Steamfunkateers

by Balogun Ojetade

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Ah-ha, Ya Missed Me: If you aren’t worried about where the shots actually end up, you can phase out as someone is attacking you. You can ignore all physical damage from a single source, because it strikes everything around you instead.

  Armor Piercing: By imparting some of your intangibility to a rock or other small object and then tossing it, you can have it become solid inside a target. This will make the projectile shatter violently inside the target, sending shards ricocheting throughout their body, which deals a moderate, sticky condition to them.

  Plant Control

  You possess the ultimate green thumb.

  Basic Plant Control: You can communicate with plants up to two zones away. You can direct and accelerate their movements, animating them and using them to take physical actions or even make attacks. When an animated plant takes actions, you roll your dice with Empathy to control it. Picking up objects is a 0-level challenge (no penalty), while manipulating them will be a level-1 or level-2 challenge (-1d or -2d), depending on complexity. Having plants uproot themselves and move around is a level-4 challenge (-4d).

  Enhancements

  Master Plant Control: You gain +2d to Empathy when animating plants and take no more than a -1d penalty, regardless of complexity.

  Accelerated Growth: You can induce a plant to grow from only a seed to fully grown in just a few seconds.

  Woodland Stride: Your fine control over plants means that they never obstruct you. You can walk through a tree, phasing through the trunk as if there was nothing there. Furthermore, you can phase through any objects made of plant matter, such as wooden doors.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Slowing: No matter where you go, there’s enough grass or weeds underfoot to let you tangle up an opponent.

  Harm: You have a natural expertise with plant-based toxins. You might even secrete them.

  Drawbacks

  Occasionally—or fairly often, depending on the adventure—you leave the great outdoors for exploration of a haunted mansion, or get thrown in the slammer, or visit a house of ill-repute. You hate it when that happens because you are Not Very Useful Indoors.

  You are part plant yourself, or too much time in their presence has caused chlorophyll to leech into your flesh. Either way, you have Green Skin.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Rapid Reforestation: You can summon forth an entire grove of trees, filling your zone. It is a level-2 obstacle for anyone attempting to enter or leave the zone. Of course, this revenge of nature will tear up anything on the ground.

  Creeping Vine: You can plant a little sprig of ivy at the base of a wall or any solid object. After a few seconds, the ivy covers the obstacle, extends tendrils through it, and then collapses it entirely, allowing you to pass through the barrier.

  Precognition

  You have a bit of insight into how things are going to go; you know how to dodge just before a punch gets thrown.

  Basic Precognition: You can see hits coming early, letting you use Spot to defend against all physical attacks. Also, during a conflict you always act before anyone who does not have Precognition.

  Enhancements

  Master Precognition: You gain +2d to Spot when defending against physical attacks.

  Visions: Once per scene, you may ask the GM a question about future events, the likely outcomes of your actions, or any other information you can only access through seeing the future. The GM must answer as honestly as possible, but may be vague.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Senses: Your senses aren’t actually heightened, but you have an uncanny knack for looking in the right spot at the right time.

  Telepathy: Your mind has a unique construction; it allows you to see into the future and also to read the minds of those around you.

  Drawbacks

  There are so many different futures that you can half-see; it’s overwhelming, leaving you with Constant Migraines.

  Your ability to see the near-future is so finely tuned that it eclipses your ability to stay in the now, leading you to answer questions before they’re asked and dodge blows before they’re thrown. You Have Trouble Seeing the Present.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Expected Backup: At any point, you can announce that you knew there would be trouble several hours ago, so you called in a tip to local law enforcement. This law enforcement immediately arrives in force, most likely breaking through windows or kicking down doors to get there. Whether this backup means the constabulary, the sheriff, a U.S. Marshal, or a gang of Street Sparrows defending their territory depends on the scene and is up to the GM.

  Future Echoes: You open up your mind and fill the brains of everyone around you with visions of the near-future. This leaves everyone else in the scene confused and disoriented. Every time someone else makes an attack, they choose the lowest die roll because they keep aiming where someone is about to be. This effect lasts a few minutes or until you dismiss it.

  Regeneration

  You aren’t made of iron. You can get stabbed just as easily as the next guy. The difference is, once the knife gets pulled out, you’re ready to fight again.

  Basic Regeneration: Whenever one of your physical conditions begins to recover, it gets renamed and moved to the next lower condition, if available. This clears away mild consequences immediately. Additionally, at the end of a scene, if you have any mild physical consequences—whether they are recovering or not—they get cleared away automatically.

  Enhancements

  Master Regeneration: It’s easier for you to start the healing process. Anyone, including yourself, attempting to begin healing one of your physical conditions gets +2d to their roll.

  Immortal: You can be knocked out, or otherwise incapacitated in combat, but nothing can make you actually die. Ever.

  Quick Recovery: By spending a point of Vigor, you can use Will to attempt to begin recovering one of your physical conditions. You can do this at any time, even as an action during combat.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Toughness: It’s not that you don’t get hurt; it’s that the things that hurt normal people just don’t apply that much to you.

  Harm: Part of your enhanced regenerative ability is an immune system so powerful it actually attacks anyone who gets too close to you.

  Drawbacks

  You don’t heal perfectly. Every time you come back from an injury, there’s a scar, even if it’s just a little one, and those things add up. By this point, you are Grotesquely Scarred.

  You are older than you look—much, much older. You may have lived several lifetimes, or spent a few decades trapped in ice before you were revived. Either way, you are From Another Time.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Horror Show: You can perform an act of horrifying self-mutilation in front of everyone in your zone—tear off your head and hold it in your arms as you ask your target for a kiss; hang yourself with your own intestines; slap a man in the face with your severed hand and challenge him to a duel. When you perform such a grotesque act, nameless NPCs will flee in fear, and named NPCs and PCs must use Will with a -2d penalty to avoid taking a moderate, sticky mental condition.

  Shrapnel: Your body is full of bullets, blades, bones, and all kinds of detritus from past battles. If you don’t mind embedding all that stuff in the walls and people around you, you can force your body to eject the foreign material en masse at top speed. By doing so, you attack everyone in your zone and one adjacent zone using Marksman.

  Shape-Shifting

  You are what you want to be.

  Basic Shape-Shifting: You can change your form into that of any creature. You can use Will to get the upper hand of Creature Form. The opposition is generally level-1 (-1d penalty), though it increases for particularly large or small shapes and for complex transformations like a swarm of bees to level-2 (-2d penalty). Your new shape persists until you decide to end it or get incapacitated.

&nb
sp; Enhancements

  Master Shape-Shifting: You gain +2d to Will when attempting to change your shape.

  Skill-Shifting: When you change your shape, select one skill. Gain +2d to that skill as long as you remain in creature form.

  Rapid Shifting: Changing your form is nearly instant; it does not take an action.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Flight: With a little fine control over your shape-shifting ability, you can sprout wings whenever you need them.

  Animal Control: Your time being an animal has taught you to think like an animal—and consequently, how to order an animal around.

  Drawbacks

  Your transformations aren’t perfect; whenever you return to human shape, some animal features remain. You Don’t Look Quite Human.

  While your transformations are impressive, you can only tweak your form a little bit; you can’t change it entirely. You are Limited to Terrestrial Mammals.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Mokele-Mbembe: You can turn into a giant dinosaur or similarly massive force of destruction, able to crush everything around you. You can only hold this form for a few minutes, though, and you’re sure to tear up everything around you. While massive, you gain +1d to attack rolls and all that defend against you suffer a -1d penalty.

  Pangolin: You can turn yourself into an armored dinosaur-sized creature or similarly unstoppable juggernaut, unfazed by anything around you. You can only hold this form for a few minutes, though, and you’re sure to crush everything around you. While armored, you gain +2d to defend rolls and can knock down obstacles like thick concrete walls just by walking through them.

  Shielding

  You keep people safe with invisible walls of force. It’s not flashy, but it’s a solid defensive ability.

  Basic Shielding: With a moment’s concentration, you can erect a barrier between your zone and an adjacent zone, which lasts until the end of the scene or you will it away. This barrier is transparent, but no matter can pass through it.

  When someone attempts to attack through the barrier, or attacks the barrier itself, you intercept the attack, using Will to defend. If the attack succeeds, you may either take a moderate, sticky mental condition or allow the barrier to shatter and take a mild, fleeting mental condition. You may erect multiple barriers, but each active barrier after the first reduces your Will check by 1d.

  Enhancements

  Master Shielding: You gain +2d to Will when attempting to maintain your barriers.

  Opaque Shields: When you create a barrier, you can make it transparent, opaque, or anything in between.

  Precision Shielding: You can create much smaller shields, surrounding a single human-sized target within your zone.

  Semi-Permeable Shield: You and your allies can attack through your barriers, but at a -1d penalty.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Telekinesis: With a little concentration, you can demonstrate finer control over your shields, letting you manipulate objects in your own zone or an adjacent zone.

  Invisibility: Light doesn’t pass through your shields quite cleanly; it bends a little. With practice, you’ve learned to get light to bend all the way around your shield, making everything within it invisible to the naked eye.

  Drawbacks

  Because you can throw up protective barriers with ease, you’ve never had to really defend yourself. As result, anyone who breaks through your shield will find that you’re Quite Frail.

  Your barriers don’t appear instantly; instead, they coalesce as the air solidifies. Your shields are Slow to Form.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Shield Bubble: By creating a small shield around yourself and expanding it out at high speed, you can knock every target—enemies and allies—in your zone into an adjacent zone of your choice. Each pushed character takes one physical condition. Using this effect also pushes around anything else that happens to be in your zone.

  Deflection: If you are aware of a projectile attack against you, you can generate a shield at a precise angle, redirecting the attack to any other target in your zone or an adjacent zone. The new target defends against the attack. Doing this makes your shield break apart, however, throwing shards of invisible force all around your environment.

  Slowing

  You have the ability to stop a person in their tracks.

  Basic Slowing: Select a target up to one zone away and make a roll using Marksman. That target cannot move to another zone until you release them or they surmount an impediment with opposition at a level equal to your Marksman rank.

  “Slowing” is a broad term for several different means of getting an opponent to stop in their tracks. The skill used to surmount your slowing depends on the nature of your special ability:

  If you are physically entangling your opponent, as with vines or webbing, they use Athletics.

  If you are encasing your target in a barrier, such as a mound of ice, they use Physique.

  If you are slowing them with a psychic force, they use Will.

  Enhancements

  Master Slowing: You have perfected your ability to hold people in place. Gain +2d to Marksman when slowing targets.

  Slow Field: You can affect an entire zone with your special ability. Select a zone up to one zone away, and perform a Marksman roll with a -1d penalty. Your special ability affects every target in the zone, friend and foe.

  Stop: When you entangle your opponents, you entangle them completely. When slowing a target, you may choose to use the Marksman skill with a -1d penalty. If you succeed, your target cannot take any physical actions until they escape from your special ability.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Speed: You steal speed from your opponents, absorbing it, which allows you to move at greater speed.

  Superb Toughness: You have an aura of slowness around you. You can still get hit, but punches land a little slower than they otherwise would.

  Drawbacks

  You don’t slow someone by force of will alone; you hit them with a bola, a sticky web, a length of chain, or something of that nature. Whatever the precise form, you Require a Prop to make it work.

  Your ability to slow others is a reflection of your own personality; you’re just a Lethargic person.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Mass Slowing: When pressed, you can apply your slowing effect on a massive scale, targeting everyone in your zone and every adjacent zone. Of course, by affecting so many targets, you’re likely to damage something in the environment as well.

  Timeless Zone: Your special ability comes from an ability to manipulate time itself. You can turn your zone into a bubble of stopped time; nobody within it can take any actions, until you release the effect or the scene ends. However, the border between regular and timeless space is a strange and dangerous thing, which will kick up powerful winds and potentially destroy whatever gets too close.

  Special Ability Amplification

  You don’t do much on your own. But when there are others around with special abilities, you are vital.

  Basic Special Ability Amplification: By touching a Brushed individual, you can give them the boost Empowered, which they may invoke during any use of their special ability. You may only have one such boost in play at a time; if you generate another, the first goes away. If unused, the boost goes away at the end of the scene. Additionally, you always know who around you is Brushed and generally what their special ability is.

  Enhancements

  Master Special Ability Amplification: You can create an additional Empowered boost. You may apply multiple boosts to a single target, or spread them around.

  Ray of Empowerment: You can empower a target even if you cannot touch them, up to one zone away.

  Lingering Special Ability: Select any special ability you have, including Ability Synergies, besides Special Ability Amplification. Anyone with your Empowered boost gains access to the basic form of that special ability.

  Common Ability Synergies


  Special Ability Nullification: You can give a special ability, and you can take it away. That makes you pretty scary in a Brushed melee.

  Electricity Projection: You amplify others’ special abilities with bolts of lightning. You’re not sure how it works, but it’s effective.

  Drawbacks

  Your ability is less than short-range; you Must Maintain Physical Contact to keep someone empowered.

  When you empower an ally, they’re taking some of your energy away. Your special ability Leaves You Weakened while your allies are empowered.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Mass Empowerment: You can give your Empowered boost to every Brushed individual in the scene, friend and foe, in a single wave of energy. Outputting this much energy in a single go, however, has unpredictable effects on inanimate objects and unpowered humans; they get tossed around, thrown in the air, and might even explode.

  Special Ability Nullification

  The guys who amplify special abilities are more popular, but you’re arguably more important, if only as a jailer.

  Basic Special Ability Nullification: You can render your zone inhospitable to the use of special abilities. If someone attempts to use a special ability in your zone, they must surmount an impediment with Will with a -2d penalty in order to use that ability.

  This nullification field does not affect you, and you can dismiss it at will. Additionally, you always know who around you is Brushed and generally what their special ability is.

  Enhancements

  Master Special Ability Nullification: Increase the opposition to the use of special abilities to -3d penalty to Will.

  Distant Special Ability Nullification: You can create a special ability nullification zone up to two zones away. This zone may exist in addition to the one in your zone. You can only maintain one zone of distant special ability nullification at a time.

  Full Nullification: By touching a target, you can temporarily strip away their special ability. If they resist, you can make an attack using Melee to grab them against their will. Once stripped, they cannot benefit from their special ability in any way until the end of your next turn.