Steamfunkateers

by Balogun Ojetade

  Common Ability Synergies

  Special Ability Amplification: You can take special abilities away, but you can give them back and even make them better.

  Frost Projection: When your ability is active, the affected zone isn’t just resistant to special abilities—it is a frigid and inhospitable place.

  Drawbacks

  Nullifying special abilities requires a lot of concentration, and keeping a nullification zone active for more than a few seconds is Exhausting.

  Rather than strictly nullify special abilities, your ability causes special abilities to short out, go off randomly, and generally still work but work wrong. Your nullification zone suffers from Unpredictable Special Ability Misfires.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Superb-Special Ability Strike: By concentrating, you can unleash a burst of energy that strikes at the heart of a Brushed individual. A nameless NPC with special abilities gets killed instantly, while Brushed named NPCs or PCs must either take a mild, lasting condition or lose access to their special abilities entirely until the end of the scene.

  This energy blast resonates throughout the area, causing everyone there—whether they have special abilities or not—to become dazed and disoriented.

  Special Ability Replication

  You never need to suffer from special ability envy. If you can find someone with a special ability, you’ll have it too.

  Basic Special Ability Replication: If you are touching a Brushed individual, you can mimic their special ability. If they resist, you may make an attack using Melee to grab them against their will. You may use the Basic special ability or special ability suite, but you cannot access their Enhancements or Collateral Damage Effects. You get the same Drawbacks, though. Additionally, you always know who around you is Brushed and generally what their special ability is. If you are touching someone with special abilities, you know exactly how their special ability works.

  Enhancements

  Master Special Ability Replication: When the special ability you are replicating requires you to roll the dice—for instance, to attack—you gain +2d to that roll.

  Lingering Special Ability Replication: You can keep the special ability after you let go of the person you took it from. This special ability goes away at the end of the scene or if you replicate another special ability.

  Special Ability Vampire: While you are replicating someone’s special ability, their ability to use that special ability is hampered. If your victim attempts to use the special ability, they must surmount an impediment with Will with a -2d penalty in order to use it.

  Special Ability Suite Duplication: By spending several minutes closely concentrating on a Brushed individual, you can copy most or all of their special ability suite. During this time, you gain your target’s Basic special abilities in the suite. You also gain their Enhancements and Collateral Damage Effects, but you lose access to all of YOUR special abilities, including Enhancements and Collateral Damage Effects. You keep these special abilities for a full scenario or until you willingly get rid of them, at which point your original special abilities return.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Special Ability Amplification and Nullification: If you know how to replicate special abilities, improving or hampering them should be easy.

  Harm: You’re stealing someone’s special ability. You’re stealing a very real part of who they are. That’s gonna hurt.

  Drawbacks

  Too much time thinking about how special abilities work and how to get access to them has left you a little psychologically damaged: you are Special Ability-Addicted.

  A light tap on the arm isn’t enough for you to borrow someone’s ability; your special ability-theft Requires Sustained Physical Contact.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Replicated Collateral Damage: You can use the collateral damage effect of the person whose special ability you are replicating.

  Superb Agility

  You are an acrobat without compare.

  Basic Superb Agility: You are preternaturally graceful, and gain +2d to Athletics when leaping, balancing, or otherwise demonstrating your agility. In addition, you have a Prodigious Leap: leaping up to a second-story window or from rooftop to rooftop across a wide alleyway is a simple task that, without further complication, requires no Athletics roll.

  Enhancements

  Master Superb Agility: You gain an additional +2d bonus to Athletics when demonstrating your superior agility.

  Cat Footed: You know just how to land after even the highest fall. When you fall, you land on your feet and take no damage, regardless of the height you fall from, as long as you are conscious.

  Uncanny Dodge: If you can see a projectile coming, you can get out of its way with some clever gymnastics. You gain +2d to defense checks when dodging ranged attacks.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Strength: You have strong legs, which is why your leaps are so prodigious.

  Flight: You might not have true flight, but your leaps are so superhumanly powerful that they are nearly indistinguishable from flying.

  Drawbacks

  Your legs don’t like being still. When you aren’t leaping through the air, you are Restless.

  While your leaps are decent enough, what actually moves you are lines of sticky webbing, strong vines or rope, or metal cords that work like grappling hooks. You Need Solid Anchor Points in order to leap.

  Your leaps are amazing, but not incredibly accurate. Outside that’s not a problem, but you are Accident-Prone While Indoors.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Mighty Bound: If you put everything you have into it, you can leap incredible distances; from the ground to basically any outdoor point in the city. Of course, putting that much muscle into a jump will crack the pavement where you land.

  Hair-Trigger Reaction: If you are targeted by a ranged attack from another zone, you can use your superhuman agility to not just leap out of the way, but also leap toward your attacker, landing in their zone. This causes the attack to miss you, but it will still hit something in your zone.

  Superb Intelligence

  You are the smartest person in any room.

  Basic Superb Intelligence: You gain +2d to Will when working through puzzles, riddles, or other mentally absorbing tasks. In addition, you can answer complicated mathematical problems instantly.

  Enhancements

  Master Superb Intelligence: You gain an additional +2d to Will when demonstrating your mental acuity.

  Walking Library: You’ve forgotten more than most people will ever know. By spending a point of Vigor, you can use Will in place of Scholarship and gain the bonus to Will from Superb Intelligence, even if it’s not a mentally absorbing task.

  Strategist: You don’t just understand facts; you understand how people operate. You gain +2d to Empathy when attempting to predict someone’s future actions.

  Taskmaster: Once you see how someone fights, you can exploit their weaknesses. When someone deals a physical condition to you in a conflict, you gain +2d to all attack checks against them until the end of the scene.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Precognition: Your intelligence is so far beyond the norm that you can predict the near-future with uncanny accuracy.

  Influence: People are just complex systems that a clever mind can manipulate with the right words, and your clever mind always knows just what to say.

  Natural Weapon: Your fists are no stronger than anyone else’s, but your ability to read an opponent means you know exactly where to strike for maximum effect.

  Drawbacks

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s sometimes difficult for the very brilliant to get along with the more normal. You Think You’re Better than Everyone.

  Your brain doesn’t shut off. Because of your endlessly contemplating, productive mind, you are Intensely Sleep-Deprived.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Uncanny Parry: You can use your gift for analysis to dive
rt an incoming attack. When an attack would hit you, you can have it instead strike a nameless NPC in your zone—they wandered into the line of fire at the exact right moment, as you planned. When this happens, you take no damage and the NPC is knocked out or otherwise incapacitated.

  Battle Plan: Your tactical mind has figured out exactly how a given conflict will shape up—you just need to remind your companions what to do. You can shout out a battle plan to give yourself and every ally in the scene the boost We’ve Planned for This. Unfortunately, doing so will give whomever you’re fighting a little insight into your tactics.

  Superb Senses

  Some of your senses are much more acute than is normal. It sometimes surprises you when you realize just how blind the rest of the world is.

  Basic Superb Senses: Pick a single sense—sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. You gain +2d to Investigate when using that sense. In addition, that sense cannot be impeded; for instance, you can see in darkness or hear clearly in a cacophony.

  Enhancements

  Master Superb Senses: You gain an additional +2d to Investigate when using your superior sense.

  Sensory Suite: Pick another sense for your bonus to apply to.

  Alertness: Your senses are heightened even when you aren’t really trying. You gain +2d to Spot against anything you could identify with your superior sense.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Superb Agility: Included among your enhanced senses is proprioception—your ability to recognize where your body is in space. That lets you pull off some superhuman acrobatics.

  Precognition: Included among your enhanced senses is your ability to sense things before they occur.

  Drawbacks

  The human brain wasn’t meant to deal with this much input all at once. You are Easily Overwhelmed.

  You can’t tune out or narrow your super senses. It’s hard for you to focus on what’s important at the moment. As a result, you suffer from a Slowed Reaction Time.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Mental Map: Your senses are so finely tuned that you can create a full mental map of an entire floor of a building in an instant; all you need to do is click your tongue and listen to the echoes, or perhaps light a fire and watch the way the air currents move the smoke. Whatever the method, it gets you the layout of the building, but it’ll likely attract unwanted attention.

  Hyper-focus: You can focus the full power of your super sense on someone anywhere in the scene. Because of your superior focus, you gain +4d to all attack and defense rolls against your target until you end this effect or the target is incapacitated in some way. However, you cannot attack anyone else while hyper-focused, and you are liable to cause collateral damage because you’ve stopped paying attention to your surroundings.

  Superb Speed

  You move at a rate of acceleration and maximum speed in excess to that of normal optimal human capacity.

  Basic Superb Speed: You gain +2d to Athletics rolls that involve moving quickly. Additionally, you can move quickly enough to run across liquids or up sheer vertical surfaces—although if you slow down or stop, you’ll sink/fall.

  Enhancements

  Master Superb Speed: You gain an additional +2d bonus to Athletics when moving quickly.

  Improved Reaction Time: You can use Athletics in place of any other skill for the purpose of determining turn order.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Phasing: By concentrating carefully, you can accelerate the molecules in your body to such a point that they no longer interact with common, non-accelerated matter.

  Natural Weapon: When you fight, you might not hit harder than anyone else, but you get a whole flurry of hits in at once, which is just as good.

  Superb Intelligence: It’s not just your body that moves quickly; your mind also operates at high speed.

  Improved Special Effects

  Lots of Actions: You can apply your attack, defend, skill and ability rolls to up to three different actions, adding +1d to each.

  Drawbacks

  Even a super-speedster gets tired, and when your hyperactive metabolism is on the downswing, you can suffer from intense Burnout.

  In your world, people are moving in slow motion; they take forever to do the simplest tasks. No wonder you are so Easily Distracted.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Time Sprint: If pressed, you can run fast enough to break through time itself. You and anyone and anything you are holding onto disappear completely, reappearing in the same position in the future—as little as one exchange later, but up to a week, with no time having passed for you. The spontaneous return to the natural flow of time, however, is sudden and potentially violent.

  Speedster: If you’re willing to tear up the streets—shattering glass, injuring pedestrians, and such—you can travel pretty much anywhere in the same city in the span of a single exchange.

  Superb Strength

  You are an unstoppable force; a mountain of muscle. You possess strength well beyond that of normal humans.

  Basic Superb Strength: You gain +2d to Physique in all situations that require pure strength.

  Enhancements

  Master Superb Strength: You gain an additional +2d bonus to Physique in situations requiring pure strength.

  Immovable: You aren’t going to get pushed around so easily. You are immune to all forced movement.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Natural Weapon: Who needs weapons when you can put this much muscle behind every hit?

  Superb Toughness: Tough and strong; a natural fit.

  Improved Special Effect

  Discus: You can throw a target of your attack up to four zones away.

  Drawbacks

  Your super strength also makes you super aggressive. Sometimes you can’t help but fly into a Destructive Rage.

  Your special ability comes from having muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. You are big and beefy but, unfortunately, Clumsy.

  Superb strength isn’t quite the gift everyone makes it out to be; just ask the trail of broken doors, shattered plates, hospitalized spouses and other chaos you leave in your wake. It’s not fun when you Don’t Know Your Own Strength.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  SMASH!: It’s easy for you to just pick someone up and hurl them away, or slam them on the floor like a porcelain doll. You can pulverize a nameless NPC entirely, or deal a moderate, lasting condition to anyone else, at the expense of the structural integrity of the buildings around you.

  Earthquake: You can raise your fists and hit the ground with enough force that the whole earth seems to shake, attacking everyone in your zone with Physique.

  Superb Toughness

  It’s not that you’re too strong-willed to show that you’re hurt, or that you recover especially well from being hurt. It’s that you just don’t get hurt.

  Basic Superb Toughness: You automatically and instantly reduce the severity of any physical conditions you suffer by one step.

  Enhancements

  Master Superb Toughness: You automatically and instantly reduce the severity of any physical conditions you suffer by two steps.

  Implacable: The best defense is not even noticing that someone is attacking you. You gain +2d to defend against physical attacks.

  Juggernaut: Running around obstacles is for people afraid of running through them. You gain +2d to any attempt to surmount an impediment to your movement by smashing right through it.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Regeneration: You are truly hard to kill.

  Shielding: Your super toughness is actually an unconscious side effect of your ability to throw up energy shields.

  Drawbacks

  Your toughness is actually a form of armor, either literal armor that you have to put on or armor that you can encase your body in at will. Either way, it impedes your mobility, leaving you Slow.

  You’re super tough and can’t really feel pain, but that’s because your entire sense of tou
ch has been dialed down to 1. You Can’t Feel Much of Anything.

  The source of your super toughness isn’t internal; it’s in the mass of keloids covering your entire body, or the series of chitinous plates sprouting from your joints, or something else similarly Horrifying to Behold.

  Collateral Damage Effects

  Bulletproof: You can, at will, shrug off any amount of physical condition from a single source—bullets simply bounce off your chest, uselessly. However, the damage is reflected into your environment; bullets gotta go somewhere, after all.

  Interception: When someone, up to one zone away, is attacked, you can intervene, throwing yourself in front of them to defend for them. Leaping into action and throwing targets out of the way, however, will incur its own damage. All this assumes you are able to move there, of course.

  Telekinesis

  You are able to move, manipulate and control a multitude of people and objects with your mind without physically touching them.

  Basic Telekinesis: You can move small objects in your own or adjacent zones without physically touching them. By hurling objects around, you can attack with Will against targets in your zone.

  Enhancements

  Master Telekinesis: You gain +2d to Will when attacking with telekinesis.

  Long-Range Telekinesis: Your mental abilities stretch unusually far. You can move objects and make attacks up to three zones away using telekinesis.

  Telekinetic Might: You can use Will to lift large objects. Lifting something adult human-sized is a level-1 obstacle, while a steam car is a level-2 obstacle.

  TK Shield: You can ward off physical attacks with the power of your mind. By erecting a telekinetic shield, you can defend with Will against physical attacks.

  Common Ability Synergies

  Flight: You can hoist your body into the air using your special ability.

  Shielding: You can use your telekinesis to erect shields, either generated from nearby detritus or composed of sheer psychic force.