Steamfunkateers

by Balogun Ojetade

  Elasticity

  You’ve got a body as stretchy as rubber and twice as resilient.

  Basic Elasticity: Your body stretches to incredible lengths. By stretching yourself, you can interact with objects and make melee attacks in an adjacent zone without moving. Additionally, you can contort your body into rough approximations of animals, objects, and tools, although your mass doesn’t change and you still very much look like yourself.

  Enhancements

  Master Elasticity: You are extra stretchy. You can stretch yourself one zone further.

  Filament: You can stretch yourself thin enough to squeeze through impossibly small gaps. If there is an opening as large as a keyhole in a barrier, you can move through it as an action.

  HAND-y Person: You can change your hands into a functional tool, such as a crowbar, hammer, or lock-pick. Scissors are about as complex a tool as you can make this way.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Toughness: Your body is a shifting, inconsistent mass of vague stuff. It’s hard for it to get hurt in a meaningful way.

  Disguise: With a little careful manipulation, you can reshape your face, body, and even voice into convincing facsimiles of someone else’s.

  Natural Weapon: Your elastic arms can turn into blades, hammers, clubs… all manner of melee weaponry.

  Drawbacks

  Because all of your bones slip and slide around, you can never really bring good leverage to bear during physical tasks. You are actually quite Weak.

  You aren’t so much “elastic” as you are a formless, shapeless horror. You might be able to put on a fairly humanoid form, but you Need to Concentrate to Stay Solid.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Swole: You can swell up like a balloon, large enough to completely fill your zone. This is an attack on everyone, friend and foe, in your zone, which causes the Disabled condition. Every target who suffers a condition is moved into an adjacent zone of your choice. Meanwhile, everything else in the zone gets moved or crushed.

  Ricochet: When you bounce back, you do so with style. When someone attacks you with a projectile, you can use your body’s rubbery quality to reflect it back at them. If you do, both you and your attacker must defend against your attacker’s roll, and any special effects created by the attack apply to both of you. Doing this may send wayward projectiles in the direction of innocent bystanders, however.

  Energy Absorption

  You are a human capacitor, able to absorb pure energy into your body and release it at will.

  Basic Energy Absorption: You may use Physique, with a +2d bonus, to defend against any energy-based attack and to surmount energy-based obstacles, simply by absorbing the energy into your body. Energy-based threats include electricity, radiation, fire, aether and most energy blasts; in short, things that can hurt you but aren’t solid objects or gasses.

  Enhancements

  Master Absorption: Gain an additional +2d to Physique to defend against energy-based attacks or to surmount energy-based obstacles.

  Voltaic Pile: Absorbing energy empowers you. Whenever you successfully defend or surmount an obstacle using your special ability, in addition to any other effects, you gain a Filled with Energy boost, modified to reflect the type of energy you absorbed. You may only have one such boost at a time.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Energy Blast: The energy you absorb doesn’t bleed away slowly; you release it with force. As an energy blaster, you can shoot out energy of the same type that you most recently absorbed.

  Harm: People need energy to live, and you can take grim advantage of this fact by draining it out of them.

  Superb Toughness: Kinetic energy is energy too, after all. You can’t stop a physical attack, but you can slow it enough that it doesn’t hurt so badly.

  Drawbacks

  The human body is not a perfect battery, which is why you’ve blown out a few walls without meaning to. You suffer from Involuntary Bursts of Energy.

  Wherever you go, incandescent light bulbs flicker, telegraphs go haywire, and steam-cars won’t start. You Can’t Shut It Off.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Lamprey: You can suck out every last bit of energy in the area to empower yourself. This instantly shuts down anything mechanical in your zone, but clears all your physical conditions.

  Discharge: You can release all the latent energy you’ve stored up in one deadly burst, right through the heart of one target in your zone, dealing a severe, fleeting condition. But it’s not a perfectly accurate discharge: random bolts of energy flare around you causing a mild, fleeting condition to everyone else in your zone.

  Energy Blast

  A classic special ability with innumerable variations: you can shoot stuff—from your eyes; from your fists; from your chest, mouth, knee caps, or anywhere else.

  Basic Energy Blast: You can fire a projectile of some sort, with a range of three zones, using Marksman.

  Enhancements

  Master Energy Blast: Your shots are especially accurate. Gain +2d to Marksman when using your special ability.

  Long-Range Blaster: Your projectile is tightly focused; you can fire up to 6 zones away.

  Defensive Blasts: You throw out energy blasts quickly and accurately enough to intercept other projectiles. You can defend using Marksman against attacks from another zone that you are aware of.

  Kinetic Acceleration: Anything that you can physically lift, from a playing die to a person, you can toss with all the power of an energy blast. This is an attack using Marksman.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Projection: What you fire isn’t just a blast of undifferentiated energy; it’s a specific element. Pick from Fire Projection, Electricity Projection, Frost Projection, or Shadow Projection.

  Item Summoning: You aren’t throwing pure energy; you’re throwing stuff that you pull out of thin air.

  Flight: Basic physics. Point your energy blasts down, and you go up!

  Drawbacks

  Your energy blast takes the form of aether beams shooting from your eyes. This is great for sniping at a distance, but not for tracking nearby targets. You are Inaccurate at Close Range.

  Your blasts come with huge bursts of concussive force, which generate Lots of Collateral Damage.

  You don’t have true control over your blasts: energy pours out of you non-stop, but you have safety equipment to hold it in check until you need to fire. You Need a Device to Protect Those Around You.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Rapid Fire: You can shoot every target within your zone at full strength. If you throw out that many shots, though, you can’t help but hit something you don’t mean to.

  Charged Shot: If you take a few seconds to concentrate, you can generate a blast with enough force to blow open the door to a bank vault, destroy a reinforced wall, or otherwise eradicate an obstacle. Of course, a blast this big is slow and imprecise. It’ll tear up the entire room.

  Flight

  You are one of the lucky ones, able to take to the air as easily as most people walk down the street.

  Basic Flight: You can move through the air as easily as moving along the ground. Use Athletics to surmount obstacles or get the upper hand related to flying.

  Enhancements

  Master Flight: You can fly better than most people can walk. Gain +2d to Athletics rolls while airborne.

  Eagle-Eyed: You can, in fact, see your house from up there. Gain +2d to Spot and Investigate checks that involve seeing distant things.

  Supersonic Flight: Without gravity getting in your way, it’s surprising how quickly you can get around. During conflicts, you may move up to two zones in an exchange, rather than one, in addition to your action.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Speed: Without the ground to slow you down, you can get where you need to go in a hurry.

  Improved Special Effect

  Bum-Rush: Move yourself and a target in your zone by up to two zones. Both of you end
up in the same zone.

  Drawbacks

  Your ability to fly comes from the pair of great big wings sprouting out of your shoulder blades. You are Very Noticeable.

  You can’t actually fly on your own. Instead, you have artificial assistance, such as a jetpack. Your special ability has Limited Fuel.

  Humans aren’t actually built to fly; without wings or a tail to act as a rudder, you find that it is Hard to Maneuver in Flight.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Cannonball: By flying a few stories up and slamming yourself back into the ground at top speed, you create a shockwave. This attacks every target in a zone at the expense of the structural integrity of the zone.

  Cyclone: You fly in a tight circle at top speed, whipping up intense winds that push every other target out of the zone. You determine who is pushed into which adjacent zone.

  Forge

  You have special insight into how stuff works, letting you assemble incredible devices with seemingly no resources.

  Basic Forge: You have an intuitive understanding of machines of all types. Just by seeing a device, you can tell what it does, at least in general. In addition, you gain +2d to Tinkering when repairing or building complex devices.

  Enhancements

  Master Forge: You gain an additional +2d to Tinkering when repairing or building complex devices.

  Superior Forge: When you use a surmount action to build or repair a device and get Four Successes, Five Successes or more, instead of gaining a boost, you create a situation descriptor. This descriptor fades away at the end of the scene, even if you hold onto the device.

  Useful Devices: You have any number of fantastically useful contraptions tucked into your utility belt. You can spend a point of Vigor to create just about anything you could possibly carry on your person.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Forge: Virtually any special ability can become an ability that you have thanks to a gadget you have forged. You might have jetpack-powered Flight, a device which lets you Phase through walls, or a chest-ray to create energy Shields. Even though these special abilities come from devices, the devices only work because of your superb craftsmanship, so they can be affected in the same way as standard special abilities can by Special Ability Amplification, Special Ability Nullification, and other means.

  Technology: Your mechanical aptitude is superior, but it’s not quite superhuman. Likewise, the devices you create aren’t super-gadgets, just leading-edge pieces of technology.

  Drawbacks

  You learned to build things out of sheer necessity, not because you like it. It turns out, despite your skills, Machinery Tends to Fail around You.

  If not for your inventions, you wouldn’t be here today. After a horrible accident some time ago, you are Kept Alive by Your Own Devices.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Highly Experimental Device: Once per scene, if someone suffers a Moderate physical or mental Condition or worse (including you), you can pull a highly experimental device out of your pocket, prepared for just such an occasion. Not only does your device completely negate the condition that would have caused you to be incapacitated, it also clears all your other conditions. After that, your device explodes, misfires, goes rogue, or otherwise renders itself inoperable while dishing out some collateral damage.

  Handmade Off Button: You’ve got a very useful little remote control in your pocket, which you can use to just shut off one or more devices in the scene—anything as technologically advanced as a pocket watch is a viable target. You can choose what to target, but your control isn’t perfect. Also, sometimes you “shut things off” by making them explode. You’re trying to work that kink out.

  Harm

  You have a deadly touch. You don’t have to hit people to hurt them; just brushing up against them can be fatal.

  Basic Harm: By maintaining skin-to-skin contact with another person for a moment, you deal them a mild, fleeting physical condition. Additionally, when you attack a target using your bare hands, you cause a moderate, fleeting physical condition.

  Enhancements

  Master Harm: Your touch is considerably more painful. You cause a moderate condition when you maintain skin-to-skin contact for a moment, or a severe condition when you attack with your bare hands.

  Ray of Harm: You may harm anyone in the same zone as you without touching them. If they are resisting, use Marksman.

  Piercing Damage: Your ability ignores the target’s Armor. Additionally, you do not have to maintain skin contact for your special ability to work; you can cause harm through multiple layers of clothing.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Healing: It’s not unusual for someone with your special ability to trade damage for healing or vice versa.

  Drawbacks

  You cause harm in the form of strange, cancerous lesions all over your target’s skin. Unfortunately, you show them as well, making you look Grotesque.

  Despite your best attempts to keep it in check, your special ability is always active in small ways: roses rot in your hand and food spoils when you touch it. You Can’t Turn It Off.

  Your special ability is usually inactive, which means you aren’t accidentally damaging those around you, but it means you can’t always bring your ability to bear; you have to be furious at a target to harm them. Your special ability is Fueled By Rage.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Epidemic: You can emanate a wave of harm from your body that affects everyone in your zone. It kills nameless NPCs, while named NPCs and PCs must successfully defend with Physique with a -2d penalty to avoid taking a moderate, sticky physical condition.

  Tarnish: Instead of decaying flesh, you can use your ability to weaken metal. Every metallic object in the scene—including handcuffs, deadbolts, and weapons—either falls apart or becomes so fragile that a single hit will shatter it.

  Healing

  You are, invariably, the most popular person to have on hand during a fight. You make hurt people not hurt so much.

  Basic Healing: You can make a Will check with a -2d penalty to totally clear another character’s physical condition(s). A character may only benefit from your ability once per scene. Additionally, you can use Will to improve the severity or duration (not BOTH; choose which) of a physical condition by one step on another character with no penalty to your roll. For example, a Dislocated Knee is reduced to a Sprained Knee. If the Sprained Knee is healed, it disappears altogether.

  Enhancements

  Master Healing: You suffer no penalty to Will when you roll your dice to start healing another character’s condition.

  Condition Drain: You take another character’s physical condition and transfer it to someone else with a Will check against the person’s Physique you are trying to give it to. You must touch both people at the same time to perform the transfer.

  Over-Healing: When you heal a target’s physical condition, they also gain a point of Vigor.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Regeneration: Most doctors can’t operate on themselves, but there’s no reason you can’t turn your special ability inward.

  Harm: Medicine and poison is the same thing, really. It’s all about the dosage and delivery.

  Improved Special Effect

  Healing Wave: Every injured person in your zone reduces the severity of their physical condition by one step.

  Drawbacks

  Your healing is tied to your emotional state and your ability to feel compassion for your target. No matter how pressed, you Can’t Heal Someone You Don’t Like.

  Your healing ability isn’t perfect; like any healer, you’ve lost patients before, and like any healer, you’re Racked with Guilt about it.

  The human body is incredibly complex, which means you Require Complete Concentration to heal your targets.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Invulnerability Charge: If someone in your zone is attacked, you can turn the full extent of your special ability onto
them, causing them to ignore the damage entirely. The damage still has to go somewhere, though: Bullets or energy blasts would pass right through your target, and kinetic energy from powerful punches would pour into the ground.

  Pacifist Aura: You can turn up your special ability to such a point that it’s almost physically impossible for people to get hurt in your presence. Everyone in your zone gains +4d to Physique to resist damage until the scene ends or you end the special ability. However, the vital energy filling the area tends to make inanimate objects leap about in unpredictable ways.

  Illusion

  You can make things appear there that really aren’t.

  Basic Illusion: You can project an illusory image, up to about human size, as far as one zone away. You can also generate sounds, including voices. You must concentrate to keep the illusion active. Others must actively try to see through your illusion. This is a surmount check using Investigate, which you actively oppose using Deceive.

  Enhancements

  Master Illusion: You gain +2d to Deceive when opposing someone trying to see through your illusions.

  Giant Illusions: You can create illusory images that fill up an entire zone. Instead of being limited to individual illusory objects, you can create and populate entire rooms.

  Full Sensory Overload: Your illusions cover all the bases: sight, sound, smell, and even touch. That said, anyone attempting to physically push through an illusion will quickly realize it offers no actual physical resistance.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Shielding: By combining the sensory input of your illusions with physical barriers to reinforce them, you can create incredibly convincing simulacra. You can encase the shields you generate within illusory walls.

  Telepathy: While you generate your illusions in the minds of those around you, you can poke around in those minds. This is especially useful if you want to project someone’s darkest secret or hidden fear.

  Drawbacks

  Everyone has demons, of course. Not everyone has the latent ability to bring their subconscious thoughts into the real world when they aren’t paying attention. You suffer from a Subconscious Made Real.