Golden Star "Papa said War is WAR"

1
The power to cause a destructive blast of damage in an area.
Used by Lucky Number 13, Created by PoisedIvyT_T.
(This Effect is obviously Alien when used. Both the source of the effect, as well as the danger zone it creates, are obvious to observers. )

Project Shining Star is TARP'S intention to find a method to get an immortal soul in an otherwise weak body, by any means necessary. The Conventions and rules of the real world would not stand for such experimentation, however in this simulation, any research would be viable in the pursuit of making Humanity a greater species.

Subject Shining Star is a testament to the hard work and ideals of TARP science and biological research: they have shown promise in a controlled setting, but how does it fair out in the field? Would this have militaristic applications?

While the Subject is unstable and prone to spontaneous combustion, they are otherwise the most promising in relation to the 12 others: The Soul's energy, when released without warning enshrouds the blast area with unstable radioactive isotopes. However when this energy is harnessed, the blast is able to set off without these consequences.

With this, the only notable flaw, the next stage of Shining Star is set to commence. Field research.


Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend an Action. The area within 25 feet of you immediately and obviously becomes imminently dangerous. On the following Rounds, you may choose to detonate the Blast as a Free Action on your initiative. When you do so-- or when one minute elapses-- roll Brawn + Athletics at Difficulty 6.

If the Outcome is positive, your blast hits everything within 25 feet of you with Damage equal to your Outcome + 4. If you botched the activation roll, you will also take full Damage from the blast, otherwise it will not hurt you.

Anyone hit by the blast may roll Body at Difficulty 7 as a Free Action, and reduce their Damage taken by the Outcome. Damage spreads to targets beyond the edge of the initial radius, decreasing by 2 Damage for every 5 feet traveled.

Any flammable Objects within the radius during the blast will catch fire, and any being who takes at least 4 Damage will catch fire. Starting the Round after they caught fire, flaming targets take 2 Damage per Round until the fire is extinguished.

Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: Shining Star: You cannot raise your voice above a shout or a whisper. After physical activity, your body starts humming and dimly glowing; all stealth rolls are -2 dice.

Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Papa said War is War: Good soldiers follow orders, but should a dangerous situation were set up, you are the first in line to face it. In the heat of battle, roll self-control in order not to do a dangerous action to complete the mission- with no regards to collateral damage to yourself, or others.

If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.

  • The sacrificial Injury received from activating this Effect cannot be prevented by any means or healed before 1 day has passed. It is shared with all Effects that use sacrifice. This Injury does not requires Stabilization or cause Battle Scars when it becomes Severe.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Community Power Gifts

Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend at least one Action. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. Your target cannot be engaged in Combat. Communicate a command to your target. Roll Charisma + Performance at Difficulty 6. The target may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.

If the contested Outcome is positive, your target will be compelled to follow your command to their best understanding of the letter and spirit of the command until they have completed it or for your Contested Outcome in minutes. You cannot issue another suggestion to the target until 10 minutes after they have completed the first command or 10 minutes after a failure.

The target will be fully aware that they are doing this task on your behalf and will inform anyone who they interact with that they were sent by you, though they may not view it as compulsory or against their will until the effect wears off. If you fail, they realize that you were attempting to influence them supernaturally with your command.

Your command can be an order to take an immediate Action. You cannot order a target to "do nothing," and they are free to take other Actions as they fulfill your request. Your command cannot be obviously self-destructive. The Effect ends if following your command would cause a target to cross one of their Limits in a way that would necessitate a Trauma roll.

You may activate this Effect as a Reaction to contest any Action a valid target is taking, reducing their Outcome by your own. Your command has no impact beyond disrupting their Action. This interrupts Concentration.

This Effect ends if you are stunned, fall asleep, go unconscious, are incapacitated, die, or if your total Stress ever exceeds 5.

  • The target must be able to understand you and must receive your communication for the suggestion to work.
  • Allowed Commands
    • Direct Order: The target must take an immediate action (e.g. “Sit down,” "run away," or "tell me your password.")
  • In the case of a failed activation, GMs should consider how bystanders would realistically react to a potentially-outlandish accusation of mind-reading.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend an Action or Reaction to activate. Roll Brawn + Alertness at Difficulty 6.

If you succeed, you create a barrier around yourself, which absorbs the next Outcome Damage. Half the damage absorbed is reflected back at the attacker, which they can Defend against as normal. The Damage reduction from the barrier is applied before Armor, and is treated like Armor by any effects such as Armor Penetration. You may only have 1 active barrier at a time.

You must maintain Concentration while using this Effect. The barrier will fall if you are interrupted, or if it absorbs the full amount of Damage. When a barrier falls, you cannot use this Effect again for a minimum of 2 Rounds.

  • If you use this Effect as a Reaction to dodge, you still need to make a roll to dodge. The Effect will occur regardless of the Outcome of this roll, but if you fail you will be hit by the relevant attack prior to the Effect occurring.

Spend a Quick Action. You must actively and obviously use any Axe to activate this Effect.

You may withdraw an item from your stash, or add an item that is within 30 feet of you to your stash. You may only stash targets which are not possessed by someone else, and are freestanding and unattached. You may Exert your Mind and spend an Action to stash items in others' possession, but they automatically notice that you stole the item.

You may store Objects in your stash, each no larger than something which could fit inside a rolling luggage bag (60 liters), and you may store up to 3 things at a time.

You may choose to equip any equipment you withdraw at no additional cost.

Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see Grognar swings his axe, cleaving through the very fabric of time. A grotesque tear opens, blood oozing from the wound in reality itself..

Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Echoes of the Fallen.

Whenever you withdraw an Object from your Stash, you must immediately Stash another object to replace it. You may only stash objects you are attuned to. Attuning an object requires one minute of physical contact.

  • "Equip" refers to drawing a gun, putting on a piece of armor, etc. You may store or withdraw a maximum of 6 items in a given Round. Reminder: you may perform up to two Quick Actions for -2 dice each or 3 if you use up your Action, unless a different Effect grants you additional Quick Actions.
  • When narrating disturbing content, be cognizant of your group's tone and accommodating to those who would like to "fast forward" through the description.
  • The Maximum Object Size parameter is intended to roughly capture the weight / size restriction of items and isn’t intended to restrict shape. GM discretion is advised. A human being is approximately 60 liters.
  • Containers which hold multiple things may count as a single item so long as the things within are generally packaged together. For instance, you may stash a clip full of bullets, a medical kit full of medical supplies, or a box of crackers, but you cannot stash a backpack full of miscellaneous equipment.
  • You may only attempt to store Objects which are free-standing and disconnected from other things. The use of this Effect will not allow you to sever any connections holding an Object in place.

Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend an Action to activate.

You may understand and communicate to as if you are fluent in a relevant language for the next ten minutes.

Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Your target takes a Severity 1 Injury. You must actively and obviously use Bottle of Sake to activate this Effect.

You may cure any Non-Alien diseases, toxins, or poisons afflicting your target even if you have not diagnosed or fully understood it. You may cure diseases or poisons even if they are not treatable through modern medicine. During treatment, the malady you are treating does not progress or cause additional Damage or other effects.

You may treat Alien maladies and curses. If there is some method to cure them, you learn what it is. If the malady does not provide its own means of curing it, it is cured.

After you finish activating this Effect, you cannot move quicker than a walk (max 15 feet per Round) for one minute and suffer a -1 dice penalty for an hour. Exhaustion’s penalty and duration stacks with multiple activations.

  • Exhaustion penalties and duration stack. If you activate this Effect or another Effect with Exhaustion, your penalty will worsen, and the duration is increased by one hour.
  • Without some sort of diagnostic Effect, “fully diagnosing” a disease or poison will always require a roll of some sort, frequently Intellect + Medicine, but the specific roll and difficulty is at GM’s discretion.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Stock Power Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Roll Dexterity + Brawl Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling Body, Difficulty 6.

If the Contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 2. The target's Armor is completely ignored.

When you activate this Effect, instead of occurring immediately, you may choose to delay its effects until the target takes a particular Action. For example: "when they fire a gun" or "when they swim in deep water."

Instead of dealing Damage all at once, the Injury caused by this Power starts at Severity 1 and worsens at the rate of one level per Round until it reaches the Severity it would have otherwise been.

  • A given target can have a maximum of one Suspended Effect on them at a time. The selected triggering Action cannot be used to reveal information about the target (e.g. no "activate when they are a vampire"). It must be an Action they take, not a thought or something that happens to them.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of Effect. There must be no substantial obstructions between you and your target.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Any Injury you receive heals quickly, reducing its Severity by one level every 6 hours. Any Injuries you receive while this Effect is active do not deteriorate over time. However, any Battle Scars caused by such an Injury will remain unless it is Properly Stabilized as normal.

All Injuries you receive are considered Properly Stabilized. You may also choose to heal any Battle Scar on yourself that may not have been caused by an Injury. Doing so takes one day, and the Battle Scar affects you fully until that time.

Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: any scars that heal this way leave the flesh in that area bluish and semi-transparent, causing you to be viewed as a freak by most people who see you.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

If you would take an Injury that would kill you, you don’t die. Instead, you survive in an Incapacitated state. This state lasts for the next hour, at which point you fully return to life. Unstabilized Injuries do not degrade while you are Incapacitated

If, while you are unconscious, your wound level rises above your rating in Body + Charisma, or if you take an Injury with Severity greater than your rating in Charisma, you die. After you return, the Injury that would have killed you, as well as any Injuries sustained while Incapacitated, are healed. Battle scars obtained during this time remain.

Spend one minute. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. You must actively converse with the individual in question for one minute in order to gather any information. At the end of your investigation, roll Perception + Influence at Difficulty 6.

You learn all the following information about your target:

  • You learn a hidden desire of the target. Roll Outcome determines the relevancy / secret-ness of the desire.
  • You learn their relationship to a specific individual (chosen prior to the effect activation).

The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.

Any information you gather is spoken aloud in conversation and made publicly available.

This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 2.

You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

This Effect cannot be used unless you are making a deal to exchange money for protection.

You may make an oath with a physically-present, Sapient target. Communicate the oath's terms to the target, including the requirements and penalties for each participant. If all agree to the terms, you must Exert your Mind and all participants must shake hands to seal the deal.

Record the oath as a Condition. If a party breaks the oath, the Condition ends and they suffer the oath's penalty.

When crafting your oath, you may incorporate any of the following penalties:

  • You may suspend a targeted Offensive Power which will take effect when the oath is broken. The Power must be able to target all participants the oath indicates it could hit.
  • A Battle Scar up to Severe (deaf, missing limb)
  • The oath-breaker is physically marked as an oath-breaker, and any investigative effect will reveal the terms of the oath they broke.
  • A particular Trauma and a single Mind Damage
  • The oath-breaker goes unconscious for up to 24 hours
  • An Injury up to Severity-6 (cannot be reduced by any means)

The target cannot be compelled to agree via a direct threat of violence, another Effect, or another oath. If you would like to use clever wording to mislead the target, you must succeed a contested Intellect + (Culture or Influence) roll.

  • All Oaths must have at least two participants.
  • The target must be physically present to enter the oath.
  • The terms and penalties of the oath do not need to be equitable and do not need to affect all parties equally.
  • A single action cannot break multiple oaths. You cannot 'stack' oath penalties by having a target sign multiple identical oaths, or similar.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.