost of the slot unless only some of its points are used for combining, in which case the VP cost for the remaining points are calculated normally. Other slot modifiers can increase the cost normally. You must choose the traits added to each slot when you acquire this slot.

Dynamic (Flat +1 VP): If you don't use every trait in a Dynamic slot, the slot's total for purposes of the array limit is calculated based only on the traits that you use, allowing you to more freely mix-and-match the traits in your slots.

Flexible (Flat +1 VP): When using two or more Flexible slots together, you can mix-and-match extras from one slot with effects from another freely, rather than the extras only applying to a specific effect. However, you can't add more points worth of extras to a given effect than it normally has (so you can't just stock a single slot with a bunch of 0-cost effects and suddenly be able to use them all with the full value of the array, you'd need to at least dedicate each effect to its own slot).

Reaction (+1 VP per 10 PP): You may swap this array off-turn as an instant reaction.

Shiftable (Flat +1 VP): When using a power in a Shiftable slot, you may shift any points of extras in the slot to different extras that are already in use. For example, if you have a 30-point Shiftable slot with Attack (Burst Area, Battering, Brutal), you could shift it to Attack (Burst Area 2, Battering) or Attack (Brutal 3) or Attack (Battering 2, Brutal), or any other combination of Burst Area, Battering, and Brutal that adds up to 30 PP. You may lower other traits in a Shiftable slot to pay for extras, but you can't raise traits other than extras above their defined value. If the power is Diverse, you must include each Diverse option in the power itself (you can't add Diverse on the fly) but you don't actually have to leave points of Diverse in the power on use; you can choose the options and then shift the points out to other extras. Other extras that require choices must use the same choice as the original application.

Slow (Limit 2+): The Slow modifier functions as a limit on the slot's cost (not the array's point value). You have to spend an additional action to activate the slot (on top of the instant action, so you can still only swap 1/round). This is similar to the Activation limit, but with a higher value since it will come up more often and only applies to the slot cost. It does, however, mean the slot isn't automatically deactivated at the start of the scene. If multiple slots in the array are Slow, you can add all of them to the upgrade.

If you have to spend a move action to swap to the slot, the limit value is 2. Standard is 5, full is 10. The limit value is 20 if you can only swap to the slot between scenes, and 40 if only between episodes.

Synched (+0 VP): Some or all of the point value of this slot simply go to increasing the point value of a different array, while this slot is active. This only increases the array's total value, it doesn't add any new traits to the slots, so unless the array has Dynamic or Flexible slots, it mainly just allows using this array's value for another array's slots.

Variable (+3 VP per 5 PP): You can change the traits in the slot by taking the action to swap to it (you may do so even if you are already on the slot). You must choose a cohesive theme for the sort of traits you can add, such as a shapeshifter modifying physical traits, a mimic copying powers, a mage learning spells from other wizards or spellbooks, a super-scientist inventing devices, etc.

You may change each variable slot once per scene. You may also change all of your variable slots any time you spend at least 20 Hero Points on a surge.

A Variable slot opens up a few additional options:

Additional Change (+1 VP per 5 PP): For each rank of this extra you can change the slot one additional time per scene.

Broad Theme (+2 VP per 5 PP): The theme of the power is broad enough that it could potentially justify virtually any trait. Think something like magic or super-inventing - there might be other restrictions on how you can use the slot, but thematically there's not really anything they can't do.

In Play (Limit 2+): The traits you use have to be "brought into play" somehow - you can't just use whatever traits you like. For example, you might have to mimic another character's powers, or learn spells from another wizard, or augment an ally with traits that already exist on its character sheet, etc. This has a basic limit value of 2 if you can draw from the traits automatically as long as they're in play - for example, you can copy the powers of anyone you see. If you need some sort of favorable circumstance that isn't automatic but you can set up fairly freely, such as being in close range of them, or targeting them with an action, it's limit value 5. If there are points of possible failure (for example, the target must be willing, or must use the power on you, you have to successfully defend, you have to make a skill check to learn it, you have to touch them, etc) each one increases the limit value by 5, to a max of 20. If you have to overcome a significant challenge to acquire the power (such as defeating them, killing them, completing a task, etc) the limit value increases to 40. If you can return to the power once you've acquired it without going through the same process, the limit value is halved.

Narrow Theme (-1 VP per 5 PP): The theme of the power is especially narrow, only justifying certain specific traits, often just variations on a single effect, or maybe a couple related effects.

Communications

Communications improve your ability to communicate to others.

Clarified Communication (Varies): Your communication is more easily detectable. Choose a number of utilities of the Senses type. All other characters are considered to possess these senses for purposes of detecting your communication, using your stats where applicable. For example, if you choose to add Ranged to your speech, you could substitute your Scope for determining how far away your speech could be heard. If you add Piercing, then your speech is unmuffled by walls and other physical barriers. And so on. The VP cost is equal to the cost of the senses chosen.

Comprehensive Communication (2-6 VP): You can comprehend some broad type of creature that possesses a means of communication but not a human language - typically animals, though other such groups may be possible depending on the setting. For 2 VP, you can understand the messages conveyed by such means of communication, which are generally best expressed as simple concepts - food, danger, follow, attack, safety, etc, and you can communicate such messages yourself in the same way. For 4 VP, you can communicate with such creatures using normal speech, and can understand their responses as normal speech, although such communications are still simple and may be limited by the creature's ability to comprehend its reality. For 6 VP, any such creatures you communicate with can properly understand your speech and respond to you as if they were human-level intelligent, and can also effectively draw from your conceptual knowledge for such communications. For example, you could ask an animal if it saw a person you know by name, and the animal would arbitrarily be able to identify and remember that person just as well as you could to give an accurate answer to your question.

In addition, you can use interaction skills on animals (or whatever creature type this power effects) normally.

Communication Link (1 VP): This functions as Projected Communication, allowing two-way communication at a distance between yourself and others. However, it may only target others who have the same sort of communication link, rather than anyone with an appropriate sense. The communication link is effective anywhere on the same planet - if you want to communicate between worlds or dimensions, also take an Astronomical or Dimensional Commune power.

The Communications feature can be used to access less private communications networks, such as cellular system or radio frequencies.

If you add the Sensory Link extra to a Communication Link utility, it only costs 1 VP per application rather than 5, due to the limited number of possible subjects.

Encrypted Communication (1+ VP): Any communications you make with this power are encrypted - people who aren't authorized to receive them only get gibberish, even if they have some means of eavesdropping on the communication itself. It is possible, with a sample of the encrypted communication and some time (equivalent to a Downtime Action) to break the encryption. This requires an appropriate Expertise check, and the DC is 11 + the higher of your Deception, Expertise (in the same field), Investigation, or Stealth. For 1 VP breaking the encryption requires hitting the one-success milestone. Each doubling of the VP increases the milestone required by one step.

For PCs with this option, an NPC who has obtained a sample of the encrypted communication and had time to break it may do so with an appropriate Expertise check. This counts as a complication earning you 10 HP per VP invested in this option.

Interface Communication (2-4 VP): You can interface with electronic data directly, allowing you to access computers and the like without needing a normal connection. For 2 VP you have "read only" access, allowing you to retrieve information but not make changes. For 4 VP you have "read/write" access, letting you operate as if you were accessing the system with a computer and make full use of any relevant Expertise skill. This also allows you to use Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion on computerized constructs normally. You may also substitute any of those skills for Expertise when working with computers, and you may substitute Expertise (with an appropriate field) for any of those skills against computerized creatures if desired. This ability does not inherently provide any additional ability to overcome computer security, beyond using your skills.

Projected Communication (2-10 VP): You can project your communication at a distance, sending messages from afar and receiving any responses. You must be able to identify your target in some way - typically by either visualizing it or knowing its name, but depending on the nature of the power other options of identification may be possible. If you target a location, your communication manifests at the chosen point - it can either come clearly from a specific spot or just be kinda "ambient" in the area. If you target a character, the communication comes from their location. Anyone with an appropriate sense can perceive the communication normally, although you can modulate the volume or equivalent (i.e. whisper) to make it harder for unintended individuals to detect. Selective Communication allows you to communicate more subtly.

For 2 VP, you can project your communication over a localized area within several miles - typically good for within a city. For 4 VP, you can project tens of miles - typically good for within an entire county. For 6 VP, you can project hundreds of miles - easily enough to cover most large regions or small countries. For 8 VP you can project thousands of miles - enough to cover most continents entirely. For 10 VP, you can project anywhere on the same world. For communication between worlds or dimensions, also take an Astronomical or Dimensional Commune power.

Projected Communication counts as a projection. Targeting the projection itself ignores cover and concealment. Cover and concealment then applies normally relative to the target point for purposes of determining who can hear it. For example, you don't need Clarified Communication (Piercing) to project your communication into a building, but if you project it to a certain room in the building, you might need it to allow people in other rooms to hear it clearly through walls.

You can create as many links as you want, but this power doesn't provide you with any particular ability to keep track of multiple conversations. Quickness can help you to do so, as can the Rapid Communication option.

Rapid Communication (1 VP): Your Quickness applies to the speed at which you communicate. Those communicating with you also receive the increased speed, and you can all understand each other as if you were talking at normal speed.

Selective Communication (2 VP): Your communication is only detected by those you wish, and even making the communication is undetectable by others (for example, selective speech wouldn't require you to actually move your mouth). Characters not intended to overhear the communication cannot do so unless they have an appropriate super-sense (generally a Broad sense appropriate to the descriptor, or a Detect sense keyed to the descriptor).

Universal Communication (2-6 VP): You can speak, read, or understand all languages for 2 VP. For 3 VP, you can do two of those. For 4 VP, you can do all three. For an additional 2 VP on top of being able to speak all languages, your speech is automatically translated to any given listener's language as they hear it.

Fortunes

You have an improved facility with Hero Points. Each Fortune utility costs 5 VP. Each utility has an action type and class, allowing you to take the action to achieve certain results. In the case of instant actions, all instant Fortune utilities are considered the same action, so you can only use one in a given round.

Many of these actions call for Luck checks, which is a check using twice your PL as the stat. Some of these actions have specific DCs; others roll against what is called your base DC. Your base DC is a calculated DC which always begins at 11 + twice your PL (so effectively it's equivalent to a straight d20 roll needing an 11 or higher), but each time you succeed a check against your base DC it increases by 2 per degree of success, and each time you fail it lowers by 2. It resets to 11 + twice your PL at the end of each scene. Some checks are made against a target's Luck DC. This is a calculated DC of 11 + twice the target's PL + 5 per rank the target is higher than you (or -5 per rank lower).

Invocations of GM Fiat, complications, Villain Points, and other GM actions that award Hero Points count as using Hero Points for purposes of Luck Control. Whenever Luck Control gives Hero Points to someone (or allows someone to retain Hero Points), it gives them directly to characters, not to the player. These Hero Points can be used by that character's player (the GM in the case of NPCs) to allow that character to perform surges, but they expire at the end of the scene if not used beforehand.

Luck Control effects may never affect multiple targets simultaneously.

Luck Control effects that specify allies cannot affect you.

Augmented Edit (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you use the Edit Scene surge. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. If you succeed, you may keep the Hero Points.

Augmented Inspiration (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you use the Inspiration surge. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. For each degree of success, you may ask one additional question.

Augmented Recovery (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you use the Recover surge. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. For each degree of success, you may reduce another condition (or the same one) by one step of duration.

Augmented Reroll (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you use the Reroll surge. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. For each degree of success, you get a +1 critical bonus on the reroll.

Augmented Stunt (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you use the Stunt surge. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. For each degree of success, you gain one additional benefit from the list.

Charge Luck (Basic Move or Standard): When you use this option, choose a character in range (which may be yourself). Roll a Luck check against your base DC (if targeting yourself) or your target's Luck DC (if targeting another). If you succeed, the target gains 20 HP if you performed this action as a move action, or 40 HP if you performed it as a standard action. Unlike most Hero Points bestowed by Luck Control, these expire if they are not used within one round per degree of success. These Hero Points may not be used on the Inspiration or Request Support surges, or on the Bonus surge (since that's really what the Aid action is for).

Lucky Streak (Free Reaction): You may use this option when you roll a natural 20 on a meaningful check, or an opponent rolls a natural 1 against you. Checks made by or against characters of lower rank than you, or more than 2 PL lower than you, never count as meaningful for this purpose. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. If you succeed, you gain 10 Hero Points per degree of success.

Negate Luck (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when Hero Points are used against you. Roll a Luck check against the Luck DC of whoever is benefiting from the Hero Points (or your base DC if nobody is directly benefitting). If you succeed, that use of Hero Points is prevented against you, and cannot be tried again for one round. The Hero Points do not actually get used in this case. In addition, as a passive effect, as long as this utility is active, any opponents in the scene take a penalty on Luck checks equal to your total number of Fortune utilities, to a maximum penalty equal to your PL. Multiple such penalties don't stack, use only the highest.

This utility cannot be used to negate surges that are defensive in nature (such as Mitigate, Negate, Bonuses or Rerolls to Defense or Resistance, etc) by characters of equal or higher rank. It also cannot be used to negate major instances of GM Fiat that award Hero Points to the whole party.

Save Luck (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you spend Hero Points. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. If you succeed, you retain half the Hero Points spent.

Share Luck (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you spend Hero Points. Choose an ally in range and roll a Luck check against their Luck DC. If you succeed, that ally gains half the Hero Points spent.

Siphon Luck (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when an ally in range spends Hero Points. Roll a Luck check against their Luck DC. If you succeed, you gain Hero Points equal to half what the ally spent.

Spread Luck (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when you spend Hero Points to somehow provide or improve a defense against an attack that affects multiple targets. Roll a Luck check against the attacker's Luck DC. If you succeed, the effects of your surge apply to everyone you wish who was also targeted by the attack.

Steal Luck (Instant Reaction): You may use this option when an opponent in range spends Hero Points. Roll a Luck check against their Luck DC. If you succeed, you gain Hero Points equal to half what the opponent spent.

Stock Luck (Free Reaction): You may use this option when you roll a natural 1 on a meaningful check, or an opponent rolls a natural 20 against you. Checks made by or against characters of lower rank than you, or more than 2 PL lower than you, never count as meaningful for this purpose. Roll a Luck check against your base DC. If you succeed, you gain 10 Hero Points per degree of success.

Temporal Action (Instant Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. You may use this option when using the Action surge. The action effectively takes effect on your last turn, which may retroactively change what has happened in the interim. This costs twice as many Hero Points as normal.

Temporal Bonus (Free Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. By paying twice as many Hero Points, you can use the Bonus surge after making your roll.

Temporal Edit (Free Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. Any time you use the Edit Scene surge, your edit can represent some change to the scene you might have made yourself by travelling back to the past up to one Time Rank per Range rank and changing something, or perhaps having predicted you would need in the past and prepared for now, significantly expanding the utility of the surge.

Temporal Inspiration (Free Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. Whenever you use the Inspiration surge, you make ask a question about something that happened in the past or future, within one Time Rank per Scope rank. The GM must provide an accurate and non-misleading answer, but may limit the details for story purposes.

Temporal Mitigation (Basic Free): You can manipulate time rather than luck. You may use the Mitigate surge at any time to directly reduce the tier of a condition by one, as if you had mitigated it when you received it.

Temporal Negation (Free Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. You may use the Negate Attack surge after rolling the Resistance check, if you wish. This costs 40 HP rather than 30.

Temporal Reroll (Free Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. Whenever you use the Reroll surge, if you don't like the result of the reroll, you can take the original roll and keep the Hero Points. You can't try to improve the roll again once you have made this choice. However, if you make multiple attempts to improve the same roll and at the end don't like any of them, you can accept the original roll and retain all the Hero Points. If you accept any reroll, you can't retain any Hero Points.

Temporal Support (Free Reaction): You can manipulate time rather than luck. You are able to Request Support from your own past or future selves! This functions as a normal Request Support surge, but the NPC is effectively mechanically identical to you. You may lower the PL of your past selves to represent less experienced or capable versions, to save on HP. You may also Request Support from a future self up to one PL higher, with a corresponding increase in the effective Power Value and thus Hero Point cost.

Immunities

Immunities give you some level of resistance to certain forms of attack.

Age Immunity (0 VP): You don't age, or only do so very slowly. This immunity is pretty much pure fluff, so it carries no cost.

Ally Immunity (1+ VP): Choose an individual or cohesive group. An individual costs 1 VP; a group can multiply the number of people by 5 per doubling of cost, so a small team of up to five individuals costs 2 VP, a squad of up to twenty-five individuals costs 4 VP, a unit of up to 125 individuals costs 8 VP, an organization of up to 625 individuals costs 16 VP, etc. The subjects you choose must be willing, complicit, or otherwise intentionally involved in your gaining the immunity, so you can't generally use this to gain immunity to specific enemies (although there might be a situation where two enemies gain immunity to each other for whatever reason). You are immune to the actions of this individual or group unless you wish to be affected by them, even if the action is controlled or redirected by some third party. You may include yourself in an Ally Immunity.

Cipher (1+ VP): You are difficult to learn about. You may substitute a bonus of +5 for your Investigation skill for purposes of setting passive DCs to learn about you or your activities. Each additional +5 doubles the cost, so +10 costs 2 VP, +15 costs 4 VP, etc.

Condition Immunity (10 VP): Choose a single condition of tier 0 to 3 other than Bruised or Tagged per purchase of this immunity; you still receive the condition normally, but you ignore its effects (however, if you receive a tier 1-3 condition multiple times it still bumps up to the next tier normally). If the condition is included as part of a tier 4 condition, you still suffer its effects when the tier 4 condition is imposed.

Critical Immunity (5 VP): You treat critical hits against you as normal hits. This doesn't prevent other critical bonuses.

Defiance (20 VP): While you have tier 3 conditions, you may receive Recovery Points from Tenacity each round, although the number is halved. Tier 4 conditions still prevent these Tenacity checks. In any round that you get attacked while already suffering from a tier 3 condition, your Tenacity check gives you twice as many Recovery Points rather than half as many (don't forget the rule against intentional oppositional triggers - allies can't attack you to trigger this bonus!)

Hardship Immunity (1 VP): Choose one of the following per purchase of this immunity: hunger and thirst; need for sleep; need for air; physical exertion; or a single mundane environment descriptor or a mundane descriptor that would use the Physiological attack mode, such as poison or disease. The chosen hardships cannot impose any conditions or complications upon you. This doesn't allow you to ignore, say, cover, concealment, or obstruction from appropriate environments; for instance, immunity to environmental cold won't let you see or move through snow any more easily, but will prevent you from suffering conditions for intense cold or, say, developing frostbite or hypothermia or the like as a complication. All hardships are considered to use the Physiological attack mode, so immunity to that obviates the need for Hardship Immunity ir Life Support.

Hazard Immunity (2 or 10 VP): Choose one type of hazard - Onset, Continuous, or Immediate. You are immune to hazards of that type for 10 VP. If you wish to choose a single specific hazard to be immune to, that costs 2 VP.

Instant Escape (10 VP): Whenever you take the Maneuver action, you automatically successfully Escape any undesired maneuvers being maintained upon you. You can still be affected by undesired maneuvers, but you can escape them automatically without having to make a check or spend your maneuvers attempting the escape.

Interaction Immunity (1 or 10 VP): You are completely immune to interaction skills, but also unable to use them on others. For 1 VP, you are a computerized being and are thus instead subject to Hack actions and the Interface communication utility. For 10 VP, you are not subject to those either.

Lethal Immunity (5 VP): Lethal damage is treated as nonlethal against you, rendering you unkillable by normal means. You must take a complication that defines some manner of inflicting lethal damage to you; that means of attack is always treated as lethal against you, and ignores any immunities you possess that would otherwise apply against it. You receive 20 Hero Points for the complication whenever you face that form of attack, on top on any Hero Points that would normally be awarded for facing lethal damage or having your other immunities ignored (if any).

Life Support (10 VP): You are immune to all hardships (see Hardship Immunity).

Maneuver Immunity (15 VP): You are immune to the Maneuver action unless you wish to be affected, and to any other means of forcibly changing your position or orientation. You are likewise immune to the Immobilized condition.

Manipulate Immunity (15 VP): You are immune to the Manipulate action.

Nonlethal Immunity (2-10 VP): You are highly resistant to nonlethal damage. However, characters may freely inflict lethal damage against you - there may be certain in-setting repercussions for doing so, but there are no mechanical limitations on it - you don't have to be subject to certain conditions, no Hero Points are awarded, etc. Naturally, that makes this immunity rather unattractive unless you think your enemies will be particularly averse to killing you! You may not possess both Nonlethal Immunity and Lethal Immunity. For 2 VP, you get a +2 circumstance bonus on Resistance checks against nonlethal attacks. For 5 VP you get +5. For 10 VP, you are entirely immune to nonlethal attacks.

Standard Immunity (Varies): You are immune to certain types of attacks and effects, unless you wish to be affected by them.

Standard Immunities are in some ways a form of complication. PCs have to spend their VP to buy their immunities, but the GM is essentially free to put them up against enemies who can circumvent them. On the flip side, the GM is able to design or select NPCs with immunities to the specific attacks the PCs have access to, making that NPC much more effective against certain PCs or forcing PCs to stunt powers capable of dealing with the immunities. While it's certainly possible for a GM to precisely balance encounters so immunities get play without dominating the game, it takes effort. Treating them like complications allows the system to self-balance.

Whenever a PC's effectiveness in a given round is reduced due to an NPC's Standard Immunities, it gets 10 HP from a complication. This might be because the PC's attack had lower effect against its target due to the immunity, or the PC attacked multiple targets and some of them ignored the effect thanks to immunities, or the PC was forced to take less effective actions to avoid dealing with an immunity. The complication requires the PC to be making a reasonable effort to be effective; a PC can't "farm" Hero Points by intentionally wasting actions attacking an immune NPC when there is other stuff it could be doing. If the PC's effectiveness is greatly reduced or negated (its attack ignored outright, or it simply has no way to make a meaningful contribution that round due to the immunity) it gets 20 HP instead. These awards are per round of reduced effectiveness, not per immunity encountered or attack made.

Conversely, when a PC who has Standard Immunities ends a battle with conditions, it gets Hero Points based on the total value of its standard immunities. It receives 1 HP per five VP worth of standard immunities per tier of the highest-tier condition it ends the battle with. This represents the fact that the enemies were designed in such a way that they were able to bypass the PCs immunities well enough to harm it. to some degree. Immunities in an array, or that are otherwise acquired on the fly (such as Adaptive and Variable Immunities) do not award HP.

A Standard Immunity is made up of several choices that determine its cost. The cost is a scaling value using the following table:

Rank	Cost	Notes
1-3	1 VP	Minor immunity to a descriptor.
4	2 VP	Major immunity to a descriptor or Minor immunity to a group of descriptors.
5	3 VP
6	4 VP	Minor immunity to a source or origin.
7	5 VP	Total immunity to a descriptor, Major immunity to a group of descriptors, or Minor immunity to an attack mode.
8	6 VP
9	8 VP	Major immunity to a source or origin.
10	10 VP	Total immunity to a group of descriptors, Major immunity to an attack mode, or Minor immunity to a delivery mode.
11	12 VP
12	15 VP	Total immunity to a source or origin.
13	20 VP	Total immunity to an attack mode or Major immunity to a delivery mode.
14	25 VP
15	30 VP	Total immunity to your fifth or sixth attack mode.
16	40 VP	Total immunity to a delivery mode.
17	50 VP	Total immunity to your seventh or eigth attack mode.
18	60 VP	Total immunity to your third delivery mode.
19	80 VP	Total immunity to your ninth or tenth attack mode attack mode.
20	100 VP	Total immunity to the setting's primary power source or origin or your fourth delivery mode.

Immunity Strength: Choose a Minor, Major, or Total immunity. Minor immunities start at rank 1, Major at rank 4, and Total at rank 7.

Immunity Type: Choose a Defense, Resistance, Recovery. Once you purchase a Standard Immunity of a given type, other Standard Immunities of equal or lower strength, and to the exact same subject, are treated as three ranks lower (so if you have a Major Defense Immunity to the Physical attack mode, you could then buy a Major Resistance Immunity to the Physical attack mode for half the cost). Alternately, you can give an immunity two types for +2 ranks, or all three types for +3 ranks.

Minor Defense Immunity grants a +2 circumstance bonus to Defense. Major grants +5. Total means you automatically defend against attacks of that type. Defense Immunity can be beaten by Tracing powers.

Minor Resistance Immunity grants a +2 circumstance bonus to Resistance. Major grants +5. Total means you automatically resist attacks of that type. Resistance Immunity can be beaten by Penetrating powers.

For each Minor Recovery Immunity you possess, you gain 5 Recovery Points per round at the end of your turn that can only be used to heal scene duration or lower conditions of the appropriate type. Major gives you 10 RP per round, and also lowers the duration of all conditions of the appropriate type by one step at the end of your first turn with the immunity active since you gained the condition. Total automatically removes all appropriate conditions at the end of your turn. Recovery Immunity can be beaten by Incurable powers. Note that while Recovery Immunities are slightly weaker than Defense and Resistance Immunities in that they don't offer immediate protection, they are more flexible; a Defense or Resistance Immunity in an array or upgrade won't help you if it's off at the time you receive the attack, but a Recovery Immunity will start working on existing conditions as soon as it turns on. However, you must actually possess the immunity to the attack at the time you receive it, even if it isn't active. If you use a Variable or Adaptive Immunity to gain a Recovery Immunity, or Bestow a Recovery Immunity onto an ally, it will only help recover from future attacks, not from any prior ones.

Immunity Nature: Choose if your immunity is Normal, Insubstantial, Object, or Innate.

Normal immunities use normal rules and costs.

Object immunities are due to you having traits more in common with inanimate objects than living beings (such as if you are a robot or golem). They are always Resistance Immunities, and may only be to the Material, Mental, Mystical, Positional, Physiological, Tactical, or Transformative attack modes. Object Immunities are beaten by Affects Objects powers rather than Penetrating powers.

Insubstantial Immunities are due to certain attacks passing right through you. They are always Defense Immunities, and may only be to the Energy, Material, Physical, Physiological, Positional, or Transformative attack mode or the Contact or Flash delivery mode. Insubstantial Immunities are beated by Affects Insubstantial powers rather than Tracing powers.

Mundane Immunities offer substantial protection against attacks below a certain threshold of effectiveness. In game terms, they only apply against opponents of lower character rank. The rank is reduced by 3. You can lower the threshold of effectiveness to further lower the cost; if they only apply against opponents at least two ranks lower, the rank is reduced by 6 rather than 3. If they only apply against opponents at least three ranks lower, the rank is reduced by 9. They also protect against most "natural" effects - things you might encounter in the world that aren't being actively utilized by another character. In general, natural effects are usually considered Mundane rank, so like a burning building, a natural toxin, or an environment effect from normal weather, would generally count as Mundane. Especially weak natural effects might be considered Minion rank - alcohol or food poisoning, for example. Especially strong ones, such as lightning strikes and molten lava, should generally be considered Elite rank. Only the strongest of natural phenomena, such as the heat of a star or the crushing force of a black hole, should qualify as Major rank.

Innate Immunities cannot be negated by any power extra. The rank is increased by 3. Further, Innate Immunities require a specific complication justifying them. A pyrokinetic cannot take Innate Immunity to heat. A fire elemental could, using a complication relating to the fact that it is living flame to justify it (meaning it might consume oxygen rapidly, burn things it touches or comes near, etc).

Immunity Subject: Finally, choose the thing you are actually immune to.

If you choose a single descriptor, keep the rank as is. Immunities to additional related descriptors can then be purchased as if they were six ranks lower. For example, once you take immunity to, say, Fear, you could then take immunity to other emotions as if they were six ranks lower the cost. Or if you take immunity to Fire, you can start taking immunity to other elements (or perhaps other solar forces) for lower cost. If the descriptor could be in multiple groups, you choose one that gets its costs reduced. If the immunity is in an array, the reduction only applies to other immunities in the same slot.

If you choose a group of related descriptors (such as emotions, elements, solar forces, etc), increase the rank by 3.

If you choose an entire power source or origin, increase the rank by 5. If there's a relatively limited number of power sources or origins in the setting, the GM may increase this surcharge (an additional +4 is a good rule of thumb). Likewise, if most powers come from the same source or origin, the rank may be further increased (yet another +4 is a good rule of thumb).

If you choose a specific attack mode, increase the rank by 6, +2 for each two attack modes beyond the second that you are already immune to.

If you choose a specific delivery mode, increase the rank by 9, +2 for each delivery mode beyond the first that you are already immune to.

Adaptive Immunity: Once per scene as an instant reaction, you may change the subject of your immunity to any other subject of the same type. So you could change an immunity to the Physical attack mode to immunity to a different attack mode, immunity to the Fire descriptor to immunity to a different descriptor, etc. If you have multiple Adaptive Immunities, they share one action (so you can only change one per round, but you may change each of them once per scene).

PCs do not receive Hero Points for enemies overcoming their Adaptive Immunities, and the rank is increased by 3.

Variable Immunity: As a standard action, you may change the subject of your immunity to any other subject of the same type. So you could change an immunity to the Physical attack mode to immunity to a different attack mode, immunity to the Fire descriptor to immunity to a different descriptor, etc. If you have multiple variable immunities, you only change one per action.

PCs do not receive Hero Points for enemies overcoming their Variable Immunities, and the rank is increased by 3.

Temporal Inertia (1 VP): You are somehow uniquely "anchored" in the space-time continuum, making you immune to changes in history. You can recall the "true" version of historical events, even if no one else does, and are aware of when history is altered. You cannot be directly affected by temporal Fortune utilities, but you may be indirectly affected by them.

Morphs

You can alter your form. For the most part, morphs are purely cosmetic and don't affect your actual traits - if you want to be able to change your traits too, use an array (perhaps a Variable array) to represent your alternate forms.

You don't need to use Deception checks to disguise yourself with Morph - it can be assumed that your alternate form is indistinguishable from whatever it is based off of. You might, however, still need to use Deception to avoid arousing suspicion, especially when not acting in character. Morphs provide you with no additional knowledge, so if you're using them to impersonate someone, it might be good to also have some sort of Informative sense to help you learn more about them.

Morphing to a different form is an instant action. When you morph, you can make any changes appropriate to any or all of the Morphs you possess.

Shifting Attire (1-2 VP): You can quickly or supernaturally change clothes. For 1 VP, you can change into any clothing you currently have on hand as a free action. For 2 VP, you can simply change the appearance of your attire freely.

Shifting Body (5 VP): You can make minor changes to your overall shape and appearance as an active instant action. You're still fundamentally recognizable, but you may get larger, smaller, thinner, fatter, etc. In addition, this lets you reconfigure any points spent on the Attractive or Improved Initiative advantages, the Stealth and Prowess skills, and the Growth, Shrinking, Might, Swiftness, Stamina, and Jumping features. You may lower any of those that you possess to raise others at their normal costs. Note that you're only moving points around, so features bought with FP can't be used to buy traits that cost SP or PP.

Shifting Form (2+ VP): You can take on entirely different shapes, but they have to be more-or-less the same size and mass as your normal form. For 2 VP, you can take on a single specific additional form. For 5 VP, you can have a small group of alternate forms (somewhere in the vicinity of half a dozen). For 10 VP, you can take any of a narrow group of forms (such as a certain kind of animal, people of basically the same size and gender as you, robots or another specific type of machine, etc). For 15 VP, you can take on any of a broad group of forms (such as animals, humans, machines, etc). For 20 VP, you can take any of an extremely broad group of forms (any animal-like creature, any humanoid creature, any object, etc). For 25 VP, you can take on any form of more-or-less your own mass.

Normally, morphing is visual only. You can use the Additional Sense extra (paying VP rather than PP) to expand this.

Shifting Features (1-2 VP): You can make cosmetic changes in an instant without any tools, such as styling your hair, applying makeup, cleaning up, drying off, and so on. For 2 VP, you may also change your coloration and make minor physical changes, such as altering your hair, eye, and skin tones, creating or removing tattoos, altering the length of your hair and nails, etc. You still look more-or-less like you to close examination, so this doesn't really allow you to disguise yourself as a specific person, but this is sufficient that if you change enough people who don't get a good, close look at you won't be able to identify you even if they know you.

Shifting State (10+ VP): You become less substantial. This utility provides some benefits of certain immunity and movement utilities, but they are consolidated together. It has a lower cost than the utilities it is based on, but also comes with drawbacks (these are built-in costs of the utility, and do not award Hero Points when they come up). If you don't want the drawbacks, you can buy the component utilities individually (you may also take a lower level of Shifting State and then "fill up" the higher levels with direct purchases).

The immunities gained through Shifting States still count as immunities you possess for purposes of calculating future immunity costs for attack and delivery modes.

Shifting State comes in several possible levels, which have different advantages and drawbacks. If your Shifting State level gives you a weakness to certain types of attacks, you cannot also take immunities to the same thing, unless you first buy off the weakness. Typically, you can swap between your default, fully material state, and the single state you pay for. For +2 VP, you may choose a single lower state you can also swap to.

Typically, fully material is your "default" state and you activate this utility to assume a less substantial state. If you wish, you can choose your less substantial state to be your default. Remaining in a non-default state uses Sustained maintenance.

Flexible (10 VP): Your form is kinda rubbery and mutable, giving you more physical control but making your body somewhat easier to transform against your will. You gain the following:


Segmented (20 VP): Your form is made up of many smaller parts that can reshape but generally remain contiguous, giving you even more control over your shape. You gain the following:


Fluid (30 VP): Your form is fluid like water, making your shape incredibly flexible and making it hard to strike you solidly, but making your form very easy to transform and conductive to energy. You gain the following:


Gaseous (40 VP): Your form is a discorporate gas, making you extremely mobile and hard to hurt, but very easy to transform against your will and conduct negative effects to. Many gaseous characters also have a complication limiting their ability to physically interact with solid objects and creatures. You gain the following:


Energy (50 VP): Your form is pure energy, of a wavelength that can pass through most objects, protecting you from many forms of attack but making you extremely vulnerable to attacks that transform you against your will or directly manipulate ephemeral forces. Some energy characters will have a complication limiting their ability to physically interact with solid objects and creatures, and they all must have a complication supporting their Innate energy immunity. You gain the following:


Incorporeal (60 VP): You are completely incorporeal, like a ghost. You can move completely freely in any direction, and have nothing to fear from any attack with a tangible form. However, you are still vulnerable to attacks that transform you against your will, or that directly manipulate ephemeral forces. Most incorporeal characters will have a complication limiting their ability to physically interact with solid objects and creatures, and be warned that this broad swath of immunities may result in your attacks being considered unanswerable by some opponents! You gain the following:


Shifting Voice (Level 1-4 VP): You can alter your voice. For 1 VP, when you put on an accent or otherwise modulate your voice, listeners won't be able to tell it's you if they don't know it, and you can perform feats of ventriloquism within a Distance rank equal to half your Range rank. For 2 VP, you can also perfectly mimic any voice you've heard. For 4 VP, you can perfectly mimic any sound you've heard within human vocal range.

Movement

You gain additional options for movement.

Adapted (1 VP): Choose one environmental descriptor, such as Rubble, Sand, Snow, Underbrush, Water, Wind, and so on. You ignore the Impede Movement and Restrict Movement environments with the chosen descriptor. You may take this option multiple times, choosing a new descriptor each time.

Burrowing (10 VP): You can move through solid, unattended objects with Resistance ranks less than or equal to your Force rank. If the object's Resistance is more than half your Force, you take a -1 penalty to Speed per point above. Burrowing may use the Energy, Physical, or Transformative Attack Mode (chosen when you gain the power), which some objects might have immunities to. Burrowing movement damages the object you pass through, but does not leave a passable tunnel.

Burrowing is not considered a Projection.

Climbing (1-2 VP): You can move along diagonal, vertical, or even upside-down surfaces without falling. If you don't move at least your speed in any round, you fall if you are not properly supported by the end of your movement. For 2 VP, you don't need to keep moving - you can just stick to whatever surfaces as long as they can support your weight.

Dragging (1 VP): When using the Drag maneuver you don't need to physically hold or otherwise carry the characters (or objects) you are dragging. You harmlessly drag along anyone who is in contact with you when you move. Multiple people can make a chain to all be considered in contact with you. Characters you are dragging still count against your carrying capacity normally. To drag an unwilling target, you must successfully target them with your maneuver.

This utility allows you to perform the Drag maneuver on willing targets as a free action.

Flight (10 VP): You can move freely in three dimensions. Flight effectively invalidates the Climbing, Gliding, Hovering, Leaping, Stable, and Swinging Movement utilities; a power with the Flight utility reduces the cost of those utilities to 0.

Flow (2-4 VP): You can flow easily through small openings. As a two-point option, you can shift your mass about like an ooze, or your body is made up of numerous smaller parts like a swarm, treating you as up to two Size ranks smaller for purposes of the sort of openings you can pass through. As a three-point option, your form is completely amorphous or made up of very tiny particles, allowing you to pass freely through any opening that isn't water-tight. As a four-point option, you can pass through any opening that isn't air-tight. This option offers no protection from attacks, but most characters with the Flow option possess some level of immunity to the Material attack mode (typically a Minor Bonus, Major Bonus, and Full Immunity, respectively) and/or the Instant Escape immunity. Characters who lack this immunity might be unable to discorporate while bound.

Flow is not considered a Projection.

Gliding (5 VP): If you begin falling, you can glide, controlling your movement (moving as you desire in any direction but up) and landing safely. You fall at a rate of 30' per round while gliding, unless you choose to descend faster.

Hovering (2 or 5 VP): You can cease falling at will. This doesn't allow you to move laterally within the air (unless you have something to climb or push off of or the like), or gain altitude, but you can hover in place. For 5 VP, you can also raise or lower yourself, though you still can't move laterally while suspended in the air.

Leaping (2 VP): When you jump, you can use the higher of your Strength or Speed to determine the distance, and you don't deduct your Mass rank (note that if your Strength is higher than your Speed you may get "hang time" if you jump a greater distance than your top speed). Your jumping height can also be equal to your jumping distance.

Permeate (10 VP): You can move through objects and creatures in your way without harming them or leaving a tunnel, regardless of their Resistance. You also ignore all Impede Movement and Restrict Movement environments. This does not inherently protect you from attacks or allow you to automatically escape grabs, interference, and other impediments provided by characters, but most characters with Permeate movement also take Full Immunity to the Material attack mode or the Instant Escape immunity, representing their ability to pass right through such obstructions (without this immunity, they can pass through obstacles, but anything that restricts them personally kinda acts as if "part" of them as far as their powers are concerned, like the clothes they're wearing).

Permeate is considered a Projection.

Portal (5 VP): Any time you move using this power, you can create a portal linking your starting point to your destination; if you wish you may also create the portals for your movement without actually moving yourself. Anyone or anything passing through one portal exits through the other. You may have one pair of portals open at a time per rank of this option. Keeping the portals open uses sustained maintenance.

Safe (1 VP): Performing a maneuver cancels out any falling velocity up to and through this round. If you are still falling afterwards, you calculate the fall's effects from the height you start at next round.

Sure (1 VP): You reduce any external penalties to your Speed (due to terrain, being prone, the Hindered condition, etc) by your ranks in this option.

Stable (1-2 VP): You can move across surfaces that don't support your weight while you are moving, but if you cease moving you fall. As long as moving was the last thing you did on your last turn, you don't fall until your next turn, and even then only if moving is not the first thing you do. By taking two ranks of this Extra, you don't need to move to remain supported.

Swinging (2 VP): You can swing through the air at your full speed, using a swing-line you provide or available lines and projections (tree limbs, flagpoles, vines, telephone and power lines, etc.) You can't achieve a height greater than the tallest projection available plus your maximum jumping height, and there must be a projection within a Distance rank of your destination equal to your Range rank.

Teleport (15 VP): You can blink from place to place without passing through the space in between. You must either be able to accurately perceive your destination, specify a fixed direction and distance, or be personally familiar with your destination. Otherwise, the attempt fails. For an additional 10 VP, you only need to be able to unambiguously identify your destination and know give-or-take where it is relative to you - you couldn't teleport to a villain's lair that you don't know the location of, but you could teleport to a place that you know the name of and generally where in the world it's at, or even to the location of a specific person or object if you know more-or-less where they are at the moment.

Teleportation has all the functionality of the Permeate movement mode (but as with Permeate, it doesn't offer protection from being bound or otherwise restricted unless you purchase a relevant immunity). It can be in any direction but doesn't do anything to fix your position when you arrive (so if you teleport into the air and can't fly, hover, or teleport back down or something, you'll fall). In addition, teleportation happens all at once, which means other characters don't have any leeway to chase you - normally, it's assumed that actions are happening more-or-less simultaneously, so if you try to flee an enemy can give chase on their next turn and follow you as long as they can keep up. With teleportation that's not really the case; you're just gone in an instant and if they can't perceive you at your destination, they'll have no idea where you went without a Following super-sense or Perception edge. You may, however, break your movement up into multiple smaller jumps if you have the Move-by Action advantage.

When teleporting, you can spend several actions "building up" a distance beforehand, and then when you have built up enough distance to reach your destination, teleport on spending the final action. For example, if you can teleport four miles per move action and need to go forty miles, instead of making ten separate four-mile teleports, you can spend ten move actions concentrating and then teleport the whole forty miles in one blink as soon as you spend the tenth action.

Teleportation that is lateral only costs 2 fewer VP. Teleportation that lets you ignore only terrain (i.e. Impede Movement environments) but not obstacles (i.e. Restrict Movement environments) costs 5 fewer VP. Teleportation that can't ignore obstacles or terrain costs 10 fewer VP. Teleportation counts as a Projection.

Tunneling (10 VP): The Tunneling Extra functions as Burrowing, but leaves behind a passable tunnel.

Trackless (1 VP): For each rank of this option choose one sense type; when you are trying to avoid leaving tracks, your check to set the DC to track you with the chosen senses gets a +10 bonus, and you do not need to be able to use that sense to track to avoid a -10 penalty.

Senses

Your senses are enhanced. You must purchase these utilities separately for each sense.


Accurate (2 VP): An Accurate sense can pinpoint something's exact location. You can use an accurate sense to target something with actions. Without an Accurate sense, everything has a minimum of Total Concealment for purposes of targeting.

Acute (1 VP): The sense is keen enough to identify and recognize individuals. You don't need an acute sense to tell the difference between different types of things; the sense of smell isn't Acute, for example, but you can still tell the difference between, say, the smell of cooking vegetables and the smell of cooking meat, or even between a hamburger and bacon. If your sense of smell were Acute, though, you could recognize a person you were familiar with based purely on their unique scent (just like how, with your Acute vision and hearing, you can identify someone by their facial features or voice). An Acute sense doesn't necessarily guarantee recognition, it just makes it possible; if you see someone briefly, you certainly might not recognize them if you meet them again later. Likewise, an Acute sense doesn't recognize based on literally anything it can detect; Acute hearing can identify people by their voices, but not by say the sound of their footsteps. Without an Acute sense, everything has a minimum of Partial Concealment for purposes of identification.

Analytical (1 VP): Your sense is extremely sensitive to exact or fine details. It doesn't let you perceive more than you already could (if the sense isn't Accurate, for example, you can't precisely judge distances and directions, because you can't pinpoint the subject at all!) but the sense essentially performs automatic and exact calculation or evaluation of what you perceive. For example, with Analytical vision, you would tell at a glance the distance between yourself and an object, the exact dimensions of an object you see, the number of things in a group you can see (this could range from people in a crowd to hairs on a head), the exact shade of an object, precisely how bright or dim something is, etc. Analytical hearing could tell you things like the exact volume and pitch of a sound you hear, and if it's an Accurate sense, the exact direction and distance to a sound. Analytical taste could tell you the precise ingredients of food you eat, and easily detect poison or other contaminants. And so on. A sense must be Acute before it can be Analytical.

Broad (1 VP): One of your existing senses can pick up a broader range of its normal stimulus, outside of the range that a normal person could detect. Choose one of the following ranges you can perceive: higher, lower, or just different in a specific way. So, a Broad Visual sense could let you perceive ultraviolet light (higher), infrared light (lower), or strange colors outside of human visual capability (different). A Broad Auditory sense could let you pick up ultrasonic sounds (higher), infrasonic sounds (lower), or radio frequencies (different). And so on. This is an improvement to an existing sense, not an entirely new sense.

Circuitous (1-2 VP): A circuitous sense can detect things around objects, but not straight through them. As long as there is a path around the object, you can potentially detect it, though you use the effective Distance rank for following the entire path rather than a straight-line distance. Circuitous senses lose the benefit of the Accurate option unless you spend 2 VP rather than 1.

Clear (2 VP): A sense with this trait ignores certain forms of impediment. Choose one type of impediment per ranks; five ranks (10 VP) lets you ignore all of them. If you wish, you can narrow an impediment to a single specific descriptor of that impediment by reducing the cost of that rank to 1 VP. You automatically ignore any Concealment caused by purely mundane, passive effects and environments of the appropriate type.

If a character is actively taking action to gain or cause Concealment, you still ignore it unless the character has a Stealth edge against you.

If a power is being used to provide the Concealment, you must have a Perception edge over the user to ignore the Concealment. In addition, your Scan, Search, and Watch actions may allow you to ignore powers that cause the appropriate kinds of Concealment. If your check beats a DC of 11 + the user's Stealth, you may ignore any powers they have of the relevant descriptor for purposes of detecting things with this sense. If this check would fail with your regular Perception and Stealth skills, but succeed with your rescaled skills, it counts as a success.

The types of impediment are as follows. Clear senses never ignore Concealment caused from being entirely obstructed by a solid object - for that, you need a Piercing sense. Likewise, they don't ignore Concealment caused by Obscurement conditions - your senses themselves can still be weakened or removed. To protect against that eventuality, you'll need immunity to the appropriate attacks or conditions.

Blending: You can ignore Concealment that comes from "blending into the background". Essentially, you perceive each individual stimulus clearly and independently. Vision would ignore camouflage, chameleon power, and even things like blending into a crowd. Hearing would let you tune into specific conversations in a crowded room and ignore background noise. Smell would ignore things like rolling around in the mud to make yourself smell like your surroundings, or again crowds of people. And so on.

Cloaking: You can ignore Concealment that comes from directly lessening or removing an existing stimulus or bypassing interaction with the sense's medium. Vision would ignore invisibility, translucency, and all related powers. Hearing would ignore things like whispering, moving quietly, or suppressing the sounds you make with a power. Scent would ignore powers that lessen the scents you produce or even mundane things like deodorants and air filters. And the like. This counts both attempts to remove the stimulus itself, or to remove your perception of it (such as a psychic power or phantasm that just passively stops people from perceiving a certain thing).

Distracting: You ignore Concealment that comes from directly causing a sense to bypass or ignore a stimulus. This doesn't mean you perfectly perceive everything, you still have limits to your attention, but your attention can't be forcefully directed away from a sense. This prevents concealment from active attempts to distract you or otherwise divert your attention, as well as powers that do things like passively cause people to ignore the subject.

Medium: You can ignore Concealment that comes from a lack of the medium through which you perceive things. Essentially, you are able to perceive things through an alternate, personal medium. Vision would ignore darkness, hearing would work fine in a vacuum (or a zone of magical silence or "still air", as more esoteric examples), smell would work in airless environments, etc.

Overlap: You can ignore Concealment that comes from ambient or overlapping stimuli "drowning out" what you are trying to perceive. Essentially, you "filter out" overlapping or overpowering stimuli. Vision would ignore things like a bright glare or dense fog, hearing would ignore roaring winds or other loud ambient noise, smell would ignore strong ambient scents or covering scents like perfume, etc.

Danger Sense (5 VP): You receive an instant of warning whenever a threat or hazard is about to present itself. If any of your enemies have Automatic Initiative, you do as well. You automatically succeed the Perception check to avoid being Vulnerable or Dazed during a surprise round. If an action you take triggers some threat or hazard you were not aware of, after it resolves, you may retroactively take back the action to prevent it from happening, if you wish. Any time you fail to detect a potential threat or harm, as long as you don't fail by three or more degrees, you still get a sense that there is something dangerous in your vicinity.

Detect (1 VP): You can sense something others can't. This basically gives you an entirely new sense of a chosen sense type. For example, you might have an "infravision" power as visual Detect (Heat). Maybe your skin crawls in the presence of spirit beings giving you tactile Detect (Spirits). And so on. Your sense can distinguish between different types of things, but not different individuals - Detect (Heat) could tell the difference between human body heat, the radiant heat of a light bulb, the fading heat of cooked food, and the heat of a fire, for example, but you couldn't identify two different people by their body heat unless the sense is Acute. The sense can discern general details, but not with extreme precision; Detect (Heat) could tell roughly how hot something is, but you need an Analytical sense to be able to discern exact temperature to the degree, for example.


Extended (2 VP): An Extended sense increases your Scope by 3 per rank with that sense only, up to your soft cap, or 1 per rank up to your hard cap. Extended senses must be Ranged first.

Following (2 VP): Once you detect someone with a Following sense, you remain aware of them regardless of any additional Concealment, Cover, distance, or the like they may acquire, for a certain amount of time (or until the sense is no longer active). You perceive them with the same clarity as previously, so if you detect someone but they have Partial Concealment, and then they get Total Concealment, you'd ignore the Total Concealment but they'd still effectively have their previous Partial Concealment. If the Following sense is Accurate you'd know their position, if it's Acute you'd distinguish their features, etc. The Following sense remains functional for one Time rank per rank of Following.

Informative (4-12 VP): An informative sense is inherently able to reveal useful information on top of what you would normally expect from your senses. The basic senses can't be made Informative; you add this extra only to Detect senses.

A basic Informative sense costs 4 VP. If the sense is also Acute, the Informative option costs 8. If the sense is also Analytical, the Informative option costs 12. So effectively, Informative Detect costs a total 5 VP, Acute Informative Detect costs a total of 10 VP, and Acute Analytical Informative Detect costs a total of 15 VP.

The information gained by an Informative sense isn't automatic; it requires some attention. As an instant, one-shot action, you can scan one subject that you can perceive with the sense for more details (extras like Area can let you scan more subjects at once). This generally requires a skill check to succeed; if you are scanning for personal information about a character (thoughts, emotions, complications, etc) it uses an Insight check, against a passive DC of 11 + the higher of the target's Deception or Stealth. Otherwise, it requires an Expertise check with an appropriate proficiency; if you have Detect (Magic), you would use Expertise (Magic). If you have Detect (Chemicals), you would use Expertise (Chemistry), etc. The Expertise check is against a set DC depending on the complexity of what you are scanning and other circumstances. Scanning is generally not detectable by others (even the target scanned) unless the power has the Noticeable limit; at most they might notice you're kinda paying close attention or maybe giving them a funny look. If you succeed your check, then you get detailed information about whatever you are perceiving; you might learn what a target is currently thinking about, the exact chemical composition of a compound, roughly what a spell does, etc.

If the sense is Acute, you can also probe the target for more information. This requires you to have already scanned the target, and is a one-shot move action. For each point your previous check succeeded by, you may ask one question about the subject as relates to your sense (or you may ask a single broad question and get one relevant answer per point of success). For example, you could use Detect (Thoughts) to learn a piece of information the target knows per question, or Detect (Chemicals) to ask what sort of things could be done with these chemicals (learning one possibility per point), etc. If the target is a character, it detects the probe automatically unless it has the Insidious extra. Characters may also resist the probe; they get a Resistance check against an active DC of 11 + your Force, and immunities or weaknesses to the Mental attack mode apply. If they succeed, the probe fails entirely. Even if they fail, your questions are capped to the points they failed by, if this is lower than the points your original check succeeded by.

If the sense is Analytical, when probing a target, you get especially detailed answers to your questions. You might receive a full memory in answer to your question with Detect (Thoughts), for example.

Microscopic (2 VP): You can perceive extremely small things. You ignore any effective Distance rank increases for detecting smaller objects (or similar as suits the sense, such as quieter sounds, fainter smells, etc) up to one Size rank below -2 per rank of Sc ope.

Piercing (5 VP): A sense with this option can ignore solid objects, and thus any Concealment they impose to the sense. This isn't automatic. As a basic move action, you can choose an object to look through or a location to look into; even with a Radius sense, you have to be somewhat specific about what you're piercing. For example, you could look through a wall, or inside a building, or inside the bodies of everyone in a crowd, or so on. But you don't just get to freely ignore all solid objects you encounter constantly. You can ignore an object entirely, such as seeing straight through a wall to the other side, or partially, such as looking into a wall to see the pipes and wiring within.

Obviously, it can be quite difficult to hide from someone with a Piercing sense, but since they do have to actively scan, a character with a Stealth edge can potentially "keep ahead of them". Of course, if the character doesn't realize the need to see through an object, you can still hide behind it just fine.

A Piercing sense counts as a projection.

Positional Awareness (1 VP): You are always perfectly aware of your position in space and time relative to anything else you can either perceive, or have an accurate understanding of the location of. You always know precisely what direction you are facing, how far something you can see is from you, what time it is, and so on.

Radius (1 VP): You can use a Radius sense to perceive things in all directions simultaneously; you don't have to be facing the subject.

Ranged (1 VP): A Ranged sense lets you use your full Scope. Without a Ranged sense, your Scope is treated as -5, and the additional Distance ranks for reduced clarity are halved.

Rapid (1 VP): A Rapid sense increases your Quickness by 3 per rank only for purposes of speed of perceptions with that sense, up to your soft cap, or 1 per rank up to your hard cap.

Remote (10 VP): You can project your sense over a distance, perceiving as if you were at a chosen location for as long as the power's duration lasts, at a Distance rank equal to twice your Range rank. Remote Sensing overrides your normal sense(s) while you are using it, leaving you effectively Unaware of your local surroundings with the projected sense (unless your displaced sense is still close enough to perceive them). An observer who has a Perception edge gets a "feeling they are being watched" when your Remote Sense is in their vicinity; with three degrees of Perception edge, they are aware of the position of your displaced sense. Sensory effects targeted on the spot where you have displaced your senses to affect you normally.

You can project regardless of intervening obstacles (but this counts as a Projection). You may target a specific direction and distance, or a known or easily identifiable place (such as "five miles due west", "my living room", or "the other side of this door"). You may also target characters provided you know both their name and their face (at GM discretion, other options for determining who you can target may be possible, such as having some article of theirs on hand). When targeting people, you must roll an Accuracy check against a passive DC of 11 + their Defense stat (immunities or weaknesses to the Mystical attack mode apply). Trying to scry on a specific person is considered a one-shot action.

You can make Perception checks normally using your displaced senses, taking the normal action to do so. To search a large area for someone or something, use the search guidelines given in the description of the Perception skill.

Simultaneous (5 VP): You may add this option to a Remote sense. You may perceive at one additional location per application simultaneously; if you wish, you may dedicate one of these locations to your own so you are not Unaware with the sense at your location.

Synesthetic (2 VP): You can move Senses utilities (including the free ones from your default senses, save touch) from one synesthetic sense to another, switching which apply to which as an instant action.

Tactical (2 VP): You may add this option to an Informative sense that could potentially detect powers of a certain source or origin, such as Detect (Magic), Detect (Skill), Detect (Thoughts - potentially revealing mental powers), etc. When you scan a character or object with the sense, you get a list of the names of any powers of the relevant source or origin that the subject possesses. If you probe the subject successfully, you also learn generally what each power does. If your sense is Analytical, a successful probe gives you the full mechanical details for each power. This is in addition to any normal information that might be revealed by the Informative sense (without a Tactical sense, you could still potentially learn about the subject's powers, but it would require probing at the cost of one question per power revealed).

True (5 VP): If someone is presenting something false to the world and you perceive it with this sense, you automatically recognize it as false unless they have Deception edge over you. If you wish, you may completely ignore anything you recognize as false. This may let you see a person's true identity by ignoring their disguise, or bypass Concealment provided by an illusion, for example.

Unified (2 VP): Choose another sense you possess with the same sense type; this sense shares all Senses utilities on that sense, including any free ones if it is a default sense (except touch).

Vague (-1 VP): Your sense is especially vague. It cannot be Acute, Analytical, or Informative. You can't really tell much difference between things with the sense; Vague vision would only detect fairly amorphous shapes and colors, not effectively resolving into identifiable objects, as if everything had a minimum of Full Concealment for purposes of identification. Vague hearing would not be able to make out words. Vague Detects wouldn't get any classifications, just presence or absence of the thing they detect. And so on.

Features

Features are relatively minor capabilities that have limited mechanical effects. Each feature is given one or more designations in brackets by the name, indicating what that feature can be applied to. Features with a C can be applied to characters, D to devices, I to installations, and V to vehicles. There is also an R designation, which means the feature is a room. Rooms can generally only be applied to installations, but it's possible for vehicles, devices, and even characters to acquire the ability to have rooms.

Features cost feature points to purchase. You can get 10 FP for 1 VP. You can also purchase them with skill points.

Alarm (2 FP; DVI): Any unauthorized attempt to access the object triggers an alarm or alert of some kind. By taking a Hack action with a -5 penalty, the character can attempt to access the object without triggering the alarm, but if it fails by three or more degrees, the alarm triggers anyway. Each additional application of this function increases the penalty to avoid the alarm by 5. A separate application of this function can trigger an alarm in response to attacks against the object. For an additional application, even authorized attempts will trigger an alert (or something similar, such as the attempt being logged).

Alarms can be obvious to discourage attempts at entry, or hidden (Perception DC 11 + owner's Stealth to detect). If the alarm has additional applications increasing the penalty to avoid it, each one also requires one additional degree of success on the Perception check to notice the alarm. A character may attempt to avoid an alarm even if it doesn't know for sure one is there.

Alternate Identity (2 FP; C): You have an alternate identity, complete with legal paperwork (driver's license, birth certificate, etc.) This is different from a costumed identity, which doesn't necessarily have any special legal status (but may in some settings). You don't need an Alternate Identity if, for example, you were born with an original identity but now use a new one exclusively - Alternate Identity is only used if you have both a real identity and a fake one. Investigation and similar checks relating to your Alternate Identity will only reveal informaiton about that identity, not your real one. With two ranks in this feature, you have a small selection of identities. With three ranks, you can create new identities between adventures. With four ranks, you can create new identities between episodes. An Alternate Identity in no way improves your ability to disguise yourself, although if you have means of reliably disguising yourself, you can give each alternate identity its own disguise.

Ambidexterity (2 FP; C): You can use both hands equally well, perhaps avoiding the occasional circumstance penalty for being forced to use your off-hand for a task that involves precision. With two ranks in this feature, your feet and toes are just as precise as your hands and fingers. With three ranks, you can use any part of your body with the same manual dexterity as your hands, for purposes that the body part is physically capable of performing (for example, you couldn't type or hold a weapon with your forehead - it's physically too big to hit a specific key and has no means to "grasp" an object - but you could type with your nose or wield a weapon in your mouth or something).

Beacon (2 FP; CDVI): The subject outputs a beacon of some kind - a GPS signal, a teleport lock, etc. Characters with means of receiving the beacon know the object's location and can easily navigate to it.

Benefit (Varies): While the GM is always free to create new advantages, effects, extras, flaws, limits, utilities, and so on, features are perhaps especially subject to being expanded on. Players are by default allowed to create custom features to provide minor little gimmicks and niche capabilities, subject to GM discretion with regards to exact effects and pricing. Use other features as examples.

Combat Simulator (2 FP; R): A combat simulator is a special room equipped with various devices intended to test characters’ powers and skills and allow them to train in realistic combat situations. A combat simulator uses technology, quasi-real illusions, and so on to create threats for characters to train against. Effects of the combat simulator are never real or lasting - it cannot in any way be used to achieve real useful results. For example, a combat simulator could emulate, say, a healer or precog for purposes of training against foes with healing support or tactical foresight. But characters couldn't pull an actually injured person into the simulator, manifest a healer, and heal its real injuries, or consult such a precog to get actual predictions about the future.

There's no hard limits on what a combat simulator can manifest; it's subject to GM discretion. While the combat simulator is how this sort of technology is often used by superheroes, this function can be used to reflect a virtual reality entertainment room or so on.

Naturally, combat simulators could be co-opted by foes and used as a sort of death trap, as a complication.

Communications (1 FP; CDVI): The subject connects to a specific communications network, such as police bands, a cellular network, or the internet, and can send or receive communications from that network. More private networks limited to specific individuals should use the Communication Link utility instead.

When added to an Installation, this feature includes a state-of-the-art communications suite that can connect to any standard communications network.

This feature does not circumvent any normal network security measures, although it is possible to do so with the Hack action.

Computer (1 FP; CDVI): The subject functions as a computer, able to process data and run programs. The primary mechanical value of a computer is to serve as a tool for computer-oriented Expertise actions.

When added to an Installation, the entire installation has a privately-networked computer system, which can even run functions of the installation itself. A computerized installation can serve as a workspace, rather than just a tool. Vehicles with computer system are similar, though they only function as improvised workspaces.

Concealed (2 FP; DI): Devices with this feature are small and easily concealed on one's person, or appear innocuous. Installations are hidden from the outside world in some way - camouflaged behind a false facade, buried underground, or something similar. Noticing the object or recognizing it for what it is requires a Perception check, DC 11 + the higher of the owner's Deception or Stealth (Investigation can also be used for installations). Each additional rank of this feature requires one additional degree of success to recognize the object for what it is.

Constrained (5 FP; D): The device is only usable by certain people. You may decide how access is determined - it might use a key, password, or biometric scan. It might require specialized training. It might be enchanted to only be usable by members of a certain family, or those who fulfill some sort of mystical guideline (a "good heart", "pure soul", "worthy wielder" etc). It might be usable only by its owner. An intelligent item may choose who can use it based on its own judgment. Or whatever other criteria you choose. With one rank of this feature, the restriction can be bypassed with a Hack action for a relevant type of Expertise. With two ranks, the restriction is unbeatable. Restricted items can still be taken away from you, but can't be used against you by those that don't meet the restriction's requirements. On the flip side, they also can't be willingly loaned to those who don't.

Defense System (2 FP; DVI): The object has a system in place to protect itself from unauthorized use or access. The defense system can be built as an offensive power worth up to 10 PP per application of Defense System. Each Defense System has a specific trigger, and it can trigger up to once per round. The trigger must in some way involve the target actively attempting to use or infiltrate the object. So it could trigger when an enemy tries to use your weapon, or be used as an internal defense against invaders who enter your vehicle or installation, or even backlash on people who try to hack your computer network, etc. Device and installation Defense Systems can also be set to trigger from attacks against the object; to add this capability to a vehicle, though, you have to purchase it as a full power (probably with the Reaction or Triggered Extra).

Defense systems are typically hidden, with a DC to detect equal to 11 + the owner's Stealth. Defense systems are a form of security, and can be disabled with the Hack action.

Defense systems can only affect people interacting with the object in some undesired way, and can only cause detrimental effects. If some combination of effects and circumstances would allow a defense system to be used tactically - getting a benefit, attacking foes other than those who trigger it, being used as a regular attack, etc - it fails to do so. For example, say you have a weapon that attacks anyone other than you who tries to use it. If a foe disarms you and tries to take the weapon and use it against you, the attack triggers. But if you, say, use a Manhandle action to force the sword into an enemy's hand in hopes of using a move action to hit them with a probably-overpowered attack, it doesn't work. (Although if they are then stupid enough to try to wield the weapon against you, it would work at that point).

Diplomatic Immunity (2 FP; C): By dint of your diplomatic status, you cannot be prosecuted for crimes in nations other than your own. All another nation can do is deport you to your home nation. For one rank in this feature, this extends only to one nation. For two ranks, it extends to all nations. For three ranks, it extends to other worlds as well. For four ranks, it can even extend to other dimensions. Note that diplomatic immunity doesn't apply to states that have no diplomatic ties with your own.

Dual Size (1 FP; CDVI): The object is bigger inside than it is outside. For installations, this works like the Growth feature, except the outer size of the installation doesn't change. For vehicles, each application of this function provides +1 Growth for purposes of calculating space only. For devices, the object can store a Volume Rank worth of material equal to its normal Volume Rank + the ranks of this function (objects not normally capable of storage using the ranks of this function - 5). A character can access some pocket dimension or internal storage capable of storing a Volume rank of material equal to the ranks of this function - 5.

A device or character that is capable of storing a Volume Rank of 1 or higher treats is Volume Rank as an effective Growth rank for purposes of determining space, as per a vehicle. This allows people to enter the storage area, and at Volume Rank 5 or more, also allows the storage area to acquire Room features.

Environment (2 FP; VI): Vehicles or installations with this function have special environments inside. This can mean just habitats with specific climate controls, to full fledged Environment effects (worth up to 10 PP per application of this feature). The environments can only be within the object, although installation environments can also be included in the grounds.

Fortified (2 FP; VI): For vehicles, this feature treats windows as only one rank lower than normal, and two ranks of the feature lets them use their normal rank. For installations, each rank of Fortified raises the durability of all sections by one step, to a maximum of Major Bonus (so with Fortified 1, windows would have -1 rank, internal doors would be normal, external doors would have a Minor Resistance Bonus, and both internal and external walls would have a Major Resistance Bonus).

Grounds (1 FP; I): The installation is surrounded by outer grounds of your choice. The grounds stretch around the main structure to a Distance Rank equal to -3 plus the installation's Size Rank plus twice the ranks of this feature (so for a Size Rank 0 Installation, the grounds would cover 15' at rank 1, up to 60' at rank 2, 250' at rank 3, etc). The GM may set reasonable limits on maximum Distance rank based on available land. The grounds are considered to be part of the installation.

Growth (1 FP; CDVI): Your Mass rank increases by 1 per purchase of this feature, and your Size rank by 1 per four purchases. Vehicles and installations get more space from Growth, as explained in the Objects chapter.

Hidden Compartments (2 FP; CDVI): Any or all of the subject's storage space can be hidden. It takes a Perception check, DC 11 + the owner's Stealth, to detect them. For each additional rank of this function, an additional degree of success on the check is required.

Holding Cells (2 FP; R): Holding cells are fortified and secured to contain prisoners. The cells are as strong as an installation's external walls, and the locks are just as good. Holding cells are often improved with the Secured Location function.

Immovable (2 FP; D): A device with this function can't be moved by external forces. This does operate more as "cannot be moved from its current position" rather than "does not move at all" - if it's aboard a vehicle or the like, its position will be fixed relative to the vehicle. Otherwise its position is fixed relative to, say, the planet it's on, or the like. The object's user can still move it normally, and there might be other qualifications that allow people to move it. The object can also be moved by a Strength (or equivalent force) equal to the owner's PL, +5 per rank of this feature. This feature precludes the Disarm option of the Removable limit.

Immunity (2 FP; DI): Devices and installations can acquire immunities as mere features! Each rank of the feature provides 10 VP worth of immunities to an installation or 5 VP worth to a device. Installation immunities may be Limited (Limit 10) to only walls, only doors, only exterior, or only interior. They may be also be Limited (Limit 20) to only apply to one part of the structure.

Installation immunities can affect all occupants, rather than the installation itself, if desired. Or for an additional 2 FP, they can affect both.

Devices cannot take standard immunities of a strength higher than Major - if you want that level of defense for your device, just forego the Removable (Attack) discount entirely. If you take Removable (Attack 2) the maximum immunity strength is Minor. Objects with Removable (Attack 3+) cannot take the Immunity feature. You don't need to spend FP for your objects to get the default object immunities.

Individual (2 FP; D): If you have multiple objects with the Removable (Attack) or Removable (Disarm) limits, this feature requires they be attacked or disarmed individually. Otherwise a single attack or disarm can affect all of them with no further difficulty, as if they were one object. If only some objects have this feature, an attack or disarm against any of them can also affect all objects that don't have the feature. If you wish, you may add this feature to each slot of a Removable array to make each slot an individual item.

Installation Power (2 FP; I): The installation has a power that directly affects it, typically a defensive power like Defend or Create. The power must have either Sustained maintenance or scene or longer duration, and is constantly active unless disabled by the user. The power can be worth up to 10 PP per rank of this feature.

Powers that could be used for benefits that extend outside the installation cannot be purchased in this way; for those, buy the power normally with Limited (Only usable while within Installation). This mainly means information-gathering powers (where you can, for example, go into the installation, gather the information you want, and then leave armed with the new knowledge), but other powers may apply at GM discretion (likewise, information gathering powers may not count if they're only really useful for telling you about things that enter your installation and the like).

Intelligent (10 FP; DVI): The object has its own intelligence and personality. It doesn't have actions of its own, but as long as its user has the actions to spend, or the action is free or less, it may utilize its powers and functions on its own. Installations with this function do have their own actions, just like characters, and may autonomously use any functions it possesses. The actions of an installation are limited to within its grounds or structure; it can't take actions that have an effect outside of itself.

Iron Stomach (1 FP; C): You can eat anything that's not toxic without ill effects, no matter how unpleasant it may be: spoiled or particularly gross or spicy food, for example.

Isolated (2 FP; I): Installations with this feature are situated somewhere out of the way like the Antarctic, the bottom of the ocean, on top of a lonely mountain peak, even in orbit or on the Moon. The owner doesn't have to worry about things like door-to-door salesmen or other unwanted visitors but the installation is also far from civilization (which can be limiting for heroes unable to travel fast). The installation is assumed to provide all the necessary life-support for its location, but doesn't provide characters with the means to get to the base or travel back. They need the appropriate powers, a vehicle, or a separate installation feature.

Jumping (1 FP; C): Each rank of this feature increases your maximum jumping height and distance by 10%.

Language (1 FP; C): You know an additional language per rank of this feature (by default, characters know their native language, but if the setting includes a "common" language, they know it as well).

Light Source (1 FP; CDV): The object gives off light in a 30' (Distance rank 0) radius or 60' (Distance rank 1) cone. Each additional rank of this feature raises the illuminated area by one Distance rank. This is not necessary for installation lighting.

Living Space (1 FP; R): The object includes all the necessary amenities for people to live there full-time. It includes bedrooms or private suites, kitchen facilities, dining area, bathrooms, and common living areas. Characters can live in an installation or vehicle lacking this feature short-term, but they're not likely to be very comfortable.

Luxury (1 FP; R): The object includes a room that, while not strictly serving a practical purpose, has a specialized function and is just really cool to have in your base. This can mean things like a gym, pool, trophy room, home theater, arcade, or similar.

Might (1 FP; CV): Your carrying capacity is increased by 10% per rank of this feature.

Navigation System (1 FP; CDV): The object includes GPS and navigation functions. As long as you know in general where it is you're going, you can use the navigation system to get there without risk of getting lost and in the shortest amount of time. Navigation systems are not sufficient to navigate you to secret, hidden, isolated, or otherwise restricted locations unless you already know precisely where they are.

Neural Interface (5 FP; DVI): Users can interface with the object mentally. This doesn't make the object any faster or easier to use, but means you don't have to have it in hand or physically manipulate it to use it. Outputs can also be received mentally, so to prevent someone from overseeing your screen or the like.

Occupant Power (2 FP; I): Everyone within the installation receives a power for as long as they remain within (the owner can specify only certain people to receive this power). This functions as a Zone Area effect, so the power is always lost upon exiting. The power can have a value of up to 10 PP or VP per rank of this feature.

As with Installation Powers, powers that could be used for benefits that extend outside the installation cannot be purchased in this way.

Organization Rank (2 FP; C): You are a member of a significant organization in good standing. For example, you might be a soldier in an army, a police officer, a member of an official superhero organization, etc. With one rank in this feature, you are a low-level officer, giving you a measure of authority over most normal members. With two ranks, you are a high-level officer, giving you substantial pull in the organization. With four ranks, you are among the highest ranks of the organization. The GM may modify the level required for certain organizations (smaller and weaker organizations might give you a higher rank for lower costs, while larger or more powerful organizations might require more ranks of the feature for higher ranks).

Personnel (5 FP; VI): The object has a crew, staff, or other group that can operate, manage, maintain, service, and even guard it. While the personnel themselves don't technically count as a "room", the room rules are used to determine the amount of space necessary to allow the personnel to operate without sacrificing normal functionality (so they "use up" an available room's worth of space). The personnel can be made up of a number of characters equal to their "room" occupancy limit.

The GM can control personnel as NPCs, but players may also control their own personnel for role-playing purposes.

Personnel should generally not be useful outside of the object - they don't go on adventures with PCs, and if part of a vehicle, they stay with the vehicle. Outside of the object, their actions are assumed to fail unless the GM decides otherwise. Personnel can have a PL of up to 2, with an additional 2 per rank of this feature, to a maximum PL equal to the owner's PL - 4. They are always Minions, but for additional applications of this feature, can count as one rank higher while within the object, to a maximum of Elite (outside the object, they resume Minion status). If you want multiple types of personnel, you may purchase them for one additional application of this feature each.

Portable (2 FP; V): A vehicle with this function can collapse into a portable form - such as a shrunken version of itself or a briefcase - making it much more accessible. Portable vehicles reduce the limit value of the Removable (Vehicles) limit by one. A portable vehicle must be empty of occupants to become portable, unless it has a Dual Size sufficient to contain the passengers after deducting its normal size.

Power System (2 FP; VI): A power system makes the installation or vehicle completely independent of outside power. It has its own generators (which may be solar, geothermal, nuclear, cosmic, or anything else the designer wants). They provide the object's entire power needs. Installations also have emergency back-up power should the generators fail. This generally lasts for a Time Rank equal to 9 + the rank of this feature.

Power Dampener (5 FP; I): Powers with a chosen source or origin are suppressed within the Installation. Such powers automatically deactivate upon entry, and cannot be reactivated while within. A character may spend 40 Hero Points to try to reactivate its powers; roll a Power Level check, DC 11 + the owner's PL. If you succeed, your powers reactivate for one round per point of success.

Proficiency (2 FP; C): You are proficient in a certain field, allowing you to use the Expertise skill for tasks relating to that field.

Proficiencies are typically fairly broad, but you may choose to take more narrow proficiencies if you wish. Narrow proficiencies are usable in fewer circumstances, but when they do apply, they provide a +5 heroic bonus to Expertise. Specific proficiencies are even more narrow in scope, but provide a +10 heroic bonus. You may take proficiencies that are subsets of a proficiency you already have, so you can use the general proficiency normally, and get a bonus when the narrower ones apply.

A list of example proficiencies is as follows, but these are only examples; other proficiencies are entirely possible, and some settings may have specific proficiencies. Also worth noting, the sample proficiencies are fairly broad and may include overlap in their narrower fields.

If you wish, you may purchase multiple proficiencies for one expenditure, taking -5 on your Expertise skill per doubling of proficiencies. So if you have Expertise +15, for 2 FP, you can take one proficiency at +15, two at +10, or four at +5.

Art: Covers all forms of artistic crafts and expression, and knowledge of the same. Narrow proficiencies include specific categories of artwork, such as Painting, Drawing, Scultpture, Cooking, Writing, etc, or some specific area of artistic skill, such as Art History, Art Forgery, Art Creation, Art Restoration, etc. Specific proficiencies include some further narrowed subset or a specific area of skill for a specific category of artwork, such as Abstract Painting, Graffiti, Painting Forgery, Pottery, Baking, Novels, etc.

Business: Covers all areas of skill and knowledge related to directly running a business and interacting with the financial system, as well as knowledge of major corporations and other large business or financial institutions. Narrow proficiencies include specific areas of business or financial acumen, such as Investment, Banking, Accounting, Human Resources, Advertising, Sales, Corporations, Guilds, etc. Specific proficiencies are specific subsets of those areas, such as Door-to-Door Sales, Print Ads, Forensic Accounting, Taxes, etc, or knowledge of specific companies.

Chemical: Covers all scientific fields related to chemistry. Narrow proficiencies include specific fields of chemistry such as Biomolecular Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Organic Chemistry, etc. Specific proficiencies are specific areas of expertise within a field, such as Thermal Analysis, Solar Power, Oil Refining, Mass Spectrometry, etc.

Culture: Covers general information about the world and its peoples. Narrow proficiencies include specific areas of interest such as Geography, History, Mythology, Theology, Streetwise, and Anthropology, or a specific culture of a broad group (a large country or coherent region, a single race or species, etc). Specific proficiencies include a specific area of interest for a broad group, or all cultural information for a select group (a small country or large city, a specific tribe or subrace, etc).

Criminal: Covers knowledge of the underworld and criminal groups, as well as skill in illicit activities. Narrow proficiencies include a specific area of criminal knowledge, such as Gangs, Prisons, Thievery, Vice, White Collar Crime, Computer Crimes, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific criminal groups or activities, such as Lockpicking, Smuggling, Alarms, Traps, Drugs, Forgery, Hacking, etc.

Engineering: Engineering covers most forms of practical construction. Narrow proficiencies include specific engineering skills, such as Architecture, Industrial, City Planning, Mechanical, Smithing, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific craftworks, such as Building Design, Factory Work, Car Repair, Weaponsmithing, Plumbing, Electrical, etc.

Government: Government covers most areas of knowledge related to government and governing, including how various governmental systems work, although this is more about the governmental system itself (and interactions with and within it) than everything that a government runs - Government is no substitute for other broad proficiencies like Law, Law Enforcement, or Military. The Government proficiency doesn't really cover what specific form of government any given state has, but the Culture proficiency would and once you know that, Government will give you details. Narrow proficiencies include specific governmental systems or functions, such as Bureaucracy, Politics, Democracy, Lobbying, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific areas of interest like Campaigning, Nobility and Royalty, a specific lobby or governmental agency, etc.

Law: Law covers knowledge of one's own legal system (although Culture proficiencies can expand it to other areas as well). Narrow proficiencies include broad fields of law, such as Corporate Law, Criminal Law, Family Law, Superhuman Law, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific fields of law like Contract Law, Fiduciary, Felonies, Divorce, Insurance, etc.

Law Enforcement: Law Enforcement covers knowledge of law enforcement procedures, practices, and organizations. Narrow proficiencies include specific fields of law enforcement knowledge, such as Crime Scene Investigation, Forensics, Protocols, Law Enforcement Organizations, etc. They can also reflect both general knowledge of and skills relevant to a specific law enforcement organization. Specific proficiencies can mean knowledge of a given law enforcement organization without skill in its fields (so you know how, say, the police do their job, but you couldn't do the job of a police officer), or a specific area of expertise like Autopsy, Crime Scene Cleanup, Evidence, Crime Scene Protocol, etc.

Life Skills: Life Skills covers general "around the house" skills. Narrow proficiencies include specific skills such as Cooking, Cleaning, Handiwork, Yardwork, Familial, and so on. Specific proficiencies are very specific tasks like Baking, Laundry, Dishwashing, Roof Repair, Gardening, Babysitting, etc.

Lore: Lore covers general knowledge of superhuman powers and the people who have them. It also covers fictional or fringe knowledge of such things - so in a setting where magic exists, it includes knowledge of actual magical theory and practices, but even if magic doesn't exist it would cover things like occult knowledge, fantasy depictions of magic and magical beings, etc. Narrow proficiencies include specific sources and origins, such as Magic, Aliens, Mutants, Divine, Supertech, or classifications of super-beings such as Superheroes, Supervillains, Government Supers, Military Supers, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific fields of study or groups of superhumans, such as Hero Corps, Evocation, Martians, Angels, Demons, etc.

Media: Media covers knowledge of media and entertainment of all kinds. Narrow proficiencies include specific types of media or areas of interest, such as Journalism, Current Events, Sports, Literature, Television, Film, Pop Culture, Fashion, Gaming, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific media skills, such as Photography, Cinematography, Novels, Scriptwriting, Baseball, Video Games, etc.

Medical: Medical covers knowledge of all areas of medical science. Narrow proficiencies include specific areas of medical science such as Psychiatry, Medicine, Diagnostics, Surgery, Infectious Diseases, Oncology, Pediatrics, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific medical skills such as Brain Surgery, Pharmaceutical, Physical Therapy, Anestesiology, etc.

Military: Military covers knowledge and skills related to military actions, tactics, equipment, and protocols. Narrow proficiencies include details of a specific nation's military, or general knowledge of a certain area of military thought, such as Leadership, Tactics, Strategy, Logistics, Naval, Military Weaponry, Artillery, Military Vehicles, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific areas of study as regards a specific country's military, or very narrow fields such as Battleships, Tanks, Explosives, Squad-Level Tactics, Guerilla Warfare, Basic Training, etc.

Nature: Nature covers all areas of natural science, survival skills, and other outdoorsy knowledge. Narrow proficiencies include specific natural skills such as Survival, Agriculture, Biology, Geology, Environmentalism, Yardwork, and so on. Specific proficiencies include narrow fields like Animal Husbandry, Riding, Volcanoes, Navigation, Desert Survival, Hunting, Weather, etc.

Performance: Performance covers all sort of personal performance before others, as well as knowledge of performance arts and significant performers. Narrow proficiencies include specific fields of performance such as Singing, Dance, Stringed Instruments, Keyboard Instruments, Acting, Oratory, Showmanship, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific types of performance such as Rap, Ballads, Country Music, Guitar, Drums, Ballroom Dancing, Stage Acting, Comedy, Storytelling, Magic Tricks, etc.

Physics: Physics covers the physical sciences and related knowledge. Narrow proficiencies include specific fields such as Mathematics, Astronomy, Theoretical Physics, Classical Mechanics, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific areas of study such as Calculus, Geometry, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Gravity, etc.

Technology: Technology covers knowledge of all forms of modern (or not-so-modern) technology. Narrow proficiencies include specific technological aptitudes such as Computers, Security, Robotics, Industrial, Alien Tech, Nanotechnology, etc. Specific proficiencies include specific technological skills like Web Development, Hacking, Alarms, Programming, Nanofabrication, AI, etc.

Vehicles: Vehicles covers the use and care of all forms of vehicles. Narrow proficiencies are for specific operations, such as Piloting, Vehicle Repairs, Vehicle Engineering, and the like, or specific groups of Vehicles like Ground Vehicles, Water Vehicles, Air Vehicles, Space Vehicles, Military Vehicles, etc. Specific proficiencies are for specific types of vehicles like Cars, Trucks, Tanks, Boats, Ships, Planes, Jets, Helicopters, Spaceships, Starcruisers, etc.

Projection Blocker (2 FP; VI): The walls of the installation or vehicle block projections, as a basic Block Projections environment with a rank equal to the owner's PL. If this feature is purchased twice, this becomes an advanced Block Projections environment.

Purge (2 FP; VI): The object can purge effects of a chosen descriptor that enter it. This can be like a fire suppression system, or a vacuum to suck out harmful gasses, or an effect that purges illusions or mental effects, etc. By default, the purge occurs throughout the entire object every round, regardless of whether or not it is there. The owner may restrict these parameters freely though (for example, having it purge only when the effect is detected, or purge manually, purge only in certain rooms, etc). Each time the purge triggers, it functions as a Counter with a +10 heroic bonus. Characters that might be harmed or otherwise detrimentally affected by the purge treat it as a Hazard of the GM's design, typically with a rank equal to the owner's Force.

One rank of this feature lets you choose a single descriptor. Two ranks lets you choose a group of related descriptors (like "anything that requires air"). Three ranks lets you choose a single source or origin of effects.

Recorder (1 FP; CDVI): The subject is capable of recording sensory information for later review. Each sense that it is capable of recording requires one rank of the Recorder function, except for vision which costs two ranks. By spending only one rank on vision, the object can record still images only. So you can use Recorder 1 for a camera, Recorder 2 for a video camera, and Recorder 3 for an audio/video camera, for example. If the object is also a computer, it might be able to send recordings to other computers or even stream them live.

Installations with the Recorder function have recorders spread throughout the installation and can use them for security. The recorders have a Perception skill equal to the higher of the owner's Expertise, Investigation, or Perception. Installation recorders can also have Senses Utilities or additional FP to invest in Perception, at a cost of +1 FP per 10 VP worth of utilities or Perception skill points.

A vehicle can purchase either type of recorder - either a normal one that can capture data from outside the vehicle (such as a dashboard camera), or an Installation version used for security inside the vehicle.

Remote Control (2 FP; DVI): You can activate functions and powers of the object - even piloting a vehicle - from afar. The controller itself is a separate object with a base Resistance of 0, and is required for remote functions. You may choose when purchasing the object whether remote control functions supersede manual functions or vice-versa. You don't have any additional ability to perceive the object's surroundings, although objects with Recorder functions can send them to a control to help with that.

Remote Function (1 FP; I): One or more of the installation's rooms are separate from the main structure, such as a laboratory in an isolated area (for safety and security) or a hangar high in the mountains overlooking an installation in a valley far below.

Sealed (5 FP; I): This is similar to the Isolated feature, except the installation is sealed off from the outside world rather than isolated by geographic location. It may be a structure with no doors, windows, or other outside access, or behind some sort of barrier. Only the owner and designated guests may enter. Appropriate powers, such as Teleportation or Permeate movement, might also allow access, unless further security (such as a Projection Blocker) is installed. It might also be possible to force entry by smashing through the structure's outer walls - although combining this function with Isolated can mean a building buried so far underground or protected by so inviolate a barrier that such an effort is infeasible given all normal circumstances (essentially requiring GM Fiat to bypass).

Secret (2 FP; I): This is similar to the Concealed feature except the installation is not so much concealed as it is "hiding in plain sight," its true purpose unknown. So, for example, people assume the abandoned house on the hill or the old, closed-down factory are just that. Mundane skill checks are insufficient to learn its true nature. However, extensive research (as a Downtime Action) can potentially do so. The DC is 11 + the highest of the owner's Deception, Investigation, or Stealth skills, and it requires achieving one milestone per rank of this feature (so 1 success at rank 1, 3 successes at rank 2, 5 successes at rank 3, 10 successes at rank 4, etc).

Secure Location (1 FP; VI): This feature can be added to an installation or vehicle with multiple rooms. For each FP spent on this feature, one particular room gets two SP worth of non-room features that only apply to it. You may also spend 2 SP to apply prior applications to another room. For example, you could spend 5 FP to add 10 FP worth of features to an installation's Holding Cells, and then another 4 FP to add those features to a Luxury room (say, a panic room) and a Stasis Chamber. You may also affect the outer frame of the object as if it were a room.

Security (Alternative) (5 FP; DVI): Objects with this function can be accessed by means other than the default locks and keys. This doesn't change the difficulty of bypassing the security, but can change the nature of the security measure. For example, instead of physical keys, it might use a password, biometric scan, facial recognition, magical lock, database of authorized users, or any other means you can devise. This may also change the proficiency required to Hack the object. If the object has multiple security measures, you can modify any or all of them.

Security (Easy) (1 FP; VI): Choose one security measure per rank of this feature; authorized users can get through that security measure as a free action with no token Expertise check.

Security (Improved) (2 FP; DVI): Any skill checks made to sabotage, bypass, unlock, take control of, or otherwise tamper with the object or its functions requires one additional degree of success to achieve.

Security (Layered) (5 FP; DVI): The object has multiple redundant security measures, requiring a separate action to get through each one. While this is somewhat inconvenient for authorized users (each measure is a separate maneuver to bypass and includes the token Expertise check), unauthorized users have to beat each security measure separately, making a separate check for each (or otherwise acquiring the correct means to bypass for each).

Security Clearance (2 FP; C): You have access to classified government information, installations, and possibly equipment and personnel. You may take up to four ranks in this feature, each one resulting in proportionately higher clearance. Security Clearance allows you to automatically succeed attempts to Gather Information with respect to the organization with a DC of up to 16 + 5 per rank of the feature, and may also provide occasional incidental benefits.

Self-Repairing (10 FP; DVI): The object recovers from damage as a character does; it can make Tenacity Checks using its Resistance stat, and treats Bruises and Breaches as scene duration conditions, Ruined as episode duration, and Destroyed as adventure duration. It can also be affected by Healing powers even if they don't normally Affect Objects. Each additional application of this function reduces the recovery rate of Object Damage conditions by one step, to a minimum of scene.

A vehicle can have a maximum of one application of this function. Further self-repairing capability for a vehicle must be purchased using Recovery immunities.

Shrinking (1 FP; CDVI): Your Mass rank is lowered by one per rank of this feature, and your Size rank by one per four ranks. This can make vehicles more maneuverable, but costs them space.

Stasis Chamber (5 FP; R): This room can hold up to its full capacity in stasis. Characters in stasis are effectively unconscious (Stunned, Defenseless, and Unaware) - they are unable to act or perceive anything. They also have full Life Support and Age Immunity. A character must be either willing or both Stunned and Defenseless to be placed into stasis. Once in stasis, the character can't break it naturally - it must be released through intention, accident, or sabotage.

Stamina (1 FP; C): When you are subject to an Onset Hazard, the time you can endure it before it starts affecting you (normally one minute) is increased by one round per rank of this feature. When you are subject to a Continuous Hazard, if you have ranks in Stamina, you can delay its onset by one round per four ranks.

Status (5 FP; C): You have some special status. This might be fame, a political position, a useful reputation, etc. One rank of Status generally means your status is fairly-widely known throughout a city. Two ranks is generally good throughout a small country or a region of a large country. Three ranks is generally good throughout a large country or a region consisting of several smaller countries. Four ranks means your status is known worldwide. In settings with interplanetary communities, five ranks will extend your status between worlds in the same star system, six ranks between stars in the same cluster, seven ranks throughout a galaxy, eight ranks between nearby galaxies, nine ranks between distant galaxies, and ten ranks throughout the universe.

Your status may occasionally give you role playing benefits, or a minimum final result of 11 on interaction skills where your status is a factor. You may also "upgrade" your status by increasing the cost by 2 FP per rank per upgrade; each upgrade results in generally superior status and a further +5 on your minimum interaction skill result. You may upgrade your status up to three times, and you may upgrade only some ranks. For example, the ruler of a major nation might have Status 2 globally, upgrading to Status 4 within the nation it rules.

Storage (1 FP; CD): You can safely store things inside of yourself (or in some sort of pocket dimension, "hammerspace", or the like), or a device with this feature. The subject's storage capacity is a Volume rank equal to its Size rank + 5.

Summonable (5 FP; DV): The owner may summon the object to itself as a free action. The object can be summoned into a usable position - for example, armor can be summoned around the owner and automatically worn, a vehicle can be summoned so the owner is in the driver's seat, etc. The Summonable function does not inherently include ways to beat the summon; if such options exist, they function as a Complication. This feature precludes the Disarm and Take Away options of the Removable limit.

Sustenance (5 FP; C): You can sustain yourself by abnormal means - for example, you might be able to breathe water as well as air, photosynthesize sunlight in place of food, conjure your own food and drink, etc. Each form of hardship you have abnormal means to sustain yourself for is a separate feature, but if you want multiple ways to sustain yourself against the same hardship, the additional ones cost only one extra FP each. For example, being able to breathe water and photosynthesize sunlight is two separate 5 FP features, but being able to breathe water and transmute carbon dioxide to oxygen would total 6 FP, since both of them are ways around suffocation. For +1 FP, your sustenance can be used to sustain someone else instead (for example, you could conjure food and give it to somebody else). Each additional 2 FP beyond that allows you to sustain twice as many people reliably. As a rule of thumb, if you can sustain others, you can generally sustain five times as many people as listed for a short time in emergencies, but you can't keep it up long-term.

Swiftness (1 FP; CV): Each rank of this feature increases your movement speed (and thus top speed) by 10%.

Temporal Limbo (5 FP; I): Time flows at a different rate inside the installation. For each rank of this feature, there is a one Time Rank difference between the installation and the outside world. You choose which direction the difference is in. For example, Temporal Limbo 6 could mean that for every minute that passes inside, an hour passes outside, or vice-versa. You can also dedicate a rank of this feature to making the difference selectible (up to the maximum), or usable in either direction (you can do both with two dedicated applications).

Tool (1-10 FP; CD): The device can be used as a tool for certain uses of certain skills. For 1 FP, it works for a single use of a single field of Expertise. For 2 FP, it works for a single field of Expertise, or a single use of a single skill. For 5 FP, it works for all uses of a chosen skill. For 10 FP, it works in any situation that requires tools. If the tool only minimally satisfies the requirement (+5 DC), treat it as one step higher, so a tool that can be improvised in pretty much any situation would require 5 FP.

Transport (10 FP; I): The installation has instant transport functions - a teleporter, portal room, dimensional nexus, etc. The player can decide the general scope of transit available with the GM's approval. However, the Transport function is substantially less efficient and reliable than equivalent mobility powers. Transport functions are more for plot than tactical purposes. They can be used to get characters to and from adventure sites, but not for tactical movement within. Typically, they have some limits on where they can transport people (such as only outdoors) and take some time (usually at least a minute) to "lock on" to a location and such. However, the GM may freely restrict transport functions at will due to nebulous conditions or circumstances. This is not a Complication, just a built-in restriction of such low-cost mobility.

Upgrade (40 FP; I): This powerful feature allows the installation to treat the user's PL as one higher for all purposes. A given installation can only be upgraded a maximum of five times.

Vehicle Storage (2 FP; R): The installation has storage for vehicles, such as a garage, dock, or hangar. The room can hold a total amount of space worth of vehicles equal to half the room's own space (so, four times a room's normal functional human capacity) and allows vehicles to deploy to an appropriate terrain.

Wealth (5 FP; C): You're wealthy. The first rank of the Wealth feature gives you a solidly upper-class income, or the equivalent (you might have a single lump sum of wealth but a smaller income, for example, or good credit, or a corporate expense account). A decent benchmark for Wealth 1 is somewhere in the range of $100,000 a year. Each additional rank of Wealth represents about three times as much wealth, or each two ranks about ten times as much. The GM may cap Wealth based on what is reasonable for a single individual in the setting; a maximum of Wealth 10 is usually a solid benchmark.

Wealth doesn't directly improve your gear, although from a narrative standpoint it might make it higher quality. However, in circumstances where you can leverage your money directly, for every two Hero Points you spend, your expenditure counts as one Hero Point higher per rank of Wealth. You can't generally use this for most combat or adventuring surges - no amount of wealth will give you combat bonuses, extra actions, and so on - but you might use it to Edit Scene to say you have a particular item, get a Bonus on a social check by offering a bribe, payment, or expensive gift (if that's the sort of thing that would influence the person you're interacting with), etc. You can also use your wealth to improve Request Support surges by hiring people, but hirelings count as Minions rather than Mundanes.

Weapon Systems (2 FP; I): The installation has weaponry that can be used actively to defend it. Users can spend their own actions on the installation's weaponry, and intelligent or computerized installations can direct their own weaponry. Installation weaponry can only be targeted within the installation, although this includes its grounds. The first rank of this feature creates a single weapon station (that is, the weapon system can be manned by one character at a time) with a single weapon (an offensive power of the owner's design) worth up to 10 PP. Each additional application of the function can either: A) Add another weapon station (with all the same weapons) B) Add another weapon option to all stations or C) Increase the point value of all weapons by 10.

Workspace (2 FP; R): The installation includes a workspace appropriate to a chosen type of task. A library for research, a spellcasting chamber for magical rituals, a lab for inventing and experimenting, an infirmary for treating injuries, a workshop for building and repairing objects, etc. Only installation workspaces count as full workspaces; if this room is added to a vehicle, device, or character, it counts as an improvised workspace - it's fine for actions that merely require tools, but only minimally satisfies requirements for workspaces (so, +5 to the set DC). An installation's workspace is a proper workspace, and can be used for actions that require either tools or workspaces at no penalty. With two ranks of the function, the workspace is especially advanced and provides a +2 circumstance bonus on appropriate skill checks performed within the workspace. With four ranks, it provides a +5 circumstance bonus instead.

Companions

Some concepts call for more than just a single character. You might want to play a knight and his squire, a sorceress and her apprentice, a hero/sidekick duo, a family team, a mech and its pilot, a summoner, or so on. And to some degree, even a single character may be able to act like multiple characters in some ways - maybe you want a speedster who can take multiple actions per round, or a powerhouse who can absorb as much punishment as multiple normal characters, or a unit that represents multiple weaker individuals in the game world, but in combat presents a single cohesive, and more powerful, threat.

When a GM adds multiple characters to a challenge, it is free to design them individually using Power Value to measure the overall threat they'll present. But that doesn't work as well for PCs, since Power Value is really a measure of combat strength, and PCs are going to get much more value out of non-combat and versatility options than a given NPC over time in most games. So when you want to play multiple characters, you design them as a group of companions.

A companion is a single character in a group of characters all under the control of the same player. If you have companions, all of your PCs are companions - there isn't inherently one "primary" character who has any specific advantage or importance over the others (although you can certainly design a companion group in such a way). You build a group of companions by purchasing multiple characters with a combined total Power Value of 600. None may be Boss rank, none may have a higher PL than the baseline for a single character, and at least one must be Major rank.

However, companions aren't quite full independent characters, and use the following additional rules:

Limits of Companions

When a player controls multiple characters, they don't receive all the resources that individual PCs do.

Single HP Pool: Since Hero Points are a player resource, an entire group of companions shares one Hero Point pool. However, any time Hero Points are spent to provide or improve a defense against an effect that affects multiple companions, one expenditure applies to them all. So if you spend Hero Points to reroll one companion's Resistance check against an Area attack, all companions who were included in the Area attack get the reroll. But if they were all attacked separately, you'd only improve one's check.

Companions may all have their own complications, although complications that only impact some of the companions will often be worth proportionately fewer Hero Points (as a rule of thumb, use the Power Value chart to "scale down" the Hero Points by the negative Power Rating of the affected companions; for example, if you have two PL 8 companions in a PL 10 game, and a complication only affects one of them, the Hero Point value would be halved, since that companion makes up only half of the group's total power). This rule should only apply when the complication's impact is reduced by only affecting certain companions - most narrative complications, for example, should still provide their full HP value even if they technically only come from one companion.

Limited Actions: While each companion does get its own turn, they can only be freely used to take active actions. Non-active actions may be taken by any companion normally, but the entire companion group shares a second, single set of actions that also get spent for non-active actions. For example, if you have three companions, each one has a standard and move action each round, and can take any given instant action once per round. But the group also shares a second set of a single standard and move action and single use per round of any given instant action. That second set can't be used directly to take actions - it's not a bonus, it's a limit. When a companion takes an active action, they spend their own actions only. When they take a non-active action, they spend both their action and the relevant group action. If the group action is needed but has been spent for the round, the companion can't take the action.

The group action isn't subject to conditions and other effects on companions; even if all of the companions are Dazed, they still have both their group standard and move action, so for example one companion could take a basic standard action and another a basic move action.

A group of companions also shares only one pool of downtime actions.

Single Build: Companions only have one "build" - they all have the same stats, skills, advantages, powers, etc. Companions of lower PL will have their stats proportionately reduced, but they can't make different tradeoffs or purchases. For example, if you trade two points of Accuracy for Force and spend 20 PP for +2 Resistance, a PL 8 companion would have Accuracy 6, Force and Resistance 10, Defense and Tenacity 8, while a PL 5 companion would have Accuracy 3, Force and Resistance 7, Defense and Tenacity 5. But the PL 5 companion couldn't do different shifts.

However, within your single build, you may limit traits to only certain companions. The limit value is equal to half the negative Power Rating of the companion(s) who can use the traits. So for example, in a PL 10 game, if you have a PL 6 companion (Power Value 150), a PL 8 companion (Power Value 300), and two PL 6 Elite companions (Power Value 75 each), and you limit a trait to only the PL 6 Elites, their combined Power Value is 150, for Power Rating -20. So those traits have a limit value of 10, effectively halving their cost.

If a given trait has specific usage limits, these limits are likewise shared between companions.

Since companions have one pool of PP and VP, their individual Power Levels don't determine PP and VP - always use the group's full Power Level for that purpose. Companions may also use the group's full PL for purposes of determining the caps for their measures, soft and hard.

Companion Modifiers

In addition to their normal limits, you can apply certain modifiers to companions to adjust their Power Value.

Independent Arrays: You can have different array slots active at once for different companions. This is another way to get companions "different builds" to some degree; you buy an array of different traits for different companions and purchase independent arrays (and possibly limit the slots themselves to only being used by particular companions). All companions have their Power Ratings increased by 1 per slot the group can have active at once beyond the first - for example, if you can have three different slots active at once, you increase the Power Ratings of all companions by 2. A given companion can still only benefit from one slot per array at a time. Changing each active slot for each array is a separate instant action. You only need to pay for additional active slots once, regardless of your number of arrays.

Independent arrays cannot be used to "increase" your effective available PP, only to apply it in different ways for different companions. The limits of the companions matters here. You could, for example,

You must have at least as many companions as you do active slots. If you have more companions than slots, choose which companions share which slots; a given companion can't freely "jump around" between which slot it uses. So if you have two companions sharing the same slot, they must always use the same array powers. To count for this purpose, a companion must have its own set of active actions; a companion with Shared Actions can't be used to justify an Independent Array slot. Bestow powers cannot be used with an Independent Array unless all available slots are dedicated to the Bestow power.

If your companions use independent arrays, then you may not limit traits in array slots to certain companions so as to increase the effective PP value of the slot. You may, however, limit the slots themselves to certain companions, to save on their VP cost.

Shared Actions: A companion with this modifier does not have its own set of active actions; it has to share actions with another companion. Either one can take actions, but they can't both spend the same type of action in the same round even during active scenes. This modifier reduces the Power Ratings of each companion that doesn't have its own set of actions by 5. It also reduces the Power Rating of the lowest-power companion who is providing actions by 5. A companion cannot share the actions of a companion with a lower Power Rating, but may share its own actions with companions of a lower Power Rating.

Actions taken that target the companions themselves apply to all companions sharing the actions. So a single move action lets all of them move, for example, but any maneuvers that target others have to be divided among them. Descriptively speaking, you can say multiple companions are taking part in the shared action, they just don't get any mechanical benefits for doing so - you could say two companions are attacking the same enemy, but it just resolves as a single attack by one of them. However, you can certainly use powers to mechanically represent multiple companions working together (such as giving them Area or Multiattack attacks).

Shared Conditions: A companion with this modifier shares most conditions with another companion - any conditions that one takes, they all take. This modifier reduces the Power Ratings of each companion that doesn't have its own condition track by 5. It also reduces the Power Rating of the lowest-power companion who is providing a condition track by 5. A companion cannot share the track of a companion with a lower Power Rating, but may share its own track with companions of a lower Power Rating.

There are some exceptions: lethal conditions, and conditions with the Material and Positional attack modes, still apply individually. The companions still make individual Tenacity checks, but they must all remove a condition for it to be removed from their condition list. Other effects that can lessen or remove conditions, such as Healing or Treatment, or Recover surges, reduce or remove the condition for all of them, regardless of which it actually targets. Companions with this modifier must be of the same rank.

If multiple companions who share conditions are all targeted by the same attack, it only resolves once, using the lowest stats, least resistances, and greatest vulnerabilities from among all of them. And in many cases, groups of companions that share conditions will have complications weakening their defense against attacks that target many, most, or all of them.

Shared Body: A companion with this modifier isn't actually a separate individual (probably - you could use this for like conjoined twins, multi-headed monsters, multiple personalities, and so on if you wanted) - it shares a body with another companion. This is how you make characters like a speedster who gets multiple actions in combat or a powerhouse who can absorb multiple characters' worth of punishment - or an enemy so powerful that it counts as multiple characters in combat. Sharing a body doesn't change the companion's Power Rating; it comes with advantages and disadvantages.

Sharing a body means both companions are affected by any lethal conditions, or effects with the Material or Positional attack modes, that any of them suffer. Most other effects likewise work as if the companions were all a single character; which also means that effects that can't target the user can't target any companions sharing the user's body. However, other conditions can be split among the character's multiple condition tracks. Opponents may choose which track they attack (any conditions that impede defenses only apply if on the track that is targeted), and the conditions on each track affect the relevant companion's actions. Area attacks affect all tracks.

Companions sharing a body may also share actions or tracks. If the character has more tracks than it does actions, then excess tracks are "in reserve" - they can't be targeted initially (even by area attacks), conditions on them don't actually apply to the character, and conditions cannot be removed from them while in reserve. As a non-action at the start of each turn, the character can change which tracks are active (attached to an action set) and which are in reserve. So it can swap its tracks around to divide conditions among them, limiting how much it is penalized, or it can wait until one track is heavily filled up and then swap it for a fresh track.

A character with more actions than it has tracks simply assigns multiple actions to the same track. A character may not do both - it can't put three actions on one track, and then have two tracks in reserve, for example. It may only put multiple actions on one track if it has more tracks than actions (and each track must have at least one set of actions), and it may only have reserve tracks if it has more tracks than action sets.

Limits: You can apply limits directly to companions, so the companion is only available (or active, or whatever) when the limit is satisfied. Certain limits may not be appropriate for companions; Removable (Attack), for example, doesn't apply because companions can already be attacked, but other forms of Removable could. For the first ten points of limit rating, each point lowers the companion's Power Rating by 1. The next ten points require two limit rating per -1 Power Rating. The next ten require four per -1, and so on, doubling the amount of limit rating per -1 Power Rating for each 10 points.

You must have at least one character of Major rank who has no limits.

Companion Examples

The companion system can be used for a lot of different concepts. Some examples are below. Also note that while the GM doesn't have to use the companion system when designing challenges, it certainly can to reflect certain NPC capabilities (if there's an enemy summoner, build it as a companion group, for example).

The Sidekick: The sidekick is perhaps the most iconic M&M companion - a single hero with a somewhat-less-powerful ally who otherwise has roughly the same capabilities. A typical hero-sidekick team would be PL-1 for the hero, PL-2 Elite for the sidekick. So in a PL 10 game, you can play a PL 9 hero with a PL 8 Elite sidekick. If you want the sidekick to be Major rank as well, it would be PL 6 instead.

The Team: The team is a group of roughly-equal characters who all work together. Typically they'd have mostly the same capabilities, maybe with some traits Limited to certain ones to add some differentiation, although you could get them more diversity by also adding Independent Arrays. Otherwise, a team generally has no modifiers; in a PL 10 game, you could play a team of two PL 8s, three PL 7s, four PL 6s, etc.

The Tank: The tank is two or more companions, generally of equal PL, with the Shared Actions and Shared Body modifiers, resulting in a single character with extreme durability, allowing it to receive multiple normal characters worth of punishment. Each companion has a Power Rating five lower than normal, so in a PL 10 game, you could play a PL 9 with two condition tracks, or a PL 8 with three, for example.

The Speedster: The speedster is two or companions, generally of equal PL, with the Shared Conditions and Shared Body modifiers, resulting in a single character who can take multiple sets of active actions per turn. Each companion has a Power Rating five lower than normal, so in a PL 10 game, you could play a PL 9 with two sets of actions, or a PL 8 with three, for example.

The Alternate: A character with an alternate form doesn't need companions - you just make a big array slot - but you can also use companions with Shared Actions and Shared Body, kind of like a tank, and Limit each array slot to the relevant track being active, to give each form its own health track. If you want a weaker normal character who turns into a combat powerhouse, then you might lower one companion's PL or rank.

The Summoner: A single character with one or more companions who have the Activation limit, and possibly some other limits depending on how the summoning works. The character might have an array to represent different summons.

The Mecha: Similar to the Sidekick, you have a single stronger character with a weaker ally - but in this case, the stronger character has the Removable (Take Away, Vehicle) limits, and maybe some others, such as Activation (Standard) to get it booted up. With a limit value of 5, you could play a PL 10 mecha with a PL 8 pilot, for example.

Archetypes

Quick Reference

Actions

Action	Skill	Type	Scope	Range	Req.	Dur.	Maint.	Description
Aid	General	*	*	*	*	R	-	Grant bonus to an action.
Attack	General	S	A	C	FM, PF*	S	-	Impose conditions.
Counter	General	*	R	*	*	- (F)	-	Negate or end an action.
Defend	General	S	A	C	*	R (F)	-	Set minimum Defense or Resistance.
Interpose	General	F	R	C	FM, PF	- (F)	-	Take an attack for an ally.
Maneuver	General	M	A	C	FM, PF	- (F)	-*	Move something around.
Manipulate	General	S*	B	I	PM, FF	R*	-	Socially hamper enemies.
Outclass	General	S	B	P	FF*	-	S	Gain an edge with a skill.
Ready	General	*	B	P	FF	R (F)	A	Prepare to act in certain circumstance.
Stance	General	M	B	P	PF	-	S	Focus on a maintained benefit.
Convince	Deception	S	E (T)	I	PM, FF	E	-	Social task to influence NPC.
Disguise	Deception	M	E (7)	C	FM, FF	E	-	Disguise target as someone else.
Distract	Deception	M	B	I	PM, PF	R	A	Distract a target's attention.
Innuendo	Deception	F	OS	I	PM, FF	- (F)	-	Pass a secret message.
Apply Knowledge	Expertise	M	OS	P	FF	- (F)	-	Draw relevant conclusions.
Be Prepared	Expertise	M	OS	P	FF	- (F)	-	Have an item on-hand.
Hack	Expertise	S	E	C	PM, FF	I	-	Bypass security measures.
Impress Others	Expertise	F	B	I	*	S	-	Do something cool.
Perform Task	Expertise	*	*	*	*	*	*	Do something boring.
Recall Fact	Expertise	-	OS	P	PF	- (F)	-	Know something off the top of your head.
Repair/Sabotage Object	Expertise	S	E	C	FM, FF	- (F)	-	Remove or inflict Object Damage.
Consider	Insight	M	OS	P	FF	- (F)	-	Determine if something is a good idea.
Evaluate	Insight	M	B	P	FF	- (F)	S	Determine mood and motivations of those around you.
Intuit	Insight	M	B	P	FF	- (F)	-	Gain information as if spending Insight edge.
Disturb	Intimidation	M	OS	I	PM, PF	S	-	Cause others to hesitate.
Dominate	Intimidation	S	B	I	PM, FF	S	-	Prevent further social action.
Incite	Intimidation	S	E (T)	I	PM	E	-	Social task to influence NPC.
Terrorize	Intimidation	F	OS	I	FM, FF	I	-	Lower defeated foe's rank against you.
Assess Behavior	Investigation	S	E, OS	P	PM, FF	- (F)	-	Learn motivations behind actions.
Assess Clues	Investigation	M	OS	P	PM, FF	- (F)	-	Learn relevance of scene details.
Falsify Evidence	Investigation	M	E, OS	C	PM, FF	- (F)	-	Plant false evidence for others to find.
Gather Information	Investigation	S	E, OS	I	PM*, FF	- (F)	-	Acquire information from a group.
Interview	Investigation	S	OS	I	PM, FF	S	-	Get useful information from willing subject.
Verify Information	Investigation	S	OS	P	PM, FF	- (F)	-	Check if something is true.
Pinpoint	Perception	M	A	P	FF	R	-	Pinpoint things with non-Accurate sense.
Scan	Perception	M	B	P	PF*	-	S	Scan for things that aren't immediately obvious.
Search	Perception	F	E	P	PM*, FF	- (F)	-	Thoroughly search an area.
Watch	Perception	S	B	P	FF	-	S	Keep a lookout for something specific.
Exchange	Persuasion	S	B	I	PM, PF	S	-	Give to get.
Negotiate	Persuasion	M	OS	I	PM, PF	- (F)	-	Get someone to tell you what they want.
Parley	Persuasion	F	OS	I	PM, FF	S	-	Call a hold to combat.
Request	Persuasion	S	E (T)	I	PM, FF	E	-	Social task to influence NPC.
Difficult Movement	Prowess	F	A	P	FM, PF	R	S	Move through restrictive environments.
Feat of Prowess	Prowess	F	A	P	FM, PF	- (F)	-	Look awesome.
Free Maneuver	Prowess	I	A	P	FM, PF	- (F)	-	Perform a maneuver as an instant action.
Mitigate Hazard	Prowess	F	R	P	PM, PF	- (F)	-	Reduce effect of Immediate Hazard.
Conceal	Stealth	M	E	C	PM, PF	I	-	Conceal an object from detection.
Elude	Stealth	F	B	P	FM, FF	- (F)	-	Enemies lose track of you.
Obscure	Stealth	M	B	P	PM, PF	- (F)	-	Perform an action without others noticing.
Surprise Attack	Stealth	M	B	P	PF	- (F)	-	Render foes Vulnerable to an attack in certain circumstances.
Aid Recovery	Treatment	M	B	C	FM, FF	R (F)	-	Boost an ally's Tenacity check.
Speed Recovery	Treatment	S/D	B/E, OS	C	FM, FF	- (F)	-	Grant additional Recovery Points.
Revive	Treatment	F	B	C	FM, FF	- (F)	-	Bring a character back from the brink.
Stabilize	Treatment	S	B	C	FM, FF	- (F)	-	Stabilize a dying character.

Conditions

Condition	Tree	Tier	Description
Dazed	Dazing	1	Lose move action.
Staggered	Dazing	2	Lose standard action.
Stunned	Dazing	3	Lose all actions.
Unconscious	Dazing	4	Stunned, Defenseless, and Unaware.
Distracted	Distraction	1	Impaired and Vulnerable for Full Focus.
Disoriented	Distraction	2	Disabled and Defenseless for Full Focus, Impaired and Vulnerable for Partial Focus.
Incoherent	Distraction	3	Stunned and Helpless for Focus.
Lost	Distraction	4	Incoherent, Exhausted, and Bound.
Fatigued	Fatigue	1	-2 Tenacity, -1 Measures.
Exhausted	Fatigue	2	-5 Tenacity, -2 Measures, worsened tier 1's.
Spent	Fatigue	3	Halve and -2 all numeric traits, halve Recovery Points, worsen tier 1-2 conditions.
Empty	Fatigue	4	Spent, Drained, and Handicapped.
Hampered	Hampering	1	Impaired and Weakened for natural traits.
Handicapped	Hampering	2	Disabled and Crippled for natural traits.
Incompetent	Hampering	3	Lose all natural traits.
Useless	Hampering	4	Incompetent, Bound, and Disabled.
Impaired	Impairment	1	-2 Accuracy and skills.
Disabled	Impairment	2	-5 Accuracy and skills.
Impotent	Impairment	3	Can't succeed most checks.
Incapacitated	Impairment	4	Impotent, Staggered, and Defenseless.
Injured	Injury	1	-2 Resistance, take a Bruise on failed Resistance check.
Wounded	Injury	2	-5 Resistance, double tier 0 conditions received, subject to lethal damage.
Maimed	Injury	3	Double points of Resistance failure, may pass out from actions.
Broken	Injury	4	Maimed, Crippled, and Staggered.
Obscured	Obscuring	1	Treat everything as Partial Concealment, can't speak.
Unaware	Obscuring	2	Treat everything as Full Concealment, can't vocalize.
Deprived	Obscuring	3	Treat everything as Total Concealment, can't intentionally make sounds.
Insensate	Obscuring	4	Deprived, Disoriented, and Drained.
Restrained	Restraining	1	Impaired and Vulnerable for Full Movement.
Bound	Restraining	2	Disabled and Defenseless for Full Movement, Impaired and Vulnerable for Partial Movement.
Paralyzed	Restraining	3	Stunned and Helpless for Movement.
Encased	Restraining	4	Paralyzed, Unaware, and Handicapped.
Suppressed	Suppression	1	Impaired and Weakened for Supernatural traits.
Drained	Suppression	2	Disabled and Crippled for supernatural traits.
Neutralized	Suppression	3	Lose all supernatural traits.
Powerless	Suppression	4	Neutralized, Disabled, and Crippled.
Vulnerable	Vulnerability	1	-2 Defense and active DCs, can't take reactions.
Defenseless	Vulnerability	2	-5 Defense and active DCs, enemies attacks get minimum 11, subject to lethal damage.
Helpless	Vulnerability	3	Worst possible result on Resistance failure, enemies may attack as reactions.
Exposed	Vulnerability	4	Helpless, Wounded, and Disoriented.
Weakened	Weakening	1	-2 Force, lose half of extras.
Crippled	Weakening	2	-5 Force, lose all extras.
Debilitated	Weakening	3	Actions fail to have mechanical effect.
Harmless	Weakening	4	Debilitated, Exhausted, and Wounded.
Influenced	Influence	1	Exert minor influence.
Compelled	Influence	2	Exert disruptive influence.
Controlled	Influence	3	Exert debilitating influence.
Commanded	Influence	4	Exert complete influence.
Bruised	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Resistance.
Dampened	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Force.
Disrupted	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Accuracy.
Hampered	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Measures.
Hesitant	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Tenacity.
Hindered	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Speed. First application is additional -1/5 ranks.
Immobilized	Miscellaneous	1	Can't move from current position.
Muffled	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Scope. First application is additional -1/5 ranks.
Prone	Miscellaneous	1	Lying on the ground, various modifiers.
Sapped	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Strength. First application is additional -1/5 ranks.
Shortened	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Range. First application is additional -1/5 ranks.
Slowed	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Quickness. First application is additional -1/5 ranks.
Tagged	Miscellaneous	0	-1 Defense.
Dying	Lethal	N/A	Will die unless it can keep making Tenacity checks.
Critical	Lethal	N/A	Will die if not treated soon.
Treated	Lethal	N/A	Suppresses Dying and Critical.
Stable	Lethal	N/A	Suppresses Dying and Critical, harder to remove.
Dead	Lethal	N/A	Removed from play.

Environments

Environment	Basic	Advanced
Bestow Movement	Grants movement utilities with capped Speed.	Raises Speed instead of capping.
Block Projections	Blocks effects that can pass through objects.	Doesn't allow a check.
Cover	Spend maneuver to gain Partial Cover.	Upgrade to Full Cover.
Enhance Effect	+2 circumstance for certain effect, source, or origin up to environment rank.	Upgrade to +5.
Extend Movement	Increase Speed (1/2 ranks) and lower Prowess DCs (1/rank) for certain movement mode.	Affects all movement modes.
Extend Projectiles	Increase range of projectiles 1 Distance rank per 2 ranks.	Also impose -1 Defense vs. ranged Contact attacks per 4 ranks.
Extend Sense	Increase range of visual senses 1 Distance rank per 2 ranks.	Also halve starting Distance rank.
Hamper	Resistance check or tier 1 condition while within.	Tier 2 if fail by 2 degrees.
Impede Movement	Reduce Speed (1/2 ranks) and increase Prowess DCs (1/rank) for certain movement mode.	Affects all movement modes but Teleport and Permeate.
Impede Projectiles	Reduce range of projectiles 1 Distance rank per 2 ranks.	Also impose -1 Accuracy on ranged Contact attacks per 4 ranks.
Impede Sense	Reduce range of visual senses 1 Distance rank per 2 ranks.	Also double starting Distance rank.
Restrict Movement	Prowess check or specific movement mode required to move through area.	Can't move through area without appropriate movement mode.
Restrict Sense	Partial Concealment against a chosen sense.	Upgrade to Full Concealment. Natural environments can upgrade again to Total.
Suppress Effect	-2 on certain effect, source, or origin if below rank.	-2 if below twice rank, -5 if below rank.

Surges

Surge	Cost	Active	Description
Action	20-40	Varies	Take an additional action.
Bonus	10-40	Varies	Get a bonus or negate a penalty.
Edit Scene	20	No	Add a detail to a scene.
Inspiration	20	No	Get a hint or clue from the GM.
Mitigate	30	No	Reduce all degrees of an attack by 1, prevent cumulating conditions.
Negate Attack	30	No	Roll Defense check with +10 heroic bonus to negate hit.
Recover	40	No	Reduce the duration of an effect by one step.
Request Support	Varies	No	Get help from an allied NPC.
Reroll	20-40	Varies	Reroll a check with a +10 heroic bonus.
Retry	10	Varies	Ignore one-shot scope for one failure.
Reveal	Varies	Yes	Spend unspent PP or VP immediately.
Stunt	20	Yes	Gain new capabilities for the rest of the scene.

Advantages

Advantage	Type	Description
Accurate Attack	Combat	Accurate Attack stance can swap up to 5 points.
Active Defense	Combat	Active Defense stance can swap up to 5 points.
Animal Empathy	Skill	No penalty to use interaction skills on animals.
Anticipate	Skill	Use Insight edge to learn what an enemy will do on next turn.
Assessment	Skill	Use Insight to learn about the target's stats.
Assistant	Skill	Use Expertise to Aid actions related to your proficiencies.
Attractive	Skill, Ranked (2)	Gain social edges more easily against those who find you attractive.
Beginner's Luck	Fortune	Spend 20 HP for automatic 21 on untrained skill check.
Commander	General	Divide degrees of Aid success among multiple allies.
Complex Stance	General, Ranked	Combine certain stances together.
Connected	Fortune	Spend 20 HP to establish existence of helpful NPC.
Contacts	Skill	Gather Information much more quickly.
Cunning Application	Skill, Ranked	Use a different skill for a certain purpose.
Daze	Skill	Successful Manipulate action also Dazes target.
Defensive Attack	Combat	Defensive Attack stance can swap up to 5 points.
Defensive Manhandle	Combat	Successful Defend action allows you to maneuver target.
Defensive Manipulation	Skill	Successful Defend action allows you to manipulate target.
Defensive Roll	Combat	Reduce number of tier 0 conditions imposed by an attack by accepting a maneuver instead.
Disruptive Attack	Combat	Replace tier 0 conditions with maneuvers.
Eidetic Memory	Skill	Use half Expertise for all fields for purposes of Recalling Facts.
Encourage	General	Use rescaled social skills to Aid allies.
Established Team	General	Share some options with entire team.
Evasion	Combat, Ranked (4)	Gain bonuses to defend against Area attacks.
Extraordinary Effort	Fortune	May use two different active surges per round at increased cost.
Fascinate	Skill	Make targets pay attention to you in lieu of other actions.
Fast Grab	Combat	Perform advanced maneuver as move action with attack.
Favored Environment	General	Get combat or skill bonus in certain type of terrain.
Favored Foe	General	Get attack or skill bonus against certain type of enemy.
Fearless	General	Immune to mundane fear, +2 on Resistance vs. [Fear] descriptor.
Great Endurance	General	Get a bonus to resist repetitive attacks and hardships.
Group Manipulation	Skill, Ranked (2)	Manipulate a group at a lower penalty.
Hide in Plain Sight	Skill	Move with Elude action to get to concealment.
Improved Critical	Combat, Ranked (4)	Increase range of Accuracy check results that cause a critical hit.
Improved Defense	Combat	+2 to Defend actions targeting yourself.
Improved Grab	Combat, Ranked	Grab targets with only one arm, don't count their weight unless moving them.
Improved Hold	Combat	Grabbed target treats all maneuvers as advanced maneuvers.
Improved Initiative	Combat, Ranked	+5 initiative per rank.
Improved Interpose	Combat	1/round turn failed Interpose into successful partial Interpose.
Improved Manhandle	Combat	Successful Maneuver action against unwilling target inflicts one more maneuver.
Improved Manipulation	Skill	Manipulate actions last one additional round.
Improved Smash	Combat	Attack an opponent and its objects simultaneously.
Improvised Tools	Skill	No DC increase for minimal or improvised requirements.
Inspire	Fortune, Ranked (5)	Spend Hero Points to grant all allies a heroic bonus for one round.
Instant Maneuver	Skill, Ranked	Perform a certain basic maneuver as an instant action.
Inventor	Skill, Ranked (2)	Use downtime and Expertise skill to create temporary devices.
Jack of All Trades	Skill	Use half Expertise for untrained Apply Knowledge, Impress Others, and Perform Task actions.
Leadership	Fortune	Spend Hero Points on allies' behalf.
Linguist	Skill	Use Expertise to understand unknown languages.
Move-by Action	Combat	Intersperse movement with other actions.
Power Attack	Combat	Power Attack stance can swap up to 5 points.
Precise Attack	Combat, Ranked (3)	Attacks reduce effect of cover or concealment.
Prone Fighting	Combat	No penalties to combat while Prone.
Ready for Anything	Skill	Substitute third-highest skill to set passive DCs.
Reckless Defense	Combat	Reckless Defense stance can take two conditions for +5 to a stat.
Redirect	Skill	Can manipulate an opponent into hitting an ally with a missed attack.
Second Chance	Skill	Roll skill check as well as setting DC in certain circumstances.
Seize Initiative	Fortune	Spend 20 Hero Points to gain Automatic Initiative.
Set-up	Skill, Ranked	Transfer benefits of a successful Manipulate action to your allies.
Sherlock Scan	Skill	Use lower of Perception or Investigation to scan for clues about a target.
Skill Mastery	Skill	+5 heroic bonus on checks with a certain skill.
Stalwart Defense	Combat	Stalwart Defense stance can swap up to 5 points.
Special Attack	Combat, Ranked	Gain an additional special attack.
Specialization	Skill, Ranked	Get a circumstance bonus for a certain use of a certain skill in a certain situation.
Takedown	Combat, Ranked (2)	If you drop an enemy, free attack against a minion.
Teamwork	General	+5 circumstance bonus on Aid actions that target others.
Tracking	Skill, Ranked	Use Perception to follow tracks.
Trance	General, Ranked	Fall into a trance for various benefits.
Ultimate Effort	Fortune	Spend Hero Points to make a reroll an automatic 20 for certain type of check.
Uncanny Dodge	Combat	Not Vulnerable due to Surprise, Surprise Attacks, or Concealment.
Weapon Break	Combat	Successful Defend action lets you attack attacker's weapon.
Well Informed	Skill	Get information on encountering someone for the first time.

Effects

Effect	Cost	Type	Scope	Range	Req.	Dur.	Maint.	Description
Aid	0	V	V	V	V	R	-	Add modifiers to Aid action.
Attack	0	S	A	C	PM, PF*	S	-	Add modifiers to Attack action, gain a special attack.
Bestow	V	S	B	C	PM, FF	-	S	Grant traits to another.
Commune	0	V	V	V	V	V	V	Add modifiers to any action involving communication.
Concealment	10	F	B	P	PF	-	S	Gain Partial Concealment from vision while active, add extras to Stealth actions.
Create	20	S	B	C	PM, FF	R	S	Conjure objects and barriers.
Defend	0	S	A	C	*	R (F)	-	Add modifiers to Defend action.
Discern	0	V	V	V	V	V	V	Add modifiers to actions involving knowledge, learning, and figuring.
Enhance	0	I	B	P	-	-	S	Add further modifiers to a different effect.
Environment	10	M	B	C	FF	R	S	Change environment effects in the area around you.
Exert	0	V	V	V	V	V	V	Add modifiers to actions involving physical movement/manipulation.
Healing	0	V	V	C	FM, FF	- (F)	-	Add modifiers to Treatment actions.
Illusion	10	M	B	R	FF	R	S	Modify what others perceive.
Nullify	0	V	R	V	V	- (F)	-	Add modifiers to Counter action against same source or origin.
Perceive	0	V	V	V	V	V	V	Add modifiers to actions involving noticing things.
Transform	10+	V	OS	C	PM, FF	V	S	Transform things into other things.

Extras

Extra	Cost	Description
Absorb	10	Convert successful defense to Aid effect as a reaction.
Accurate	1	+1 to hit, -1 to effect.
Additional	10	Cause an additional result on a success.
Additional Sense	1 (N)	Affect additional senses or sense types.
Affects Insubstantial	2 (N)	Ignore Insubstantial immunities.
Affects Objects	2 (N)	Ignore Object immunities.
Aggravated	20 (N)	Ignore Standard immunities and trigger weakness-based complications.
Area	10	Affect multiple targets in an area.
Astronomical	1-3 (N)	Operate on interplanetary scale.
Augmented	10	Special improvement based on effect.
Aura	10	Zone follows a character or object.
Battering	10	Inflict additional tier 0 conditions.
Broad	10 (VP)	Make choices on power use rather than creation.
Brutal	10	Fewer points of success/failure required to improve results.
Consume	10	Successful defense heals you as a reaction.
Contagious	10	Effect spreads to others who come near.
Continual	10	Repeat uses keep prior check.
Counterstrike	10	On successful defense, take same action against initiator as a reaction.
Cumulative	8	Attack conditions combine degrees.
Dangerous	1	Equivalent to Improved Critical advantage.
Dimensional	1-3 (N)	Power works across dimensions.
Diverse	1 (VP)	Make multiple choices when creating power, choose which applies on use.
Divisible	1	Divide potential effects among multiple targets.
Effortless	5 (N)	Make multiple attempts with one-shot action.
Fast	10	Power loses extended scope.
Homing	10	New chance to hit in later rounds.
Immediate	30	If power succeeds, repeat to add degrees until it fails or maxes out.
Increased Duration	10	Increase duration of a power one step per rank.
Increased Maintenance	5	Increase maintenance of a power one step per rank.
Incurable	5 (N)	Ignore Recovery Immunities, increase duration of conditions.
Independent	20	Power ignores effects on you.
Indirect	2	Originate from point other than user.
Insidious	2	Effects of the power are not immediately obvious.
Lingering	2	Area power affects others who enter area during round.
Linked	5	Use two effects together for one action cost.
Movable	8	Allows you to move the power's area as a move action.
Multiattack	10	Attack multiple targets or get an effect bonus from a high roll.
Penetrating	5 (N)	Ignore Resistance immunities and lower Resistance minimums.
Persistent	5	Power is harder to Counter.
Phasing	20	Ignores all forms of cover.
Potent	1	+1 effect, -1 to hit.
Precise	1	Power allows refined control.
Progressive	20	Power's degree may increase each round.
Reaction	10	Power gains the reaction scope.
Reciprocate	10	Failed defense reciprocates damage.
Redirect	10	You may choose target of defensive reactions.
Reduced Action	10 or 20	Lower the action type.
Reflect	15	Successful defense reflects effect upon user.
Reliable	5	Checks get +1 heroic bonus per rank, +2 if not with stat or rescaled skill.
Repeatable	10	Power repeats over time.
Resurrection	10	Allows a Healing power to bring back the dead in a short window of time.
Reversible	1	Can reverse the results of power.
Ricochet	1	Can bounce an attack off a solid surface to get around cover or surprise target.
Secret	1	Cannot be detected by Tactical senses without Perception edge.
Selective	10	You decide who is or is not affected.
Sensory Link	5	Allows you to see through target's eyes when connected mentally.
Simple	2	Lessen a requirement by one step.
Split	1	Take a penalty to affect more targets.
Subtle	2 or 5	Power has no obvious display.
Sweeping	10	Affect a wide sweep to target more characters or mitigate a successful defense.
Tracing	5 (N)	Ignore Defense immunities, increase DC to Interpose.
Triggered	2	Set power beforehand to trigger in a certain circumstance.
Variable Descriptor	1-2	Choose descriptor on use.
Withstand	10	Reduce tier 0 conditions received.
Zone	0	Area effect with duration lasts within area, rather than lasting on those who were initially exposed.

Flaws/Limits

Flaw	Cost	Description
Activation	Limit 1+	Must spend an action to activate each scene.
Advantaged	Limit 1 or 5	Negated by or requires certain skill .
Buildup	Limit 1+	Must build up charges before use.
Capped	Flaw -10	Limits the degree of result.
Complex	Flaw -2	Increase requirements for the power.
Complicating	Limit 1+	First use each scene grants GM some free Hero Points to use against you.
Conditional	Limit 5/tier	Only usable against targets with certain condition.
Contingent	Limit 10	Using it requires certain result on a check.
Costly	Limit 10	Must spend HP to activate.
Distracting	Limit 5	Suffer a condition as long as upgrade is active.
Disruptable	Limit 5	Effect deactivates on failed Resistance check.
Empathic	Flaw -20	You suffer any effects placed or removed.
Fades	Flaw -10	Each use penalizes future uses.
Feedback	Flaw -10	Suffer damage when manifestation or target of effect is damaged.
Focused	Limit 2	Take penalty on other stats, skills, and measures while active.
Full Power	Flaw -1	Must use at full strength.
Increased Action	Flaw -10	Power uses higher action type.
Invested	Flaw -20	While power is active, you are removed from play.
Lessened	Flaw -1 or -5	Reduces a numerical trait involved in use of power.
Limited	Limit Varies	Only usable or applicable in certain circumstances.
Locked	Limit 1 or 2	Traits with a downside can't be turned off.
Medium	Limit 10	Power that operates over a distance requires a certain medium.
Mundane	Flaw -5 to -20	Power uses lower character rank.
Noticeable	Limit 1	Clearly noticeable while active.
One-Shot	Flaw -10	Adds the one-shot scope.
Passive	Limit 10	Cannot use in same round as you target someone else.
Proportional	Flaw -5	Must divide stat among certain calculations for power.
Quirk	Flaw -1 or Limit 1	Minor inconvenience attached to power.
Reduced Duration	Flaw -10	Power has a lower duration.
Reduced Maintenance	Flaw -5	Power has a lower maintenance.
Reduced Range	Flaw -1	Ranged power becomes Close.
Removable	Limit 0+	Power can be temporarily removed by circumstance or enemy action.
Requirement	Limit 5	Must spend action or effort a certain way to use upgrade.
Resistable	Flaw -2, -5, or -10	Power is easier to resist.
Restricted	Limit 1+	You have fewer options for using the trait.
Selfish	Flaw -10	Power only benefits you.
Selfless	Flaw -10	Power only benefits your allies.
Sense-dependent	Flaw -2, -5, or -10	Targets must be able to perceive the effect.
Short	Flaw -2	Scene duration power expires after a few rounds.
Side Effect	Flaw -10 or -20	Suffer conditions on power use.
Source	Limit 10	Must be in close range of the source to use the power.
Synchronized	Flaw -1	Tied to another power, ends when it does.
Tiring	Limit 10	If you used the power, gain condition with episode duration.
Uncontrolled	Limit 5 or 10	Certain choice for power is outside of your control.
Unreliable	Limit 10	50% chance each round that upgrade is unavailable.

Utilities

Utility	Cost	Description
Arrays
Array Slot	1 VP/5 PP	Gain additional mutually exclusive sets of traits.
Combining	Special	Add more traits to slots of a different array while this slot is active.
Dynamic	+1	Only count used points towards array total.
Flexible	+1	Can mix-and-match extras and effects from Flexible slots.
Reaction	+1/10 PP	Swap array slot as instant reaction.
Shiftable	+1	Shift values of extras in the slot.
Slow	Limit 2+	Takes time to swap array slot.
Synched	+0	Use this array's value to activate a different array's slots.
Variable	+3/5 PP	Can change the traits in this slot 1/scene.
Arrays (Variable)
Additional Change	+1/5 PP	Change slot one additional time per scene.
Broad Theme	+2/5 PP	Power's theme is broad enough to justify virtually any trait.
In Play	Limit 2+	Traits you use have to be "brought into play" somehow.
Narrow Theme	-1/5 PP	Power's theme is especially narrow.
Communications
Clarified Communication	Varies	Other characters possess Senses utilities for purposes of detecting your communication.
Comprehensive Communication	2-6	Comprehend a non-linguistic form of communication.
Communication Link	1	Communicate with others with similar link.
Encrypted Communication	1+	People who aren't authorized to receive communication can't understand it.
Interface Communication	2-4	Interface with electronic data.
Projected Communication	2-10	Communicate at a distance.
Rapid Communication	1	Double communication speed.
Selective Communication	2	Only those you wish to hear you do so, without super-sense.
Universal Communication	2-6	Speak/understand any language.
Fortunes
Augmented Edit	5; Instant Reaction	May keep Hero Points when using Edit Scene.
Augmented Inspiration	5; Instant Reaction	Ask additional questions when using Inspiration.
Augmented Recovery	5; Instant Reaction	Reduce additional conditions when using Recover.
Augmented Reroll	5; Instant Reaction	Get a critical bonus on a Reroll.
Augmented Stunt	5; Instant Reaction	Gain multiple benefits from Stunts.
Charge Luck	5; Basic Move or Standard	Take an action to grant temporary Hero Points.
Lucky Streak	5; Free Reaction	Can gain Hero Points on natural 20, opposed natural 1.
Negate Luck	5; Instant Reaction	Can prevent Hero Points from being used against you.
Save Luck	5; Instant Reaction	May retain half Hero Points spent.
Share Luck	5; Instant Reaction	May send half Hero Points spent to an ally.
Siphon Luck	5; Instant Reaction	May gain half Hero Points spent by an ally.
Spread Luck	5; Instant Reaction	Defensive surge applies to all targeted by attack.
Steal Luck	5; Free Reaction	May gain half Hero Points spent by an opponent.
Stock Luck	5; Free Reaction	Can gain Hero Points on natural 1, opposed natural 20.
Temporal Action	5; Free Reaction	Action surge retroactively applies last round.
Temporal Bonus	5; Free Reaction	Get a Bonus after rolling for double Hero Points.
Temporal Edit	5; Free Reaction	Expand usage of Edit Scene.
Temporal Inspiration	5; Free Reaction	Use Inspiration to learn about past or future.
Temporal Mitigation	5; Basic Free	Mitigate conditions after the fact.
Temporal Reroll	5; Free Reaction	Can forego a poor reroll to conserve the Hero Points.
Temporal Support	5; Free Reaction	Request Support from your past or future self.
Immunities
Age Immunity	0	You don't age, or do so very slowly.
Ally Immunity	1+	Specific people can't harm you.
Cipher	1+	It's hard to get information about you.
Condition Immunity	10	Ignore the effects of a certain condition.
Critical Immunity	5	Treat critical hits as normal hits.
Defiance	20	You can recover from tier 3 Scene-duration conditions using Tenacity.
Hardship Immunity	1	Ignore certain hardships.
Hazard Immunity	2 or 10	Ignore certain hazards.
Instant Escape	10	Maneuver action lets you auto-escape.
Interaction Immunity	1 or 10	Immune to interaction skills, but can't use them on others.
Lethal Immunity	5	Lethal damage treated as nonlethal.
Life Support	10	Immune to all hardships.
Maneuver Immunity	15	Immune to undesired Maneuver actions, position changes, and the Immobilized condition.
Manipulate Immunity	15	Immune to the Manipulate action.
Nonlethal Immunity	2-10	Highly resistant to nonlethal damage.
Standard Immunity	Varies	You are immune or resistant to certain types of attack.
Temporal Inertia	1	You are anchored in the space-time continuum.
Morphs
Shifting Attire	1-2	Change your clothes freely.
Shifting Body	5	Make minor appearance changes to reconfigure physical features.
Shfiting Form	2+	Take on entirely different shapes.
Shifting Features	1-2	Make cosmetic changes freely.
Shifting State	10+	Become less substantial, gaining certain movement and immunity effects.
Shifting Voice	1-4	Alter your voice.
Movements
Adapted	1	Ignore Impede/Restrict Movement of chosen descriptor.
Burrowing	10	Move through solid objects destructively.
Climbing	1-2	Move along non-horizontal surfaces freely.
Dragging	1	Drag willing targets freely, drag without carrying.
Flight	10	Move freely in three dimensions.
Flow	2-4	Pass through small openings.
Gliding	5	Control movement during a fall.
Hovering	2 or 5	Cease falling or levitate.
Leaping	2	Jump uses higher of Strength or Speed.
Permeate	10	Move through solid objects non-destructively.
Portal	5	Movement opens a portal that others can pass through.
Safe	1	Performing a maneuver cancels existing falling velocity.
Sure	1	Reduce external penalties to Speed.
Stable	1-2	Move across surfaces that don't support your weight.
Swinging	2	Swing through the air using projections.
Teleport	15	Move without passing through intervening space.
Tunneling	10	As Burrowing, but leaves a tunnel.
Trackless	1	Harder to track with certain senses.
Senses
Accurate	2	Sense can pinpoint exact locations.
Acute	1	Sense can identify and recognize individuals.
Analytical	1	Easily determine fine details.
Broad	1	Pick up broader range of stimulus.
Circuitous	1-2	Detect things around objects.
Clear	2	Sense ignores certain impediments.
Danger Sense	5	Get an instant warning of threats or hazards.
Detect	1	Sense a descriptor others can't.
Extended	2	Increase Scope for this particular sense.
Following	2	Keep track of someone even after they leave your sight.
Informative	4-12	Sense provides additional useful information.
Microscopic	2	Perceive extremely small things.
Piercing	5	Perceive through solid objects.
Positional Awareness	1	Aware of position in space and time.
Radius	1	Perceive in all directions simultaneously.
Ranged	1	Required to use full Scope.
Rapid	1	Increase Quickness for this particular sense.
Remote	10	Project sense over a distance.
Simultaneous	5	Perceive multiple locations simultaneously.
Synesthetic	2	Can move Senses from one sense to another.
Tactical	2	Informative sense reveals information about powers.
True	5	Automatically recognize falsehoods.
Unified	2	Share utilities with another sense of same sense type.
Vague	-1	Sense can't tell much difference between things.

Features

Feature	Cost	Type	Description
Alarm	2	DVI	Unauthorized access triggers alarm.
Alternate Identity	2	C	Additional legal identity.
Ambidexterity	2	C	Use both hands equally well.
Beacon	2	CDVI	Output a trackable beacon.
Benefit	V	V	Varies.
Combat Simulator	2	R	Room for simulating combat situations.
Communications	1	CDVI	Connect to communications network.
Computer	1	CDVI	Computer functionality.
Concealed	2	DI	Device easy to hide, installation hard to find.
Constrained	5	D	Device only usable by certain people.
Defense System	2	DVI	Attack in response to unauthorized use or access.
Diplomatic Immunity	2	C	Cannot be prosecuted for crimes in other nations.
Dual Size	1	CDVI	Object bigger on inside than outside.
Environment	2	VI	Choose internal environment (including effects).
Fortified	2	VI	Raise durability of object sections.
Grounds	1	I	Installation surrounded by outer grounds.
Growth	1	CDVI	Make it bigger!
Hidden Compartments	2	CDVI	Allows hidden storage space.
Holding Cells	2	R	Room for securing prisoners.
Immovable	2	D	Device cannot be moved by external forces.
Immunity	2	I	Installations can acquire immunities as features!
Individual	2	D	Individual objects must be attacked/disarmed separately.
Installation Power	2	I	Installations can acquire powers as features!
Intelligent	10	DVI	Object is sentient and intelligent.
Iron Stomach	1	C	No negative effect from consuming non-toxic substances.
Isolated	2	I	Installation is hard to reach.
Jumping	1	C	Increase jumping height and distance by 10%.
Language	1	C	Learn an additional language.
Light Source	1	CDV	Illuminate 30' radius or 60' cone.
Living Space	1	R	Suite with all amenities required for full-time occupation.
Luxury	1	R	Cool special room with no practical purpose.
Might	1	CV	Increase carrying capacity by 10%.
Navigation System	1	CDV	Avoid getting lost and make best time.
Neural Interface	5	DVI	Users can interface with object mentally.
Occupant Power	2	I	Installation power usable by those within rather than installation itself.
Organization Rank	2	C	Member of a significant organization in good standing.
Personnel	5	VI	Includes a generally noncombatant crew or staff.
Portable	2	V	Vehicle can collapse into portable form.
Power System	2	VI	Object is independent of outside power.
Power Dampener	5	I	Suppresses powers of chosen source or origin while within.
Proficiency	2	C	Proficient in a certain field of Expertise.
Projection Blocker	2	VI	Walls block projections.
Purge	2	VI	Purge effects of chosen descriptor that enter.
Recorder	1	CDVI	Record sensory information from chosen sense for later review.
Remote Control	1	DVI	Object can be used remotely.
Remote Function	1	I	One or more rooms separate from main structure.
Sealed	5	I	Installation sealed off from outside world.
Secret	2	I	Installation is more than what it seems.
Secure Location	1	VI	Add features to only certain room at lower cost.
Security (Alternative)	5	DVI	Change the nature of security measures.
Security (Easy)	1	VI	Authorized users can bypass one security measure with free action.
Security (Improved)	2	DVI	Bypassing security requires additional degree of success.
Security (Layered)	5	DVI	Multiple redundant security measures.
Security Clearance	2	C	Have access to classified information and resources.
Self-Repairing	10	DVI	Object recovers as a character.
Shrinking	1	CDVI	Make it smaller!
Stasis Chamber	1	CDVI	Hold people in stasis, unable to act, unaging, and with full Life Support.
Stamina	1	C	Delay effect of most hazards.
Status	5	C	Special social status in certain area.
Storage	1	CD	Can safely store things inside.
Summonable	5	DV	Summon device or vehicle as free action.
Sustenance	2	C	Sustain self by abnormal means.
Swiftness	1	CV	Increase movement speed and top speed by 10%.
Temporal Limbo	5	I	Time flows at different rate.
Tool	1-10	CD	Satisfies requirements for tools.
Transport	10	I	Installation can be used as limited transport.
Upgrade	40	I	Treat installation PL as one higher.
Vehicle Storage	2	R	Room for storing and deploying vehicles.
Wealth	5	C	You have more resources, improving some surges.
Weapon Systems	2	I	Installation has weaponry that can actively defend it.
Workspace	2	R	Room for working on certain type of task.