Astonishing-Super-Heroes Basic-Rulebook Digital v2

Let’s Start Over, Shall We? presents...
The Revised FASERIP-inspired Basic Rulebook for Let’s Start Over, Shall We?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE 4 COMBAT 24 POWERS & GEAR 52
Secondary Traits 24 Fundamentals 52
INTRODUCTION 6
Activities 25 Power Ranks 54
HOW TO PLAY 6 Attack 27 List of Powers 55
The Core Mechanic 6 Special Effects 33 Alternate Form 55
The Uni-Table 9 Bullseye 33 Attack Powers 57
Ch. 1 Summary 11 Kill 33 Body Armor & Force Fields 59
Slam 34 Elemental Control 60
DATAFILES 12
Stun 34 Enhanced Senses 63
Primary Abilities 12
Advanced Attack Tactics 35 Healing & Regeneration 65
Secondary Traits 12
Defend 36 Illusions 66
Ranks 15
Health & Damage 38 Invisibility 67
Profiles 16
Knocked Out 38 Intangibility 67
Milestones 16
Dying 39 Mimic 68
Tracking Karma 17
Recovery 39 Movement Powers 68
Spending Karma 17
Ch. 4 Summary 39 Power Armor 70
Ch. 2 Summary 18
Psychic Powers 72
SOCIAL INTERACTION 40
MOVEMENT & ENVIRONMENT 19 Resistance or Invulnerability 74
Social Rolls 40
What’s an Area? 19 Shapeshifting 75
Optional Modifiers Table 41
Range Table 20 Size-Changing 76
Popularity 41
Movement 21 Sorcery 77
Attitude 42
Obstructions 21 Stretching 80
Attitudes and Popularity Table 42
Vertical Movement 21 Teleportation 81
Resolve & Stress 43
Special Movement 21 Transmutation 83
Contacts 45
Vehicles, Gear, & Powers 22 Ch. 7 Summary 85
Ch. 5 Summary 45
Speed Table 22
TALENTS 86
Destroying the Environment 22 RESOURCES & STUFF 46
Talent Index A to Z 87
Breaking Stuff & People 22 Resources 46
Ch. 8 Summary 88
Material Strength Table 22 Resource Difficulty Table 46
Ch. 3 Summary 23 Stuff 47 DATAFILES 90
Armor 47 Character Sheet 90
Weapons 48 Alternate Character Sheet 93
Vehicles 50 Power Armor Sheet 94
Uni-Table 95
Campaign Notes & House Rules 96
Quick Reference Tables 96
2 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Astonishing Super Heroes Basic Rulebook is © Tim Bannock. All rights
reserved. All characters, names, places, items, art and text herein are
copyrighted by Tim Bannock, with the exception of material previously
released as part of the Open Gaming License; see the OGL at the end of
this work for designations of Open Content. The mention of or reference
to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the
trademark or copyright concerned.
Some artwork copyright Dean Spencer, used with permission. Some
artwork copyright T. Glenn Bane, used with permission. Some artwork
copyright Ade Smith, used with permission.
Not for resale. Permission granted to print or photocopy this document
for personal use only.
Let’s Start Over, Shall We? is an MCU-inspired actual play TTRPG
podcast using the infamous “FASERIP” roleplaying game. Find us
on most social media as LSOSWpodcast or at anchor.fm/LSOSW.
Let’s Start Over, Shall We? is © Leon Doell.
Developed by Tim Bannock

Writing & Design by Tim Bannock, Leon Doell, and
Jayson Jolin
Cover Art by Tanni Brown
Layout by Anja Svare
Astonishing Super Heroes Logo by Silvano Beltramo
Interior Art by Ade Smith, Christof Grobelski, Dean Spencer,
Jacob E. Blackmon, Jazella, Jeff Brown, Jeshields, Lawrence
Van Der Merwe, Marcum Curlee, NightMareSR71, Rick
Hershey / Fat Goblin Games, Storn Cook, T. Glenn Bane
Playtesting by the cast and GMs of Let’s Start Over Shall We?
podcast
Inspired by the original 1980sand 1990s four color superhero
game system by Jeff Grubb, Steve Winter, Timothy B. Brown,
Steven E. Schend, Jeff Butler, Dennis Kauth, Angelika
Lokotz, Paul Hanchette, William W. Connors, Jon Pickens,
Jim Ward, and others.
Additional inspiration from the 2012 heroic roleplaying

game system by Cam Banks, Amanda Valentine, Matthew
Gandy, Jeremy Keller, John Harper, Rob Donoghue, Matt
Forbeck, Will Hindmarch, Philippe-Antonine Menard,
Jesse Scoble, Dave Chalker, John Harper, Jack Norris, Aaron
Sullivan, Sally Christensen, Miranda Horner, Alex Perry,
and Chad Underkoffler.
Special thanks to Blacky the Blackball for the original On the cover by Tanni Brown, the heroes Disk Girl, Phantom
FASERIP retroclone, as well as all of the gamers keeping Mask, Centurion, and Lion Man prepare for battle under the
the FASERIP system alive in any form by doing what’s most sneering portrait of the supervillain known as Anchor.
important: playing the game!
Extra special thanks to Leon Doell for creating the

Let’s Start Over, Shall We? podcast, and to the cast and crew
that make every episode so much fun. I hope this rulebook
is better than my notoriously long-winded tutorials!
And finally, thank you to Matthew Bannock for getting

me into RPGs, Joel Bannock and the rest of my family for
playing these games with me or supporting my hobby,
and to Tiffany and The Perky Nerd in sunny Burbank, CA
for feeding my gaming and comic book appetites.
ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 3

PREFACE
The illustrious and notorious “FASERIP” role-playing
game — published by the originators of RPGs through
the 1980s and 1990s — holds a special place in the hearts
Safety First!
Before playing any role-playing game, incorporate Safety
of gamers and comic book readers alike. This is in part Tools and Session Zero to help you and your fellow players
thanks to the series of “Gamer’s Handbook” releases that have the most fun possible. We use Session Zero regularly
featured the most comprehensive write ups on popular to help activate new characters. We use the safety tool
superheroes at the time. It’s also a surprisingly simple, “PAUSE”: if questionable topics come up in play, we pause
flexible game system. Yeah, it does use a color-coded table and edit it right out.
to look up dice roll results, which is a little weird in this Head to http://bit.ly/ttrpgsafetytoolkit for much more
day and age, but the core mechanic — roll percentile dice info!
and achieve success based on your rating in an innate
attribute or superpower, modified by any pertinent skills
(Talents) and situational modifiers — is a dead-simple
unified mechanic. That’s all the rage in gaming, and
Why This Game?
The Astonishing Super Heroes Basic Rulebook may at first
arguably for good reason. glance seem an awful lot like some other great games out
When Leon came up with the idea of “Run the cinematic there. First of all, it’s a “retroclone” of a pretty popular
universe, but using the FASERIP system, and let the dice system still available on the second market (but for
fall where they may,” I never quite realized how much my exorbitant prices!). Secondly, there’s a few other attempts
past experience with that old role-playing game’s box was at retroclones of that system — one called FASERIP,
going to factor into this endeavor. another called 4C System — and they are great games. So
There were two editions to FASERIP (named for each why should someone check this one out?
character’s primary stats of Fighting, Agility, Strength, The Astonishing Super Heroes Basic Rulebook exists on a few
Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche) with an principles that stand out from the pack.
advanced set of rules in-between. But the Revised Basic 1. Streamlined play.
Set really simplified so many of the rules. It also opened
2. A focus on the core mechanic.
an interesting door. You see, in the previous edition’s basic
and advanced sets, super powers and magic were heavily 3. No slavish devotion to the “old school.”
codified with pages and pages of options, interactions, These principles mean that while Astonishing Super Heroes
and tables filled with modifiers. In the Revised Basic Set, Basic Rulebook is a retroclone, it is not attempting to
however, the powers were all streamlined. But the kicker exactly duplicate the system on which it is based. Instead,
is that the character files included in the accompanying it is meant to focus on that game’s core mechanic (the
Campaign Book often showed interesting exceptions Uni-Table) and otherwise streamline play as much as
or modifications to those rules. In other words, each possible. Whereas the original system and its retroclones
character was customized; each hero was an individual, keep (often substantial) tables of modifiers, complex
their powers modified and built out from the baseline to combat and power options, and a system of Karma that is
create a universe of differences. clearly based on a very narrow set of heroic moral values,
Astonishing Super Heroes Basic Rulebook seeks to minimize
In recreating the MCU in this system, I came to embrace
modifiers, keep combat fast and flexible, and update the
that little trick. I realized that I could codify some bits,
Karma system to incorporate a broad sense of heroic
while each power, weapon, or piece of gear could be
values. Modern games and modern heroes run a gamut of
written in a way that’s customized for its purpose. Soon,
styles, personal moral values, and different levels of grit,
with the insights of some other GMs, and the inclusion of
and we want our game to support that at its core.
a few streamlined house rules, the character sheets really
sang. What you’ll find, then is a game that serves two audiences
very well:
Ultimately what I’m saying is: this system’s really cool. It’s
also kinda silly in a couple spots: elevators move extremely
fast for no discernible reason. But that’s the 1980s for you.
So, check out our changes, intended to make this game
a little more clean for online play, and also to lean into
both its flexibility and its absurdity. It’s supposed to be
fun, and it has certainly led to some marvelous moments!
Excelsior!
Tim Bannock, June 2021

Fans of the Old School
Love the original FASERIP game system and the incredibly
flexible, powerful Uni-Table at its core?
Astonishing Super Heroes Basic Rulebook will provide you
a chance to play that game faster, with more flexibility,
and the ability to run characters on a broad spectrum of
heroic values and power levels.
Want to emulate your favorite heroes from any comic or
movie universe?
If you’ve seen it, this system can handle it. Additionally,
the companion volume on character creation and
advancement provides several options for creating
characters from scratch, using custom builds or
random generation, choosing from templates
that can be further customized, or picking
up pregenerated characters!
Fans of Modern Games

Do you like games that have story and narrative elements
baked into the characters?
Our Karma system does that.
Do you like games that play fast without long lists of
modifiers and situational exceptions? Especially if you play
remotely or for streaming?
Our revised action system and defense rules, as well as
our support for social interaction rules highlight that. We
try to keep all the rules for a power in the power’s writeup,
so you have all the info you need on your character sheet,
and don’t have to go reference other places for exceptions,
situational modifiers, or special use cases.
Do you like games that support more than just clobbering
folks?
I mentioned our social interaction rules, and they include
a new Resolve trait as well as stress “damage” that
works with the core system seamlessly and highlights
interactions outside of combat with equal focus.

INTRODUCTION
This rulebook includes the following sections: Social Interaction
How To Play How to handle social interactions with NPCs, like
The core mechanics of the game system. negotiations and swaying public opinion.
Datafiles Resources & Stuff

How to read a character sheet (a.k.a. “datafile”) and what How the Resources trait works, as well as lists of
all the traits are for. common weapons, armor, vehicles, and other gear.
Movement & Environment Powers & Gear

Interacting with the game world. How seemingly impossible powers and gear works,
including power armor, alternate forms, and magic.
Combat
How combat and action scenes work. Or, how to give and Talents
take damage. A comprehensive list of skills and feats that have
specialized rules.
HOW TO PLAY
Astonishing Super Heroes is a roleplaying game in which
the players have superpowered characters (heroes or PCs,
short for player characters) who form a team. This team
gets involved in a scenario run by the Game Moderator
(a.k.a. GM), who frames the events in the world that
entice the team to act! The GM plays all of the non-player
characters (NPCs), which includes sidekicks, contacts,
bystanders, and even superpowered villains!
The Core Mechanic
The core mechanic of this game works in five steps.
1. Find the Rank of your ability, power or whatever
you’re using on the Uni-Table.
2. Modify it (move to the right or left) based on any
applicable Talents, gear, powers, or situational
modifiers.
3. Roll percentile dice (d100).
4. Cross reference the result of the percentile dice roll
to the color (WHITE, GREEN, YELLOW, or RED) in the
column matching your rank.
5. Declare the color and resolve the action!
When you see “Make a Strength roll” or “Make a Reason
roll” just know it means “Roll dice and look up the results
on the Uni-Table.”

1. Find Your Rank
A Rank is a rating for a primary ability, power, or piece
of gear.
Your character sheet has the following primary abilities:
» Fighting: hand-to-hand combat prowess.
» Agility: dexterity and maneuverability.
» Strength: raw physical might.
» Endurance: physical stamina and durability.
» Reason: logical acumen, intellect, and complex
problem-solving.
» Intuition: instinctive insight, social awareness.
» Psyche: force of personality, willpower.
Each of those has a Rank and Rank# (Rank Number):
» SH0 for Shift 0 (zero)
» WK (2) for Weak
» MD (4) for Mediocre
» AV (6) for Average (as in average human)
» GD (10) for Good
» EX (20) for Excellent
» RM (30) for Remarkable
» IN (40) for Incredible
» AM (50) for Amazing
» SP (75) for Spectacular
» UN (100) for Uncanny
» X150 for Extreme 1
» C1k for Cosmic 1000
Ranks can be found as the header columns on the Uni-
Table. This is because when you roll dice, you’ll be using
the column of the Rank for your attribute, ability, power
or gear, plus or minus any modifiers.
The Rank Number is used to apply effects once the roll
determines if an action succeeds or fails. Often, the Rank
Number will be applied as damage or stress, or might
measure how much of something you resist.

2. Apply Modifiers 3. Roll the Dice
Modifiers occur when some trait (such as the When a character does something interesting (brave,
aforementioned Talents) or situation (like fighting in foolish, or otherwise), the person playing that character
the dark) moves you to a new Rank. When you apply a rolls percentile dice. This is sometimes written as d100 or
modifier, you change the Rank, so you effectively “shift” d%, and includes two 10-sided dice, one of which counts
over to a different column on the Uni-Table: as the tens column (“00” to “90” ) and the other as the ones
column (“1” to “10” or sometimes “1” to “0” ).
» A +1R means shift to the right one column: you’re
rolling on a better column! Remember the exception, Leon! Percentile dice that
come up as “00” on the tens and “0” (or sometimes “10” ,
» A -2R means you shift to the left two columns: uh- depending on the die) on the ones, the result is 100! So the
oh, now it’s harder to succeed!
dice should always give you a result from 01 to 100. There
You’ll notice a hard break between the columns for X500 is no rolling zero (0).
and C1k. That’s because no matter what modifiers are in
play, if your base rank isn’t C1k or better, you can’t be rolling
on the C1k (or better) columns. Those ranks — C1k, C3k,
and C5k — are strictly for super-powerful beings. It’s just 00 1 00 0
mind-bogglingly high.
Result = 00+1 or “1” Result = 00+0 or “100”
Exceptions
There’s an exception to the “modifiers move you over
a column on the Uni-Table” rule. Whenever a modifier
doesn’t have that trailing “R” on it, it means you simply
10 0 40 2
add or subtract the number, usually from a Rank Number.
This is the case with Initiative, Health and Damage,
Resolve and Stress, and Karma.
80 9 90 7
Example dice rolls. The red die is the tens digit and the blue is
the ones digit.

4. Read the Result 5. Resolve the Action
Once you have your roll, you cross reference that number Once you determine the color result, you apply whatever
along the left-hand side of the Universal Table to the Rank effects the rules tell you. In situations where you are
column, and see what color occupies that space. The trying to harm someone physically or apply pressure to
different colors and their general meaning are: someone in a social setting, you might apply damage or
stress in the form of the Rank Number of one of your
»W HITE = The roll failed.
abilities. Certain maneuvers may have additional special
»G REEN = The roll succeeded. effects, often governed by the color result: you might slam
» Y ELLOW = The roll succeeded with style! or stun an opponent if you hit them hard enough!
» R ED = Congratulations! The roll succeeded in an And that’s all there is to it!*
extraordinary way!
THE UNI-TABLE
Universal NULL WK MD AV GD EX RM IN AM SP UN X150 X200
Table Zero Weak Mediocre Average Good Excellent Remarkable Incredible Amazing Spectacular Uncanny Extreme 150 Extreme 200 Ext
Dice Roll 0 2 4 6 10 20 30 40 50 75 100 150 200
01
02-03
04-06
07-10
11-15
16-20
21-25
26-30
31-35
36-40
41-45
46-50
51-55
56-60
61-65
66-70
71-75
76-80
Example of rolling on the Universal Table: the dice rolled 34 on IN 40 Rank; a GREEN result
81-85
86-90
*Difficulty
91-94
You’ll
95-97 sometimes see something that says “make a roll If the Difficulty is equal to your Rank, you need a YELLOW
against
98-99 Difficulty RM 30” or “make a roll against a Difficulty result to succeed. If there are variable results based on the
equal
100 to your opponent’s power Rank.” color result, both WHITE and GREEN results act as WHITE
This means you compare results, YELLOW acts as GREEN, and RED acts as YELLOW.
BATTLE EFFECTS TABLE the Ranks of the two things:
whatever trait you’re using, like Fighting or Endurance,Attack There is no chance of achieving the listed RED results.
Action Defend
against whatever it’s telling you the Difficulty is. If the Difficulty is higher than your Rank, then you need a
Effect General Blunt Damage Blunt/Restrain Edged Damage General S
If the Difficulty RED
you onlyGrapple result to succeed. IfShooting Energy
it’s 3 or more Force the
Ranks higher, GM
Maneuver – is less than your
Melee Rank, good
Charge Thrownews:Grab can Melee
rule you Throw
fail
Attack
automatically. If
Attack
there are
Attack
variable Dodge
results Block C
need a GREEN result to succeed completely. If the Difficulty
Ability – Fighting Endurance Agility Strength Strength
is 3 or more Ranks lower, the GM can rule you automatically basedFighting Agilityresult,
on the color WHITE, Agility
Agility GREEN, and YELLOW
Agility Agility
all Fighting A
White Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss
succeed. If there are variable results based on the color
Miss count Miss
as WHITE, Missand RED Misscounts Miss
as GREEN. There
Miss is
Incr.no
Hit Fail A
Green
result, use them
Hit exactly
Hit as indicated.
Hit Hit Take Miss chance of
Hit achieving
Hit the listed
Hit YELLOW Hit or RED results.
Hit Roll w/Hit STR-4 or MS
Yellow Effect+1 Slam Slam Hit Grab Partial Stun Stun Bullseye Bullseye Stun Dodge STR-2 or MS D
Red Effect+2 Stun Stun Stun Break Hold Kill Kill Kill Kill Stun Dodge STR+1/MS+1

Optional Rule: Modifiers
This system intentionally plays down situational and
circumstantial modifiers, in favor of relying on Talents or
the rules inherent in specific maneuvers and powers. For
situational modifiers, a good rule of thumb is not to add
any that don’t already get called out in the rules: a simple
+/-1R isn’t really going to make a huge difference, even if
you pile on a few of them.
If you absolutely need to add them, choose either
+2R or -2R and don’t worry about anything greater or
lesser. Don’t account for each component of a situation
individually: just because it’s dark outside, it’s also
raining, and there’s a terrible screeching sound from
a bird, doesn’t mean you need to tack on +3/-3 or
something like that. Just stick with “it’s beneficial, so
+2R” or “it’s a problem, so -2R.”
Summary
1.
Use Safety Tools and Session Zero to maximize
everyone’s fun.
2. Roll dice when success and failure are both
interesting, otherwise just describe what happens.
3. To roll dice, pick up two 10-sided dice and designate
one as the 10s column and one as the 1s column
— bonus if you already have dice that read “10” to
“00” and “1” to “10” or sometimes “1” to “0” . You will
generate a number between 01 and 100.
4. Look up the dice roll result on the left side of the
Universal Table.
5. Cross-reference that with the column based on the
Rank you are rolling for in order to find the color of
your result.
a. WHITE = bad news.
b. GREEN = good news.
c. YELLOW = great news.
d. RED = the best news ever...unless it’s overkill,
then OOPS!
6. If a roll has an Difficulty, compare your Rank to
its Rank to see if you might just need to roll higher
than a GREEN result just to succeed!

DATAFILES
Your datafile is a sheet that provides all of your character’s
statistics, gear, powers, listings of NPC contacts, and so
on. A blank one is shown on the next page, followed by a
Secondary Traits
You also have a number of other traits:
general map of the character file layout. Profiles
Roleplaying choices and guidelines that grow and change
Primary Abilities
Your datafile has the following primary abilities:
your character’s role in the world. These provide you with
a metagame currency called Karma.
Karma
» Fighting: hand-to-hand combat prowess. Your accrued bonus points for roleplaying your character
» Agility: dexterity and maneuverability. (determined by your Profiles), which can be spent to
improve your character’s luck or call in extra help.
» Strength: raw physical might.
Initiative
» Endurance: physical stamina and durability.
Your placement in the action order sequence during
» Reason: logical acumen, intellect, and complex combat or social interaction scenes (see COMBAT).
problem-solving.
Health & Damage
» Intuition: instinctive insight, social awareness. Your hit points; a static number that represents your
» Psyche: force of personality, willpower. overall physical well being. Normally, it is equal to the
sum of your FASE Rank Numbers. When you get injured,
you accrue Damage. Once it equals your Health, you’re
not dead right away, but it’s certainly a growing concern!
(See COMBAT.)
Resolve & Stress
Your emotional and mental well being. Normally, it is
equal to the sum of your RIP Rank Numbers. When you
face social, psychological, or psychic damage, you accrue
Stress. Once it equals your Resolve, you’re stressed out.
(See SOCIAL INTERACTION.)
Popularity
How the general public views you. This is a modifier
used in social interactions with NPCs (see SOCIAL
INTERACTION).
Resources
Your access to money and financial assets. Used to buy
stuff, access or requisition things, invent new stuff, or
apply financial leverage.
Powers & Gear
The cool stuff you can do that nobody else can. Otherwise
known as abilities. There’s a whole chapter on this (see
SUPER POWERS & GEAR).
Talents
Learned skills or innate competencies that give you a
boost on applicable dice rolls. Generally, they provide
a +1R to applicable rolls, and they stack, so if you’ve got
three that make sense, add +3R! Some Talents have special
rules, though, and are described in the TALENTS chapter.
Affiliations & Contacts
NPCs you are connected to who can provide you aid (see
Profiles and Karma later in this chapter, as well as SOCIAL
INTERACTION).

CODENAME MILESTONES KARMA
+1 Karma when you quote a line

from a superhero show or ﬁlm in a
contextually appropriate manner.
PROFILE #1:
PUBLIC OR SECRET? IDENTITY
INITIATIVE
FIGHTING
HEALTH
AGILITY
STRENGTH
DAMAGE
ENDURANCE
PROFILE #2:
REASON RESOLVE
INTUITION
PSYCHE STRESS
POWERS & GEAR TALENTS POPULARITY RESOURCES
AFFILIATIONS & CONTACTS
For best results, use pencil. Permission granted to print or photocopy for personal use.
A blank datafile


MILESTONES &
from a superhero show or ﬁlm in a
contextually appropriate manner. KARMA
TRACKER
IDENTITY PUBLIC OR SECRET? IDENTITY
PROFILE #1:
INITIATIVE
FIGHTING
HEALTH
AGILITY
INITIATIVE
PRIMARY STRENGTH
ABILITIES
DAMAGE
ENDURANCE
PROFILE #2:
REASON RESOLVE
INTUITION
RESOLVE &
STRESS
HEALTH &
TRACKER
PSYCHE STRESS
DAMAGE
TRACKER POWERS & GEAR TALENTS POPULARITY RESOURCES
POPULARITY &
RESOURCES
POWERS & GEAR TALENTS CONTACTS
Anatomy of a datafile

Ranks
Your primary abilities and some secondary traits each The Rank is what is used to determine which column on
has a Rank consisting of its name and a Rank Number the Uni-Table you reference for your dice roll results. The
used to determine some effects. higher the Rank, the better your odds of achieving success
» NULL for Zero (0) (GREEN result), or exceptional success (YELLOW and RED
results).
» WK 2 for Weak (2)
» MD 4 for Mediocre (4) Your Rank is modified by things like Talents and
situational modifiers. There are relatively few situational
» AV 6 for Average (as in average human; 6) modifiers, in order to keep things fast moving.
» GD 10 for Good (10)
The Rank Number comes into play when you might punch
» EX 20 for Excellent (20) a villain or fire a repulsor ray, damaging them. You might
» RM 30 for Remarkable (30) try to bust through a wall, or catch a fast-moving object.
» IN 40 for Incredible (40) You might try to stress an opponent out, intimidating them
or breaking down their willpower through interrogation.
» AM 50 for Amazing (50) In all these cases, you will reference the Rank Number of
» SP 75 for Spectacular (75) some pertinent ability or trait, and that is the amount of
» UN 100 for Uncanny (100) effect you have. For example, your Strength is the damage
» X150 for Extreme (150) you deal on a punch: if you have RM 30 Strength, you deal
30 points of damage when you punch someone.
» X200 for Extreme (200)
Use the Rank Descriptions table on the next page for a
» X500 for Extreme (500)
general overview.
» C1k for Cosmic (1000)
Rank Descriptions
Rank Description Agility Strength Endurance Reason Intuition Psyche
NULL Nonexistent
WK (2) Far below Lift 50 lbs Operate simple
average machines
MD (4) Below average Lift 100 lbs Notice obvious
items
AV (6) Average human Lift 200 lbs Tear gas
GD (10) Above average Walk a balance Lift 400 lbs Snake venom Develop simple Hypnosis
beam electronics
EX (20) Olympic level Lift 800 lbs Spider venom Notice fine detail
RM (30) Human limit Walk a tightrope Lift 2,000 lbs/ Artificial Mind control
1 ton intelligence
IN (40) Enhanced human Lift 10 tons Find hidden Understand
objects magic
AM (50) Enhanced limit Lift 50 tons Understand star
drives
SP (75) Beyond human Catch an arrow Lift 80 tons Sense invisible Mythos spells
objects
UN (100) Realm of Catch a bullet Lift 100 tons Survive in
powerful aliens vaccum
X1 (150) Further increases
X3 (500) Alien limit
C1k (1000) Cosmic entity
C3k (3000) Further increases

Profiles
Profiles are clever roleplaying cues that reinforce who
Milestones
Milestones are written like this: “+2 Karma when you…”
and then list some things the Hero would often do. This
your hero is, what they stand for, and how they grow and
is called a “milestone”: if you do the thing, you get the
change over the course of a session or larger campaign.
Karma for doing the thing. For example, you might have
Playing to these cues nets you a metacurrency called
a milestone that says: “+2 Karma when you say ‘Heroes
Karma, which you can spend to improve your rolls, shake
Assemble!’ for the first time in a battle.” Literally every
off detrimental effects, or call in help.
time you say that, you get 2 Karma.
You’ll notice that all characters in Let’s Start Over, Shall
Anatomy of Profiles We? get a single +1 Karma milestone for quoting superhero
A Profile — you’ll have two of them — is kinda like a movies or shows in a contextually appropriate way. That’s
personalized story arc for your character. Choose ones because it’s both fun and easy to do! (“Easy” because you
that help you tell the story you want to tell about your can find character quotes on a bunch of movie sites.)
character.
You can double-dip on a single milestone, hit two
Each has different roleplaying activities you take to carry milestones at the same time, and so on. Generally that
them out and hit their milestones… doesn’t happen often, but it’s possible. Don’t be afraid to
An example would be Born Leader: ask the GM if you’re unsure.
» +2 Karma when you give orders to your team. Once you hit the +10 Karma milestone in a Profile you can
choose to stick with the Profile you have and play through
» +5 Karma when you take advice from a teammate to it again, or you can say it’s “closed out” and change to a
heart, or rely on teamwork to defeat a villain. new one to highlight a new story arc for your character.
» +10 Karma when you survive a major encounter (You can change Profiles anytime you want between
without your team’s help, or when you sacrifice sessions, too: you don’t have to close one out, just decide
in order to give your team a chance to fight again and make it so!)
another day. The following are loose guidelines on the different
milestones and the frequency that you can get rewarded
Karma for them.
» +2 Karma milestones can be hit as many times in
a scene as you want or can conceivably do. Every
character comes with a bonus +1 Karma milestone
involving quotes, so feel free to memorize movie
dialogue or keep a print out of character-specific
quotes on hand!
» +5 Karma milestones generally are big enough story
beats that you only hit them once in a scene, and
you won’t hit them every scene. Don’t force it.
» +10 Karma milestones are always a hard choice:
“+10 Karma if you do ABC, or if you do the opposite
XYZ.” These usually only happen once in a given
game session, if that; sometimes they take many
sessions before they come to fruition.

Tracking Karma
Keep a running total of your Karma, modifying it when
you spend it (more on that in a moment). It otherwise
never goes away, though, and doesn’t reset. Whatever you
have at the end of a game session is what you start with at
the next game session!
Starting Karma
You start a campaign with Karma equal to your Resolve
divided by 10. If you ever lose track of how much Karma
you had, default to that number.
Optional Rule: Session Karma

If players get a little crazy about banking their Karma for
big events — something more common in campaign play
— you can have them reset their Karma each session to
the starting amount of their Resolve divided by 10.
Spending Karma
Karma can be spent to improve your dice rolls, resist some
debilitating effects, or call in a little help. These are all
immediate things you do during the game session. Think
of Karma like “Save Your Butt” Points.
Here’s what you can do and how much Karma it costs:
Improve Your Roll!
1 Karma = +1 to your percentile dice roll. So if you roll a 50
and get a GREEN result on the Uni-Table, but needed a 55 in
order to get a YELLOW result on the Uni-Table, you would
need to spend 5 Karma.
Shake Off Stun!
1 Karma = Reduce the duration of a Stun effect by 1 round.
If you get knocked out in a fight for 4 rounds, you could
spend 1 Karma and be awake in 3 rounds, or 4 Karma and
wake up on your very next turn! “I can do this all day…”
I Know Someone…
5 Karma = Establish a new, temporary contact for a scene.
This is someone not listed on your datafile. For example,
a rich playboy can reasonably call the editor of TIMELY
Magazine and for 5 Karma say they get along great and
kill a story that’s about to up-end his latest PR campaign.
Hey, Buddy!
10 Karma = Call in a supporting character for a scene.
This is a Contact on your sheet. Normally, you can call
them up or visit them without spending Karma, but if
you want them on scene (or to physically affect the scene
through remote resources or something like that) when
the action gets going, you gotta spend the Karma. (Your
listed contacts are always going to be more meaningful
assets than a 5 Karma temporary one.)
Stay With Me!
15 Karma = Stabilize Endurance loss for 1 round. When you
are dying, you start losing Ranks off of your Endurance.
This slows that down...but doesn’t stop it! Hope your
buddies know first aid… (See the COMBAT chapter.)

Character Creation
Now that you know all the parts of the character sheet,
the question is “how do you create a character?” There are
three ways:
» Narrative
» Standard Array
» Random
Narrative Character
Creation Method
So, how do you create a character for an Astonishing Super
Heroes game? That is the focus of a whole other book!
With the rules in this book, you can easily emulate
any character you’ve seen in popular media simply by
assigning them the values that most make sense. The rules
you’ll find in the COMBAT and SOCIAL INTERACTION
chapters will prove that game balance is not as big a factor
as you might find in some games: a character who has
incredibly high physical abilities and lots of Health can
still get stressed out, just like a powerful psychic character
with all the Resolve in the world can still be beaten to a
pulp if they take too much damage.
The Astonishing Super Heroes character creation and
advancement systems will be presented separately, with
a host of options in order to help you build the types
of heroes you want to play. In addition, a number of
pregenerated heroes and hero templates will be included
to make it easy to jump right into the action!
Summary
1.
Your primary abilities are FASERIP: Fighting,
Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition,
Psyche.
2. You have a bunch of secondary traits such as
combat-related scores (Initiative), financial assets
(Resources), overall condition (Health), and more.
3. A Profile is a little “How to Roleplay Your Character”
guide. Hitting the milestones gives you Karma to
spend on improving your luck and calling in help.
4. There are three ways to build a character: Narrative,
Standard Array, and Random.

MOVEMENT &
ENVIRONMENT
In this chapter, we will address many game-mechanics
related to movement and affecting the world around the
characters. Most of the time, it really boils down to greatly
oversimplifying things like:
» movement and tactical positioning
» the hardness or thickness of different materials
» the speed of objects and vehicles
Anything not covered? Use logic and the real world as
your guide. Anything covered that defies logic? Ignore it
or run with it, as long as you are consistent and have the
consensus of all the other players at your game table.
What's An "Area"...?
Often times, we refer to ranges, speeds, and so on in terms
of “areas.” In Astonishing Super Heroes, think of areas as
“zones” or “range bands”: an abstract amount of space
between you and your opponent or target. If you’re close
enough to reach out and touch someone, you’re within
the same area or up to 1 area away. If you’re far, you’re
probably 2 to 4 areas away from the target. And if you’re
really far, you’re 5+ areas away.
Some guidelines:
» Outside, an area is about 10 yards/meters.
» Inside, an area is a room or hallway.
» A large enclosed space, such as a warehouse, might
be made up of multiple areas of different portions
of the warehouse floor.
To simplify it further, especially for theater-of-the-mind
play, think of an area as each zone on the battlefield that
contains something interesting or is of different terrain.
In a fight taking place on highway entrance near a
megacorporation’s research headquarters, the battlefield
might contain some of the following zones:
» Highway
» Storage warehouse
» Reactor control room
» Reactor containment
» Megacorporation roof
Arguably, each could be an area, or larger zones like the
highway and the storage warehouse might have 2-3 areas
each.

Range Range Table (in areas)
Another way to look at it is like this: if someone’s in the Rank Range Thrown
same area or within a couple areas, you can close in on NULL Touch only 0
them and fight ‘em hand-to-hand. You can also shoot WK Touch only 1
them or throw things at them, whether you move or not.
MD 1 1
If they are farther than that, you may take a penalty to hit
them with ranged attacks, and it’ll take you more than 1 AV 2 1
round of moving to close the gap if you want to sock ‘em GD 4 2
on the chin. EX 6 3
RM 8 4
IN 11 5
AM 20 6
SP 40 7
UN 60 8
X1 80 10
X2 160 15
X3 400 20
C1k 1,000
C3k 10,000 Awareness
C5k 1M

Movement
A character can move a number of areas in a single round
Vertical Movement
Sometimes you need to climb, which might include
climbing a ladder or doing a running leap and pulling
based on their Endurance. Unless they have special powers
yourself up onto a ledge or something.
or gear that provide alternative means of movement, such
as flight, web-slinging, and so on. In those cases, use the Endurance Speed
Rank of the power/gear to determine how fast they can Up to EX 1 story/15 feet per turn
move. Unless you’re told otherwise by a power or gear, RM+ 2 stories/30 feet per turn
you can always choose to move less than the full amount.
Note that, during combat, you can split your movement
up throughout your turn, but you are (for game-purposes, Special Movement
not logic) stationary on other turns...unless they move Other common forms of movement that aren’t covered by
you! This means that if you can normally move 2 areas vehicles can be found below, on the Special Speed Ratings
per turn, you can move 1 area, attack someone, then move table. These include riding in an elevator, falling, leaping,
to another area after the attack, all on your turn. and swimming. You can safely assume crawling works
Endurance Speed like swimming, for simplicity’s sake.
WK or less 1 area/turn Special Speed Ratings
MD to EX 2 areas/turn
Situation Movement
RM+ 3 areas/turn
Elevator 10 stories/round
Falling 10 stories/turn, 10 damage per story (max 120) plus Stun
Obstructions Leaping
(resist as in combat)
Strength Rank Number in feet
Crowds and clutter can get in your way. Whenever you’re
pressed up against hordes of people (or monsters?) or Swimming 1 area/turn
forced to squeeze between rubble, warehouse crates,
or the mad machinery of some villain, you must
succeed at an Agility roll to leave the area.
Usually there’s no Difficulty on this roll:
just get a GREEN or better result.
Cramped Quarters
Fighting
Fighting in extremely cramped
spaces incurs a -1R penalty to all
attacks.
Ranged attacks into a cramped
space from outside of it is
dangerous on a miss. When
you miss, you hit a
randomly determined
target: the GM will
roll to see who
it is, replacing
the original
intended
target with
a complete
miss.

Destroying the
Environment
One of the most common situations in comic books and
comic-related films is when inanimate objects come
into play: busting through walls, wielding cars as melee
weapons, and dropping buildings on your enemies. To
determine the durability of an object we factor in its
Material Strength. See the Material Strengths table.
Thickness
If something is deemed especially thin by the GM (usually
1 inch or less of thickness), give the character trying to
destroy it +1R. If it’s really thick (usually 1 foot of thickness
or more), give them -1R per foot of thickness.
Breaking Stuff & People

But how does this come into play? Glad you asked.
Breaking Stuff
To keep things simple, when we discuss destroying an
object, we tend to mean an object or inanimate thing
Vehicles, Gear & Powers about the size of the character in question. So a human-
Vehicles, powers, special gear, and other stuff may have sized character punching through a window and a giant
a speed rating. Speed ratings are Ranks, and they mean monster bursting through a wall are going to leave
different things over land and sea, or in the air. See the different-sized holes.
Speed Table for all of the details and possibilities. If you want to get very targeted — like knock down a
Note that acceleration and deceleration, or other complex support that topples an entire room’s roof or an entire
considerations are ignored. Don’t hesitate to collaborate building on someone — then the GM is well within their
with your GM on such things, but always remember rights to call for attack rolls with YELLOW (Bullseye) or
that the color of your result on the Uni-Table is the most better results.
important aspect of success or failure on a dice roll.
Material Strengths Table
Speed Table MS Object
Rank Land/Water Speed Air Speed WK Cloth, paper, brush, glass
Areas per Miles per Areas per Miles per MD Plastic, crystal, wood
turn hour turn hour AV Rubber, soft metal, ice, interior wall
NULL 0 0 0 0 GD Brick, aluminum, asphalt, high-strength plastic, light machinery
WK 1 15 2 30 EX Concrete, iron, bullet-proof glass or clothing, exterior wall
MD 2 30 4 60 RM Steel, reinforced concrete
AV 3 45 6 90 IN Stone, volcanic rock
GD 4 60 8 120 AM High strength steel, granite
EX 5 75 10 150 SP Diamond, super-heavy alloy
RM 6 90 15 225 UN Cosmic metal, magical elements
IN 7 105 20 300 C1k Metal from the heart of a dying star
AM 8 120 25 375
Anyway, assuming the former, breaking stuff is a common
SP 9 135 30 450
example of Difficulty. If you want to bend a steel bar, you
UN 10 150 40 600 compare your Strength (perhaps enhanced by Power
X150 12 180 50 750 Armor you wear, for example) to the Material Strength
X200 14 210 100 1500 of the steel bar, then make a roll. If your Strength is RM
30 and the steel bar is RM Material Strength, you need a
X500 16 240 200 3750
YELLOW result to do it. Against cosmic metal or something
C1k 32 480 Interplanetary way above your rating, the GM might rule it impossible,
C3k 50 720 Near light speed or you have to succeed at some other task to make it
C5k 100 Near instantaneous malleable (like hitting it constantly with a high-tech heat
1500
(speed of plot) ray for an hour).

Optional Rule: Summary
Object Health & Damage 1.
Movement and positioning are abstracted into
areas, which are basically just “zones of interesting
If the intent is to destroy an object completely — render battlefield stuff.”
it utterly useless — then the GM may rule that it takes
2. Range and speeds have some tables...but basically
more than just overcoming its Material Strength in a
0-1 areas is close by, 2-4 is far, and 5+ is very far.
single roll. This is especially true of gear being used by a
character (hero or villain), as well as objects that might 3. You can destroy the environment, or you can use
be resistant to a single blow. stuff in the environment to destroy other people
or things. Either way, doing so refers to an object’s
In this case, the object can either be targeted by a simple Material Strength to determine how hard it is to
ability roll (ala the Strength roll previously described break (Difficulty) or how useful it is in improving
against the object’s Material Strength), or can be targeted your damage output (potentially Strength +1R for
by attacks. The object has a Health score equal to its determining damage).
Material Strength Rank Number. If it is unattended, do not
roll the attacks, simply assume a GREEN result for every
attack aimed at it. If it is attended, then attacks against
it are resolved as if targeting the character holding/
manipulating the object, and likely require special effects
(such as a YELLOW Bullseye result or special effects from
powers or gear) in order to be affected.
Breaking People with Stuff

Using hard objects to beat other people down is a fun
thing in comics and similar media. Ripping out light poles
and swinging them at your enemies is a popular pastime,
for instance.
The simple version is this: if the GM deems the object
to be of sufficiently hard material, then a character
employing such an object gets +1 to their Strength Rank
for determining damage only; no bonus to actually hit the
opponent, just to damage them.
The complex version, if you want to get technical, is the
same as above, but the object must have a Material
Strength equal to or greater than your Strength.
Otherwise, no improvement: it’s just descriptive fun,
and it probably breaks on the first couple hits or
less. So in that case, if you have a Strength of IN
40, you need to be wielding a giant stone boulder
or high-strength steel I-beam or something. An
engine block might do. But throwing some bricks
(rated WK) or wielding a baseball bat (rated GD)
won’t improve your damage.

COMBAT
When you get into an action sequence — usually a fight
because there’s a lot of that in comics, but it doesn’t always
have to be a fight — the rules get a little more rigid. That
said, this system is meant to play fairly fast and loose. The
best thing to do is imagine the scene in your head, and
think, “If this were a movie, what would my Hero do right
now?” And say you do that. Refer to the different types
of attack and defensive maneuvers, and that should help
you figure out how to make it happen and what to roll.
Secondary Traits
First of all, here are the important traits to remember:
Initiative Score
Initiative is a static score (not a Rank) calculated as the
sum of the following:
» Agility Rank Number divided by 10
» Intuition Rank Number divided by 10
» Any bonuses from Talents (i.e. the Military Talent
provides a +1 bonus to Initiative)
» If you have gear/power armor that provides Optional Rule:
increased speed (no matter how fast or how many
movement modes), you get a +1 to your initiative
Start Within the Order
You can always start at a different point in the initiative
score while using it order if it makes sense to do so, such as if the villains
» If you have a power that provides an innate increase successfully ambush the heroes (or vice versa). In that
to your speed, you add that power’s Rank Number case, start with the first villain in the initiative sequence,
divided by 10 and then continue to cycle through as normal. This cuts
» If you have a power that increases your situational both ways: if a Hero clearly does something sudden,
awareness (danger sense, heightened hearing or surprising, and that changes the tenor of a scene, start
other senses, etc.), add your power’s Rank Number the initiative order with that Hero and then run through
divided by 10 it in the proceeding order.
» Round down, minimum score of 1

An average person is going to have a score of 1: AV 6 in
both Agility and Intuition, no other traits that influence Health Score
it, so 12 divided by 10, rounded down equals 1. Can’t get
any lower than that!
& Taking Damage
Every character has a Health score. It’s not a Rank, just a
Usually, you’ll find leader-type characters near the top: static number made up of the sum of your Fighting, Agility,
this is intentional so they can strategize with the rest of Strength, and Endurance Rank Numbers. If you take RM
the team! 30 Rank damage, you note 30 points in the Damage box on
It’s a static score because that’s the easiest way to jump your character sheet. When you take more damage, just
into fights fast: the GM will create an ordered list of keep adding to the number in that box. Once that number
characters and their initiative scores at the start of the matches or exceeds your Health, you’re in trouble.
session. Health and Damage primarily reflect your physical
condition, while Resolve and Stress reflect your mental
and emotional wellbeing. Resolve and Stress are detailed
in SOCIAL INTERACTION.
You’ll find more on Health under the section on Health
& Damage near the end of this chapter. First, let’s
concentrate on doing damage in the first place.

Activities
On your turn, you can…
Move
There’s a whole chapter on movement. Basically, you can
move 1-3 “areas” (an area is like a few yards) on your turn,
» Move unless you’re super-fast in which case your powers or
» Perform 1 interaction: talk, open or close a door, sip gear tells you how far you can move. (See MOVEMENT &
a hot coffee ENVIRONMENT.)
» Perform 1 action: attack, defend, hold off, or do

something cool Interaction
On other people’s turns, you can… Think of an interaction as a “free action.” They don’t
require dice rolls and don’t take up much time. You can
» Converse with people, especially if it’s an usually only do each one once (or for a short period of
appropriate response to their actions: “Ouch! Stop time) on your turn, but they do have to take place on your
punching my face off!” turn. Typical interactions are:
» Take a reaction IF AND ONLY IF you either…
» Manipulating a simple object that doesn’t require a
• Decide to defend as your action on your turn, roll to do so, such as...
or...
• Open an unlocked door
• You have a power or gear that gives you a
• Pick up a dropped cell phone
reaction.
• Drink or eat
(You may be limited to a certain number of reactions, so
keep that in mind. Your powers and gear will tell you.) • Stow your laptop in your backpack
• Draw or sheathe a weapon
» Actively look for someone or something that’s not
terribly well hidden.
» Focus on a conversation such that you can make
use of the social interaction rules (see SOCIAL
INTERACTION).

Reaction
Most Heroes can only use a reaction if they have chosen to
defend as their action: in that case, you go fully defensive,
concentrating on nothing but getting out of harm’s way.
Otherwise, you don’t have any reactions. If you don’t see
that word on your character sheet, don’t worry about it
outside of going on the defensive.
If you do have that word on your sheet, good for you! You
can now react to someone else’s action on their turn and
do something cool: your character sheet tells you what.
The best example is when you get a free Shield Block
defensive action every round because you wield a shield.
That means that after you’ve already taken your action
on your turn bashing the shield into a villain’s face, and
someone attacks your or a nearby friend, you can leap in
the way, attempting to absorb the attack.
(Note that if you didn’t attack on your turn, and instead
used the defend action for Shielding, you’d be able to use
your shield to defend against a bunch of attacks, rather
than just one. Sometimes a good defense is a good defense,
ya know what I mean?) Defend
There are a few different defensive maneuvers, but the
Actions ones you most often see are:
There are four actions: » Dodge: duck and cover! You roll Agility against each
» Attack incoming attack to avoid it.
» Defend » Block: try to soak up a hit with your raw strength, a
» Hold Off shield, or some other protective gear.
» Do something else cool, like set a trap, hack a » Escape: slip out of a hold or grab.
computer, thoroughly search for an invisible
opponent, or push a nuclear missile through a Hold Off
portal. This means you decide to attack, defend, or do something
else cool at some point later in the round. You can interrupt
Attack an action (before it’s resolved!) and say, “My turn!” then
You try to hurt someone, disable them, entangle them, or choose whether you attack, defend, or do something else
hit them with some other effect that makes them simmer cool. But once you choose, that’s all you get to do.
down or bite the dust! When you Hold Off, you choose when to move or perform
There’s a bunch of different types of attack maneuvers, any interaction(s): either during your turn before
but generally speaking, they have the following effects declaring to Hold Off, or once you interrupt and take your
depending on the color of the result you get when you actions. You can’t do them at both times, however!
make them, WHITE, GREEN, YELLOW, or RED. Hold Off is awesome when paired with some of the
» WHITE = you miss. advanced tactics later in this chapter, because you time
your action with another Hero, like Double Team and
» GREEN = you hit, dealing damage or the bare Combined Attack, to deal more damage or have a better
minimum effect. chance of affecting something. So if you think you can get
» YELLOW = a telling blow, dealing damage +1R and/ some mileage out of that, read up on those rules.
or potentially inflicting an additional effect on top
of that. Examples include Bullseye, Slam, Stun, etc. Do Something Cool
This is a catchall for things that may or may not require
» RED = an extraordinary success deals damage +2R rolls, may or may not cause damage, and...well, it’s really
or the maximum effect of the maneuver, with a just up to the player and the GM to discuss how it works.
potential additional effect, possibly knocking out or Some examples might be hacking a database (Reason roll),
even outright killing someone, breaking something, directing dozens of civilians to the safest route away from
or the like. the alien invaders (maybe a social roll of some kind if
Note! Those additional effects we mention aren’t 100% they are being stubborn), hotwiring a car (Reason roll), or
guaranteed: the opponent may have the opportunity to poking around for clues such as where the Invisible Man
resist. There’s a whole section on this stuff later. is or if the safe is hidden behind a painting (Intuition roll).

Attack
Now that you know the basics, let’s talk specifics. When
Damage Modifiers
When you see “Damage +1R” or the like, note that the +1R
you attack an opponent, you choose a specific maneuver part modifies the Rank as normal, not the Rank Number.
based on your skills, weapons, or powers. Each maneuver So if your base damage is your Strength Rank Number,
comes with a type of damage or effect when you and you roll a YELLOW result which reads “Damage +1R”
successfully hit someone or something with it. you will increase your Strength Rank by one, and use that
When you make an attack roll, the color result tells you new Rank Number to calculate the damage.
what happens. A useful general rule, that applies to all
damaging attacks, is as follows:
» WHITE = You miss and don’t deal damage or apply
any special effects.
» GREEN = You deal damage.
» YELLOW = You deal +1R damage.
» RED = You deal +2R damage.
This way when you roll a YELLOW or better result on your
attack, you have a chance of dealing more damage than
normal! The additional effects (Stun, Slam, Kill, etc.) are
described later in this chapter.
Maneuver + Effect
To resolve your attack, you simply describe what you
want to do: punch a villain’s face, restrain them, throw a
car at them, shoot them with your Electromagnetic Stun
Rifle, blast them with a kinetic shockwave, or torch them
with your heat rays. In every case, the game mechanics
will land on two facets:
» Maneuver: How you perform the attack.
» Effect: How the attack affects the target(s).
Maneuvers tell you what roll to make, and effects tell you
what happens based on the color result of the roll. You
want to keep in mind both: if you have a high Agility, then
a Shooting Attack sounds like a good idea, until you realize
that you could accidentally kill your target when really all
you want to do is subdue them until the authorities arrive.
Look out for consequences!
Maneuver Template
Maneuvers are laid out as page spreads in order to keep
the rules you need all in one place. This does mean
you’ll see some duplication. Maneuvers are listed with a
description, followed by a few sections:
Range
Notes on how close you have to be to use the maneuver.
Ability
Which FASE ability is used to make the roll to see if
you hit the target, plus any specific modifiers.
Effect
The effects of the different maneuvers. Note that
some special effects — Slam, Stun, Kill — are
described in a later section.

Melee Combat Improvised Weapons
If you use an improvised weapon such as a stop sign, lamp
post, a brick, or whatever, it deals Strength +1R damage
You get in close in order to bludgeon or slice/stab your
opponent either hand-to-hand or with a close-quarters if the item’s Material Strength is equal or greater than
melee weapon. your Strength. Otherwise, it probably just breaks because
it’s too flimsy. See MOVEMENT & ENVIRONMENT for
Material Strength ratings of common objects.
Range
You must be within the same area as your opponent, or
you must move in order to close the distance.
Slam, Stun, Kill
See Special Effects.
Ability
You use your Fighting Rank to make the attack roll.
Effect
You deal damage based on the type of attack, either blunt
(fists, clubs, pipes, nunchaku, quarterstaff, baseball bat,
bricks, etc.) or edged damage (swords, spears, axes, claws,
bites, chainsaws, etc.).
Blunt Damage
Your color result determines the effect.
» WHITE = Miss!
» GREEN = Damage
» YELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Slam
» RED = Damage +2R, plus Stun
Base Damage
You deal damage equal to your Strength Rank Number if
unarmed, or the damage rating of the weapon if armed.
Pull Your Punch

When making blunt attacks, you may reduce the effect if
you’d like. Choose one:
» Deal less damage, choosing any number that’s less
than your damage rating.
» Reduce your color result.
Edged Damage
» WHITE = Miss!
» GREEN = Damage
» YELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Stun
» RED = Damage +2R, plus Kill
Base Damage
You deal damage equal to the attack or weapon’s listed
damage Rank Number.
You cannot reduce the damage or the color result of an
attack that deals edged damage.

Charge
You rush toward your enemy in an attempt to smash or
tackle them.
Range
You must move at least 1 area to attempt a Charging attack.
Ability
Use your Endurance for the attack roll. For each area
you move before reaching the target, add +1R to your
Endurance Rank for the attack roll, up to a maximum of
+3R.
Effect
»W
HITE = Miss + you travel an additional area in a
straight line.
»G REEN = Damage
» Y ELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Slam
» R ED = Damage +2R, plus Stun
Damage
You deal damage equal to your Endurance +1R for each
area you traveled through before hitting the target.
Pull Your Punch

When making a charge attack, you may reduce the
damage to any number you wish, but you cannot change
the color result.
Slam, Stun

Wrestling Grappling
You attempt to snatch away an item, weapon, or object »W HITE = Miss!
(Grabbing), or ensnare your opponent (Grappling).
»G REEN = Miss!
» Y ELLOW = Partial Hold
Range
You must be within the same area as your opponent, or
» R ED = Hold
you must move in order to close the distance. Partial Hold
You get a hold of a limb, inflicting a -2R penalty on all of
their rolls until they successfully use the Escape defensive
Ability
You use your Strength to make the attack roll.
maneuver. If your Strength is greater than theirs, they can
no longer move on their turn. (But they can still act: if they
don’t want to take the Escape action, they do whatever
action they want, just at -2R.)
Effect
You may deal damage on certain results, up to your
Hold
You gain a full grappling hold on the target, immobilizing
Strength Rank Number. Otherwise, the effects are based them and dealing damage equal to your Strength Rank
on the maneuver. Number. They may only make the Escape action on their
turn; they may make no other actions or movement.
Grabbing Maintaining the hold is an interaction for you. If you
maintain the hold, you may deal your Strength Rank
Your color result determines the effect. Number in damage as part of this interaction on each of
» WHITE = Miss!* your turns that the hold is maintained. This means you
still get an action, too...
» GREEN = Take
» YELLOW = Grab Pull Your Punch
When making a grapple attack, you may reduce the
» RED = Break
*If the item was in someone else’s possession, they retain the color result.
it. If not, it falls to the ground.
Take
You gain a hold of the item. If your Strength is equal or
greater than the target’s Strength, you gain control of it.
Otherwise they pull it free; treat it as a WHITE result.
Grab
You grab and gain control of the item, regardless of your
opponent’s Strength.
Break
You grab and gain control of the item, but risk
breaking it. If your Strength is greater than
the Material Strength of the object, it breaks.
Regardless, if it has a button or trigger to activate
an effect, it goes off, targeting a random person in
the area (determined by the GM), and using AV
6 as the attack roll Rank, unless stated
otherwise.

Thrown Attacks
You throw a projectile, dealing damage based on whether
it’s blunt or edged.
Range
The attack has a range listed in areas. This is its maximum
range. Each area the projectile passes through up to that
point incurs a -1R penalty to the attack roll.
Ability
You use your Agility to make the attack roll, with the
penalty noted above.
Effect
You deal damage based on the type of attack, either blunt
(throwing baton, brick, baseball, car, lamp post, etc.) or
edged damage (throwing knife, shuriken, thrown spear,
dart, throwing axe, etc.).
Blunt Damage
» WHITE = Miss!
» GREEN = Damage
» YELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Bullseye
» RED = Damage +2R, plus Stun
Base Damage
damage Rank Number.
Hold Back
When making a thrown blunt attack, you may reduce the
the color result.
Miss!
On a miss, the GM may roll to see if it hits a randomly
Edged Damage determined bystander.
» WHITE = Miss! Improvised Weapons
» GREEN = Damage If you use an improvised weapon such as a stop sign, lamp
post, a brick, or whatever, it deals Strength +1R damage
» YELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Stun if the item’s Material Strength is equal or greater than
» RED = Damage +2R, plus Kill your Strength. Otherwise, it probably just breaks because
it’s too flimsy. See MOVEMENT & ENVIRONMENT for
Base Damage
Material Strength ratings of common objects.
damage Rank Number.
You cannot reduce the damage or the color result of an Bullseye, Stun, Kill
attack that deals edged damage. See Special Effects.

Ranged Attacks
You fire a projectile weapon such as a gun or bow (Shooting),
or project a form of energy or concussive force to deal
damage (Energy/Force Attacks).
Range
The attack has a range listed in areas. This is its maximum
range. Each area the projectile passes through up to that
point incurs a -1R penalty to the attack roll.
Ability
You use your Agility to make the attack roll, with the
penalty noted above.
Effect
You deal damage, plus special effects, based on the type of
attack: shooting, energy, or force.
Shooting Attack
Shooting Attacks are defined by a projectile fired from a
weapon, giving said projectile more force and penetrating
power than if it were thrown. Guns, bows, crossbows, etc.
fall under this. Your color result determines the effect.
» WHITE = Miss! Force Attack
The primary difference from an energy attack is that a
» GREEN = Damage force attack has kinetic force: concussive explosions, force
» YELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Bullseye fields, and repulsor blasts. Your color result determines
» RED = Damage +2R, plus Kill the effect.
Base Damage »W HITE = Miss!

You deal damage equal to the attack or weapon’s listed »G REEN = Damage
damage Rank Number.
» Y ELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Bullseye
» R ED = Damage +2R, plus Stun
Energy Attack Base Damage
Energy doesn’t usually have kinetic force behind it: fire,
lasers, electricity, etc. Your color result determines the
damage Rank Number.
effect.
» WHITE = Miss!
» GREEN = Damage
Miss!
On a miss, the GM may roll to see if it hits a randomly
» YELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Bullseye determined bystander.
» RED = Damage +2R, plus Kill
Base Damage Hold Back
You deal damage equal to the attack or weapon’s listed When making an Energy or Force Attack, you may
damage Rank Number. reduce the damage to any number you wish, but you
cannot change the color result. You cannot do either for
a Shooting Attack.
Bullseye, Stun, Kill

Special Effects
Many maneuvers have special effects in addition to the
Kill
You have mortally wounded your opponent...they might
die, regardless of their current Damage!
old standby “damage your opponent.” The ones shared by
many maneuvers are described below. Resistance
When subject to a Kill, first compare the attack’s Rank
to your Body Armor or other protection. If their attack is
Bullseye greater (i.e. you take damage), then make an Endurance
You didn’t just hit, you hit exactly the spot you wanted to, roll. Otherwise, ignore the Kill.
inflicting more than just damage!
Effect
A Bullseye result allows you to “call your shot” and hit The result of the Endurance roll tells you what happens.
something interesting like a weak point, something a
person’s holding, the lever that activates the Doomsday »W
HITE = Endurance Loss: You are unconscious and
Device, or whatever. You are encouraged to describe it in begin dying..
a fun manner, and you and the GM collaborate on a neat »G
REEN = KO 1-10: You are knocked out for 1d10
extra effect like: rounds.
» Shooting a gun out of someone’s hand. » Y ELLOW or RED = No: You’re fine.
» Lashing someone’s arm or weapon to a nearby light
post.
» Knocking out a specific system on power armor or
vehicles, such as the sensors, or blowing out a tire
or stabilizer.
This is a license to consider an alternative effect other
than damage (though you may certainly deal damage,
as well). Using Slams or Stuns as a useful template, you
might hit a rocket pack and effectively “Slam” your
opponent into another area. An aimed shot at someone’s
head might effectively “Stun” them. If something is viable
on a YELLOW result under another maneuver, then it’s fair
game if the GM says so. But you can only ever choose one
effect in addition to dealing damage.
This is not a license to employ the Kill result, or increase
the damage of an effect. Since Kills only happen on a RED
result, you can’t achieve that. Same with Break (Grab) and
Hold (Grappling): these are RED results, so if you Bullseye
an enemy’s gun, you shoot it out of their hand...but they
can still recover it and use it later on. It’s not broken. If you
entangle their limb, they might have a -2 penalty while
wrapped up (as for a Partial Hold), but aren’t completely
immobilized.
Resisting Bullseye Effects

Your target can’t resist a Bullseye effect itself. However, if
you use Bullseye to create an effect that normally has a
way to resist it (such as a Slam or Stun), then those rules
take precedence.

Slam
You’ve been hit by an attack that might knock you through
the air!
Resistance
When subject to a Slam, first compare the attack’s Rank
to your Body Armor or other protection. If their attack is
greater (i.e. you take damage), then make an Endurance
roll. Otherwise, ignore the Slam.
Effect
The result of the Endurance roll tells you what happens.
» WHITE = Grand Slam: You go flying! Starting at Null
on the Uni-Table, count up a number of Ranks
equal to the difference between your Endurance
Rank and your opponent’s damage Rank. Reference
this Rank on the Land/Water Speed section of the
Speed Table to see how many areas you are flung,
minimum 1 area.
» GREEN = Slam: You are pushed into an adjacent area
of the attacker’s choice.
» YELLOW = Stagger: You stumble but remain in the
same area.
» RED = No: You remain planted where you are.
On any results except for RED, if there’s a wall, pit, debris,
crowds, or other environmental features in the area you
end in (even if it’s the same one you’re in because you
were Staggered), your attacker can choose to knock you
into them. The effects of these are usually left to the GM to
devise. (Crowds and clutter are described in MOVEMENT
AND ENVIRONMENT.)
Describing a Slam
A Slam successful result doesn’t strictly mean that a
character was walloped hard enough to fly through
multiple Areas. While that’s certainly one interpretation,
it may not make sense for characters who aren’t super
Stun
You are hit so hard you have the wind — or your
strong. Slams can be described as any variation of the
consciousness — knocked right outta ya.
following:
Resistance
» You reel backwards. When subject to a Stun, first compare the attack’s Rank
» After being hit, your opponent throws you aside. to your Body Armor or other protection. If their attack is
» You stumble several feet, unable to catch your greater (i.e. you take damage), then make an Endurance
footing. roll. Otherwise, ignore the Stun.
» You slide across the ground. Effect

The result of the Endurance roll tells you what happens.
» You skip across the ground, like skipping a rock.
» You bounce off of several obstacles as you go »W
HITE = 1-10: You fall prone and roll one 10-sided
die, and that’s the number of rounds you’re out of it.
staggering backwards.
»G
REEN = 1: You are dazed, still on your feet but
unable to act for one round.
» Y ELLOW or RED = No: You’re fine.
A stunned character cannot act, but it’s up to them
whether they are fully unconscious or not. Either way,
they are confused, don’t move or defend themselves, and
can’t meaningfully communicate in any form.

Advanced Attack Point-Blank Range
When you make a Shooting Attack against a helpless target
Tactics
Use the following maneuvers and situations to maximize
(such as one restrained by a hold, tied up, or unconscious)
who is next to you, unobstructed by a crowded or cluttered
situation, you gain +2R to your attack roll and increase
your teamwork, attacks and abilities. the color result by one (maximum of RED).
Aiming Shockwave
You take aim on your intended target as your action. On If your Strength is at least two Ranks greater than the
the following round you get an additional +1R on your Material Strength of the ground, you may affect a large
attack roll. area by creating an earthquake-like effect. Make a Strength
roll, and everyone (and everything) other than you within
Attacking Multiple Targets 1 area of you applies the following effects individually.
When making a melee blunt or edged attack, energy Damage is based on your Strength Rank Number.
attack, or force attack, you target multiple adjacent
opponents in the same area as you. Make a single attack »W HITE = Miss!
roll at -4R then resolve the effects individually. »G REEN = Damage
Blindsiding » Y ELLOW = Damage +1R, plus Slam
If you get the drop on an opponent — attacking from » R ED = Damage +2R, plus Stun
hiding, while invisible, etc. — you gain a +2R on your
attack roll.
Attacking an opponent you cannot sense (due to darkness,
powers, etc.) applies a -2R penalty on your attack rolls.
Combined Attacks
As your action, declare that you will combine attacks with
another character in order to punch through an enemy’s
defenses or increase the effect of a special attack. Doing
so gives you a reaction on an ally’s turn where you make
an Agility roll. If successful, your ally’s action receives
a bonus to damage based on your color result:
WHITE = no bonus, GREEN = +1R, YELLOW = +2R,
RED = +3R.
Divebomb
A character charging from the air (via flight,
etc.), dropping straight down, gains a +4R
bonus on their attack roll.
Double-Teaming
Any time you attack a character that is currently subject
to a Partial Hold or Hold from an ally, you get a +2R to
your attack.
Groundstrike
To make an Energy Attack on a target without the
risk of a possible Kill result, you instead strike the
ground beneath them (or any other surface they
are in contact with). Your Energy Attack must
have a Rank that is higher than the Material
Strength of the surface you are striking. If so,
make your attack using the Force Attack results
instead of Energy Attack, but you deal damage
equal to the Material Strength of the surface
targeted instead of your normal damage.

Defend
Normally, you are assumed to be ducking and weaving to
a certain degree. That’s why opponents have to roll to hit
you, and why being subject to a grappling hold is very bad
for you.
If you want to be extra careful, you can move and interact
on your turn normally, but take the Defend action, which
is effectively nothing else on your turn. You may then use
any defensive maneuvers described below as a reaction,
as many times as you like. (Exception: Escape works
differently.)
The Defend action is most useful if you have no other
way of affecting the outcome of a fight, or find yourself
in special circumstances. One example is when you are
subject to a Grappling hold: you cannot take any actions
or move at all, except to use the Escape maneuver. Another
example would be if you want to shield an ally from an
attack: you can use theShield special defensive maneuver
to do that.
Finally, there are some powers or gear that give you a
“free” defensive reaction. In these cases, they’ll tell you
what happens, but it usually means you don’t have to take
the Defend action to use them: you act normally on your
turn, plus you can use one of the defensive maneuvers as
a reaction.
Block
You attempt to absorb the impact of an attack through brute
The most common maneuver is Dodge, which is presented strength.
first. Special defensive maneuvers presented afterward
Useful Against
include Blocking (and Shielding), Catching, and Escaping.
Incoming attacks targeted at you. Attacks that affect an
entire area cannot be blocked.
Dodge Effect
You attempt to get out of the way of an incoming attack. Make a Fighting roll as soon as you are targeted by an
Useful Against applicable attack as a reaction. If you have a protective
Incoming attacks targeted at you. Attacks that affect an item (an item designed to block attacks, like a shield), or
entire area cannot be dodged. an improvised item (such as a door, trash can lid, etc.)
use its Material Strength as Body Armor. If you don’t
Effect have such an item, the color of the result determines how
Make an Agility roll as soon as you are targeted by an much effective body armor you receive. This body armor
applicable attack as a reaction. You dodge each attack works like the power Body Armor: you subtract the Rank
individually. If you take the Defend action, you can dodge Number from any damage you take, to a minimum of zero
any number of attacks in between your turns. Otherwise (0).
you are limited by the ability that gives you this reaction.
The color of the result determines what happens: »W
HITE = Fail! Increase the attack’s color result by
one (GREEN | YELLOW | RED).
» WHITE = Stepped Right Into It! Increase the attack’s »G
REEN = You gain body armor equal to the Material
color result by one (GREEN | YELLOW | RED). Strength of your shield, or your Strength -4R.
» GREEN = Roll with the Impact! Reduce the attack’s » Y ELLOW = You gain body armor equal to the Material
color result by one (RED | YELLOW | GREEN | WHITE). Strength of your shield, or your Strength -2R.
» YELLOW or RED = Dodge! You evade the attack » R ED = You gain body armor equal to the Material
completely. Strength +1R of your shield, or your own Strength
+1R.
If you already have the Body Armor power (or gear that
grants it), you use the higher rating only; it doesn’t stack.
(So, this power isn’t great if you already have Body Armor
that’s rated near or above your Strength.)

Shield Improvised Shields
You leap in front of an attack aimed at an ally (or anything
Note that improvised shield devices are always rendered
else you’re willing to protect with your body)!
useless the first time they successfully shield you; items
Useful Against built for defense can be used again and again, unless they
Any attack. are actively targeted to be destroyed.
Effect If using the optional rules about destroying objects (see
Shield is a special form of Block. As a reaction, choose a MOVEMENT & ENVIRONMENT), assume items built to
single attack aimed at someone (or something) else in the act as shields don’t take damage from an attack unless
same area as you and make an Agility roll. If successful, specifically targeted themselves.
you become the target of the attack and immediately
If you prefer a more “realistic” (i.e. complex) approach,
make a Block maneuver.
assume a shield-like object takes 25% of the damage
delivered by an attack, but only if the attack is rated
Catch equal or higher than the Material Strength of the object.
You’re either awaiting a pass from the quarterback or you
otherwise know something’s headed your way, and you
want to snatch it out of the air. Escape
Useful Against When you are held in a grapple hold or entangled by some
Falling people, objects thrown to you, attacks thrown or object or power, this is your one chance to slip free.
fired at you*. Useful Against
*Trying to catch something used as an attack against you Grappling, abilities that entangle.
is very difficult. You must have a minimum Agility in Effect
order to even attempt this, per the table below. Escaping is a special form of defense you are forced to
make when you are the subject of a hold (from a Grappling
Catching Table maneuver) or entangled by gear or powers. On your turn,
Attack Min. Agility make a Strength roll when subjected to an applicable
Thrown projectiles RM (30)
attack. The color of the result determines what happens.
Large fired projectiles (arrows) AM (50) »W HITE = Fail!
Small fired projectiles (bullets) UN (100) »G REEN = Fail!
Effect » Y ELLOW = You break free, but remain in the same
Make an Agility roll as a reaction when you are near area you were restrained in.
where someone or something is falling, or are targeted » R ED = You break free, and may immediately move
to receive a thrown object, or are targeted by thrown or up to 1 area away, and you may make an attack or
shooting attacks. The color of the result determines what perform another action you’d normally be able to
happens: do on your turn, but with a -2R penalty.
» WHITE = Auto-hit: The thing hits you, and affects you You may only make a single Escape attempt on your
normally, or if a falling person/object, hits you as if turn. Notably, you can only ever be subjected to a single
charging you. grappling or entangling effect: the worst/most powerful
one is the one you need to break free from, if it ever
» GREEN = Miss: Unless it was targeting you, in which matters that you have multiple potential sources.
case it hits you and resolves the attack normally.
» YELLOW = Damage: You catch the thing, but deal
your Strength Rank Number in damage to it.
» RED = Catch: You catch the thing with no ill effects
to you or it.
You may only use the Catch maneuver as a reaction once
until your next turn. And generally, you can only catch
a single person or thing at a time, so make it count! (The
GM is free to rule you can catch more at once if they are
falling/thrown such that they remain very close together.)

Health & Damage
As previously mentioned, your Health is a static score
Knocked Out!
When you suffer the effects of a Kill result, it doesn’t
matter what your current Health is. You resolve the Kill
that is the sum of your FASE abilities: Fighting, Agility,
result to see what happens.
Strength, and Endurance. It is a measure of your physical
condition, including stamina, durability, flexibility, and Otherwise, when your current damage equals your Health
more generalized well-being. Injury, disease, toxins, score, you immediately fall unconscious and are knocked
exhaustion, extreme temperatures, and so on all affect out (KO). Make an Endurance roll as if subjected to a Kill
your Health, usually by dealing damage. result (results reprinted here):
Damage is tracked as a cumulative number. Normally, you »W
HITE = Endurance Loss: You are unconscious and
start most scenarios without any damage, but you accrue begin dying.
it as the situations previously mentioned affect you. You
»G
REEN = KO 1-10: You are knocked unconscious for
record any damage you take, and as you take more, you
1d10 rounds.
add it to the current damage. If you somehow heal or
recover, you subtract that from your current damage. » Y ELLOW = No: You’re fine.
When you hit something with an attack, you deal damage, » R ED = No: You’re fine.
usually defined by a Rank Number. Punching? Deal If you remain unconscious but are not dying, you simply
your Strength Rank Number as damage. A really strong remain out cold until you recover (see Recovery). An
character deals 40 damage because their Strength is IN unconscious character cannot act, and isn’t aware of
40. A typical person off the street, on the other hand, what’s going on around them at all.
probably deals 6 damage for their AV 6 Strength. I Don’t Want to Kill Them
Laser Blasts might use your power armor’s targeting Some maneuvers allow you to pull your punch, or
system to hit an opponent, which is AM 50! But on a otherwise deal less than the listed damage. What happens
successful attack, the rays themselves only deal 30 if you just want to knock out the villains without risking
damage because they are rated at RM 30. Your individual killing them? Whenever you are likely to deal enough
powers, gear, and so on will usually note what you roll damage to KO your opponent, it is okay for the GM to
for the attack roll, and then what you use for the damage simply rule that you deal enough damage to knock an
number. If it doesn’t specify and only has one Rank and opponent out rather than causing them to roll to see if
Rank Number, use that for both. they start dying.
Hit ‘em While They’re Down
Recording Damage If you are unconscious but not currently dying, and
then you are subjected to any other attacks, you don’t
You might prefer to have damage subtract from your
take additional damage, but you do immediately begin
character’s Health, rather than accumulate and then
dying. There’s no such thing as going over your Health in
compare it to their Health. That’s okay, too! All you have
damage.
to remember is:
» Your character is knocked out when their Health
is zero. Dying
When you are dying, you temporarily lose an Endurance
» There’s no such thing as having negative Health. rank each round on your turn, and remain unconscious.
» Healing improves your Health, removing damage, If you are not stabilized (see below), you die for really real
but you (usually) cannot recover more Health than once you reach NULL 0 Endurance.
your original maximum.
Stabilizing a Dying Character
So, just treat your Health as your “Maximum Health” and There are two ways to stave off death, not counting special
use the Damage box to show your “Current Health.” powers and gear that tell you otherwise.
Treatment
If another character spends their action tending to you,
they can make a Reason roll, stopping the Endurance loss
if they succeed. A character with First Aid or Medicine
Talents can do this without a roll, they just use their
action.
Karma
You can spend 15 Karma to stave off your Endurance loss
for 1 round. You may do this as many times as you have
Karma to pay for it.

Recovery Summary
If you’re unconscious but not currently dying, you’ll wake
1. When you get into a fight, the order in which people
up at the end of the 1d10 rounds with whatever your
act is based on their Initiative: highest goes first,
current Health is.
then in descending order.
If you awaken and still have damage equal to your Health, 2. ...Unless the GM rules otherwise. It’s okay to start
make another Endurance roll (at your current, potentially somewhere other than with the highest if the
reduced Endurance Rank): if you fail you remain situation (an ambush, a feint or sleight, etc.) dictates.
unconscious for 1d10 minutes. Repeat the roll at the end 3. When it’s your turn to act, you can perform:
of that duration, and if you succeed you awaken and
a. 1 move
recover damage equal to your Endurance Rank Number,
otherwise you’re out for 1d10 more minutes. Rinse and b. 1 action
repeat. c. 1+ interactions (simple actions like opening a
door)
Every hour of rest (not necessarily sleep; you can perform
light activity) allows you to heal more damage equal to 4. Your action can be...:
your Endurance Rank Number. a. Attack
b. Defend
Every week of light activity allows you to recover one lost
Endurance Rank. If you have access to trained, equipped c. Hold Off
medical care, then this increases to one Rank per day of d. Do something else cool
light activity under medical care. 5. When it’s not your turn and someone tries to do
something to you, you’re at the mercy of their dice
roll, unless…
Optional Rule: a. you took the Defend action
Lingering Injuries b. you have a power or ability that gives you a
You or the GM may rule that you have lingering injuries. reaction.
Until you recover your full Endurance Ranks, you may 6. When you roll to perform actions like attacks and
choose to make any roll at -2R and gain 1 Karma. defensive maneuvers, the color of your dice roll
result — WHITE, GREEN, YELLOW, or RED — tells you
(A) how well you did, and (B) if you get to inflict
some additional effect.
7. Most “additional benefits” can be resisted. Even so,
you get to describe how cool you are when you do
them.
8. When you get hurt, increase the number in your
Damage box on your datafile by the amount of
damage.
9. If you suffer a Kill result and fail your Endurance
roll, or find yourself with damage equal to your
Health, you might start dying.
10. Dying characters lose Endurance Ranks
temporarily. At NULL, you’re dead-dead.
11. Recovering from damage requires rest. Recovering
lost Endurance Ranks requires a lot more rest.

SOCIAL INTERACTION
The modified Popularity and Attitude rules, and Step Two: Method
associated Talents were created by Jayson Jolin Now decide how you wish to influence them.
(@realityJaysonJ on Twitter)! Logical argumentation.
Use Reason.
Reason, Intuition, and Psyche can all be employed to Appeal to their emotions, or appeal to their motives
influence, resist influence, and otherwise interact with based on what you know about them.
NPCs in a scenario. Use Intuition.
Reason is all about logic and complex problem-solving. Charm them, fast-talk them, or outright command them.
That comes into play when someone tries to appeal to Use Psyche.
your intellect or makes a logical argument to get you to
respond in a way to their liking, or you do the same to It’s okay if this step is a little fuzzy and could go any one
them. of multiple ways: use your highest primary ability in any
instance where it’s unclear.
Intuition is commonly used to get a “read” on someone’s
emotional state or motives.
Psyche measures your character’s force of personality,
moxie, and willpower. In social interactions, it measures
one’s determination and focus, so it can be used to assert
your will over someone, or resist the same.
Social Rolls
Social rolls are non-combat rolls, and as such the result
color needed for success often depends on a Difficulty. As
a reminder, if the Difficulty is lower than the ability Rank,
you succeed on a GREEN result. If the Difficulty equals
the ability Rank, you succeed on a YELLOW result. If the
Difficulty is higher than the ability Rank, you succeed on
a RED result.
Step One: Goal

When attempting to convince someone of something,
negotiate with them, interview or interrogate them, or
whatever, first decide what you are trying to accomplish.
Are you attempting to convince someone of the truth of
a statement, or attempting to make that person believe
something (true or not)?
If so, then your Difficulty is your target’s Reason.
Are you attempting to rile up the target or calm him
down, or elicit some other emotion?
Use the target’s Intuition as the Difficulty .
Are you trying to motivate the target to perform some
specific action?
The target’s Psyche acts as the Difficulty to resist such
attempts.

Step Three: Popularity
Apply Modifiers Characters do not live in a vacuum; their reputations
Apply any modifiers to the roll based on your Popularity, often precede them, leading to more complicated social
the NPC’s Attitude, or situational modifiers. interactions. When dealing with members of the public
who have no story reason to have a differing opinion
Is the NPC a stranger, or someone that only knows the
from that of the general population, the GM can take a
character through their public-facing persona?
hero’s reputation into account as Popularity.
Apply your Popularity as a modifier. See Popularity, below.
The modifier for Popularity represents a character’s
Does the NPC know them and already have a
reputation before the public. Popularity comes into play
preconceived feeling towards them and their behavior?
most often when dealing with nameless NPCs who only
Apply the NPC’s attitude as a modifier. See Attitude, below.
know the character indirectly. Once a NPC has interacted
Anything else? with the character and becomes a named NPC, the GM
Use the modifiers on the Optional Modifiers Table as should use that NPC’s Attitude towards the character in
appropriate. Note that this list is by no means exhaustive. addition to Popularity.
The GM should apply other modifiers as they deem
Popularity is a modifier with positive and negative aspects
appropriate.
ranging from -3R (Demonized) to +3R (Idolized). Popularity
Optional Modifiers Table is relegated to a modifier of social rolls rather than used
for rolls of its own, similar to Talents. See the Attitudes
Situation Modifier and Popularity Table for specific levels and modifiers.
The target benefits. +2R
The target is placed in danger.
The item in question is up to Good (GD) value.
-3R
-1R
Managing Popularity
The fickle nature of Popularity is such that your modifier
The item in question is up to Remarkable (RM) value. -2R
may change...perhaps often! The things you do in the
There’s a good chance the item will not be returned. -2R public eye might increase or decrease your Popularity
The item is unique. -3R modifier, largely at the GM’s discretion, but using these
guidelines.
Step Four: Committing Crimes

If you commit a crime publicly, even if you are charged
Resolve the Roll by authorities for a crime you didn’t commit, you almost
Make the roll as normal, using your Rank plus or minus certainly suffer -1R Popularity. Capital offenses may inflict
any modifiers, and applying the Difficulty to determine even greater penalties, proportional to the perceived
what color result is necessary to succeed. Popularity of the victim. (Killing a known villain isn’t
If you succeed, you get what you want. really a crime in the public’s eyes.)
If you fail, the other character determines how the Fighting Villains
interaction ends. Defeating a villain publicly will endear you to the masses,
Generally, you can’t retry the same roll: you need to come while being defeated has some negative consequences.
to do the table with something different. That said, if Defeat a Villain
you’re absolutely determined to get what you want, you Doesn’t matter how many you defeat at a time, but so long
could initiate either combat (get it by force!) or a social as you defeat at least one, you get a +1R to your Popularity.
challenge. See the section on Social Challenges under This could be higher if you avert a worldwide disaster...
Resolve for more. but only sometimes. There’s always plenty of folks who
wonder if you started the fight...
Defeated by a Villain
Doesn’t matter how badly you lose, -1R Popularity if you
get in a tussle and clearly come out as the loser.

Acts of Charity no other motive (yet): you are focused solely on improving
Acts of kindness can go a long way. your standing with them. This may require that you give
them something or perform a task for them; it is up to
Donations
the individual NPC what might allow for this roll to take
Charitable donations to big causes are great...but only
place. Keep the NPC’s goals in mind.
if you really show up with the cash! You must set your
Resources back -1R for at least a month in order to get a In either case, success shifts the Attitude based on the
+1R to your Popularity. See the chapter on RESOURCES & color result:
STUFF.
»W HITE = worsen Attitude by one
Public Appearance »G REEN = Attitude stays the same
You don’t have to give money, you can just show up and
lend your existing popularity to potentially increase » Y ELLOW = improve Attitude by one
your Popularity with a capital “P”. The event has to be big » R ED = improve Attitude by two
enough for national (or bigger) media attention, and even
Remember that Difficulty applies, so move the color
then, the GM may require you to make a roll to change
result effects up or down based on whether the Difficulty
the default Attitude of the crowd. In any case, you’ll get at
is lower, the same, or higher than your Rank.
most +1R to your Popularity.
Conversely, if you do things to your target that could
Rescue
worsen their Attitude towards you, you must make a roll
Whether it’s a cat in a tree or a bus full of students
to prevent them from thinking worse of you. In this case,
teetering on the edge of a busted bridge, everyone loves a
failure (WHITE result) worsens the Attitude by one, but any
rescue scenario. +1R to your Popularity!
other color causes it to stay the same.
Attitude
The primary modifier for social rolls for named NPCs and
Attitudes and Popularity Table
Modifier Attitude Popularity
PC’s, is Attitude: how the target feels about you. Attitude -3R Enamored Demonized (hated/fear)
ranges from Hostile to Enamored. See the Attitudes and -2R Very friendly Very distrusted or disliked
Popularity Table for specific levels and modifiers. -1R Friendly Distrusted or disliked
+0 Neutral Neutral
Changing Attitude +1R Unfriendly Liked

Improving a target’s Attitude toward you is a Psyche roll +2R Very unfriendly Loved
against the target’s Intuition as Difficulty. This requires +3R Hostile Idolized
you to interact with them in a manner where you have

Social Challenges
Unlike in combat situations where a character takes
damage and compares it to their Health, most social
situations are simply handled as a single roll against
any individual you are attempting to influence or who
is attempting to influence you. Choose your goal and
method, apply modifiers and Difficulty, and roll to see if
you get what you want.
If you fail and are determined to try again without
bringing anything new to the interaction, or you find
yourself in a complex, multi-stage situation that requires
many interactions, such as a legal case, complex business
negotiation, or prolonged interrogation, then the GM may
rule it is a social challenge.
In a social challenge, you begin dealing stress to your
opponent in order to stress them out and get what you
want. This acts like combat:
1. Go in initiative order.
2. Each character makes a single social interaction on
their turn.
3. Resolve each interaction by dealing stress based on
the method chosen.
What’s different is that Popularity and Attitude no longer
play a part. Each interaction works like this:
1. Choose your goal to set the Difficulty.
2. Choose your method to determine which ability
you roll (Reason, Intuition, or Psyche).
3. Apply the results based on color.
The color results are the same for any method. Remember
that Difficulty applies, so move the color result effects
up or down based on whether the Difficulty is lower, the
same, or higher than your Rank.
»W
HITE = Your opponent deals stress to you equal to
their Difficulty trait’s Rank Number.
»G
REEN = You deal stress equal to your method trait’s
Rank Number.
» Y ELLOW = You deal stress equal to your method
Resolve & Stress

Your Resolve is a static score that is the sum of your RIP
trait’s Rank Number +1R.
» R ED = You deal stress equal to your method trait’s
Rank Number +2R.
abilities: Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. It is a measure of
your mental and emotional condition, including focus,
calm, courage, perseverance, and more generalized well- Wielding Your Resources
being. Intimidation, anxiety, fear, loss, anger, psychic In some cases, it can make sense to use Resources in
attacks, emotional manipulation, and so on all affect your place of one of your primary abilities, such as if you are
Resolve, usually by dealing stress. flaunting your wealth against someone, in high society
Stress is tracked as a cumulative number. Normally, you settings, buying up their assets, or leveraging financial
start most scenarios without any stress, but you accrue connections to freeze their assets or create expensive
it as the situations previously mentioned affect you. You legal quandaries for them. In this case, your Resources
record any stress you take, and as you take more, you add Rank and Rank Number come into play, instead of
it to the current stress. If you somehow heal or recover, Reason, Intuition, or Psyche.
you subtract that from your current stress.

Multiple Aggressors Recovery
What if multiple characters are involved in the scene?
When you are stressed out, you recover a number of
In such cases it might seem unfair to have multiple
stress equal to your Psyche Rank Number as soon as
characters making social challenge rolls and applying
the next scene you are in begins. In this scene, you can
stress to a single target, for example. Well, it is, so things
either seek out help and potentially recover more stress,
work differently.
or you perform other activities and have to let your stress
When you and some allies want to apply stress to a target, naturally recover, which takes time.
each side chooses a leader who does the dice rolling. They
When you seek out recovery, frame a scene with one
choose the goal and the method. Everyone that wants to
of your Contacts, or another Hero. This scene involves
help out provides a +1R to the leader’s rolls, or to the trait
roleplaying with them: catching up with them, asking
acting as the Difficulty. Unfortunately, they are all now
them for support, voicing your frustrations, or seeking
at risk of taking stress, too. Whenever stress is dealt out,
advice. At the end of the scene, make a Psyche roll:
it is applied to the leader and everyone that helped by
providing a +1R bonus to the leader. »W
HITE = No change.
»G
REEN = You recover stress equal to your
Stressed Out companion’s Psyche Rank Number.
At any point in the conflict, on your turn, you can give » Y ELLOW = You recover stress equal to your
in to the stress, giving your opponent what they want on companion’s Psyche Rank Number +1R.
your terms. When you do so, the challenge ends, and you » R ED = You recover stress equal to your companion’s
describe your failure on your terms. Against NPCs, giving Psyche Rank Number +2R.
in causes their Attitude toward you to worsen by one.
You can repeat such scenes until you recover fully, but you
When your current stress equals your Resolve score, you must seek out a new companion each time.
are stressed out. Generally, this means you describe how
you leave the scene, unable to get what you want and Recovering stress naturally happens over the course of
unwilling to push any further. You might storm out in rest. Each full night’s sleep or the equivalent (based on
anger or sorrow, you might be frozen in fear, or you might your character’s biological needs) recovers stress equal to
give in and give your opponent what they want instead, your Psyche Rank Number.
without any further resistance.
Optional Rule:
Recording Stress Healing & Stress
You might prefer to have stress subtract from your
Any power or gear that provides damage recovery can
character’s Resolve, rather than accumulate and then
alternatively be used to provide stress recovery. You
compare it to their Resolve. That’s okay, too! All you have
can’t do both at the same time, though.
to remember is:
» Your character is stressed out when their Resolve
is zero.
» There’s no such thing as having negative Resolve.
» Recovery improves your Resolve, removing stress,
but you (usually) cannot recover more Resolve
than your original maximum.
So, just treat your Resolve as your “Maximum Resolve”
and use the Stress box to show your “Current Resolve.”

Contacts
“My character knows them!” versus “This person owes me/
loves me/will risk themselves for me” are two different
relationships. These are represented by NPCs either being
just that — NPCs — or being labeled as Contacts under
the Affiliations & Contacts section of your datafile.
An NPC usually either does whatever the GM thinks
makes sense, or whatever the dice dictate under
SOCIAL INTERACTIONS. This includes all negotiations,
interrogations, interviews, profiling, bribing, deceit, and
so on.
The exception to this is when you spend 5 Karma to
establish a temporary contact. This can be with either
a new NPC you call into a scene or someone already
present: spending the Karma just establishes them as an
asset to you in this particular scene. In such a case, you
can call on that NPC to help you out an important, albeit
not-too-risky way.
What Do Contacts Do?
A contact, however, is a named NPC on your character
sheet, and they automatically can be called on at any
time to lend a hand in a minor way. Call them on the
phone, setup a meeting, etc. However you do it, the NPC
gets involved and shares whatever aid the GM deems
reasonable, which could be nothing (“Sorry, I don’t know
what a ‘hydra’ is outside of that scene in Willow…,” says
Smiley Sam) or could be lending cash or info-dumps
about subjects they are well-versed in.
However, if you spend 10 Karma as noted in the DATAFILES
section on Milestones & Karma, you can bring one of your
Contacts onto the scene as an important asset. When you
do this, they will provide material aid to you and likely
will even risk themselves to do so. Maybe not life and
limb, but certainly they will put their reputation on the
line, fight harder for your cause than some stranger off
the street, or take a financial hit if it means bailing you
Summary
1. Reason is logic and complex problem-solving.
out of jail. Some may be inclined to risk their lives for you;
this is ultimately up to the GM and how the narrative has 2. Intuition is insight and emotional intelligence.
so far established your relationship. 3. Psyche is willpower and force of personality.
4. Most social rolls are made against a Difficulty, using
Adding or Upgrading whichever traits make the most sense.
5. Popularity is a modifier for social rolls when used on
Contacts the general public, ranging from -3R (Demonized) to
One thing you might be wondering is how to turn a one- +3R (Idolized).
off temporary contact into a Contact on your sheet. Or, 6. An NPC has an Attitude toward the character
you might wonder how to improve your relationship with which modifies whichever of their traits is acting
a Contact such that they would risk their lives for you. as the Difficulty for a social roll. Like Popularity it
This is entirely narrative: you can request to frame a short is measured from +3R (Hostile) to -3R (Enamored).
scene that tests your relationship with that NPC — you 7. If your in a complex social situation, or you face
and the GM collaborate on what happens that might assault from psychic powers, you might accrue
bring conflict or a new status quo — and usually the GM Stress, which is compared to your Resolve to see if
will require at least one pertinent roll. It also may just you get Stressed Out.
take time: multiple scenes with the NPC over the course of 8. Datafiles have a section of Contacts who you can call
several scenarios. It’s up to the GM, and it’s a great source onto a scene for 10 Karma. You can also establish a
for projects your character can focus on during downtime. handy temporary contact in a scene for 5 Karma.

RESOURCES & STUFF
This chapter covers Resources (financial assets used to Resource Difficulty Table
buy things or throw around to make people do what you
Situation Difficulty
want) and Stuff (mundane gear, weapons, vehicles, etc.).
Bus/subway fare WK
Resources
Loosely tied to social interactions, but of great importance
Modest hotel
Rent, 1BR in NYC
MD
AV
Mortgage, small house AV
nonetheless, is money. Financial assets make the world of
Housekeeper salary AV
business go round, and it’s also a primary motivator for so
Bodyguard salary GD
many criminal activities.
Lawyer or doctor fees GD
You have a Resources Rank and Rank Number which
Broadway tickets GD
gauges your relative wealth: not simply in liquid assets,
but overall. This trait can fluctuate: buying expensive Car, sedan EX
things or gaining a sudden windfall are often temporary, Mortgage, large house EX
but impact your wealth long enough that it could be Penthouse suite RM
measured in weeks, months, or even years. On-staff lawyer RM
Luxury car RM
Buying Stuff Private jet IN
To afford something available, you simply roll your Salary, hundreds of workers IN
Resources against a Difficulty based on the thing’s Mansion IN
perceived current value. If it’s 3 or more Ranks below your Salary, thousands of workers AM
Resources, the Judge can just handwave it and say you get
Military jet SP
it. If it’s 3 or more Ranks above your Resources, the Judge
can say it’s simply not in your ability to purchase (cue a Major corporation SP
heist scenario!). Mega-corporation UN
Flying aircraft carrier X150
Assuming you succeed at the roll, you buy the thing.
It’s that simple. If it was equal to or 1 Rank higher than
your Resources, the Judge can temporarily lower your
Resources by one or two for a timeframe they choose. Resources & Popularity
See Acts of Charity in the SOCIAL INTERACTION chapter
A few tables of stuff to purchase — mainly weapons, for how you can leverage your Resources to affect your
armor, and heroic gear — can be found at the end of this Popularity modifier.
chapter.
Pooling Resources
If multiple characters want to pool their Resources to
afford something, they must first be within one Rank
of each other, and then the character with the highest
Rank receives a +1R bonus for each character pooling
in (maximum +3R). However, if the character would
receive a temporary reduction of their Resources, then all
characters who pool in receive the penalty.

Stuff
The following tables include a bunch of stuff you can
purchase that you’d normally see in a role-playing game
scenario, including weapons, vehicles, and so on. These
tables aren’t meant to be a laundry list of items, and tend
to greatly generalize most objects. Specifics should be
referenced using real-world information, wikis, and so
on.
Armor
» Protection: This provides the Rank and rules text
describing the benefits of the armor.
•
Note that “physical attacks” means that the
character is hit by a physical manifestation,
usually in the form of a bullet, projectile, or
other impact. Most attacks using Energy or
Force circumvent this.
» Price: This is the cost in Resources of the item,
assuming you buy it rapidly and without any
haggling.
Item Description Material Protection Price
Strength
Makeshift Hardened MD 4 WK 2 - Subtract WK 2
Armor or studded 2 damage from
leather physical attacks
that strike you.
Tactical Police vest, AV 6 MD 4 - GD 10
Armor chainmail Subtract 4
damage from
physical attacks
that strike you.
Combat Heavy riot gear, GD 10 AV 6 - Subtract EX 20
Armor state-of-the-art 6 damage from
armor physical attacks
that strike you.
Mechanized High-tech EX 20 GD 10 - IN 40
Infantry combat armor Subtract 10
Armor damage from
physical attacks
that strike you.

Weapons Firearms - Typical
» Action: What sort of attack action do you use when Grenades & Rockets
wielding this weapon? Rocket launchers and similar weapon systems — bazookas,
LAWs (Light Artillery Weapon), grenade launcher, missile
» Max. Range: How far away can you affect a target? launchers, etc. — use variable ammunition loadouts in
This is the maximum range (see COMBAT for range order to customize the effects for the mission at hand.
penalties). Typical ammunition is found below. The cost of the ammo
» Damage: The damage of a successful attack. is subsumed into the cost of the weapon.
» Price: This is the cost in Resources of the item, » Armor Piercing: Shooting Attack, AM 50 shooting
assuming you buy it rapidly and without any damage.
haggling.
» Concussion: Force Attack, IN 40 force damage.
» EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse): Agility attack, IN 40
Difficulty Stun effect to an entire area, affecting
only machines, electronics, etc.
» Flash: Agility attack, AM 50 Difficulty blinding effect
to an entire area (worse of Agility or Endurance to
resist, WHITE = blind 1d10 rounds, GREEN = blind 1
round, YELLOW+ = resist).
» High Explosive: Energy Attack, AM 50 energy damage
to an entire area.
» Incendiary: Energy Attack, RM 30 energy damage,
RM 30 Difficulty Agility roll or a person or object
catches fire and burns for 1d10 rounds.
» Smoke: Agility attack, EX 20 Difficulty smoke covers
an entire area.
» Tear Gas/Crowd Control: Agility attack, AV 6
Difficulty Stun effect to an entire area.
Firearms - Typical
Item Description Material Action Max. Range Damage Price
Strength
Pistol Revolvers, handguns EX 20 Shooting Attack PR (1 area) AV 6 shooting MD 4
Shotgun Sawn-off, hunting, or pump-action GD 10 Shooting Attack AV (2 areas) EX 20 shooting GD 10
Rifle Hunting rifle, sniper rifle GD 10 Shooting Attack EX (6 areas) GD 10 shooting AV 6
Assault Rifle Carbine, submachine gun, combat GD 10 Shooting Attack GD (4 areas) EX 20 shooting GD 10
rifle
Flamethrower Military-grade flame projector GD 10, Tank = Energy Attack 1 entire adjacent GD 10 energy GD 10
AV 6 area
Machine Gun Heavy personal machine gun GD 10 Shooting Attack EX (6 areas) RM 30 shooting GD 10
Rocket Launcher LAW or personal rocket device GD 10 * IN (11 areas) * EX 20
Grenade Launcher Mortars, targeted grenade launchers EX 20 * AV (2 areas) or * GD 10
EX (6 areas)
Firearms - High-tech, Experimental, and Specialty

Strength
Laser Blaster Energy-based pistol MD 4 Energy Attack GD 10 GD 10 RM 30
Laser Rifle Energy-based blaster AV 6 Energy Attack EX 20 EX 20 RM 30
Stun Rifle Force-based blaster MD 4 Force Attack EX 20 GD 10 EX 20

Hand-to-Hand and Melee Weapons
Item Description Material Action Range Damage Price
Strength
Club Baseball bat, 2x4 AV 6 or GD 10 Blunt Attack melee STR +1R WK 2
Spear Spear, polearm GD 10 Edged Attack melee STR +1R WK 2
Sword Saber, broadsword, katana GD 10 or EX 20 Edged Attack melee STR +2R GD 10
Projectile and Thrown Weapons

Strength
Bow Hunting bow MD 4 Shooting Attack AV (2 areas) AV 6 MD 4
Knife, throwing Throwing knives, shuriken EX 20 Throwing Edged AV (2 areas) AV 6 WK 2
Spear, thrown Javelin, harpoon, spear GD 10 Throwing Edged AV (2 areas) GD 10 WK 2
Special Gear
Item Material Price Notes
Strength
Taser or stun gun MD 4 WK 2 In melee (or up to 1
area for taser guns),
use an Agility attack
to deliver a GD 10
Difficulty Stun effect.
Whip, leather AV 6 MD 4 In melee range,
you may Grapple or
Grab using Fighting
instead of Strength.
Otherwise make an
attack that deals STR
blunt damage.
Whip, chain GD 10 GD 10 As for leather whip,
or you can make a
melee attack that
deals STR+1R blunt
damage.
Fire Extinguisher AV 6 AV 6 RM 30 fire
extinguishing foam
(rolled against a
fire’s Difficulty).
Reinforced EX 20 AV 6 To get out, you
handcuffs must break Material
Strength or pick a
GD 10 Difficulty lock.

Vehicles
» Body: Effectively the Material Strength of the
vehicle, though individual parts may vary greatly
(engine blocks are pretty hard, tires not so much).
This also acts as the crew/passenger Body Armor
value against attacks that attempt to strike through
the vehicle.
» Control: Substitute this rating for Agility when
making risky maneuvers.
» Speed: The maximum safe speed that the vehicle
moves in its primary (or listed) movement mode(s).
Going faster usually requires Control rolls, and
generally cannot go more than a single Rank higher.
» Price: This is the cost in Resources of the item,
assuming you buy it rapidly and without any
haggling.
Road Vehicles Ground Vehicles
Vehicle Body Control Speed Price Vehicle Body Control Speed Price
Sedan AV 6 AV 6 GD (4 areas, RM 30 Tank IN 40 EX 20 AV (3 areas, IN 40
60 mph) 45 mph)
Luxury Car EX 20 MD 4 EX (5 areas, IN 40 Jeep GD 10 EX 20 GD (4 areas, RM 30
75 mph) 60 mph)
Police Car GD 10 GD 10 EX (5 areas, IN 40 Heavy Truck EX 20 MD 4 AV (3 areas, IN 40
75 mph) 45 mph)
Armored Car RM 30 AV 6 AV (3 areas, IN 40 Bulldozer or EX 20 AV 6 MD (2 areas, IN 40
45 mph) construction vehicle 30 mph)
Motorcycle MD 4 AV 6 EX (5 areas, EX 20 Train RM 30 WK 2 EX (5 areas, IN 40
75 mph) 75 mph)
Van or pickup truck GD 10 MD 4 GD (4 areas, RM 30 Bullet Train RM 30 MD 4 IN (7 areas, AM 50
60 mph) 105 mph)
Bus AV 6 MD 4 GD (4 areas, RM 30
60 mph) » Tank: Mounts a machine gun as well as a cannon
Fire Truck GD 10 AV 6 EX (5 areas, IN 40 (treat as a rocket launcher with armor piercing or
75 mph) high explosive ammo).
Ambulance GD 10 GD 10 EX (5 areas, RM 30 » Jeep: A jeep can mount a rear-turreted machine gun.
75 mph)
Heavy Truck EX 20 MD 4 AV (3 areas, IN 40
45 mph)

Air-based Vehicles Water-based Vehicles
Vehicle Body Control Speed Price Vehicle Body Control Speed Price
Private Plane WK 2 AV 6 AM (25 areas, IN 40 Rowboat WK 2 GD 10 AV (3 areas, AV 6
375 mph) 45 mph)
Corporate Jet MD 4 AV 6 AM (25 areas, AM 50 Motorboat AV 6 EX 20 EX (5 areas, GD 10
375 mph) 75 mph)
Fighter Jet AV 6 EX 20 X150 (50 SP 75 Speedboat AV 6 GD 10 IN (7 areas, RM 30
areas, 750 105 mph)
mph)
Ocean Liner RM 30 GD 10 AV (3 areas, SP 75
High-tech Military EX 20 RM 30 X200 (100 SP 75 45 mph)
Jet areas, 1500
Yacht AV 6 AV 6 GD (4 areas, IN 40
mph)
60 mph)
Helicopter, police or WK 2 GD 10 EX (10 areas, IN 40
traffic 15p mph) » Ocean Liner: Ocean liners are compartmentalized;
Helicopter, military GD 10 EX 20 EX (10 areas, AM 50 compartments might be separated by lower or
150 mph)
higher Body at the Judge’s discretion.
Blimp WK 2 WK (4) MD (4 areas, AM 50
60 mph)
Hang Glider NULL 0 AV 6 MD (4 areas, EX 20
60 mph)
» Fighter Jet: Usually mount twin machine guns and

potentially several rocket launchers, as well.
» High-tech Military Jet: These craft have VTOL
capability, meaning it is a vertical take-off and
landing (VTOL) aircraft, and can hover, take off, and
land vertically. Some models mount weaponry such
as machine guns and rocket launchers, and they
can usually carry a small team.

POWERS & GEAR
This chapter explains how very common abilities work,
as well as the underlying mechanics for a great many Powers & Gear
powers, to help you understand what’s on your datafile
PSIONIC HELMET
or help you design new powers. It is not meant to be an
As long as you are wearing the Psionic Helmet, you may
exhaustive list of superhuman powers and abilities: most
use the following powers. The Psionic Helmet is Material
heroes and villains have unique aspects to their powers,
Strength IN 40. If destroyed or if you take damage from
so there are very few that work in any sort of singularly
an electrical attack (i.e. after resistance to electricity is
codified way. There are many examples, however!
factored in), all of this item’s powers are shut down.
Fundamentals
Like primary abilities (FASERIP), most powers or special
Telepathy: RM 30. You may psychically contact and speak
with up to 30 individuals at once within one area of you,
or a single person up to 8 areas away.
gear have a Rank and Rank Number; these work exactly
the same as normal. Usually this means you use the Rank Sense Psychic Energy: UN 100. You may use this power
to determine what column to reference on the Universal for any of the following:
Table, or the Rank number to determine the numeric • Psychic Detection: You can detect the use of psychic
effect for calculating damage or stress, determining powers within 60 areas, narrowing it down to the
protection, or the like. Sometimes, the Rank will be used area of use.
as a Difficulty. • Psychic Analyzer: You can analyze impressions left by
psychic power use up to a year in the past, identifying
Gear the signature as if it were a fingerprint. If you are
This isn’t a power on its own, but rather a category of familiar with the user’s powers and have interacted
power: it represents special abilities that come from with them before, you can identify this fingerprint.
an item, suit of armor, weapon, or anything else that’s
(usually) separate from your physical body. In other A power set representing a Psionic Helmet that provides
words, it can be taken away, lost, or stolen. Such powers telepathy and the ability to sense psychic energies.
are marked with “(Gear)”.
Besides that, gear-based powers have one other thing
to remember: Material Strength. Gear can be broken, Profiles
and therefore the material it’s made of must be rated “Profiles” refers to characters who have multiple datafiles
using the Material Strength Table (see MOVEMENT & or different stats when they take on different forms. A
ENVIRONMENT). wimpy scientist that turns into a giant, raging monster is
a great example, but so is a genius inventor who dons one
of their various armored suits.
Power Sets Profiles are often bundles of powers and/or gear, and
You will sometimes see rules that refer to “power sets.”
When a suite of powers are contingent upon other powers, sometimes may represent an entirely different profile
or a special piece of gear, they are arranged under a header (you turn into someone — or something! — else entirely),
in the Powers & Gear section of the datafile. These headers or they collate a bunch of bonuses and enhancements to
represent the power set: every power listed beneath them your normal, everyday form.
is a component of the header. Therefore, if something The two most common representations of this sort of
happens that disables it or causes powers to “shut down” power are:
(see below), all powers within that set are fair game.
» Alternate Form
For example, if you wear a helmet that allows you to
connect with other people’s minds and communicate » Power Armor
psychically with them (Telepathy), and also allows you to The powers on each sheet will tell you when you change
sense the presence of psychic energy (a form of Enhanced (Alternate Form), or what improvements you receive
Sense), then it might be arranged as shown in the image when you utilize it (Power Armor).
nearby.
Perhaps the helmet is prone to short circuiting if targeted
by electrical attacks. In that case, both the Telepathy and
Sense Psychic Energy powers no longer work. (Usually it
will tell you how to repair the item or refresh the powers
in some other way.)

Ranks Shutdown
Powers often have Ranks and Rank Numbers, but not Whenever something says it can cause a power, item, or
always. Sometimes, different aspects of a single power other feature to “shut down” that means that the thing no
might have multiple Ranks: for example, an energy longer works. At all. There’s usually information on how
blast might have different Ranks for the range and for to fix or refresh the thing, and that could be time (rounds,
the damage. Generally speaking, the highest Rank is the minutes. hours, days), downtime (any scene where the
one that is considered the Rank of the power in terms of character has some free time to gear up or hit the gym), or
character creation or game balance issues. Otherwise, between game sessions.
varying Ranks within a given power are more a sign Sometimes, when a particular potent power or power set
of customization and the unique aspects of the power has limitations or vulnerabilities that can cause them to
as they appear in this individual case: it’s rare that two shut down, there is a stipulation that you gain 1 Karma
characters with Teleportation have the exact same when this happens. This doesn’t represent anything “in
appearance, range, and special effects like teleporting the game world,” but rather ensures that if your most
inside of objects or being stunned by the psychic feedback interesting powers and abilities are denied for a time, you
of the teleportation process itself. at least get something to show for it. Since Karma can be
A useful rule of thumb when determining how a power used to stave off detrimental effects or call in help from
works is that if there are variable traits to a power — your contacts, this is a nice — though by no means equal!
range and damage, special effects or limitations, etc. — is — payoff for facing an adverse situation.
that each beneficial special effect or enhancement lowers When creating powers, use both shut down and 1 Karma
the effective Rank by one. If the power has common rewards sparingly. Try to make the situations they come
limitations and you avoid those, then you might lower the up interesting, and/or up to the player to choose: denying
effective Rank by one, as well. So if you have Teleportation: players the use of their powers with no recourse, no choice
RM 30, and you don’t suffer from either psychic feedback on their part, is a very adversarial playstyle: “Sorry, you
or the chance of teleporting inside of an object and taking created a character with cool stuff, but now you can’t use
damage — two common limitations of the Teleportation the coolest bits.” Astonishing Super Heroes tries very hard
power — then you might use EX 20 to determine the range to avoid this sort of playstyle, and when it’s unavoidable,
you can teleport. If you have Energy Blast: AM 50 but you the 1 Karma reward is a great way to say, “but here’s
deal twice that damage to inanimate objects because the something you can use to save your butt!”
blast is a highly corrosive acid, then you might have a
Range of only IN (11 areas) or less.
No Rank
Special Effects (SFX)
Any individual power, and sometimes power sets, might
Some powers do not have a Rank or Rank Number. These include special effects, usually listed in a section labeled
specify what they do as clearly as possible. “SFX”. These often accompany attacks, but they don’t
If there’s ever an instance where a Rank or Rank have to. Examples might be:
Number feels like it should apply (such as comparing two
characters that have the same power to see who uses theirs
»
A weapon that, when thrown, returns to you
automatically.
better, quicker, or whatever), simply choose a primary
ability that seems closest to what the trait is used for. » Receiving a reaction that can be used for a defensive
Combat? Use Agility (targeting, speed), Fighting (training, maneuver in certain situations, such as when you
tactics), Strength (brute force), or Endurance (resistance, have especially fast or agile flight powers.
toughness). Perception? Use Reason (logical deduction) or
Intuition (awareness, insight). Social? Consider Intuition
(reading others), or Psyche (imposing your will on others,
your determination).

Weaknesses
Weaknesses are limitations or “negative SFX”: they are
circumstances, objects, materials, or other things that
make life more difficult for the hero, often by limiting
their ability to use certain powers, or by shutting down
powers altogether. Some examples:
» A limitation of a power, such as when returning to
one of your alternate forms, you are temporarily
exhausted.
» A limitation that can shut down your power or
power set, such as if it is used too often, or you are
in the presence of a specific material.
» A limitation of a power when you are targeted
by some other power, such as Body Armor that
specifically doesn’t work against magical attacks.
Power Ranks
The following table summarizes many aspects of powers determined by their Rank. These are general guidelines, and
note that many powers will have various Ranks for these different components. For example, an attack power may have
one Rank for the range and a different one for the damage it deals.
Power Ranks Table

Range Area of Speed
Rank Ranged Thrown Effect Duration Land/Water MPH Air MPH
NULL 0 Self only 0/same area Self only Instant - - - -
WK 2 Touch 1 area 1 foot 1 round 1 area 15 mph 2 areas 30 mph
MD 4 1 area 1 area 2 feet 1 round 2 areas 30 mph 4 areas 60 mph
AV 6 2 areas 1 area 4 feet 2 rounds 3 areas 45 mph 6 areas 90 mph
GD 10 4 areas 2 areas 10 feet 3 rounds 4 areas 60 mph 8 areas 120 mph
EX 20 6 areas 3 areas 20 feet 4 rounds 5 areas 75 mph 10 areas 150 mph
RM 30 8 areas 4 areas 1 area 5 rounds 6 areas 90 mph 15 areas 225 mph
IN 40 11 areas 5 areas 2 areas 8 rounds 7 areas 105 mph 20 areas 300 mph
AM 50 20 areas 6 areas 3 areas 10 rounds 8 areas 120 mph 25 areas 375 mph
(1 minute)
SP 75 40 areas 7 areas 4 areas 2 minutes 9 areas 135 mph 30 areas 450 mph
UN 100 60 areas 8 areas 5 areas 3 minutes 10 areas 150 mph 40 areas 600 mph
X150 80 areas 10 areas 8 areas 5 minutes 12 areas 180 mph 50 areas 750 mph
X500 400 areas 20 areas 20 areas 1 hour 16 areas 240 mph 200 areas 3750 mph
C1k 100 miles Awareness / 1 mile 1 day 32 areas 480 mph Interplanetary
C3k 10k miles Sensory 2 miles 1 week 50 areas 720 mph Near light speed
C5k 1M miles Range 5 miles 1 year 100 areas 1500 mph Near instantaneous

List of Powers
Below is a list of common power types, along with Separate
examples of specific powers and their effects. Additionally, Your alternate form might be a separate entity for all
most categories list examples of SFX and Weaknesses. intents and purposes. If Health or Resolve is listed as
These are meant to be a starting point, not a fully detailed a number with no modifier, you simply have that new
listing of powers and their mechanics: powers can and form’s scores. When you switch forms in this case, your
should be tailored for each character! powers indicate what happens to your current damage
and/or stress.
Alternate Form
Most characters with an alternate form-type power
(Sciency Guy > Raging Monster) will have a second (or
more) datafile(s): one for each form. These are called
profiles. In cases where only certain stats change, it may
be easier to keep these all on one sheet and simply
call attention to them by separating them visually.
For example, a creature that gets tougher as it gets
angrier reflects that with increasing tiers of power
listed side-by-side. The rules for increasing tiers are
listed in one of the powers, usually either named
“Alternate Form” or something like “Adrenaline
Surge.”
Health & Resolve

If your Health and/or Resolve changes when you change
forms, look for two possibilities:
Bonus
You probably have
a “base form” and
any other form(s)
modifies your
Health/Resolve. If
this is listed as a
number with a + sign
before it, that means you
increase your maximum
Health or Resolve score
by that amount when you
first transform. Whenever you
switch forms after this point, you
compare your current damage or
stress to the maximum Health/Resolve of
the new form, and this indicates whether you
are knocked out or stressed out.

Example: The Monster Example: Dark Matter
(Power Set) Form (Power Set)
When you get angry or hurt, nothing can stop you from You can call on the power of the Paradigm Gem to gain powers
changing into a big monster! over reality!
This is an example power set, with the following two This version is a power set with the following powers
powers that define the transformation. You would use a beneath it: Body Armor, Image Generation, Invisibility,
standard datafile for your human form, and an Alternate Life Support, Regeneration, Shockwave, and Teleportation.
Form datafile for your Monster stats. This second datafile (Those powers aren’t listed here, but would be on a
would list all the different Ranks and Rank Numbers for datafile.)
your primary abilities, as well as anything else that might Alternate Form: Dark Matter
change such as Popularity, Talents, etc. To gain access to this power set, you first transform into a
Alternate Form: The Monster. dark-matter-powered version of yourself as an interaction
If you have taken any stress, or describe how your anger is on your turn. Doing so is instantaneous, and in this form,
currently influencing you, you may turn into The Monster your eyes are pitch-black pools, and you are surrounded
Stage 1 on your turn. If you take any damage, or have been by reddish-black liquid that seems to coalesce around you.
stressed out, you may transform into The Monster Stage 2 Weakness: Psychic Feedback As soon as you choose
on your turn (even if you are unconscious or dead). to change back to your normal form, or you have
If the GM rules you must make a Psyche roll to resist such damage equal to your Health, make a Psyche roll and
a change (i.e. it is against your wishes to change into The refer to the results below:
Monster), you make it at a Difficulty of the GM’s discretion »W
HITE = You are unconscious for the rest of the
and gain 1 Karma. If you fail the check, you turn into The current scene, and your Alternate Form set is shut
Monster Stage 2. If you succeed you may choose to remain down for the rest of the day. Gain 1 Karma.
human or turn into The Monster Stage 1.
»G
REEN = You are stunned for 1d10 rounds, and your
Adrenaline Surge Alternate Form power set is shut down for 1 hour.
The listed ability scores are for The Monster when he first Gain 1 Karma.
transforms from human form. Usually you will start at
Stage 1, but in some cases you may start at Stage 2. » Y ELLOW = You are stunned for 1 round, and your
Aether-form power set is shut down for 1 hour. Gain
In Stage 2 and Stage 3, The Monster's total Health and 1 Karma.
Resolve is modified by the amount listed. Your current
Damage and Stress are affected in the opposite manner » R ED = You are fine, but one of your Aether-form
by this amount when you first move into a new Stage. powers is shut down for 1 hour. Choose one or let
For example, when you move from Stage 2 to Stage 3, the GM determine randomly.
you increase your Health by 50, decrease Damage by 50,
decrease your Resolve by 2 and increase your Stress by 2.
If you shift back a Stage (such as from 2 to 1), you do not
modify your current damage, but if your current damage
exceeds your new Stage's maximum Health, you fall
unconscious and begin dying.
To increase your Stage, you must take damage or stress
before your turn (i.e. it must be in excess of your Body
Armor). On your turn, use an interaction to make a
Psyche roll. If the total damage you took was less than
your Endurance, you must get a YELLOW result, otherwise
all it takes is a GREEN result to shift one stage.
If you take no damage in a round until your turn, or all
known threats are defeated, you can shift down a Stage
by making a Psyche roll. If you fail (WHITE result), you
rampage for 1d10 turns, attacking the most damaging or
largest target (your choice), and then you may attempt to
shift down again.
If you are dying, or you shift down from Stage 1, you
become human again. When you do so, you recover all
damage. If you were dying when you become human, you
are stunned for 1d10 rounds, however.

Attack Powers
This broad category covers just about any direct attack,
whether it be from claws, weapons, projected energy
beams, quills that fire out, or whatever. All such powers
have one or more common elements:
» Material Strength: If the power has a physical
manifestation separate from your body, it should
have a Material Strength rating.
» Attack Type: This tells you what kind of attack it is
and thus what ability roll to use, such as Fighting or
Agility. Sometimes it will be the power’s Rank.
» Range: If the attack can be performed outside of
melee combat or at a distance, it will list the range,
found on the Range Table or Power Ranks Table.
For projectile attacks, the range will often be the
power’s Rank.
» Damage: Most often, the power’s Rank Number is
used to determine the damage it deals. This will
usually include a damage type like blunt, edged,
force, or energy, which tells you which Battle Effects
column to use. (Some powers may deal stress
instead.)
» Area of Effect: Some powers will affect a large area,
rather than just one target. This refers to the Area of
Effect column on the Power Ranks Table.
» Duration: If an effect lasts a certain amount of time
— and isn’t an existing effect like Stun — it will list
that here, referring to the Power Ranks Table. The power’s name or description should clue you in on
both the description of it in action, as well as any additional
effects that may occur on YELLOW or better results. For
Multiple Ranks example, a character that projects flames might be able
You’ll note that some powers clearly follow all the rules to light a match on fire with a Bullseye result, while a
of their listed Rank from the Power Ranks Table: a RM character with a bow and arrows might be able to pin a
30 laster gun has a Material Strength of RM 30, a range newspaper to the wall...but the fire projector is going to
of 8 areas, and deals 30 damage. But you’ll find that have a very different effect on that piece of paper!
many attack powers don’t follow this trend, too. Some
might rely on the shorter thrown ranges instead of the SFX and Weaknesses
normal ranges, or might have one Rank for their Material Attack powers are some of the most common powers
Strength and a completely different one for damage. to receive SFX or Weaknesses...or both. Here are some
examples.
The best we can say is “roll with it.” That’s how you
customize powers! Not every lightning bolt from a » The attack can be made as a reaction under certain
superhero is going to work exactly the same, so it’s nice circumstances.
to have some differences in there. The less obvious » The attack might ignore certain types of armor or
answer to “why is that?” is simply that during character protection.
creation you might get discounts or roll a certain way
(depending on how you create your character) and this
» The attack utterly destroys inanimate materials
below a certain Material Strength.
stuff happens. Again, it’s because of the customization
aspect. If you want to simplify the game at all, this is a Some weaknesses might be:
great place to do it: just have the Rank for the damage » You can only use the power as a reaction under
or “main effect” of the power be the one you reference certain circumstances; it’s entirely retaliatory.
for everything, and ignore different ratings for different
» You take some amount of damage (such as half
aspects of the power.
the Rank Number) when performing the attack, or
when expanding its area of effect or range.

Examples Fire Projection: RM 30
You can project gouts of flame like a flamethrower.
Bola Launcher (Gear): RM 30
Your forearm launcher fires electrostatic bola cables that » Attack: Energy Attack (Agility).
can make a grappling attack at range. » Range: 8 areas.
» Material Strength: RM 30 (launchers and cables). » Damage: RM 30 energy damage.
» Attack: Grappling Attack (power Rank). » Weakness: If your fire manipulation powers are shut
» Range: RM (4 areas); uses Thrown Ranges. down, then you run the risk of setting objects on
fire with this attack if you roll a WHITE result. Roll
» Effect: Use the Grapple Attack on the Battle Results 1d10: 1-5 no fires are started, 6-8 a nearby person or
Table. The bolas do not deal damage, however. object takes the damage instead, 9-10 something
Bone Spikes: RM 30 flammable erupts into a fire with Difficulty equal
You may choose to change your melee damage to edged to this powers’ Rank -1R.
and get a +1R to the damage you deal for melee and Ice Projection: RM 30
grappling attacks. If you are the subject of a grapple You can project sheets of ice from your hands, either firing
(Partial or Hold), your opponent takes 30 damage from the shards of bludgeoning ice, or creating a quick-freezing
spikes on each of their turns that they maintain the hold. snare out of thin air.
Corrosive Touch: RM 30 » Attack: Force Attack (Agility) for ice shards,
You can secret an organic acid from your hands. Grappling (power Rank) for ice snare.
» Attack: Fighting. » Range: RM (4 areas); uses Thrown Ranges for either
» Damage: RM 30 energy damage. effect.
» SFX: Inorganic objects of Material Strength » Damage: RM 30 force damage for the ice shards, or
less than your power Rank targeted by this are use the Grapple Attack on the Battle Results Table
destroyed as the acid eats through them. The acid for the ice snare. The snare only deals damage
instantly destroys hand-sized objects, and can eat when it first hits, in which case it deals GD 10 force
through a man-sized object or create a man-sized damage.
hole in a larger object in 5 rounds. Objects with Rotting Touch: RM 30
great Material Strength may be slightly corroded Your touch causes organic material to decay and rot.
but are not appreciably damaged by this power, at
the GM’s discretion. » Attack: Fighting.
Cosmic Metal Claws (Gear)
» Damage: RM 30 damage.
You have retractable claws made of space metal in your » SFX: Against objects made of organic materials
armor. (wood, cloth, etc.), you can use this power’s Rank in
place of your Strength to break them.
» Material Strength: UN 100.
» Attack: Edged Attack (Fighting). Shockwave: RM 30
You can unleash a shockwave of force as your action,
» Damage: IN 40 edged damage. affecting everyone in your area. Make a power roll:
» SFX: Mundane armor and cover of a lesser Material
Strength than your claws do not provide any »W
HITE = Everyone in the area, including you, must
protection. resist a Slam result.
»G
REEN = Everyone else in the area (not you) must
Extra Arms: RM 30 resist a Slam result.
You have two extra arms due to your mutation. This gives
you +1CS on all Strength-based rolls. Additionally, they
» Y ELLOW = Everyone else in the area (not you) must
resist a Slam result and — if they are slammed —
allow you to make extra melee attacks. As an interaction,
then resist a Stun result.
you concentrate on making different attacks with each
arm and make a power roll to see how many additional » R ED = Anyone you choose in your area takes up
melee attacks you can make: WHITE = no additional to RM 30 force damage (you may decrease this as
attacks, GREEN = 1 additional melee attack, YELLOW = 2 much as you’d like), then must resist a Slam result
additional melee attacks, RED = 3 additional melee attacks. (even if you deal zero damage). If they are slammed,
they are automatically stunned for 1d10 rounds.

Shuriken Launchers (Gear): RM 30
On each wrist is a launcher that fires multiple reinforced
shuriken-style darts all at once.
Body Armor &
» Material Strength: RM 30 (launchers and shuriken). Force Fields
Body Armor usually refers to armored plating, thick skin,
» Attack: Shooting Attack (Agility). mutant scales, or the like. It doesn’t affect your chances of
» Range: RM (8 areas). being hit by an attack, but instead lowers the amount of
damage you receive from a successful attack.
» Damage: EX 20 shooting damage, or RM 30 when
both are fired at the same target. You simply subtract the Rank Number from the damage
of the attack that hits you. There are a few things to keep
Sorcerous Bolts: RM 30
in mind:
You fire bolts of deadly magical energy.
» Body Armor can reduce damage to zero, but not
» Attack: Energy Attack (Agility). lower: there’s no “negative damage.”
» Range: RM (8 areas). » If you take no damage, you usually cannot be
» Damage: RM 30 energy damage. affected by additional special effects, like a Slam or
Stun.
Taser Gauntlet (Gear): RM 30
Your gauntlets deliver a powerful bioelectric shock that » Body Armor usually tells you what types of damage
shorts the nervous system. it protects against, such as blunt, edged, shooting,
energy, or force.
» Material Strength: RM 30. » Body Armor doesn’t usually protect you from stress.
» Attack: Agility. » Body Armor almost never protects you from psychic
» Effect: As long as you hit the target with your Agility assaults, and can sometimes be circumvented by
attack, the target must resist a RM 30 Difficulty magic or other attacks when a power’s SFX tells you
Stun Effect by making a successful Endurance roll. so.
» SFX: Because it doesn’t need to deliver damage to Some Body Armor can and does protect from special
affect a target, Body Armor and the like doesn’t attacks. This is always noted in the description of the
protect against this attack. power. That said, most often such protection is afforded
by Resistance or Invulnerability powers, such as against
Thunderclap: RM 30 toxins, disease, radiation, or the like.
You smack your hands together, creating a booming
explosion of sound.
» Attack: Force Attack (Agility).
» Area of Effect: 1 area.
» Damage: RM 30 force damage to everyone — and all
objects! — in your area.
Venomous Spit: RM 30
You can spit a glob of paralyzing venom at a target.
» Attack: Agility.
» Range: RM (4 areas); uses Thrown Ranges.
» Effect: RM 30 energy damage, and the target must
resist a Stun effect at a Difficulty equal to the power
Rank.

Force Fields Elemental Control
Force fields work much the same as body armor, but there
You have the ability to manipulate existing energy or
are two types. A personal force field protects you, while
elements in the environment around you, or you can
a projected force field can be expanded to protect you,
control them entirely, possibly summoning them into
others, or you and others.
being when there was none previously. Generally, if the
For projected force fields, the power will specify how big power is named something like “Fire Manipulation” it
of an area you can cover, and whether or not you can pick requires that you have a fire present to use it: a lighter,
and choose within the area, such as if you want to protect car fire, or bonfire, maybe. If the name is something like
your friends but not some nearby enemy. Force fields will “Magnetic Control” or “Dark Force Mastery” then you can
specify what types of attacks they protect against, much summon it into being, or pull it from the ambient particles
like Body Armor does. already existent around you.
These powers are very broad, but a few common elements
Body Armor Examples exist.
Body Armor: RM 30 » When making attacks enhanced with this power,

Subtract 30 damage from blunt, edged, force, and shooting you still rely on the attack’s governing ability roll (i.e.
attacks that strike you. Fighting to attack with a spear made of electricity),
and use the power Rank Number for the damage.
Organic Metal Skin: RM 30
» You might have to rely on another power in order to
Subtract 30 damage from any attacks that strike you.
make attacks directly with this element you control:
if you can manipulate darkness, that doesn’t have
Force Field Examples any outright damaging elements, so you need
something like Darkness Beams or something you
Force Field Projection Belt (Gear): RM 30 can project to freeze or entangle an opponent.
The device on your belt can be used to project a force
field up to 1 area in size around you, protecting anyone » These powers often present ways to manipulate
within it. You can choose any number of feet from you objects or environmental features, not directly
to be covered, but cannot sculpt the force field (such as to affecting people but instead the conditions and
cover only allies, for example). Subtract 30 damage from terrain around them. Use the power Rank to
any attacks that strike through the force field. determine things like range or Difficulty, and
Material Strength to determine damage, protection,
Magic Shield: RM 30 or as a gauge of the amount of volume that can be
You can summon mystical energy in the palm of your affected with the power.
hand to act as a shield, one that protects you unlike any Common elements include:
mundane shield! When you use your action to cast this
spell, you make a power roll to determine how many
» Air
shield are created, and for each one, you gain a reaction » Cosmic energy
in which you can use the Blocking or Shielding defensive » Darkforce
maneuvers. When you do so, the shield allows you
to subtract the Rank Number of this power from any » Earth
damage that strikes you. If the damage is greater than this » Electricity
power’s Rank, you do not take the excess, but instead, one » Fire/heat
of the shields shatters, reducing the number of reactions
you have, until all shields are destroyed. WHITE = 1 shield, » Gravity
GREEN = 2 shields, YELLOW = 3 shields, RED = 4 shields. » Ice/cold
Personal Force Field: RM 30 » Kinetic/telekinetic
You can project a force field around yourself. Subtract 30 » Light
damage from any attacks that strike you. This force field » Magnetic
is shut down when you are unconscious or asleep.
» Sonic
Storm Shield: AM 50 » Technology
You summon the energy of a storm to create a force field
of wind, hail, and electricity, providing AM 50 protection » Water
to all allies in the same area as you, against any form of » Weather
damage. Once used, this power is shut down for the rest
of the scene.

These powers are almost always found as part of a
power set. A character that can control the weather
still needs Flight to fly, a Lightning Blast attack in
order to target an individual with an electrical
burst, and perhaps a second attack-like power
to represent the wind effectively “grappling”
an opponent and making them stay put.
Examples
Air Control: RM 30
You can create extreme gusts of wind, even
on a calm day. You may create a blast of
wind that acts as a Charge attack using
the power’s Rank and Rank Number.
You may also summon a whirlwind to
act as a force field, protecting you by
subtracting your power’s Rank Number
from blunt, edged, shooting, or force
attacks that strike you. This lasts up
to 5 rounds, but during that time,
you cannot make attacks with the
power.
SFX: Flight. You may control the air immediately
around you, allowing you to fly at an air speed equal
to your powers’ Rank (in your case: 15 areas per turn
or 225 mph).
Earth Manipulation: RM 30
You can manipulate natural and semi-natural minerals;
artificial and refined materials are unaffected (steel, glass,
etc.). You may fashion weapons, shields, or armor with
the same Material Strength as the mineral, providing you
additional damage in combat (usually Strength +1R for
melee or thrown weapons) or giving you the equivalent
of Body Armor (subtract the Material Strength from
any attacks that strike you). You can also shift the earth,
digging up to 1 area at a time, or causing a single area to
experience an earthquake, using your power’s Rank as
the Difficulty on Agility rolls for everyone in that area to
remain standing.
Electrical Control: RM 30
You can manipulate and control electrical energy around
you, up to 8 areas away. You are unharmed by electricity
up to your power Rank in Difficulty. You can stop, control,
or forcefully start the flow of electricity to any electrically
powered device, controlling its operation. For example,
you can turn on/off battery powered or plugged in devices,
or perform more complex manipulations to electronic
devices, such as running a computer completely by Energy Reflection: RM 30
thought. You can reflect energy or force attacks back on the
attacker. As a reaction to any such attack, make a power
SFX: Clear! You can deliver a powerful electrical roll against a Difficulty equal to the attack’s Rank (use
charge just by touch. This could fry electronics, act the damage or effect Rank if it has multiple subtraits
as a defibrillator, or serve as an enhancement to any with Ranks). WHITE = you fail and the attack strikes you
unarmed attack. In addition to any normal unarmed normally, GREEN or YELLOW = you reflect the attack upon
damage you might deal, you may deliver RM 30 the attacker, RED = you reflect the attack on any viable
energy damage. target within the same area as the attacker.

Energy Absorption: SP 75 Light Manipulation: RM 30
As a reaction once per round, you may absorb up to your You can manipulate existing light energy, increasing or
Rank Number energy damage. Any excess damage affects decreasing its intensity. You can brighten or dim an entire
you normally. area, create a flashlight-like beam of light that reaches up
SFX: Supercharge. Stored energy lasts until the end to 8 areas, or create a strobe effect to blind a single target
of your next turn. You may use it to make an Energy (they resist your power Rank’s Difficulty with either
Attack by “throwing” the energy at a target up to 7 Agility or Endurance, your choice).
areas away, dealing the amount of energy damage Magnetic Control: RM 30
that you have stored. You can manipulate magnetic materials such as iron and
Weakness: Overloaded. Stored energy retained by iron-based alloys. When a range is needed, it is based
the end of your turn can damage you. Make an on this power’s Rank: RM (8 areas). This allows you to
Endurance check with a Difficulty equal to the perform a number of different actions:
stored energy’s Rank, and if you fail the energy is
discharged, inflicting its Rank -3R energy damage to
» Lift ferrous objects within range, using this power’s
Rank in place of Strength.
you (minimum zero).
»
Hurl metal objects or bend them to grapple
Fire Manipulation: RM 30 opponents. Use the power’s Rank to attack and the
You can increase or decrease the Difficulty of an existing object’s Material Strength to determine damage or
flame, or cause it to “leap” at targets within a short Difficulties where necessary.
distance.
»
You can detect fluctuations in magnetic fields
SFX: Manipulate Intensity. To increase or decrease a caused by the presence of metal objects or electricity
fire’s Difficulty (which measures its size and intensity), within range.
make a power roll against the fire’s Difficulty.
» You can deal damage directly to iron or iron-based
» WHITE = Change its Difficulty by 1 Rank, but your alloy objects within range equal to this power’s
power is shut down for the rest of the scene. Rank Number.
» GREEN = Change the Difficulty by up to 2 Ranks. » You can scramble electronics — objects, robots, AI,
etc. — within range, forcing them to resist a Stun
» YELLOW = Change the Difficulty by up to 3 Ranks.
effect against a Difficulty equal to your power’s
» RED = Change the Difficulty by up to 4 Ranks. Rank.
SFX: Fire Burst. You can cause a fire of any size to
“spray” a target up to a Thrown Range equal to your Sound Manipulation: RM 30
power’s Rank: 4 areas away from the fire. Doing so You can dampen or increase the intensity of existing
is an Energy Attack (Agility) that deals your power sound within any 1 area up to 8 areas away. When you
Rank Number in energy damage and can ignite dampen sound as a reaction, any noise of your power
flammable objects. You may deal damage equal to the Rank in Difficulty or less is silenced, while any sound
fire’s Difficulty Rank Number, instead, if you choose, up to UN 100 is reduced to your power Rank. Higher
regardless of whether the Difficulty is lower or higher Difficulty sounds are reduced by a number of Ranks equal
than your power Rank. to your Rank Number divided by 10. When you increase
sound, you can either select a single noise or all ambient
Gravity Manipulation: RM 30 noise and increase it to your power Rank, or by a number
You can increase or decrease how gravity affects a single of Ranks equal to your Rank Number divided by 10 if their
person or object within 8 areas. When you decrease Difficulty is higher than your power Rank. If you do this
a target’s gravity, you can use this power Rank in place as an action, everyone that can hear in that area must
of your Strength to lift the target, or you can cause it to make an Endurance roll against the sound’s new Rank or
levitate, floating vertically upwards at a number of stories be stunned for 1d10 rounds.
equal to your power’s Rank Number each round. Or if
it falls, it will descend that number of stories without Telekinesis: RM 30
taking damage. If you increase a target’s gravity, anyone You can lift and manipulate people and objects with your
attempting to lift it must make a Strength roll against mind at RM range (8 areas). Treat this power’s Rank and
your power Rank as the Difficulty. If it can move on its Rank Number as your Strength or Agility when making
own (a person, robot, vehicle, etc.), it must make an attacks (throwing objects for blunt or edged damage), to
Endurance roll against this same Difficulty just to move: make unarmed attacks, or to perform Grapple or Grab
WHITE = cannot move at all, GREEN = can move no more attacks.
than 1 area, YELLOW = can move no more than 2 areas (if it
could move more than 1 area normally), RED = can move
up to 1 area less than normal.

Water Control: RM 30
Your mastery over water allows you to conjure it from the
ambient moisture in the atmosphere, shape it, and alter
Enhanced Senses
Specify the sense or senses that are enhanced. The Rank
its currents. of this power will be at least one higher than the higher of
SFX: Conjure Water. As an action, may conjure a your Reason or Intuition. When rolling to perceive things,
number of gallons of water equal to your Rank use this Rank instead of your Intuition or Reason when
Number. You may ultimately conjure enough water applicable.
over time to fill an entire area in this way, but then Enhanced senses might also include entirely new senses,
this power is shut down for the rest of the scene. or such highly sensitive abilities that the character
SFX: Shape Water. You may shape water — up to a can do things far outside the bounds of normal people,
volume equal to 1 area — into any shape you desire: technological sensors, and so on. Examples in these
parting it, fashioning a shield or battering ram, categories might include sensing danger, being able to
sculpting it, and so on. Using it as a shield can work substitute one sense for another, and so on.
either as a personal shield or force field up to 1 area in
size (and sculpted to only protect allies, for example),
subtracting your power Rank Number from any
Examples
energy damage that strikes through it. Using it as a Danger Sense: RM 30
battering ram uses the power Rank and Rank Number You can pick up on body signals (heart rate, perspiration,
to make a Charge attack and damage, and you may breathing) that suggest fight or flight. This allows you to
target an individual or up to an entire area (and can detect danger within the power’s range — RM (8 areas)
sculpt it to only affect enemies in that area, if you — but you cannot pinpoint them. This means you cannot
wish). be Blindsided. If you have acted in a fight but did not take
the Defend action on your turn, you may Dodge using this
SFX: Alter Currents. You may alter the flow and intensity power’s Rank in place of your Agility. When you take the
of a current of water within 1 area of you. This allows Defend action, use the better of your Agility or this power
you (and allies in the same area, if you wish) to gain for all Dodging actions.
a swimming speed of your Rank. You may also resist
the effects of a dangerous current using your power Detect Magic: RM 30
Rank. Finally, you may force enemies in the body of You have the ability to detect magical energies when
water to suffer the effects of a Slam, using your power they are present in an area; roll the power’s Rank against
Rank as the Difficulty on their roll. a Difficulty of the Rank of any magical effects meant to
obscure the presence of magic, if any. As an action, you
Weather Control: RM 30 can also peer into the Astral Plane and see if anyone is
You have the power to influence and even completely present on that plane within one area.
alter the forces of the weather around you. You may
create weather effects like fog, heat, cold, rain, sleet, or Detect Radiation: RM 30
thunder that fill 1 area, anywhere up to 8 areas away from As an action, you can attune your senses to detect
you, that have a Difficulty equal to your power Rank. You radiation, and evaluate the levels of each. This gives you
may also strike with this power in the form of slicing the ability to isolate specific combinations of radiation
or bludgeoning hail, or with the electrical shock of a energy, and determine how dangerous and long-lasting
lightning bolt, against one target within 8 areas, using the any radioactive materials are. Roll the power’s Rank
power Rank to make an energy attack and dealing Rank against the Material Strength of materials that shield
Number energy damage. against radioactive materials, when applicable.
SFX: Gliding. You may glide on wind currents using
Hyper Sense - Hearing: SP 75
your power Rank to determine your flight speed (in
Your hearing has a range of SP (40 areas), and you can
this case: 15 areas or 225 mph). You cannot climb in
identify things (including people) in the same area as
altitude when gliding.
you without having to use other senses. You cannot be
Blindsided and do not suffer combat penalties in darkness.

Mutant Detection: RM 30 Protected Sense - Sight: SP 75
You have the ability to sense the presence of the gene that Your eyes can reflexively close a second, tinted membrane
causes superpowered mutation in an individual or area. that allows you to see but filters out light past a certain
Against an individual, make a power roll: on a GREEN brightness. Whenever you must resist a blinding effect
result you can sense the gene’s presence in them, and on a or light-based attack, you do so using this powers Rank
YELLOW or better you can even track that individual in the rather than one of your primary abilities.
future so long as they were present in the area you’re in
within 5 rounds. If searching an area, you must be present Sense Emotions: RM 30
in the area and make a power roll: on a GREEN result you As an interaction, you can read the surface emotions of
sense the presence but not which individual has the gene, someone you are conversing with. Make a power roll
and on a YELLOW or better you know which individual(s) with their Psyche as the Difficulty. If successful, you
have the gene. On a RED result on this roll, you can now understand their current emotional state as a series of 1-3
track any of those individuals in the future, so long as adjectives.
they were in the area you’re currently in within 5 rounds.
Tracking: SP 75
Night Vision: RM 30 You have heightened senses attuned to tracking the
You can see clearly in dim light, and even in total darkness. passage of someone. If you are familiar with the person’s
Your eyes naturally enhance any ambient light to act as scent, you can track them so long as they were in the
daylight, while in the darkness you can see clearly at a vicinity within the past 2 minutes. You can detect their
range based on the Thrown Range column of the Power presence (though not their exact location) as soon as
Ranks Table: 4 areas, in your case. they are within 4 areas of you. If they are present, you
can use an action to pinpoint their location by making a
successful power roll.

Healing &
Regeneration
You can heal others, but not yourself. Healing is usually
all about reducing a character’s current damage. Healing
lost Endurance ranks is usually reserved for especially
powerful healers. Bringing characters back from the dead
is possible with a healing power, but should be rare, and
usually comes with a significant cost, such as:
» The need for a special magical ingredient that is
incredibly hard to procure.
» A permanent reduction of your own Health.
» A penalty to one or more of your or the target’s
primary abilities.
» The potential to create a temporary doorway for
dangerous creatures to crossover from the lands of
the dead to our world.
Regeneration, on the other hand, is your personal ability
to recover from damage more quickly than normal. If you
can regrow limbs, your power will say so. Normally, this
power does not kick in when you are dying (see COMBAT),
but if it does, it will say so, such as in the Healing Factor
example below.
Healing Examples
Chi Healing: EX 20
You can recover damage in others (but not yourself), or
restore one lost Endurance Rank (such as from dying; see
COMBAT) via touch. When you do so, the target recovers
a number of damage equal to the power’s Rank Number
Regeneration Examples
or a single lost Endurance Rank. You then must make a Fast Recovery: RM 30
power roll: You recover lost Endurance levels (such as from dying; see
COMBAT) at a faster rate. Once each day, make a power
» WHITE = You heal them but your power is shut down roll. On a GREEN result you recover 1 Endurance Rank, on
for the rest of the session. You gain 1 Karma. a YELLOW you recover 2, and on a RED you recover 3. This is
» GREEN = You heal them but this power is shut down in addition to the normal recovery rate of lost Endurance
until you have at last a few hours of meditation to Ranks (1 per week, or 1 per day under professional medical
replenish your chi. You gain 1 Karma. care).
» YELLOW = You heal them but this power is shut down Healing Factor: RM 30
for the rest of this scene. You recover damage equal to your Rank Number divided
» RED = You heal them and choose: either you can by 10, at the beginning of your turn, even if your damage
re-use this power again as an action whenever equals your Health, as long as you are stable. If you are
you want, or you heal them for double (2 x Rank currently dying, you make a roll with this power at the
Number or 2 lost Endurance Ranks) and shut down start of your turn to see if you stabilize. If you do (GREEN
this power for the rest of the scene. or better result), you begin healing the following round.
Regeneration
You recover your Endurance Rank Number in Health
every minute of full rest. If you are dying, this power is
shut down until you are stabilized. You can regrow non-
essential appendages and organs, which become fully
functional once you return to full health. (The head/
brain and torso/heart/lungs of a human are essential
appendages; a finger, arm, or leg is not.)

Illusions
Lifelike illusions can be generated with these powers,
Interacting with Illusions
When you first interact with an illusion, you make an
Intuition roll with the power’s Rank as the Difficulty,
causing victims to believe things are there when they and a success means you no longer believe the illusion.
truly aren’t. The ability to do this can vary greatly in terms You can move through it harmlessly and are otherwise
of their origin and how they affect others. Sometimes unimpeded by it, though it can still obscure real things
they may be psychically created images within a single they cover up. You cannot be targeted by attacks from
person’s mind, or they might be projected illusions that them, and do not take stress from them. You may only
everyone can see or sense. attempt this again if another character can reasonably
Illusions can never cause direct harm because they are convince you of the illusion: this requires them to make a
not real: they deal stress, not damage. That said, the added successful social interaction roll with the difficulty of the
effects of certain situations are believable enough that power’s Rank.
a victim can still be subject to them: a grapple Hold or
a Stun, for example. That said, some special effects are
Stressed Out by Illusions
Once you are stressed out by an illusion, you recognize it
reduced in effectiveness or are treated as different effects:
for what it was in the following scene, or as soon as you
Slams never result in more than a single area of forced
are revived or recover due to the aid of another character.
movement, and a Kill is treated as a Stun.
The same rules then apply: you are no longer subject to
stress or other impediments from the illusion.
Seeing Through Illusions
Illusions can be seen through in one of two ways: you Examples
interact with it directly in close proximity (touching,
Illusory Duplicates: RM 30
conversing, hand-to-hand combat), or you are stressed
As an action, you create a number of illusory duplicates
out by it.
based on the rank of this power. For each one, you gain
a free reaction in which you can negate an attack that
targets you. Each one also gets a single action on your
turn, but uses your power Rank and Rank Number for any
rolls or effects, and can only deal stress, not damage.
» WK to AV = 1 duplicate
» GD to RM = 2 duplicates
» IN to SP = 3 duplicates
» UN to X500 = 4 duplicates
» C1k and up = 5 duplicates
Image Generation: RM 30
You can cover an entire area in a real-seeming illusion,
complete with people, animals, objects, and so on. If
combat erupts or you create the illusion of damaging
terrain or events, all rolls and Difficulties use your Rank in
this power, and any effects deal stress (but never damage)
equal to your power Rank Number.
Visions of Fear: RM 30
You can project horrifying images within your area that
afflict anyone you wish within that area for 5 rounds.
All your opponents must make a Psyche roll against a
Difficulty of your power Rank. Any that fail must use their
movement on their turn to move away from you (even if
they don’t know where you are they will subconsciously
be directed away), and any rolls they make suffer -2R.
They will avoid or attack anyone trying to stop them from
fleeing by any means possible. They may make a Psyche
roll to resist these effects again at the end of each of their
turns (but with the -2R penalty).

Invisibility
Invisibility provides you with the benefits of always being
Intangibility
You are able to change your molecular structure such
treated as unseen (-2R on attacks that target you), and you that you become “out of phase” with the physical world
can make Blindsiding attacks (+2R on your attack rolls) to some degree, capable of passing through solid objects.
against anyone that isn’t aware of you. High levels of this power may also lead to abilities that
The Rank of this power is used as a Difficulty to detect you mimic flight. Sometimes, this power also leads to the
by alternative means. What those means are depends on ability to phase specific parts of the body, or to interfere
how your power is defined. You might be bending light with electronics or mechanical devices by phasing “part
around you, which means senses like hearing or certain way” through them.
types of technological sensors can still attempt to detect
you. You might create a psychic aura that causes people
to ignore your presence; cameras and magical detection
Examples
might still pick you up. Being detected in this way simply Phasing: IN 40
gives someone the chance to target you; they still operate You can pass through objects of Material Strength up to
with the listed penalties, and you can still blindside them. your power Rank. Anything higher that you pass through
deals damage equal to its Material Strength Rank Number,
but your power’s Rank Number acts as body armor
Examples against this: subtract your power Rank Number from the
Chameleonic Coloring: RM 30 damage dealt. You may also phase through living matter
You can change the appearance of your skin and any as an action, and when you do so, you deal damage equal
worn items to match the coloration and apparent to your power’s Rank Number. However, you also take
texture of your immediate surroundings. As long as you damage equal to the target’s Endurance Rank Number,
move no more than 1 area during any movement and but your Phasing power again acts as body armor as
don’t otherwise call attention to yourself, your attacks above.
are Blindsiding attacks (+2R on your attack rolls) and SFX: Reactive Phase. You gain a single reaction each
attempts to find you must succeed against a Difficulty round of combat where you can attempt to phase
equal to your power Rank. Once you are discovered, there through attacks aimed at you. This reaction acts
are no penalties to attacker’s rolls against you, and you as a Dodge, but you use your Phasing power’s Rank
can take an action and make a successful power roll to instead of your Agility.
hide against a different background.
Invisibility: RM 30
As an action, you can magically cloak your body in an
enchantment that allows you to disappear from view
for up to 5 rounds. While invisible, all of your attacks
are Blindsiding attacks (+2R to your attack roll). Anyone
attempting to find you must make an Intuition roll
against a Difficulty equal to your power Rank, or employ
special sensors that don’t rely on visual means (with the
same Difficulty). Once found, attacks may target you but
suffer -2R to strike you.

Mimic
You can gain the special abilities of whatever you mimic,
Movement Powers
Movement-related powers involve either increased speed,
though it is limited by your rating in this power. Mimicry the ability to maneuver over otherwise inaccessible
is a broad power, and often comes with significant surfaces or terrain, or entirely new ways to move from
limitations, or a very specific specialization, such as: point A to point B. While they don’t inherently add to your
defensive capabilities, they may often come with special
» Animal mimicry: mimic the traits of a naturally effects that include such abilities.
occurring animal.
(Teleportation and traversing alternative dimensions
» Power mimicry: mimic a single power that you don’t actually involve movement through physical space,
observe.
technically speaking, so they are treated separately. See
» Material mimicry: you mimic the Material Strength Teleportation.)
and other traits of an inanimate object you touch.
Examples Flight
You can fly at an air speed based on the Rank of your
Power Mimic: RM 30 power. Being limited to gliding (not gaining altitude) is a
When you witness a super power in effect, you may weakness.
duplicate it for 5 rounds starting on your next turn. You
follow the rules of the power in question, substituting the
lower of the duplicated power’s Rank or this power’s Rank Leaping
where applicable. For example, if you have Power Mimic You may jump vertically, horizontally, or both, traveling a
RM 30 and witness an Energy Blast that has a range of AV number of feet equal to the Rank Number of your Strength
6 and deals SP 75 energy damage, your duplicated version +[X]R, where [X] is a number, usually between 1 and 5. For
would have the same range (it’s lower than your power example, if you have Leaping: 3, you leap a number of feet
Rank), but it would only deal RM 30 energy damage. equal to the Rank Number of your Strength +3R: if you
have Strength IN 40, then you leap 100 feet because IN 40
Weakness: Focused. You may only duplicate one power +3R puts you at UN 100.
at a time (and never a full power set). If you decide to
duplicate a new power, you may do so for 5 rounds,
but lose the ability to duplicate the previous power
you chose for 24 hours.

Lightning Speed
You can run (or otherwise move along the ground) at a
land speed based on the Rank of your power.
Swimming
You can swim (or otherwise move underwater) at a water
speed based on the Rank of your power.
Swingline
You can shoot or project something
that attaches to other objects and
allows you to swing from place
to place. Powers like this have
a rating for the Material
Strength of the line — a
cable, webbing, grapple
hook and rope, etc. —
as well as a range.
You attach the line
to something that
is anywhere up to
that number of
areas away as part
of your movement
on your turn.
You can then
immediately move a
number of areas equal
to double the number of areas you fired your swingline.
So if you can fire your swingline up to 6 areas (EX 20
Rank), but choose an object that is only 4 areas away, you
could swing 8 areas. If you attached it to something the
full 6 areas away, you could swing 12 areas.
Wall Crawling
You can move at your normal speed along vertical or
upside-down surfaces without any mobility issues. The
Rank of this power determines your “stickiness” which
tells you what surfaces you can cling to, as well as acting
as a Difficulty if someone were to try to knock you down
or off such a surface.
Wall Crawling Stickiness

Rank Surface
WK Concrete, brick
AV Glass, metal
RM Oil-slicked surface
IN
C1k
Non-stick surface
Frictionless surface
Other Examples
Levitation: RM 30
You can levitate, floating vertically upwards at a number
of stories equal to your power’s Rank Number each round.
If you fall, you can descend that number of stories without
taking damage.

Power Armor
Power armor, like alternate forms, modifies some
statistics. Usually it’s the FASE stats and Health. Each
suit of armor has its own profile sheet. With very rare
exceptions, power armor is always Gear.
Power armor often includes additional powers in the
form of Systems (see below). This accounts for things like
built in weapons, some form of alternative movement or
propulsion system, defensive countermeasures, and so
on. You can think of power armor as Gear with multiple
built-in power sets (the systems).
Stat Modifications
Stat modifications appear on the power armor profile
sheet. For the stat modifications, there is a column for
bonuses and a column to list the modified stat totals based
on the pilot. So Jim Smarty in the Version 4 Robot Man
armor has the same bonuses as Bill Bradski does in that
armor, but not the same totals since they have different
FASE stats.
Initiative often gets modified, too. Unlike the standard
calculations for an initiative score, power armor usually
only adds +1 for each enhanced movement mode. For
example, power armor with flight (Rank doesn’t matter)
gives +1 to the pilot’s initiative score. Meanwhile, power
armor with flight and teleportation (again, the Rank of
these powers doesn’t matter) provides a +2 bonus to the
pilot’s initiative.
Armor & Health

For Health, power armor always lists the Health as a static Systems &
number, which should be tracked separately: this is the
power armor’s “Health,” a measure of its durability and Shutting Down
structural integrity. When the armor’s Health is depleted, Most of a power armor suit’s capabilities are listed under
all systems shut down (unless otherwise specified on the different “Systems” headings, such as:
armor’s profile). The pilot retains their own Health, and » Weapon Systems
doesn’t take damage to their Health so long as the suit is
still active. But, any damage in excess of the power armor’s » Internal Systems
Health is then applied to the pilot. » Defensive Systems
To calculate power armor’s Health, give it 10 Health for » Propulsion Systems
every +1 primary ability modification. So power armor » etc.
that provides +1 Fighting, +2 Agility, +1 Strength, and +2
Whenever a capability says “shut down a system” usually
Endurance has 60 Health.
that refers to one of the capabilities beneath these
Power armor usually also has the Body Armor power listed headings, not the entire heading.
under one of its systems (such as Defensive Systems).
Bullseye results might be another use for this: a bullseye
Unless stated otherwise, the Body Armor Rank is also the
against a specific system might shut down a capability:
Material Strength of the power armor, if that ever comes
for example you might shut down an A.I. Targeting
into play. If there is no Body Armor power, assume it has
System with a well placed arrow. The player and the GM
WK 2 Material Strength.
may decide to shut down all systems under a heading,
however, if they feel it’s dramatically appropriate. That
said, the player of the character getting a system shut
down should have the right to first refusal. The exception
to this is if there is only a single capability underneath a
system heading: if that one is taken out, tough luck!

Example Stat Weapon Systems
A.I. Targeting System: AM 50
Modifications The advanced targeting system in your HUD allows you to
The Robot Man Version 4 power armor provides the use this rating instead of your Agility on all Agility-related
following stat modifications: attack rolls.
» Fighting +1R Concussion Blasts: RM 30
» Agility +2R You fire a burst of concussive force from your wrist
» Strength +2R projector.
» Endurance +4R » Attack: Force Attack (Agility)

This means the armor has 90 Health. Assuming it has a » Range: RM (8 areas).
special mode of movement, such as the Boot Jets listed in
» Damage: RM 30 force damage.
the Example Systems, below, then it also provides the pilot
with a +1 bonus to their initiative score.
Example Systems
The following systems show a few power sets (the
underlined headers) and their respective powers. This suit
of armor is clearly a cobbled together, jury-rigged piece
of combat technology, with some advanced aspects and
other parts that are anything but!
By separating these powers into different power sets,
effects that might shut down just one of them can be easily
designed. For example, if the Weapon Systems are shut
down, both the Concussion Blasts and the A.I. Targeting
System no longer work!
Defensive Systems
Body Armor: RM 30
Subtract 30 damage from blunt, edged, force, and shooting
attacks that strike you.
Weakness: Exposed Electronics. Because the suit’s
electronics are exposed, it is more susceptible to
electrical-based energy attacks.
Propulsion Systems
Boot Jets: RM 30
15 areas, 225 mph flight speed.
SFX: Evasive Maneuvers. As a reaction, make an Agility
roll. You inflict a penalty on all attacks that target you
until the start of your next turn, based on the result
of your roll:
» WHITE = No penalty
» GREEN = -2CS
» YELLOW = -4CS
» RED = -6CS

Psychic Powers
Psychic powers cover a pretty wide gamut, but the
commonality is that they all require the user to establish
contact with the mind of their intended target. This can
be beneficial (mental communication), invasive (probing
thoughts and reading emotions), or aggressive (a blast of
mental pain, mind control).
Special precautions should be taken when dealing with
mind reading and mind control style powers. While these
make for great drama, they can be easily abused: if low-
level mind control can be used to cause a victim to act
against their self-preservation, it may be awfully easy
to solve (or create) a lot of problems with that power.
Before introducing such powers, make sure to have an
open discussion with all players at the table what the
limits of these powers are. The powers below utilize the
Power Ranks Table for things like duration or area of
effect, but also note subjective things like “acting against
one’s nature” or being exposed to “immediate harm.” We
purposely left those vague, to keep the powers short and
sweet, but those are precisely the terms you should closely
define with the input of your players at the outset of a
campaign.
Examples
Enchantment: RM 30
You can project an aura around yourself that charms
those who come into contact with you. You can do this
either by touching one subject or by influencing everyone
in your area. Against a single target, you must touch them
(Fighting-based attack if they are unwilling, the only effect
being that you can use this power on them), and they make
a Psyche roll against a Difficulty of this power’s Rank; on
a failure, they are enchanted. Against an area, all those
present make a Psyche roll (no Difficulty), and only on a
WHITE result are enchanted. An enchanted person treats
you as a dear friend for 5 rounds and doesn’t recall being
enchanted afterward. They will not attack you unless you
obviously attempt to harm them or their allies, and they
won’t take orders from you, but they will treat everything
you say and any non-hostile actions in the most positive
light possible.

Mind Bolt: RM 30
You can contact another person’s mind and jolt them
with psychic feedback, emotionally harming them and
weakening their resolve. This operates similar to an
attack, and does use an action.
» Attack: Psyche
» Range: RM (8 areas).
» Effect: RM 30 stress.
» SFX: If the target takes stress from this attack, they
also take a penalty to their primary abilities in
social situations or when resisting other psychic
powers. The color result of the attack tells you the
penalty: GREEN = -1R, YELLOW = -2R, and RED = -3R.
This penalty lasts until their stress is fully recovered.
Mind Control: RM 30
You may dominate the mind of a target in range (RM
8 areas), making them do your bidding. They resist
by making a Psyche roll with your power Rank as the
Difficulty. If they fail, you can direct their actions for up
to 5 rounds, which they will carry out to the best of their
ability. If you direct them to do something directly against
their nature, or that will cause them immediate harm, Psychic Force: RM 30
they immediately gain another attempt to resist the mind Your psychic power is so strong it can manifest physically
control. as a force attack.
Plant Control: RM 30 » Attack: Force Attack (Psyche)

You can animate a plant through a form of psychic » Range: RM (4 areas); uses Thrown Ranges.
manipulation that allows it to animate and do very un-
» Damage: RM 30 force damage and RM 30 stress.
plant-like things. It can move as a normal human with
Endurance equal to your power’s Rank. It can manipulate » SFX: Psychic Crush. You can also make Grab or
objects, grab people, and generally gain the flexibility Grapple attacks at range (same as above), using this
and dexterity of a person, using your power’s Rank to power Rank in place of Strength.
make any necessary rolls. It uses its Material Strength
for determining if it can be broken, and effects it is Telepathy: UN 100
vulnerable to gain +3R for determining those effects (such You can psychically contact someone you know within 60
as fire damage). The plant has Health equal to its Material areas and hold a conversation with them so long as you
Strength plus the Rank Number of this power and has an maintain concentration. You may contact multiple people
Initiative of this power’s Rank divided by 10. — as many people as you wish in this way, so long as they
remain within range — but doing so requires you to take
SFX: Grasping Vines. Alternatively, you can animate a an action and make a power roll to establish the link, and
number of plants in the area to simply wrap around requires concentration. To contact someone you don’t
someone and pull them to the ground. This is an know, or who is unwilling to allow it, the target makes a
action, has a range of 4 areas (there must be plants in Psyche roll against a Difficulty of your power Rank.
the area), targets a single opponent, and allows you
to make a Grapple Attack using this power in place of Weakness: Concentration. This power requires
your Strength. concentration: if you take damage or stress, the link
immediately ends. You must use an action and make
Psi-Screen: RM 30 a successful power roll to reestablish contact.
You have a psychic barrier that is always in place, SFX: Read Minds. To read the mind of someone to
protecting you from mental attacks and intrusion. When divulge their emotional state or uncover memories
you are the target of psychic attacks, you subtract the requires you to use an action to make a successful
power Rank Number from any damage or stress you would power roll in order to establish a link. The Difficulty
take. Additionally, you may use this power Rank in place of this roll is the target’s Psyche. You can only do this
of Psyche (or other primary abilities, when applicable) to to one person at a time, and it takes 1d10 rounds to
resist psychic powers, such as Mind Control, Telepathy, uncover the information you seek. You must maintain
and so on. concentration (see above) during this period, or else
start over.

Resistance or
Invulnerability
Resistances and invulnerability are always specified as to
Life Support
This is a version of Invulnerability in which you are
what they apply to. The Rank of this power will be at least shielded from any and all detrimental effects of a hostile
one higher than your Endurance. If you have resistance environment (or several). First, specify the environment(s).
against something, such as poison, radiation, toxins, or Then clarify what aspects of that environment are
the like, you make a roll using your applicable Resistance covered: you might be immune to the effects of vacuum,
Rank, using the effect’s rating as the roll’s Difficulty. If but that doesn’t mean you don’t require food or water!
you succeed, you are unaffected by it. If you fail, you’re There is no rating for this power: it simply tells you what
affected. your immunities are.
In some cases, the GM may rule that your Resistance
provides Body Armor-like effects, rather than entirely
negating the incoming effect or attack. For example,
Examples
Invulnerability - Fire/Heat: C1k
cosmic radiation may come from a source so powerful
You are immune to the effects of extreme heat and fire-
that it causes immediate direct damage. Your Resistance
based attacks, unless their source has a higher Rank than
versus radiation acts as Body Armor against the damage
this power.
it would cause.
Life Support - Space
Invulnerability Your ability to absorb dark matter energy allows you to
survive in the vacuum of space indefinitely without a need
Invulnerability is simply Resistance that is rated as C1k
for air, food, water, or rest. You also have C5k immunity to
or higher against a thing. This means you’re immune to
extreme temperatures, though energy-based attacks can
the thing in almost every possible form; no need to make
still harm you normally.
a roll to resist it at all! The only time you worry about it is
when it is rated higher than your Invulnerability (which Life Support Systems - Space (Gear)
is never if you have C5k). Your space suit protects you from the effects of vacuum,
and provides you with a 2-week supply of air, food, water,
Sources and waste removal.
Common things you might be resistant or invulnerable to Resistance - Fire/Heat: RM 30
include: You are resistant to the effects of extreme heat and fire-
» Fire/heat based attacks.
» Cold Water Breathing
» Electricity You can breathe water and air equally well, can see
underwater as well as on land, and survive comfortably
» Radiation even at extreme depths.
» Poison
» Magical Attacks
» Emotional Attacks
» Mental Attacks
» Disease
» Acid
Any time you want to choose a type of damage — blunt,
edged, force, energy — that’s Body Armor, instead. Energy
is the only type that might be affected by Resistance or
Invulnerability because there are so many different types
of it: fire/heat, cold, radiation, and acid are all forms of
energy attacks that fall under Resistance/Invulnerability.
But notably, being resistant or immune to all energy
damage is something that only the rarest of powerful
characters might have.

Shapeshifting
You have the ability to physically transform into
something else. Most often, this means taking on the
beneficial traits of the thing, such as:
» Changing your size
» Gaining the Material Strength of inanimate objects
» Gaining natural weapons like bites and claws
» Gaining different forms of movement such as flight
or swimming
This power doesn’t come with a rating. Rather, it defines
your abilities’ Rank changes when you change forms.
In its most basic form, you become the thing; it’s as simple
as that. You retain awareness, but you are otherwise
treated as the thing mechanically until you change back.
A chair is a stationary object with a specific Material
Strength, and doesn’t do anything other than provide a
place to sit, an obstacle for movement, or an improvised
weapon for anyone who picks it up and swings it.
In the more common form of shapeshifting, however,
you are transforming into a much simpler version of
an Alternate Form: you either take on predetermined
primary abilities (such as those of a wolf), and perhaps
gain a few powers (such as claws or alternative movement
modes or speeds), but you otherwise retain your Health,
Resolve, powers, and Talents. In many cases, you retain
your mental traits — Reason, Intuition, Psyche, Resolve
— but that’s not always the case. Regardless, your Health
and Resolve do not change.
Shapeshifting is very similar to Transmutation. The major
difference is that when you shapeshift, you rarely take on
special properties of a different state. For example, you
shapeshift into a metal chair, but you transmute into a
gaseous substance. There may be overlap, or power sets
that include both abilities.
Examples
Shapeshifter - Werewolf
You can shapeshift into two alternative forms: wolf and For the hybrid form, the changes are:
hybrid (werewolf) form.
» Fighting = EX 20
This power might be accompanied by the Alternate Form
character sheet, showing the following changes for each
» Agility = GD 10
form. » Strength = EX 20
For the wolf form, the changes are: » Endurance = RM 30
» Fighting = EX 20 » Bite: Melee Edged (Fighting) attack that deals
» Agility = GD 10 Strength +1R edged damage.
» Strength = GD 10 » Claws: Melee Edged (Fighting) attack that deals
» Endurance = EX 20 Strength edged damage.
» Bite: Melee Edged (Fighting) attack that deals » Enhanced smell and hearing: RM 30
Strength +1R edged damage. » Lightning Speed: AV 6 land speed (3 areas/turn,
» Enhanced smell and hearing: RM 30 45 mph)
» Lightning Speed: GD 10 land speed (4 areas/turn, Talents and all other information remains the same as the
60 mph) character’s natural, human form.

Size-Changing
Powers that allow you to change your size come in all
Growth
The complex version of Growth has two primary benefits
and a drawback. On the plus side, you may substitute
shapes...okay, never mind. The point is, these sorts of your Growth Rank for your Strength, both for any rolls
powers allow you to grow or shrink, or give you the ability and for the Rank Number when dealing Strength-based
to cause other people or things to do so. There are a myriad damage. You also gain Body Armor (as per the power)
of ways these effects can apply to the game mechanics, so against blunt, edged, and shooting, and force damage. On
we present two different versions of these powers: simple the downside, you are easier to hit when you get bigger,
and complex. providing a bonus to the attack rolls of your enemies.
Growth Table
Simple Growth Rank Height Body Armor Hit Adjustment
& Shrinking WK 2 8 ft. - +1R
In this version of the power, growing or shrinking is MD 4 10 ft. - +1R
entirely beneficial, and usually only encompasses a AV 6 12 ft. WK 2 +1R
single size shift, or very small range. It acts almost like an GD 10 15 ft. MD 4 +1R
alternate form, but even simpler, as there are less primary EX 20 18 ft. AV 6 +1R
ability and power changes.
RM 30 20 ft. GD 10 +2R
You simply have a modifier for each size shift you can IN 40 25 ft. EX 20 +2R
make, and you apply it to a set of traits. For example, if
AM 50 30 ft. RM 30 +2R
you can grow from 6 feet tall to 10 feet tall, it would look
like this: SP 75 35 ft. IN 40 +3R
UN 100 40 ft. AM 50 +3R
Growth: +2R X150 50 ft. SP 75 +3R
You grow until you stand 10 feet tall, your body rippling
with increased muscle mass. Apply the modifier to your » Rank: The Rank and Rank Number of your Growth
Strength and Endurance on all rolls, and for determining power.
damage and movement. Your Health remains the same.
» Height: Maximum height at each Rank.
Shrinking: +1R » Body Armor: You gain this Rank of the Body Armor
You shrink until you are only 6 inches tall, making you power: subtract the Rank Number from any blunt,
harder to notice (or hit), giving you access to tight spaces, edged, shooting, or force attacks that strike you.
and increasing your overall density despite your smaller
size. Apply the modifier to your Agility and Endurance
» Hit Adjustment: This bonus is added to your
opponent’s rolls to strike you.
on all rolls, and add the Body Armor power, below. Your
Health remains unchanged. Note that ratings above Uncanny tend to be pretty game-
breaking. The sheer destructive potential of a being that
SFX - Body Armor: GD 10. Subtract 10 damage from all
size is substantial, and this almost certainly leads to
blunt, edged, and shooting attacks that strike you.
problems of collateral damage in a typical, modern day
superhero setting.
Complex Growth Shrinking
& Shrinking The complex version of Shrinking primarily makes you
harder to hit, makes normal-sized targets easier for you
The more complex version provides a means to grow or
shrink to much more . . . interesting sizes! This version to hit, and gives you access to areas you couldn’t get
of the powers have a Rank and Rank Number, and this into before. On the flip side, you’re mass and density
determines several related abilities as they grow or shrink. isn’t changing, which means your Strength is being
proportionally diminished; this doesn’t affect Health,
normally, and has a minimum of WK 2. Unlike with
Growth, the Shrinking Hit Adjustment is applied as a
penalty to attacks made against you, and as a bonus to
your attacks against normal-sized targets.

Shrinking Table
Rank Height Strength Adj. Hit Adjustment
Sorcery
Magic is often a very, very broad power, and is usually
WK 2 3 ft. - - best modeled as a power set, instead: individual spells or
MD 4 2 ft. - - magical items operate much like some other power or
AV 6 1 ft. -1R - gear, you just say it comes from a magical source instead.
GD 10 6 in. -1R +/-1R Sorcerous bolts (an energy attack), a magic sword (gear
EX 20 3 in. -1R +/-1R
that deals a bunch more damage than a mundane sword),
weather control, and similar magical effects all work as
RM 30 1 in.. -2R +/-2R
other powers or gear.
IN 40 0.5 in. -2R +/-2R
That said, magic that tends to create temporary effects
AM 50 0.25 in. -2R +/-2R
that mimic other powers or achieve an effect similar to a
SP 75 0.1 in. -3R +/-3R
single combat result (Stun, Slam, Bullseye, etc.) falls under
UN 100 0.01 in. -3R +/-3R the Sorcery power. That is, the Sorcery power is the act of
X150 near microscopic -4R Can’t miss quickly creating an effect through a magical spell, ritual,
or force of will. Another term for this is Improvised Magic.
» Rank: The Rank and Rank Number of your The other version of sorcery powers are simple effects that
Shrinking power.
exist outside of most other powers, or rely on “metagame”
» Height: Minimum height at each Rank. concepts to work, like luck, manipulation of the Power
» Strength Adjustment: Use this modifier when Ranks Table, and so on. For example, you might be able
making any Strength-based rolls, or to calculate to manipulate luck by casting a hex: this might have the
your Strength Rank Number (such as for damage) effect of allowing you to make a power roll and “banking”
while shrunk. the color result for later use on a specific type of roll.
Another option might be enchanting someone: you take
» Hit Adjustment: This modifier is added to your over their body and act with all of their physical abilities
rolls to strike an opponent (with anything but Grab (FASE scores and Health) while retaining your mind (RIP
and Grapple attacks), and is subtracted from their scores and Resolve) for a short time, before relinquishing
attempts to strike you. control and returning to your own body.
Like Growth ratings above Uncanny, Shrinking ratings
above Uncanny tend to be beyond the scope of simple
attack roll and Strength adjustments due to the scale. Improvised Magic
Once a character goes microscopic, they likely act on a Some of the most powerful spellcasters can recall little-
scale that is more akin to traversing a different dimension known spells or even make up new spells on the spot.
(see Teleportation for extradimensional antics). If you’re one of those, you can cast spontaneous spells
through the Sorcery power. It has a good chance of going
haywire, but opens up a lot of potential effects. Generally,
Variations these spells can reproduce nearly any power imaginable,
A variation on the complex versions of Growth and but they will operate at low power ranks and risk surges
Shrinking is that there’s some magical or pseudoscience of uncontrollable magical energy.
justification for the character to lose some mobility as To cast an improvised spell, entreat an entity to help you
they Grow, or not lose Strength when Shrinking. To model power it (“By the Crimson Halo of Sinistar...” or “By the
these sorts of situations where mass, force, and inertia Hoary Hosts of Horigax...”), briefly explain the effect you
concerns go out the window in fun ways, use the Body want to have (“...freeze this fool in place” or “...expel this
Armor column from the Growth Table to determine the demon back to the Dimension of Death”) and make a
ranks of various special effects. Since Growth ratings can power roll.
substitute for Strength Ranks, that’s another route you
can take for measuring such abilities, but be aware that 1. Entreat & Describe Spell
the higher end of those ratings can get out of hand quickly. Your Sorcery power tells you the source of your magical
That’s why the Body Armor column is present, after all. knowledge and power. Oftentimes, you must entreat
an entity with a suitably evocative phrase, or perform a
quick ritual as commanded by a spell’s description. Then
briefly describe the end result of the spell you wish to cast.
It’s a good idea to have in mind a power from this chapter,
but that isn’t necessary as long as you have a clear idea of
the result.

2. Determine the Difficulty
The base Difficulty of the Sorcery power roll is based on
how the entity you’ve entreated is aligned to chaos and
order:
The entity is aligned with Chaos: RM 30
The entity is aligned with Order: IN 40
The entity is Neutral: AM 50
Optional Difficulty Modifiers

If you want a little extra variation, you may apply the
following modifiers to the Difficulty of entreating the
entity.
» You are in good standing with the entity’s alignment:
-1R to the Difficulty
» You are in bad standing the entity’s alignment: +1R
to the Difficulty
» You owe something to this specific entity: +1R to the
Difficulty
» The effect you are calling on is similar to other spells
associated with the entity: -1R to the Difficulty
3. Determine the Spell Rank

The power rank of the spell is based on the color result of
your power roll.
»W HITE = Magical Surge (see below).
»G REEN = the spell’s rank is AV 6.
» Y ELLOW = the spell’s rank is GD 10.
» R ED = the spell’s rank is EX 20.
4. Determine the Results
Apply the results of the spell based on the Rank and
intended effects.
This formula is best when simply duplicating the effects
Entreating Entities of an existing power, but sometimes you may want to
create wildly more complex or bizarre effects. In such
A list of extradimensional entities will be furnished cases, the best guidance is this:
to characters who have access to entreating them for
magical spells and powers. Spells represent Difficulties that can be resisted with a roll,
such as Psyche or Endurance. They may also emulate color
Note that these entity listings are not complete, and results of some maneuvers of GREEN or YELLOW. So even the
the information is simply the best available at this time; most powerful improvised spells have a chance of simply
there may be false pieces of information, outright lies, failing outright against those of strong will. No spell will
and quite frankly, even worse. Playing with magic (and result in a Kill, but a Slam or Stun or Bullseye are all
entities) you don’t understand is a dangerous game. perfectly possible.
Magical Surges
Some magical spells, powers, or items note that a possible
side effect of using them (or failing to use them properly)
results in a magical surge. A magical surge is a random
consequence that comes from playing with magic; the GM
rolls on the table below whenever a surge occurs.

Magical Surge Table
1d10 Effect
1 Your ability to cast spells is shut down until an object of Material
Strength equal to the spell rank is “consumed” (magically erased
from existence via a long ritual), or you have downtime to
recuperate.
2 You take the spell’s rank in stress (if unclear, roll on the Spell
Ranks Table).
3 Your Agility is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
recover.
4 Your Strength is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
recover.
5 Your Endurance is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
recover. You cannot cast any spells until you recover.
6 Your Reason is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
7 Your Intuition is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
recover. You cannot cast any spells until you recover. Postcognition: RM 30
8 Your Psyche is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to You can witness the history of an item or location by
recover. You cannot cast any spells until you recover. concentrating on it for no less than 5 rounds. Choose an
9 Your magic, magical items, and all magic in your area no longer inanimate item weighing up to your Rank Number in
functions or produces opposite effects for 1d10 rounds. pounds, or the area you are currently in. When you choose
10 You are summoned to entreat directly with the extra-dimensional an object, you see everything that has happened to it, and
entity and the spell goes off as if a GREEN result...if you pay what only the surrounding area, wherever it has been during
they ask.
the timeframe (see below). When you choose an area, you
only see the events that happened within that area during
Examples the timeframe (see below); everything outside that area is
hazy and indistinct. Make a power roll to see how far back
Foretelling: RM 30 you can witness events; this is the timeframe. WHITE = 1
You can magically divine the actions of others in the very minute, GREEN = your Rank Number in hours, YELLOW =
near future. In combat situations, make a power roll at your Rank Number in days, RED = your Rank Number in
the start of the encounter, and on a success you act first years.
and know what the intended action of the original first Weakness: Temporal Feedback. You take this power’s
character to act would have been (they may change it in Rank Number in stress each time you use it.
response to what you do, of course). Outside of combat,
you may choose a specific character and make a power Power Block: RM 30
roll with a Difficulty of their Psyche. On a success, you You can magically nullify any superpowers in one area.
may ask a single question about their Attitude (for NPCs), You must take an action to activate the power block, and
a single power or gear (such as its effects or weaknesses), cannot move or take actions as long as you maintain
or their primary or secondary abilities (such as the rating), the power block. All powers with a Rank less than your
and the target must answer truthfully. power Rank simply do not function. All powers with a
Rank equal or greater to your power Rank must make a
Hex Curse: RM 30 successful power roll against a Difficulty of your Rank to
You can weave an enchantment upon someone that be activated until you end the power block.
afflicts them with ill luck. First, you must be near them,
or must have something important and identifying of Sorcery - The Book of Eibon: RM 30
theirs: a lock of hair, a favorite object, a photograph of an You can create improvised magical spells by entreating
important moment in their life, etc. Next, you must choose the entities known to Eibon, such as Azathoth, Cthulhu,
one of their primary abilities (FASERIP) to curse. Finally, Nyarlathotep, or Yog-Sothoth. See the Improvised Magic
you make a power roll with their Psyche as the Difficulty, rules, as well as the list of entities below:
and the color result tell you the penalty that afflicts that
primary ability for 5 rounds, starting whenever you » Azathoth: Neutral. Typical spells: fear, teleportation.
choose within 24 hours of placing the hex on them. WHITE » Cthulhu: Chaos. Typical spells: domination, mind
= no penalty, GREEN = -1R, YELLOW = -2R, and RED = -3R reading, dimensional travel.
and you may inflict your power Rank Number in stress
» Nyarlathotep: Chaos. Typical spells: domination,
any time they fail a roll on which they have a Hex Curse
horrific visage.
penalty.
» Yog-Sothoth: Chaos. Typical spells: resurrection,
summoning.

Stretching
The power to elongate portions of your body is known as
Stretching. This power usually just determines the range
you can extend out to, using the Thrown Ranges on the
Power Ranks Table. It may have other special effects,
however: perhaps your body acts like rubber, or has
increased strength when stretching. These special effects
might be written like so:
» Use your Stretching Rank and Rank Number in
place of your Strength when grappling, grabbing, or
Examples
dealing unarmed damage. Elongation: RM 30
You extend your limbs a number of areas governed by
» Using the Area of Effect column on the Power Ranks the Thrown Ranges on the Power Ranks Table, based on
Table to determine how wide you can spread your your Rank (in this case 4 areas). You gain any number of
body, acting like a net to catch falling objects. You creative uses for this power, such as extending your arms
might also gain Body Armor equivalent to your and legs to attack into other areas, extending your head
Stretching Rank Number when doing so, but only to see and hear in distant areas, traverse a gap such as a
against blunt damage. ravine or pit, and so on. Additionally, one maneuver you
Alternatively, these may be entirely separate powers, may make is to grapple all opponents in the same area as
governed by a power set, especially if you might have you: apply the effects of a single Grapple Attack to each
different Ranks for each power. opponent individually.

Teleportation
You can instantaneously move to a point based on the
The Astral Plane
In the Astral Plane (and “mental” planes like dream or
nightmare realms), your primary abilities for different
Range Table (see MOVEMENT & ENVIRONMENT) things change:
without moving through the areas in between.
» Fighting = Reason
Upon arrival, there may be a chance of disorientation.
Make a FEAT using this power’s Rank. » Agility = Intuition
» Strength = Psyche
» WHITE = Stunned for 1d10 rounds.
» Endurance = Psyche
» GREEN = Stunned for 1 round.
Unless a specific power or effect tells you otherwise with
» YELLOW or RED = You may take an action this round. regard to working in such planes, everything that used to
In the event that you teleport to a location which is deal damage instead deals stress. Characters with powers
enclosed or has objects you were not aware of, you risk that allow them to travel to the Astral Plane often get to
teleporting inside of them and taking damage. Make a add those powers’ Rank Number to their Resolve; Astral
power FEAT roll: Projection is one such power that increases your Resolve,
allowing you to take more stress while on these planes.
» WHITE = Take damage equal to twice the Material
Strength of the object, plus stunned for 1d10 rounds.
» GREEN or better = Take damage equal to the Material
Strength of the object, plus stunned for 1d10 round.
In any case, you are shunted to the nearest open terrain.
Astral Projection &

Dimensional Travel
Some powers allow you to teleport by actually traversing
some other plane of existence. You step into this other
plane, travel a ways there, and then pop back into the
material world (Earth) in a new location. Alternatively
some powers don’t really do teleportation
at all, but simply allow you to travel to
other planes: you return to Earth in the
spot where you left it, or even leave your
body on Earth the whole time and travel
psychically to these other planes. Your
body appears asleep or catatonic, and
might be subject to danger if you leave
it unprotected! Your powers will tell you
what happens.
Extradimensional Magic
In nearly every plane outside of the physical
(Earth) plane, magic-based powers
have a +1R across the board: they
deal more damage or stress, have
greater range, or provide a higher
Difficulty. This means that when
you are in the Realm of Mirrors,
Astral Plane, Dark World, or
some other plane where reality is
fundamentally magical in nature,
your spell ranks will get a +1R when
used. This applies to improvised
spells, as well.

Examples
Astral Projection: RM 30
You may project your mind into the Astral Plane, allowing
you to visit the unique mental realms there. Add this
power’s Rank Number to your Resolve when on the Astral
Plane, and make the following substitutions when you
take actions on that plane:
» Fighting = Reason
Known Dimensions
» Agility = Intuition
With a power like Dimensional Aperture, you should list
» Strength = Psyche a few of the likely dimensions that appear in your game’s
» Endurance = Psyche universe, and the player should choose 3-5 of these for
their power, along with a known location within each
If you can cast spells or have other powers of a magical
that they are familiar with, listed next to the dimension
nature, they operate at +1R while on the Astral Plane.
in parentheses. For example:
Additionally, you gain Flight equal to this power’s Rank.
While on the Astral Plane, your body is helpless and » Astral Plane (Dream Tower)
unaware of its surroundings. It does not require any form » Nightmare Plane (My childhood home)
of sustenance other than air to breathe, but if you are » Plane of Fire (City of Brass)
stressed out while on the Astral Plane, these protections
fade and soon your body will wither away unless you can
return to it. Shadowstep: RM 30
You can teleport to the nearest gravesite, up to 8
Dimensional Aperture: RM 30 areas away, by opening a portal to and traversing the
You can open a portal to another dimension that lasts Shadowlands, a purgatory-like realm of spirits. When you
up to 5 rounds, allowing anyone willing to step through do so, make a power roll. On a GREEN+ result, you teleport
(or thrown through unwillingly!) to travel to a point you without incident into an unoccupied space. On a WHITE
are familiar with in that dimension. Anyone that steps result, you are accosted by the restless spirits of the dead
through is physically in that dimension, even if it is a during your time in the Shadowlands, taking your power
place of thought or spirit. If you wish to open a portal to Rank Number in stress as you suffer terrifying visions of
a dimension or place within a dimension for which you their deaths.
are unfamiliar, you must make a power roll. WHITE = the
portal leads to a random dimension, GREEN = the portal Teleportation: RM 30
leads to a random place in the correct dimension, YELLOW You can instantaneously teleport from where you are
= the portal leads to a random (but relatively safe) place in standing to anywhere else in range (6 areas). You do not
the correct dimension, RED = the portal leads to the closest suffer from any ill effects of teleporting, and do not stand
safe place to your intended destination. a chance of teleporting into objects in the new location.

Transmutation
Whether it’s through the magical principles of alchemy
or science-based matter manipulation, you can
transform one substance into another. Or, at the very
least, to alter something’s properties so that it takes on
enhanced or degraded attributes. You might see this
in the form of altering the Material Strength of objects,
changing something’s chemical makeup for a short time
(turning flesh to stone), or in extreme cases, dissolving
or disintegrating a thing entirely, or creating something
from nothing.
Transmutation is one of the most common powers
to utilize the Duration column on the Power Ranks
Table, because such powerful effects are often
not long lasting. Similarly, the Area of
Effect column can be used to gauge
the amount of material affected,
disintegrated, or conjured.
You might see Transmutation
paired up in a power set with
Attack Powers, some form of
Elemental Control, or perhaps
Shapeshifting and Stretching.
Altering oneself is usually a form
of Shapeshifting, though, and
therefore doesn’t need to
be a separate power.
Absorption
One version of a transmutation-
based power is Absorption: when
you are targeted by a specific form of
damage or type of effect, you absorb
it. This usually means that you don’t
suffer any ill effects from the specified
source (like immunity), and it is
instead transformed into additional
Health, or some form of attack that
you can unleash immediately after
the absorption.
Instead of increasing your Health
through absorption, you might
increase one predetermined primary
ability to the Rank and Rank Number
of the attack’s damage. Alternatively, you
might make a specific type of retaliatory
attack as a reaction, using the Rank and Rank
Number of the attack’s damage.

Animation: RM 30
You can cause an inanimate object to take on a sort of
animated life, allowing them to move around and
act with limited sentience to follow your spoken
commands. It can move as a normal human
with Endurance equal to your power’s Rank.
It can manipulate objects, grab people, and
generally gain the flexibility and dexterity of
a person, using your power’s Rank to make
any necessary rolls. It uses its Material
Strength for determining if it can be broken,
and effects it is vulnerable to gain +3R for
determining those effects (such as force
damage against glass). The animated object
has Health equal to its Material Strength
plus the Rank Number of this power and has an
Initiative of this power’s Rank divided by 10.
Body Transformation - Light: RM 30

You can change your body into the form of light
energy. You can move at the speed of light anywhere
within 8 areas as your move, can move through any
sized gap in a surface that light could conceivably travel
through, and shed bright light that fills your entire area.
You are immune to all damage, but cannot interact
physically with anything. You can maintain this form
for up to 5 rounds. Once you switch back to your normal
form, this power is shut down for 1d10 rounds.
Body Transformation - Fire: RM 30

You can transform your body into a living pillar of flame.
Anyone that touches you is damaged as if by a fire of your
power Rank. Anything you touch burns and may ignite
Examples as if struck by a fire of your power Rank’s Difficulty.
(You can walk on most normal surfaces without causing
Absorption - Blunt Damage: RM 30 substantial damage unless you stand in place for a long
You can absorb bludgeoning and crushing effects that time or are purposely trying to burn through it.) In this
strike you. Anytime you are struck with blunt damage, form, you are immune to mundane blunt, edged, or
you take no damage. Instead, the amount of damage shooting damage, but you double the damage of any
dealt is added to your Health, up to a maximum of your cold, ice, or water based attacks that strike you (or suffer
Absorption power Rank Number. This additional Health -3R when facing Difficulties from such effects). You can
goes away at the end of the scene. maintain this form for up to 5 rounds. Once you switch
back to your normal form, this power is shut down for
Absorption - Cold: RM 30 1d10 rounds.
You can absorb cold attacks that strike you and the effects
of extremely cold temperatures. Anytime you are struck Body Transformation - Gas: RM 30
with cold damage or would be subject to the effects of Your body takes on the substance of gas, and even fly
extreme cold, you don’t suffer those effects. Instead, on air currents. You can pass through any gap that isn’t
the amount of damage dealt or the Rank Number of the airtight. You can fly at an air speed determined by your
effect is added to your Health, up to a maximum of your power Rank (in this case 15 areas or 225 mph). Additionally,
Absorption power Rank Number. This additional Health you are immune to all blunt, edged, shooting, and force
goes away at the end of the scene. attacks, but you double the damage of fire/heat, cold/
SFX: Unleash Cold. As a reaction, you may release ice, or wind-based attacks (or suffer -3R when facing
any additional Health you have gained from your Difficulties from such effects). You can maintain this form
Absorption power as an Energy Attack affecting for up to 5 rounds. Once you switch back to your normal
everyone within your area, dealing an amount of form, this power is shut down for 1d10 rounds.
energy damage equal to your additional Health. This
amount of additional Health immediately goes away
when you do so.

Body Transformation - Sand: RM 30 Elemental Mimicry: SP (75)
You can change some or all of your body into living sand, By touching an object, you take on the properties of that
allowing you to pass through gaps as if you were fine sand, object's material for as long as you wish (until you sleep or
attack with the crushing power of heavily packed earth, fall unconscious). You may choose to localize the effects
and fashion weapons or tools made of sand from your of this mimicry, such as only to one arm, or to both legs,
limbs. You can transform limbs or your entire body over etc. In addition to the physical properties, your Strength,
time to flow through any gap that sand can fit into. You Endurance, and Health improve by an amount equal to
can use this power’s Rank in place of your Strength when the Material Strength of the substance, up to a maximum
dealing unarmed damage or making Grapple, Grab, and of your power Rank. You also gain the Body Armor power
Charge attacks. As a part of any unarmed attack, you may equal to the Material Strength (maximum of your power
fashion your limbs into a weapon that deals +1R blunt or Rank): you subtract the Rank Number from any attacks
edged damage, your choice. You may fashion a limb or that strike you, unless the material is susceptible to that
limbs into a tool (shovel, hammer, crowbar, etc.), giving form of damage (such as how wood is susceptible to fire
you +1R on any relevant rolls. You can maintain most damage), in which case you take the full damage normally.
alterations indefinitely, except when it is your entire body, You also gain any vulnerabilities of the substance: such
in which case you can only maintain it for up to 5 rounds. effects gain +3R against you for determining their effects.
Once you switch back to your normal form after using it
in this way, this power is shut down for 1d10 rounds.
Body Transformation - Water: RM 30

Summary
1. Powers are cool, and often break the rules, or give
You can change your entire body to become water: you you neat tricks that modify the rules for you when
must change your whole body any time you use this you use the power.
power. When you do so, you can pass through any gap that 2. Gear might provide special powers and abilities, but
liquid can fit through. Additionally, you are immune to it can be lost, damaged, or stolen.
any attacks other than fire/heat or cold, and even against
3. Power sets are groupings of powers (written as a
those forms of attacks, this power allows you to subtract
header on your datafile) that come from the same
the power Rank Number from any damage you would
source, so stuff that affects that source might affect
take. You can maintain this form indefinitely. However,
all of the powers in a power set.
once you switch back to your normal form, you must
make an Endurance roll: WHITE = this power is shut down 4. Most powers have a Rank and Rank Number just
for 1d10 days and you get +1 Karma; GREEN = this power is like your primary abilities (FASERIP), but not
shut down for a day and you get +1 Karma; YELLOW = this always.
power is shut down for a scene; RED = this power is shut 5. Some powers (or even power sets) can be “shut
down for 1d10 rounds. down”: this means that they cannot be used until
some listed activity is taken to refresh or recharge
Disintegrator Gun (Gear): RM 30 them.
This wide-barreled pistol shoots a beam of disintegrating 6. Special Effects (SFX) are cool special rules that a
anti-matter. power can do, usually under limited circumstances,
» Material Strength: EX 20. or that circumvent the normal rules in some way.
7. Weaknesses are limitations on a power (or rarely, a
» Attack: Energy Attack (Agility). power set) that cause it to be shut down, or nullified
» Range: RM (4 areas); uses Thrown Ranges. under some circumstances, or to come with some
» Effect: One inanimate object less than 1 area in size drawback when used.
and of this power Rank’s Material Strength or less is 8. There’s a big list o’ common power types, with
completely disintegrated. all sorts of rules, ideas, and thoughts on how to
customize them.
» Weakness: This gun only affects inanimate objects.
Living creatures within a disintegrated object — 9. With each power type are several pre-written powers
such as inside of a car that you disintegrate — are so you can see how they might look on a character
unaffected, and simply drop prone where they were sheet. (Most are rated at RM 30, but a few are higher
positioned inside of the object. or lower so you get a sense of what different power
levels might look like.)

TALENTS
All talents follow the same basic rule: +1R on any rolls By no means is that a comprehensive or complete list.
when using the talent unless otherwise stated. Talents can be fairly broad or pretty specific, but there
Generally, you can “stack” Talents, gaining multiple are limits. “Science” is too general, while “Lemur Mating
bonuses to a single roll, as long as you can justify how Habits” is too specific; “Zoology” is perfect. A good rule of
each Talent helps. There is a limit: you cannot push any thumb is to use any high school-level class,
roll past X500 due to bonuses. college/university major, or general
technical vocation as a starting point.
Here’s a good list of Talents that don’t require special
rules: you just get +1R on any roll where one of these On the next page are all the special
Talents is applicable. cases: the “otherwise stated” Talents
that operate slightly differently. Also
» Archeology included are any Talents that might
» Art seem vague without a clearer
definition. They are presented in
» Astrophysics alphabetical order (A>Z).
» Biochemistry
» Biology
» Business
» Chemistry
» Computer Hacking
» Computer Science
» Drive
» Electronics
» Engineering
» Espionage
» Genetics
» Geology
» Journalism
» Law
» Mechanic
» Mythology
» Occult Lore
» Performance
» Physics
» Pilot
» Psychiatry
» Radiobiology
» Religion

Talent Index A>Z
Acrobatics
+1R to dodging and escaping actions.
Aerial Combat
+1 initiative bonus. +1R to all attack and defense rolls
while flying.
Charm
+1R to get someone to like you. Success modifies an
individual’s Attitude, or a community’s view of your
Popularity.
Close Quarters Combat

You can Stun or Slam opponents on a successful attack
even when no damage is inflicted.
Inspire
Command As an interaction
+1R to give orders to or lead a group of NPCs who might once per round, you may
otherwise be inclined to ignore your wishes. give a speech to bring out the
Convince best in others. Make a Psyche roll to
+1R when you using logical arguments and evidence to provide a bonus to a single roll made
persuade others of a truth. by an ally
GREEN = +1, YELLOW = +2, RED = +3.
Crime
+1R when dealing with criminals, engaging in crimes, or Insubordinate
masquerading as a criminal. +1R to your Psyche as Difficulty
against attempts to command you, even if backed by
Cunning psychic or superhuman powers.
+1R to see through lies and deceit, either to your Reason
as the Difficulty against a roll made to deceive you, or to Intimidate
your Intuition to suss out deceit. +1R to brow-beat someone into submission through fear
or other negative emotions.
Deceive
+1R to lie or distract. Interrogate
+1R to draw the truth out through careful questioning.
Eidetic Memory
You automatically recall any piece of mundane Law Enforcement
information you viewed at any point in the past with You have +1R with guns, as well as law/legal rolls.
perfect clarity. For esoteric knowledge or information
obscured by powers or magic, you roll against a Difficulty Leadership
equal to the power rank of the effect, or RM (30) if there +1 initiative bonus. As long as you are a recognized leader
was no rank. of a team and are present with them, you and your allies
each receive +1R on all Psyche rolls.
Escape Artist
+1R on escape actions, wiggling out of locks, chains, ropes, Martial Arts
and other restraints. +1R to Fighting when engaged in unarmed combat.
Faith Medicine
Use Intuition instead of Reason to resist logical and You can automatically halt the Endurance loss of another
evidentiary arguments that counter the tenants of your character, unless they are at NULL Endurance. You can
faith. also restore one lost Endurance rank with a successful roll.
A character who is at NULL Endurance (dead) for no more
First Aid than 1d10 minutes can be stabilized if you have access
You can automatically halt the Endurance loss of another to full medical equipment and the wounds are deemed
character, unless they are at NULL Endurance. You can reasonable to be recovered from by the GM. Additionally,
also restore one lost Endurance rank with a successful you gain +1R when diagnosing, treating, researching, or
roll. otherwise engaging with medical problems.

Military Sway
+1 initiative bonus. +1R when using military hardware, +1R to motivate or persuade others through appeals to
including weapons. emotion.
Multi-lingual (Advanced) Tumbling

You are fluent in the following languages: INSERT You can make an Agility roll after a fall up to Endurance
LANGUAGES HERE. Any time you encounter a new Rank Number in feet to land without taking damage.
language that isn’t alien to you, make a Reason roll. WHITE
= no knowledge; GREEN = you can identify its origin but Unfazeable
can’t speak/read it; YELLOW = you can speak or read it +1R to resist attempts at intimidation.
passingly well (not both); RED = you are basically fluent.
Make sure to keep a running list of such languages and
Unreadable
+1R to your Psyche when others attempt to extract
your abilities with them.
information from you, such as through interrogation.
Multi-lingual (Basic) Weapon Specialist -
You are fluent in the following languages: INSERT
LANGUAGES HERE. SPECIFIC WEAPON
+1R when using the specified weapon.
Orate
+1R to lead a crowd to a desired conclusion through a Wrestling
stirring speech. +1R on grabbing and grappling attacks, and escaping
maneuvers.
Resist Domination
+1R to all Psyche rolls against mental attacks, including Note!
psionic powers. The following Talents were created for the new social rules by
Jayson Jolin (@realityJaysonJ on Twitter).
Seduce
+1R to get others to do what you want by leaning on sex » Charm » Command
appeal. » Convince » Cunning
» Deceive » Faith
Sharpshooter » Inspire » Insubordinate
+1R on any ranged weapon attack that requires line of
sight. You don’t suffer range penalties. » Intimidate » Interrogate
» Orate » Seduce
Situational Awareness » Stoic » Stubborn
+1 initiative bonus.
» Sway » Unfazeable
Stoic » Unreadable
+1R to your Intuition when others attempt to appeal to
your emotions.
Streetwise
+1R on rolls for navigation, local underworld, and general
street survival.
Stubborn
Summary
+1R to your Reason or Psyche when others attempt to 1.
Talents are skills, learned knowledge, or innate
change your mind about something for which you’ve abilities that improve your odds of success in fairly
already decided. specific circumstances.
2. Unless it says otherwise, you get +1R to your rolls
Student - SPECIFIC SUBJECT whenever a Talent makes sense in applying to the
Choose a specific subject. Instead of gaining a bonus on situation.
a roll, you instead automatically succeed on advanced 3. If you have multiple Talents that all seem applicable
trivia related to the subject matter. This doesn’t provide to the situation, you can stack the bonuses as much
a benefit to apply that knowledge: you know a lot about as you want (up to X500).
the subject, but don’t necessarily have much functional 4. There are a bunch of Talents with special benefits
experience. and rules.

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from a superhero show or film in a
contextually appropriate manner.
PROFILE #1:
PUBLIC OR SECRET? IDENTITY
INITIATIVE
FIGHTING
HEALTH
AGILITY
STRENGTH
DAMAGE
ENDURANCE
PROFILE #2:
REASON RESOLVE
INTUITION
PSYCHE STRESS
POWERS & GEAR TALENTS POPULARITY RESOURCES

ADDITIONAL TRAITS & STUFF

ADVANCEMENT RECORD

CODENAME
FORM(S)
FIGHTIING
AGILITY
STRENGTH
ENDURANCE
HEALTH
REASON
INTUITION
PSYCHE
RESOLVE
INITIATIVE
POPULARITY
RESOURCES
POWERS/GEAR & MODS

POWER ARMOR EVEN MORE SYSTEMS
PILOT
INITIATIVE +BONUS
ARMOR BONUS TOTAL RANK TOTAL
FIGHTING
HEALTH
AGILITY
ARMOR
STRENGTH
DAMAGE
ENDURANCE
SYSTEMS MORE SYSTEMS

THE UNI-TABLE
Universal NULL WK MD AV GD EX RM IN AM SP UN X150 X200 X500 C1k C3k C5k
Table Zero Weak Mediocre Average Good Excellent Remarkable Incredible Amazing Spectacular Uncanny Extreme 150 Extreme 200 Extreme 500 Cosmic 1000 Cosmic 3000 Cosmic 5000
Dice Roll 0 2 4 6 10 20 30 40 50 75 100 150 200 500 1000 3000 5000
01
02-03
04-06
07-10
11-15
16-20
21-25
26-30
31-35
36-40
41-45
46-50
51-55
56-60
61-65
66-70
71-75
76-80
81-85
86-90
91-94
95-97
98-99
100
BATTLE EFFECTS TABLE
Action Attack Defend Special Effects
Effect General Blunt Damage Blunt/Restrain Edged Damage Shooting Energy Force General Special Stun Slam Kill
Maneuver – Melee Charge Throw Grab Grapple Melee Throw Attack Attack Attack Dodge Block Catch Escape Resist with...
Ability – Fighting Endurance Agility Strength Strength Fighting Agility Agility Agility Agility Agility Fighting Agility Strength Endurance Endurance Endurance
White Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss Incr. Hit Fail Autohit Fail 1-10 Grand Slam End. Loss
Green Hit Hit Hit Hit Take Miss Hit Hit Hit Hit Hit Roll w/Hit STR-4 or MS Miss Fail 1 1 area KO 1-10
Yellow Effect+1 Slam Slam Hit Grab Partial Stun Stun Bullseye Bullseye Stun Dodge STR-2 or MS Damage Escape No Stagger No
Red Effect+2 Stun Stun Stun Break Hold Kill Kill Kill Kill Stun Dodge STR+1/MS+1 Catch Reverse No No No
Campaign Notes & House Rules
*Difficulty
You’ll sometimes see something that says “make a roll If the Difficulty is equal to your Rank, you need a YELLOW
against Difficulty RM 30” or “make a roll against a Difficulty result to succeed. If there are variable results based on the
equal to your opponent’s power Rank.” color result, both WHITE and GREEN results act as WHITE
results, YELLOW acts as GREEN, and RED acts as YELLOW.
This means you compare the Ranks of the two things:
There is no chance of achieving the listed RED results.
whatever trait you’re using, like Fighting or Endurance,
against whatever it’s telling you the Difficulty is. If the Difficulty is higher than your Rank, then you need a
If the Difficulty is less than your Rank, good news: you only RED result to succeed. If it’s 3 or more Ranks higher, the GM
can rule you fail automatically. If there are variable results
need a GREEN result to succeed completely. If the Difficulty
based on the color result, WHITE, GREEN, and YELLOW all
is 3 or more Ranks lower, the GM can rule you automatically
count as WHITE, and RED counts as GREEN. There is no
succeed. If there are variable results based on the color
chance of achieving the listed YELLOW or RED results.
result, use them exactly as indicated.
Movement Special Speed Ratings

Endurance Speed Situation Movement
WK or less 1 area/turn Elevator 10 stories/round
MD to EX 2 areas/turn Falling 10 stories/turn, 10 damage per story (max 120) plus Stun
(resist as in combat)
RM+ 3 areas/turn
Leaping Strength Rank Number in feet
Vertical Movement Swimming 1 area/turn
Endurance Speed
Up to EX 1 story/15 feet per turn
RM+ 2 stories/30 feet per turn

Rank Descriptions
Rank Description Agility Strength Endurance Reason Intuition Psyche
NULL Nonexistent
WK (2) Far below Lift 50 lbs Operate simple
average machines
MD (4) Below average Lift 100 lbs Notice obvious
items
AV (6) Average human Lift 200 lbs Tear gas
GD (10) Above average Walk a balance Lift 400 lbs Snake venom Develop simple Hypnosis
beam electronics
EX (20) Olympic level Lift 800 lbs Spider venom Notice fine detail
RM (30) Human limit Walk a tightrope Lift 2,000 lbs/ Artificial Mind control
1 ton intelligence
IN (40) Enhanced human Lift 10 tons Find hidden Understand
objects magic
AM (50) Enhanced limit Lift 50 tons Understand star
drives
SP (75) Beyond human Catch an arrow Lift 80 tons Sense invisible Asgardian spells
objects
UN (100) Realm of Catch a bullet Lift 100 tons Survive in
powerful aliens vaccum
X3 (500) Alien limit
C1k (1000) Cosmic entity
Power Ranks Table

Range Area of Speed
Rank Ranged Thrown Effect Duration Land/Water MPH Air MPH
NULL 0 Self only 0/same area Self only Instant - - - -
WK 2 Touch 1 area 1 foot 1 round 1 area 15 mph 2 areas 30 mph
MD 4 1 area 1 area 2 feet 1 round 2 areas 30 mph 4 areas 60 mph
AV 6 2 areas 1 area 4 feet 2 rounds 3 areas 45 mph 6 areas 90 mph
GD 10 4 areas 2 areas 10 feet 3 rounds 4 areas 60 mph 8 areas 120 mph
EX 20 6 areas 3 areas 20 feet 4 rounds 5 areas 75 mph 10 areas 150 mph
RM 30 8 areas 4 areas 1 area 5 rounds 6 areas 90 mph 15 areas 225 mph
IN 40 11 areas 5 areas 2 areas 8 rounds 7 areas 105 mph 20 areas 300 mph
AM 50 20 areas 6 areas 3 areas 10 rounds 8 areas 120 mph 25 areas 375 mph
(1 minute)
SP 75 40 areas 7 areas 4 areas 2 minutes 9 areas 135 mph 30 areas 450 mph
UN 100 60 areas 8 areas 5 areas 3 minutes 10 areas 150 mph 40 areas 600 mph
X500 400 areas 20 areas 20 areas 1 hour 16 areas 240 mph 200 areas 3750 mph
C1k 100 miles Awareness / 1 mile 1 day 32 areas 480 mph Interplanetary
C3k 10k miles Sensory 2 miles 1 week 50 areas 720 mph Near light speed
C5k 1M miles Range 5 miles 1 year 100 areas 1500 mph Near instantaneous

Resource Difficulty
Activities
Situation Difficulty
On your turn, you can…
Bus/subway fare WK
» Move Modest hotel MD
» Perform 1 interaction: talk, open or close a Rent, 1BR in NYC AV
door, sip a hot coffee Mortgage, small house AV
» Perform 1 action: attack, defend, hold off, or do Housekeeper salary AV
something cool Bodyguard salary GD
On other people’s turns, you can… Lawyer or doctor fees GD
» Converse with people, especially if it’s an Broadway tickets GD
appropriate response to their actions: “Ouch! Car, sedan EX
Stop punching my face off!” Mortgage, large house EX
» Take a reaction IF AND ONLY IF you either… Penthouse suite RM
• Decide to defend as your action on your On-staff lawyer RM
turn, or... Luxury car RM
• You have a power or gear that gives you a Private jet IN
reaction.
Salary, hundreds of workers IN
(You may be limited to a certain number of reactions,
Mansion IN
so keep that in mind. Your powers and gear will tell
Salary, thousands of workers AM
you.)
Military jet SP
Major corporation SP
Mega-corporation UN
Magical Surge Flying aircraft carrier X150
1d10 Effect
1 Your ability to cast spells is shut down until an object of Material
Strength equal to the spell rank is “consumed” (magically erased
from existence via a long ritual), or you have downtime to Material Strengths
recuperate.
MS Object
2 You take the spell’s rank in stress (if unclear, roll on the Spell
Ranks Table). WK Cloth, paper, brush, glass
3 Your Agility is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to MD Plastic, crystal, wood
recover. AV Rubber, soft metal, ice, interior wall
4 Your Strength is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to GD Brick, aluminum, asphalt, high-strength plastic, light machinery
recover.
EX Concrete, iron, bullet-proof glass or clothing, exterior wall
5 Your Endurance is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
recover. You cannot cast any spells until you recover. RM Steel, reinforced concrete
6 Your Reason is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to IN Stone, volcanic rock
recover. You cannot cast any spells until you recover. AM High strength steel, granite
7 Your Intuition is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to SP Diamond, super-heavy alloy
UN Cosmic metal, magical elements
8 Your Psyche is reduced to WK 2 until you have downtime to
recover. You cannot cast any spells until you recover. C1k Metal from the heart of a dying star
9 Your magic, magical items, and all magic in your area no longer
functions or produces opposite effects for 1d10 rounds.
10 You are summoned to entreat directly with the extra-dimensional
entity and the spell goes off as if a GREEN result...if you pay what
Attitudes and Popularity
they ask. Modifier Attitude Popularity
-3R Enamored Demonized (hated/fear)
-2R Very friendly Very distrusted or disliked
Catching -1R Friendly Distrusted or disliked
Attack Min. Agility +0 Neutral Neutral
Thrown projectiles RM (30) +1R Unfriendly Liked
Large fired projectiles (arrows) AM (50) +2R Very unfriendly Loved
Small fired projectiles (bullets) UN (100) +3R Hostile Idolized

It's your turn to be the hero!
Astonishing Super Heroes is a roleplaying game of superpowered
action and drama. Inspired by the classic FASERIP system,
and rebuilt from the ground up via the OGL, Astonishing Super
Heroes streamlines action scenes and adds elegant dramatic
roleplay mechanics to better represent the variety of challenges
superheroes face in the comics, shows, and movies we're all
familiar with.
The Basic Rulebook includes:

» All the rules you need to emulate superpowered characters
from any comic, TV show, or movie universe you're already
familiar with!
»
A totally revamped Karma system customized to your
superhero's identity, whether they are an inspiring moral
paragon, a clever mystic willing to deal with dark powers, a
violent antihero, or a reformed villain!
» Rules for destructible environments and movement that can
be as tactical or freeform as you want them to be!
» All the rules to run epic fight scenes and thrilling action
sequences.
» New rules for challenging social interactions, including a
whole new stress and resolve mechanic, as well as leveraging
money and resources against your foes.
» 30 pages devoted to building custom superpowers, high-tech
gear, and more.
» Over 100 fully-built powers are included as examples!
» Character sheets including alternate forms, power armor, and
advancement sheets.
» A fully revised "Uni-Table" to capture all of the rules resolution
mechanics on a single reference page.

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Let’s Start Over, Shall We? presents...

2 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Developed by Tim Bannock

Additional inspiration from the 2012 heroic roleplaying

Extra special thanks to Leon Doell for creating the

And finally, thank you to Matthew Bannock for getting

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 3

4 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Fans of Modern Games

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 5

Datafiles Resources & Stuff

Movement & Environment Powers & Gear

6 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 7

8 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 9

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 11

12 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

+1 Karma when you quote a line

POWERS & GEAR TALENTS POPULARITY RESOURCES

AFFILIATIONS & CONTACTS

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 13

+1 Karma when you quote a line

AFFILIATIONS & CONTACTS

POWERS & GEAR TALENTS CONTACTS

14 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 15

16 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Optional Rule: Session Karma

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 17

18 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 19

20 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 21

Breaking Stuff & People

22 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Breaking People with Stuff

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 23

» Round down, minimum score of 1

24 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

» Perform 1 action: attack, defend, hold off, or do

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 25

26 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 27

Pull Your Punch

28 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Pull Your Punch

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 29

30 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 31

Base Damage »W  HITE = Miss!

32 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

Resisting Bullseye Effects

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 33

» You slide across the ground. Effect

34 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 35

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ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 37

38 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES 39

Step One: Goal

40 ASTONISHING SUPER HEROES

» Round down, minimum score of 1

» Perform 1 action: attack, defend, hold off, or do

Base Damage »W HITE = Miss!

» You slide across the ground. Effect

» Fighter Jet: Usually mount twin machine guns and

Body Armor: RM 30 » When making attacks enhanced with this power,

» Endurance +4R » Attack: Force Attack (Agility)

Plant Control: RM 30 » Attack: Force Attack (Psyche)