Themes

Power themes are like enhancements and power synergies, but they don’t add new abilities to your power suite. Instead, they color how your power presents itself. You might add an elemental effect to your power, or make it based on technology rather than on the superpower gene.

Power themes are completely optional.

Because the actual effects of power themes are limited, you may purchase one for free. Each theme beyond the first added to a power costs one stunt. Like power synergies, each theme has a short list of enhancements, drawbacks, and collateral damage effects, which become available to purchase or select when you purchase the theme.

Corruption

You are…unfortunate. Whatever turned on your superpowers did not do so nicely, and you’ve been rendered an almost-inhuman mess.

Basic Corruption: Your powers have a particularly disturbing aesthetic. You might be obviously mutated or disfigured, you might look like a corpse or a monster, or you might simply seem “wrong” to everyone around you on a subtle, psychological level. Regardless of the specifics, your presence is unnerving.

Enhancements

Horrifying to Behold: Something about your appearance is so unsettling that it actually hurts people to get close to you. Anyone who can see you that attacks you in close combat takes a mild mental consequence if they don’t already have one.

Ongoing Mutations: Once per scene, you can spend a fate point to undergo a dramatic sudden mutation. This lets you to switch the ranks of any two approaches of adjacent rank.

Obvious Target: You don’t need to work hard to get someone to want you dead. You gain +2 to your roll when attempting to make a target attack or follow you.

Common Power Synergies

Elasticity: It works like elasticity, but actually what you have are eldritch tentacles sprouting from your back, dribbling ichor on the floor.

Harm: The corruption in you can spread to others with a little physical contact.

Regeneration: You’re basically falling apart already—your power just makes you good at pulling yourself together.

Drawbacks

No explanation needed for this one: Visibly Corrupted.

Your power kicked in when you were irradiated in an accident that should have been fatal. Instead, you survived, but your body is twisted and Radioactive.

Collateral Damage Effects

Decay: You can use your corruption to accelerate the natural decay of virtually everything in your zone. Living targets have some resistance and only take 2 physical stress, while inanimate targets are more adversely affected—virtually everything, including the walls and the floor, withers to dust.

Electricity Projection

You are filled with enough electrical potential to make Tesla blush.

Basic Electricity Projection: Your powers are electrical in nature, and you’re infused with electrical energy. Whenever you use your power, you create sparks and bolts of lightning.

Enhancements

Power Generation: You can power any electrical device just by holding it. If you put your fingers to an electrical outlet, you can provide power for an entire apartment.

Conductive Trip: You can briefly convert your entire body into electricity and push through conductive material. You can use this power to pass through an otherwise impenetrable barrier, such as a door with a metal doorknob, as an action.

Stunning Blow: When you succeed with style on a melee attack, give your target the situation aspect Stunned with one free invocation. If they are already Stunned, add another free invocation to the aspect.

Common Power Synergies

Energy Blast: You can pull a lightning bolt out of nowhere and hurl it like a spear.

Machine Control: The power you create isn’t just normal electricity; it’s got a bit of your essence in it. It’s starting a machine with your own energy that puts it under your control.

Drawbacks

As a walking, talking nexus of electrical activity, you find that Modern Tech Just Doesn’t Like You.

You are filled with electrical energy, just all the time. It’s like being hopped up on sugar and caffeine, only more so! You are Hyperactive.

People notice that you tend to keep your superheroics indoors on rainy days. It’s not your fault: Water Shorts You Out.

Collateral Damage Effects

Through the Grid: You can leap into any electrical outlet in the city and emerge a moment later from another one, provided you have a general idea where it is and you are willing to short out and overload electronics at your destination.

Fire Projection

You like fire. Fire likes you. It doesn’t have to get more complex than that to be fun.

Basic Fire Projection: Your powers are infused with flame, creating fireballs and billowing smoke when you use them.

Enhancements

Friend to Flames: You cannot be harmed by fire of any sort, whether you generated it with your power or not.

Fire Control: In addition to generating fire, you can manipulate it, causing flames to spread where you want them to. Getting flames to spread in a specific direction requires you to overcome a Fair (+2) obstacle; more complex fire maneuvers increase that opposition.

Hot Blooded: Whenever someone successfully attacks you using Fight, they take 1 physical stress due to the sheer heat pouring off of you.

Improved Special Effects

Flame On: You light yourself on fire. It’s GREAT. You gain the situation aspect On Fire with one free invoke. If you are already On Fire, gain another free invoke and clear your highest marked physical stress box.

Common Power Synergies

Energy Blast: Fire is good. Fireballs are better.

Flight: Heat rises, right? So if you surround yourself in flames, you can coast on your own thermals.

Drawbacks

Some personality traits just go well with the ability to summon flames. You are Hot-Tempered.

You aren’t wreathed in flames at all times, but you’re never entirely extinguished; even if it’s just a little smoke drifting from your hair, you are Always On Fire.

You can induce a small flame to become huge, but you can’t create fire from nothing at all. At a minimum, You Need a Spark.

Collateral Damage Effects

Flaming: You can surround yourself in flames that burn everything and everyone. Fires start near you, and anyone who touches you gets a mild physical consequence, or 1 physical stress if they don’t have the open slot. This effect lasts until the end of the scene, but you can end it at will.

Frost Projection

You bring winter wherever you go.

Basic Frost Projection: Your power expresses itself through ice and cold. Whenever you use your power, the temperature of the room drops.

Enhancements

Temperature Reduction: You can create freezer-cold temperatures at will, rendering your zone or an adjacent zone uncomfortably chilly.

Ice Slick: As an action, you can create a patch of ice that fills your zone or an adjacent zone. You can move through the ice easily, but to friends and foes it is a Fair (+2) obstacle. The slick lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

Icy Aura: Whenever someone successfully attacks you using Fight, they take 1 physical stress from the sheer cold.

Common Power Synergies

Energy Blast: You can fire off a concentrated blast of sub-Arctic temperature.

Slowing: You can encase your opponents in ice, stopping them in their tracks.

Natural Weapon: You can freeze the moisture in the air around your fists, forming a painful set of ice knuckles.

Improved Special Effects

Ice Shield: You can encase yourself in a thin shell of ice, giving you Armor:4 against the next attack you suffer, at which point the bonus ends. Moving or taking a physical action breaks the shell, ending this bonus.

Drawbacks

Weather that others would consider merely chilly is, to you, sweltering. You can Only Live in the Cold.

You aren’t just cold to the touch; you bring the temperature down all around you, whether you like it or not. You don’t mind it, but you are Always Freezing.

Collateral Damage Effects

Blizzard: You can dial down the temperature so quickly that snow forms in your zone and every adjacent zone. You can move through the snow without a problem, but to everyone else it’s a Fair (+2) obstacle that persists until the end of the scene.

Shadow Projection

You can surround yourself with shadows and use them to fuel your powers. It doesn’t actually make sense as far as physics is concerned, but it works for you.

Basic Shadow Projection: Your power is expressed in the creation and manipulation of shadows; whenever you use your power, you create swathes of living darkness.

Enhancements

Dark Sight: You are built for the shadows. You can see perfectly well in any lighting, down to and including pitch blackness.

Shadow Dodge: While you’re hiding in the shadows, you gain +2 to defend against ranged attacks.

Out of the Shadows: If you initiate a conflict, you always act first, ignoring any other factors that might determine turn order.

Dark Aura: Your very presence sucks the light out of rooms. Once per scene, you can create a situation aspect to reflect this, such as Darkened Room or Deep Shadows.

Common Power Synergies

Invisibility: You can wrap yourself in the shadows even in the brightest room.

Teleportation: Shadows are connected in a metaphysical way even you can’t quite understand. But you can use this fact to step into one shadow and out of a distant one.

Drawbacks

You can never actually leave the shadows—if you try to peel away, the darkness clings to you. You are Always Shrouded in Darkness.

Your powers don’t just create shadows; they require shadows. You work best in the dark, and you’re Weakened by Daylight.

Collateral Damage Effects

Shadow Beast: You can summon a creature made out of darkness itself into your zone. This shadow beast has Great (+4) Physique, Fight, and Athletics, as well as the aspects Made of Shadows and Bestial Fury. The beast is an NPC who will attack nearby targets at random, although characters can use Provoke to get it going after a particular target. It will not attack you; however, there’s nothing preventing it from attacking your allies. The beast will dissolve away at the end of the scene or when you dismiss it.

Super-Form

You’ll be ready for action as soon as your transformation sequence finishes up.

Basic Super-Form: Your power isn’t always active; instead, you need to take a moment before battle to change form. You might grow a shell of metal around your body, or charge up with cosmic energy, or just turn big and green. Converting to your super-form requires an action, but while you’re not super it’s impossible for anyone or anything to detect that you have a power at all.

Enhancements

Growth: You can use your super form to grow massive! While in this form, you are at least twice your normal height, and you gain +1 to all attack rolls because of your overwhelming power.

Shrinking: You can use your super form to become tiny! While in this form, you’re a quarter of your normal size or less, and you gain +1 to all defense rolls because you’re so hard to hit.

Cocoon: In addition to your standard super-form, you can use your ability to encase yourself in a protective shell. While in the shell you cannot move or take actions, but you have Armor:8 against all physical damage. You can only hold onto this form for a few minutes at a time.

Common Power Synergies

Super Toughness: When you enter into your super-form, you surround yourself with a layer of metal, rock, or some other material—or in some other way you create your own armor.

Natural Weapon: It takes a moment for you to unsheathe your claws, but it’s worth the wait.

Drawbacks

Your super-form is so powerful that you can’t dive into it instantly; you suffer from an Extended Transformation Sequence.

Your normal and super selves aren’t the same person—they have distinct minds and personalities that happen to share a body. They don’t hate one another, but you are still Often Arguing with Yourself.

Collateral Damage Effects

Hyper-Mode: You are hiding an even more powerful transformation, one so powerful that the very act of transformation does damage to your environment, and which you can only hold on to for a few minutes at a time. While in hyper-mode, you can use special effects whenever you tie or succeed on a roll while using your power, in addition to when you succeed with style.

Technology

Not everyone has the privilege of an active superpower gene. Some people come by their powers honestly.

Basic Technology: Your power isn’t actually a superpower in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s an ability that comes from advanced technology you have access to, such as cybernetic implants. While your “power” isn’t necessarily built into you, you always have access to your superior equipment and it never breaks down. In addition, powers that affect other powers (such as Power Amplification or Power Nullification) do not affect you.

Enhancements

Intense Training: Choose either strength or dexterity. You may add special effects to any actions that involve use of the chosen attribute as if it were a part of your power suite.

Nice Toys: Your incredible tech had to come from somewhere. You gain +2 to Contacts when dealing with people who either built your tech or work in the appropriate industry.

Shiny Shiny: Sometimes just showing off your fancy equipment gets folks on your side. You gain a +2 bonus to attempts to influence others when showing off the quality of your tech to someone would work to your advantage.

Common Power Synergies

Super Tech: Just about any power can be explained away as using bleeding-edge technology, from mental enhancement helmets (Telepathy) to a cybernetic arm with built-in sonic cannon (Energy Blast) to drugs that push your physical abilities to the human limit (Super Agility and Super Strength).

Drawbacks

Your tech doesn’t work without power, and something this advanced doesn’t run on dollar-store batteries. You have Limited Fuel.

Your equipment isn’t fancy. You cobbled it together in your basement with duct-table and gumption. You’ve got Shabby Equipment.

Collateral Damage Effects

Take Up Arms: You can pass off your equipment to someone else. By doing so, they can use your power in addition to their own, but you will be powerless for the duration. Of course, being unfamiliar and untrained with your equipment, they’ll likely cause a lot of collateral damage just trying to use it.