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Custom Powers Master List (Work In Progress)

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Sanctaphrax:
Man, the recent arguments have totally killed my productivity.

It's time to get back to work. I have a stunt list to finish cleaning up, an Item of Power list to update, and a Sponsored Magic list to add to.

Plus the wiki and the guide, but those can wait.

Plus this.

It just occurred to me that the "unaware of the attack" thing could just be part of the take-out narration. So forget that bit. Also, I think I have a better way to phrase the limits of the compulsions now.

Added maneuvers to Mental Communication and Weaponized Telepathy because if you can act on something you should be able to put aspects on that thing.

New version:

TELEPATHY [-2]
Description: For whatever reason, you can read minds and communicate mentally.
Skills Affected: Discipline, Empathy
Effects:
Mind Reading. You may use your Discipline or Empathy skill with a +1 bonus to read people's minds. This functions similarly to the Reading People trapping of Empathy, but unlike that trapping it does not require any kind of personal interaction. It can be used on anyone in your line of sight, is fast enough to be performed within a single exchange in combat, and is defended against with the Discipline skill. Furthermore, you may use your Discipline or Empathy skill with a +1 bonus to defend against attempts to deceive you.
Mental Communication. You may communicate silently with anyone in your line of sight. This renders eavesdropping impossible and bypasses all language barriers. It also allows the transmission of pictures, memories, and other information that cannot easily be put into words. This does not make deception impossible or even noticeably more difficult. You may use this ability to perform maneuvers with your Discipline or Empathy skill.
Weaponized Telepathy [-1]. You may make maneuvers and attacks with your telepathy against anyone in your line of sight. Attacks made this way have no weapon rating, inflict mental stress, and use either the Empathy skill or the Discipline skill. The Discipline skill is used to defend against them. They work by overloading the target's brain with mental signals, causing pain and confusion.
Greater Weaponized Telepathy [-1]. (Requires Weaponized Telepathy) Your telepathic attacks are weapon 2.
Superior Weaponized Telepathy [-1]. (Requires Greater Weaponized Telepathy) Your telepathic attacks are weapon 4.
Compulsive Weaponized Telepathy [-1]. (Requires Weaponized Telepathy) When you take someone out with a telepathic attack, you may compel them to act in accordance with a mental command. Commands made this way cannot be completely out of character for their targets. As a general rule, the limits of this ability are roughly equivalent to those of a successful social attack.

I think that this might be good enough to call finished. But I'm half-asleep here, so maybe I'm just deluding myself here.

Please tell me what you think of this.

Sanctaphrax:
Continuing with the mental theme, here's Stoicism. I didn't change much, I just reworded it, made the Catch optional, and added a rebate for taking it with normal Toughness.

Changed the Catch bit because I couldn't think of a problem with catchless Stoicism.

Gave a rebate because a) Stoicism seems pricey in most games and b) once you've covered the most common damage type the other type ought to be cheaper and c) I wanted to make it affordable to be tough against everything.

Any comments?

Think I might go after The Catch next. Which would deserve its own thread.

INHUMAN STOICISM [-2]
Description: Your mind is abnormally stout, withstanding far more abuse than that of the average human.
Note: This power has no effect on mental stress that is paid as a cost to use a Power or to accomplish something else. It can, and generally should, be attached to an appropriate mental Catch.
Skills Affected: Conviction, other mental skills.
Effects:
Hard To Twist. You naturally have armour 1 against all mental stress.
Hard To Break. You have two additional boxes of mental stress capacity.
Universal Toughness [+1]. If you possess Inhuman or better Toughness, the cost of this Power is reduced by 1.

SUPERNATURAL STOICISM [-4]
Description: You can shrug off mental traumas that would utterly destroy a normal person.
Note: This power has no effect on mental stress that is paid as a cost to use a Power or to accomplish something else. It can, and generally should, be attached to an appropriate mental Catch.
Skills Affected: Conviction, other mental skills.
Effects:
Harder To Twist. You naturally have armour 2 against all mental stress.
Harder To Break. You have four additional boxes of mental stress capacity.
Universal Toughness [+varies]. If you possess Inhuman Toughness, the cost of this Power is reduced by 1. If you possess Supernatural or Mythic Toughness, the cost of this Power is reduced by 2.

MYTHIC STOICISM [-6]
Description: The durability of your mind is preposterous.
Note: This power has no effect on mental stress that is paid as a cost to use a Power or to accomplish something else. It can, and generally should, be attached to an appropriate mental Catch.
Skills Affected: Conviction, other mental skills.
Effects:
Nearly Impossible To Twist. You naturally have armour 3 against all mental stress.
Nearly Impossible To Break. You have six additional boxes of mental stress capacity.
Universal Toughness [+varies]. The cost of this Power is reduced by 1 for each level of Toughness that you have.

Sanctaphrax:
So, here's what's left of the list of planned edits I posted earlier.

Shadow Manipulation:

Shadow Manipulation [-1]
This reminds me of some powers I helped set up for a shadow-user I GMed.
Dark Void -1
Effects: You can increase the shadows within a zone. Add the aspect sticky aspect Increased Shadows, by using discipline. This can be opposed by a counterspell.
Myrrk Void: Your shadow-increasing skills rival the Myrrk itself. Give a +1 to attempts to create shadows, and add the aspect Near-Myyrk alongside Increased Shadows.
Shadow Warp -2
You can travel from shadow to shadow with a distance up to one zone. This requires no roll, but in order to escape into the shadows while being attacked use Athletics. When emerging from the shadows, roll stealth against all nearby enemies' alertness. If you succeed, you gain a relevant aspect. If not running away, you may then make an attack as a supplametal action. (Yes, you can warp into an enemy's shadow).

Shadow Manipulation [-1]
Description: You are able to use your shadow to physically manipulate objects, not only that but your shadow is malleable to your will. You can stretch it across great distances or coalesce it into a small area.
Options: This ability costs 1 refresh to start and has several upgrades to it.
Skills Affected: Fists, Might
Effects:
Shadowy Hand. You can manipulate objects with your shadow. You can lift objects in accordance with your might, and attack using fists. Each zone away from you reduces the effectiveness of your might and fists roll by 1. The closer you are, the more effective your shadow is. Using your shadow on something in the same zone as you is easier, and you gain a +1 bonus to any such roll. In addition if you possess inhuman strength or greater your shadow gains those benefits as well.
Deeper Shadows [-1]. Increase the weapon rating of attacks made with your shadows by +2.
Lasting Shadows [-1]. Your shadows take longer to dissipate, allowing you to spread your attention across a battlefield. Any aspect placed with Shadow Manipulation automatically becomes sticky.
Wall of Shadows [-1]. Your shadows have become so dense, so impenetrable that creatures without the cloak of shadows ability are almost utterly incapable of seeing past them. You may use your Shadow Manipulation to create a defensive block opposed by alertness.
Shadows Fall [-1]. Your shadow is capable of growing much larger than it should be, allowing you to attack a whole zone with it (at a -2 penalty).

Hunger Magic:

Hunger Magic [-1]
Description: You can channel the life force you've stolen to sate your hunger in order to bolster your spells.
Musts: Feeding Dependency, Some sort of Spellcasting
Skills Affected: None
Effects:
Reach Into the Well. You may invoke one spellcasting related aspect for the cost of two hunger stress without paying a fate point.
Deeper Reserves. Since you've learned to use stolen life force for other purposes, you've also had to expand your capacity to store it. You gain one mild hunger consequence.

Being A Swarm:

Swarm of Nasties (-3): Somehow, one body just isn't enough. Whether you're turning into a swarm of bats and flying off into the night, or a pile of venomous leeches, somebody's going to get freaked out. Requires previous shapeshifting ability.
When turned into a swarm, gain
Physical immunity (catch is area attacks + normal weaknesses)
Demonic Copilot (either your subconscious desires or actual demons)
*Everything is Big (as everything is small, but reverse the penalties and bonuses.)
In exchanged, lose all ranged attacking potential, and the ability to block.

SWARM BODY [–3]
Description: Rather than one entity, your body is made from a multitude of lesser creatures, making you more difficult to harm.
Musts: This power comes with its own specific Catch (see page 185). If you suffer physical consequences, they must take into account the non-singular nature of your body; a demon with a body made from five-hundred-and-two stone crabs is unlikely to suffer a Broken Arm.
Skills Affected: Endurance, other physical skills.   
Effects:
Chipping Away. Physical attacks cannot inflict more than one stress on you at a time; no matter how devastating the blow, it can only target a small part of your “body”. The effects of this power are applied after additions and subtractions from weapons and armour; wielding a sword will not appreciably increase one’s ability to fight off a swarm of bees (by the same token, bees do not classically benefit from wearing kevlar).
Specific Catch. Unlike other Toughness powers, Swarm Body comes with its own preset Catch, which offers no discount. The effects of this power are completely bypassed by area attacks; that is, those attacks that encompass a great majority of the target’s body. Diminutive insect swarms would be thus affected by sprayed insecticide, while a human-sized enemy would be vulnerable to flamethrowers or suitable evocations, and even larger swarms might require more extreme measures to seriously damage. Note that a clever maneuver might force a swarm into a confined space or formation, and thereby reduce the size of the attack necessary to harm it.

Powers That Negate All Creatures Are Equal Before God:

The Catch and Only the Catch (-3)
Life for Mortals is not fair, get over it!
Must: 1 Toughness Power
World Don’t Work That Way!: Your Toughness Powers can only be overcome by the Catch and only the Catch.  This Power counts as a Toughness Power for determining total cost.
(Designer  Note: If the Catch for the Toughness Powers are too unreasonable a Game Master can disallow a Player from choosing this Power; so as to prevent some super-munchkin from taking an absurd Catch and making it the only way to harm them.)

[-3] There Is No Salvation
There are many powers in the world that make it their business to level the playing field and give inferior creatures a "fair" chance by rewarding their inferiority.
Sometimes though, rejoice, despair, Fate does not care. This is where you come in; removing all external crutches you put all creatures in their rightful place in the world.
Effect: Pay a Fate point. For the duration of the scene, only your actual catch can negate your toughness and recovery powers.

Mindless:

MINDLESS [-1]
Description: You don't have a mind. Either you mindlessly obey others or you simply execute a complex program.
Musts: You must take an aspect to represent the thing that you use instead for a mind. For example, THE MERLIN'S PROPERTY or PROGRAMMED TO KILL.
Skills Affected: Mental and social skills
Note: This power requires excellent justification if taken by a character with positive refresh. Not for balance reasons, but for logical reasons. As such, this power is mostly unsuitable for player characters.
Effects:
No Mind. As a mindless creature, you cannot be attacked mentally. Duh. You have no mental stress track and never take mental stress. You are not immune to social stress, but social attacks and maneuvers have no effect on your actions even if you are taken out. So unless someone wants to ruin your reputation or credibility, there's no point attacking you socially.
Incapable Of Thought. Not being able to think has its downsides. You may not use any skill trapping that, in the GM's opinion, involves thought.
Superior Instincts/Programming [-1]. The complexity of your program or your instincts is impressive. Select one skill trapping. Ignore the effects of Incapable Of Thought on that trapping. This trapping may be purchased multiple times.

Here are my planned changes, and the reasons for them:

-Mindless will become free. Its drawbacks are sufficiently large that charging people for it seems weird. I'm also going to reword a little to expand its usefulness.

-The ACaEBG negators will be merged into a single -2 Power. I'd just as soon get rid of them, but this list should accomodate people who want such powers. It is, after all, a set of options.

-Swarm Of Nasties will be dropped in favour of Swarm Body. Swarm Body will be reworded and reformatted slightly, but not changed much. I might add a note recommending it be taken with Amorphous Form.

-Shadow Manipulation and Hunger Magic will be dealt with later.

Questions, comments, objections?

Tedronai:

--- Quote from: Sanctaphrax on May 26, 2012, 02:19:15 AM ---Wall of Shadows [-1]. Your shadows have become so dense, so impenetrable that creatures without the cloak of shadows ability are almost utterly incapable of seeing past them. You may use your Shadow Manipulation to create a defensive block opposed by alertness.
--- End quote ---
This is not how blocks work.  Blocks do not get to specify what opposes them.  Blocks specify what they oppose (and all else is unaffected by them).
Reword as a 'block against perception'.
Further, I see no need to specify that it be a defensive block.  When you can increase the opacity of your shadow to obscure a relatively large area in order to prevent someone from seeing you, you can increase its opacity to prevent someone from seeing things that aren't (necessarily) you (but that might include you).


--- Quote from: Sanctaphrax on May 26, 2012, 02:19:15 AM ---Reach Into the Well. You may invoke one spellcasting related aspect for the cost of two hunger stress without paying a fate point.
--- End quote ---
This needs clarification.  To what end can an aspect be invoked in this way (not all spellcasting-related-aspects will have spellcasting as their only viable purpose for invoking), and how frequently (once per action / once per action per aspect / once per scene?)





Aside from Mindless, which is a complex problem in its own right, the above are my recommended changes to / concerns regarding those powers not being abandoned in favour of a superior alternative.

Sanctaphrax:
I think I'm gonna ditch everything from Shadow Manipulation except the maneuvers and blocks. Your suggestion for the blocks sounds good, so I'll do that.

As for Hunger Magic, I really have no idea how it's supposed to work. Especially since the way that Feeding Dependency works is so opaque.

Any particular issue with Mindless?

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