Aberrant 2.0 Power Errata

General Power Errata

New Stuff

Single Techniques

In some cases, a Nova may wish to purchase a single technique of a Suite power and not have access to any other techniques. In this event, the Quantum minimum is halved (round down, minimum 1) and the power is purchased at 1 level lower than it should be.

Upgrading Powers

A Nova may occasionally upgrade powers to an improved or broader form (i.e. going from Teleport to Spatial Manipulation, Hypnosis to Dominate, Healing to Biomanipulation, Quantum Bolt (fire) to Elemental Mastery (fire), etcetera. In this event, the Nova may cash in their previous power to upgrade it, transforming the previous power into XP that is usable to raise the new power in question only.

This requires the Nova to possess all valid prerequisites, it only lowers the XP cost.

Duration: Action

Some powers now have a duration of "Action" instead of "Instant" (mainly offensive powers). A duration of "Action" means that the power cost must only be paid once every turn, rather than once every use in a turn.

Altered Extras

• Aggravated: An offensive power with the Aggravated Extra deals half (round down) its normal damage and has half (round down) its range, but is aggravated. Claws given the Aggravated Extra deal (Quantum + Claws) dice of Aggravated damage instead, soaked separately from the rest of the attack damage, which is lethal. A power with the Aggravated Extra becomes more difficult to maintain. Powers with the duration of [Action] become [Instant], and powers with the duration of [Maintenance] or [Concentration] become [Action].

• Area: A power with Area may have its Area reduced down to a minimum of 1 meter radius whenever used. The Area extra gives the power an Area rating equal to its power rating. I.e. Quantum Bolt 4 with the Area extra gains the Area:4 tag.

• Armor Piercing: No longer a valid extra-look below for the Armor Piercing strength, instead.

• Burning: Burning does half damage reduced by soak (round up) for (power rating) turns. Burning may be bought twice, so it does half post-soak damage (round up) instead.

• Cloud: Cloud adds +(power rating) accuracy to the attack.

• Explosive: An Explosive power gains the Explosive:3 tag.

• Homing: Homing powers subtract (power rating) successes from any enemy dodge roll and reduce penalties from distance and/or cover by (power rating). A Nova may buy Homing twice to render the power "fire and forget", allowing it to attack targets the Nova cannot perceive due to cover, lack of line of sight, or other similar factors (as long as the Nova could in theory see the target, i.e. the target isn't there and invisible). A fire-and-forget power must be aimed with a general target criterion (valid criteria would be "any human male", "anyone wearing this uniform, "any armored vehicle"). If there is any doubt about whether the power can acquire a target, roll the power's effective Intelligence of (power rating/2, rounded up). Success means it successfully acquires a target if one exists, failure means it dissipates harmlessly, and a botch means it rockets off and blows up an orphanage or something.

• Impervious: Impervious no longer ignores armor piercing and turns aggravated damage to lethal. An Impervious defensive power allows the power to add its lethal soak to aggravated soak, and reduces the effectiveness of armor piercing munitions and powers, subtracting (Power Rating * 2) from the effects of any hit by an armor-piercing attack or power. Impervious may be bought up to twice, stacking the effectiveness reduction to armor piercing effects.

• Increased Duration: The Increased Duration Extra changes Instant duration powers into Action duration powers, Action duration powers to Concentration powers, Concentration powers to Maintenance powers, and if bought twice for a Maintenance power, a Maintenance power becomes a Permanent power. As a Permanent power, an attack or other activated power can be activated at-will for no cost.

• Increased Range: The Increased Range Extra doubles the range increment, and changes long range to (infinite). Note that a Nova must be capable of perceiving the target to attack the target.

• Mastery: Mastery multiplies range by 5/10/15, reduces power cost by 1/2/3 Quantum, and multiplies the effect of the power by 2/3/4. Each level of Mastery does not count as an Extra for the number of Extras a power can support. Mastery 1 is gained at Q6, Mastery 2 is gained at Q8, and Mastery 3 is gained at Q10. Mastery also increases the blast radius of an area of effect power by 5/10/15, but not the area rating (slowly expanding fireballs that can be outrun are fairly kosher for large attacks, or large lead-up times).

• MIRV: A power with MIRV must deal at least 1 die of damage to every target. MIRV may be purchased multiple times to increase the distinct number of targets it can acquire-Double the damage of the power (for splitting between targets) if MIRV is purchased twice, triple it if MIRV is purchased 3 times, so on and so forth. Obviously no target may ever be assigned more damage dice than the power's base damage rating.

• Precision: A power with precision allows the user to choose exactly how many post-soak levels of damage it does if the power deals damage. If the power creates an effect, the character may choose exactly how many successes to apply.

• Spray/Jet: A power with the Spray/Jet extra fires a continuous stream, which adds (+Power Rating) to accuracy with no penalties and subtracts 1 dodge success from any attempts to evade it. Furthermore, it may engage multiple targets as if firing in a burst, with a -1d accuracy penalty for each target engaged after the first. More importantly, if it successfully hits a single target, it can "track" that target, adding a cumulative +1 accuracy and damage to strike that target for every turn the Nova engages the same target, up to (Power Rating).

New Extras

• Supercharge: The Supercharge Extra allows a Nova to supercharge a power beyond what he or she is normally capable of. The Nova pays as much Quantum as she wishes in addition to the normal activation cost. For every multiple of the power's cost, add a temporary +1 to Quantum and +1 to the power for purposes of resolving effects only for one roll.

Example: A Nova with Quantum 3, Dexterity 4, and Quantum Bolt 4 supercharges it, paying an additional 10 Quantum. The Nova resolves his Quantum Bolt as if he had Quantum 7 and Quantum Bolt 9, rolling 13d for his attack and dealing 36L [21] damage. The target is advised to use last-ditch defenses if at all possible, even burning life for additional power to fuel said defenses.

Strengths

No power can have more more total strengths than twice its rating, and no specific strength can be stacked more than (power rating) times. Purchasing a strength costs 3 XP, or 1 NP at chargen buys 2 levels of strength for a power.

• Accuracy: Add 1d to the roll to attack with the power.

• Area: Add 1 to the power's rating when calculating area, or add an area of effect with a radius of (Power Rating) meters if the power lacks an area of effect normally.

• Armor Penetration: Add +3 to the power's AP rating.

• Damage: Add +2 to a power's damage.

• Damage Adds: Add +[1] to a power's damage.

• Effect: Add 1d to the power's activation roll. 2 levels of Effect adds 1 bonus success to a power's activation roll.

• Extra Technique: A suite power with this Strength has an additional technique.

• Multiple Actions: 2 levels of this strength allows a power which normally cannot be used more than once a turn to be used more than once a turn.

• Range: Add 1 to the power's rating when calculating range.

• Rate of Fire: Add 1 to the power's rating when calculating Rate of Fire, for powers with a Rate of Fire.

• Soak: Add 1B/1L/(1A) soak if a power grants soak. This grants aggravated soak only if the power would normally soak aggravated damage.

• Speed: Add +1 to the power's rating for movement speed. Use for movement powers only.

Specific Power Errata

Attack Powers

Disintegrate

Disintegrate has an attack roll now, (Dexterity + Disintegrate), and does a base damage of (Stamina + [Disintegrate * 2]) dice + [Quantum + Mega-Stamina] in damage adds. In this case Mega-Stamina does not add +2 to Stamina per dot, as it would normally do for a static value based on Stamina.

Disrupt

Disrupt may be targeted at quantum-based constructs such as force fields, quantum constructs, and even self-guided quantum powers such as homing quantum bolts (when the attacker is out of line of sight) or the like. Similarly, it may be used to power block against offensive quantum powers.

In this case, each net success on the (Intelligence + Disrupt) roll against the (Quantum + Node) of the nova who generated the construct becomes 2 levels of damage to the construct. In the event it matters, as some constructs may have regenerative abilities or may fail to be incapacitated by certain types of damage, disrupt-caused damage is aggravated.

Claws

Claws has special interaction with the Aggravated extra-instead of turning all melee damage aggravated, Aggravated Claws deal an additional (Quantum + Claws) dice of aggravated damage which is soaked separately from the attack.

Immolate

Immolate now deals [Quantum] levels + (Immolate * 3) dice of bashing or [Quantum] levels + (Immolate * 2) dice of lethal damage to everyone in contact with the Nova. Immolate damage is soaked separately from melee damage.

Mental Blast

Mental Blast deals 2 levels of bashing damage per net success rather than 1 because of the increased number of health levels available to all Novas.

• New Extra: Lethal-Mental Blast deals lethal, rather than bashing, damage, causing severe neurological trauma.

• New Extra: Disruptive-The action after being successfully attacked by Mental Blast, the victim takes an additional -(Mental Blast/2) dice penalty, rounded up. This penalty does not stack and lasts for one turn.

Quantum Bolt

Quantum Bolt is now Duration [Action] rather than [Instant] and can switch between lethal and bashing damage as desired. Quantum Bolt has a RoF of (Quantum + Power Rating) * 2.

• Bashing Damage: (Quantum Bolt * 6) + [Quantum * 2], AP: (Quantum Bolt)
• Lethal Damage: (Quantum Bolt * 5) + [Quantum * 2], AP: (Quantum Bolt)

Quantum Conversion

As an offensive power, Quantum Conversion deals (3*Quantum Conversion) dice of bashing damage for 1 Quantum, or the same amount of lethal damage for 2 Quantum. The utility function of Quantum Conversion remains unchanged.

Quantum Inferno

Quantum Inferno deals damage like a nuclear weapon-that is to say, it deals both lethal and aggravated damage. A successful attack via Quantum Inferno deals (Power Rating * 5) dice and [Quantum * 2] automatic levels of aggravated damage, and an additional (Power Rating * 10) dice and [Quantum * 4] automatic levels of lethal damage, and has an AP rating of (Quantum + Power Level).

Quantum Inferno has a range of ([Quantum + Power Rating] * 100) meters and uses the dice pool of (Dexterity + Quantum Inferno). It automatically has the Area trait, with Area (Quantum + Power Rating). A Nova with Quantum Inferno and some Mastery can scour entire cities and gives the Nova the firepower of a tactical nuclear weapon. Even at low power levels it can give the Nova the firepower needed to wipe out main battle tanks in a single hit.

Quantum Inferno, due to its drastic weakening from being comparable to crazy Level 6 powers such as Planck Scaling and Universe Creation, is now a Level 4 power with Quantum Minimum 6.

Stun Attack

Stun Attack now has an attack roll of (Dexterity + Stun Attack) and does (Strength + [Stun Attack * 2]) dice of stun damage with [Mega-Strength + Quantum] automatic levels. Like Disintegrate, levels of Mega-Strength do not add +2 to strength as they do with most other static values derived from Strength. Stun Attack is also Duration [Action] rather than [Instant]. Stun attack still ignores all sources of soak save Stamina.

Defensive Powers

Absorption

Absorption can increase a character's strength by up to (Quantum + Absorption) dots (rather than just Absorption). Under no circumstances does Absorption give Mega-Strength.

Forcefield

Forcefield no longer gives soak. Rather, it gives temporary external health levels equal to (Quantum + Stamina + [2*Forcefield]) which regenerate at [power rating] levels/turn on the character's action. An attack which penetrates the field has to be soaked normally by the character, but loses as many dice and levels of damage (automatic damage levels are absorbed first) as were necessary to penetrate the field. So a character with Quantum 3, Forcefield 3, and Stamina 5 with Mega-Stamina 2 has a forcefield with 18 health levels that regenerates 3 of these levels a turn. If she was hit by an attack that did [15] + 20L damage that penetrated her field on the first hit, she subtracts the 18 health levels from the damage dealt (negating all 15 automatic damage levels and 3 damage dice), which means that she only has to soak 17L damage. If all health levels are filled by damage, a forcefield shuts down and may not be reactivated until the character's next action.

A forcefield typically has 0B/0L/0A soak, and Aggravated damage ignores a forcefield outright unless said forcefield is Impervious. Armor Piercing attacks deal an extra level of damage to the forcefield for every two dots of soak they would ignore (round up extra damage levels). Furthermore, a Forcefield may be directly attacked by powers such as Disrupt, with the same damage rules as apply to quantum constructs.

If Forcefield's duration is increased to permanent, it still costs Quantum to reactivate in combat, but automatically regenerates all damage and reactivates at the end of the scene.

• New Extra: Feedback. A forcefield with Feedback deals damage to the attacker whenever hit. For every level of damage the forcefield withstands, it deals 1 dice of the same type of damage (bashing or lethal, aggravated is downgraded to lethal) to the attacker.
• New Extra: Volatile. A Volatile forcefield damages everything around the user when breached. When breached, the character emits a Sphere, using her Forcefield rating for its power rating to calculate its damage and radius. By default the use of this Extra is chosen upon field activation and the damage does not distinguish between friend or foe. If purchased twice, though, the character may selectively target enemies and only enemies with the volatile field.
• New Extra: Ablative. An Ablative forcefield negates all damage from the attack that pierces the forcefield.
• New Extra: Hardened. A Hardened forcefield has bashing, lethal, and aggravated soak equal to (Forcefield + 1).

Healing

Healing is now a Level 2 power, which rolls (Stamina + Healing) to heal targets. Each net success on this roll allows the Nova to heal 1 health level. Aggravated damage costs triple to heal. A Nova may heal even a dying character but that merely stabilizes them at Incapacitated.

Healing may only be used once per character per wound, and may only be used on the same character again if they take more damage.

Movement Powers

Flight

If a character has Wings, add +1 to the effective rating of the Flight power for purposes of speed and maneuverability for each purchase of Wings that the character has. Gliding Wings add +1 to maneuverability, but do not affect speed. To fully synchronize tactical and strategic flight speeds, flight now allows the character to move (Quantum + Flight) * 32 meters a round, or roughly (Quantum + Flight) * 40 km/h.

Hypermovement

Hypermovement multiplies the final movement distance by 6 per level for both tactical and strategic movement.

Suite Powers

Animal/Plant Mastery

Animal/Plant Mastery gives the ability to talk to both plants and animals without an Extra.

Biomanipulation

Biomanipulation has Quantum Minimum 5.

• Health Manipulation: Health Manipulation rolls (Stamina + Biomanipulation), adding autosuccesses equal to Quantum against a target's Stamina + Resistance. Each net success deals 1 lethal health level of damage. Health Manipulation cannot normally be soaked-however, Hardbody adds an additional (+Mega-Stamina) dice to the resistance roll.

Bodymorph

The powers granted by Bodymorph cost no Quantum to use while transformed. More importantly, Bodymorph gains additional points for its characteristics, equal to (Bodymorph + Quantum) total dots of Level 1 or Level 2 powers, rounded up-although no power granted by Bodymorph may have a rating higher than (Bodymorph). However, the power is now costed at level 3 because of its increased power.

(Element) Control

(Element) Control is now a generic unified power, with power effects appropriate to the chosen element or weakened L1/L2 powers. Elemental Anima no longer exists, having been subsumed into Elemental Mastery. (Element) Mastery/Manipulation now generally has Quantum Minimum 4, with the exceptions being Spatial Manipulation and Temporal Manipulation due to the power sets of said.

• Blast/Lethal Blast are one power, and have a duration of "Action" rather than "Instant" with a RoF of (Quantum + Power Rating) * 2. Blast deals (Power Rating * 4) dice of lethal damage or (Power Rating * 5) dice of bashing damage with a damage add of [Quantum * 2] and an AP value equal to Power Rating.
• Storm deals (Wits + Elemental Mastery) dice of lethal damage and reduces enemy dice pools by (power rating) if they fail an opposed roll (often Stamina + Resistance, although certain storms may be defined with more esoteric resistance attributes if the element is obscure enough).
• Sphere uses the rules for Spatial Shockwave, with a radius of [Quantum + Power rating] x 10 meters, and deals (Power Rating * 3) dice of damage with a damage add of [Quantum]. Sphere cannot be blocked without a power or dodged without the ability to move outside of the radius of effect and is considered to have Area (Power Rating + 2).
• Shield can use one of several rules, with the player choosing the mode on purchase.

Deflection: The Shield power can add +1 difficulty per dot to hit the character with most attacks. This is common for powers that involve altering space or probability.

Soak: The shield adds +2B/2L to soak per power level. This is commonly used for "shields" which emulate armor, such as Molecular Control.

Ablation: Acts identically to forcefield, save it has [Quantum + Stamina + Power Rating] external health levels. Shields which ablate against enemy attacks (magical sci-fi energy shields) are represented in this fashion.

Offensive Option: The shield halves its given protection (choose another option to show how its protection works) but a hand to hand attack that hits it deals 3d of bashing or 2d of lethal damage per dot in the power. Things like fire shields or shields made out of blades would work as this option.

Specialized: The shield works only against a fairly narrow set of attacks (as non-broad Invulnerability). Combine two options to set how the shield protects against that set of attacks. Against all other attacks, choose one of those options and halve its effect, rounding up.

Entropy Control

• Bioentropy Storm: Bioentropy storm damage is unsoakable by any means, but still resisted by Stamina. Hardbody adds an additional (Mega-Stamina) dice to resist Bioentropy Storm.

• Breakdown: Breakdown deals health levels of damage per success against targets, which cannot be soaked, against the target's Stamina. Simple or hardened objects such as fairly simple machines, milspec computers, and the like have Stamina 5+ and take 1 health level of damage per net success, moderately simple systems such as vintage (pre-hypercombustion) cars, WWII-era propeller planes, most high-reliability computers, etc have Stamina 2-4 and take 2 health levels of damage per success, while highly complex systems like cutting edge fighter aircraft, advanced electronics, and so on have Stamina 1 and take 3 levels of damage per net success. Breakdown damage is lethal.

• Entropic Shield: Entropic Shield is a Deflection shield power, ignore its other rules.

• Probability Corruption: The character now rolls Intelligence + Probability Control versus Wits + Luck (the Nova power). Each net success removes 1 success from the result of any roll the opponent makes, up to (Entropy Control) successes removed. Furthermore, a character affected by this power botches any non-opposed failed rolls and any opposed roll where he or she scores 0 or fewer successes.

Shapeshift

Shapeshift no longer allows the character to emulate powers. It only allows the character to shuffle attribute dots, change appearance, and manifest body modifications. Each success on the shapeshift roll allows the manifestation of 6 XP worth of body modifications, move up to 3 dots from one physical attribute to another, or add up to 2 dots to any combinations of physical attributes and appearance. A character may not add more than (Shapeshift * 3) dots to any one physical attribute via shapeshifting.

Spatial Mastery

• Ripple Shield is a Specialized (ranged attacks only) shield with the Deflection and Soak options (+1 difficulty, +2L/2B soak per level).

Temporal Mastery

• Accelerate Time: Accelerate Time's extra actions, like all extra actions, may not be split.

• Delay Damage: Delay Damage delays all damage from one attack by its net successes in turns, and a character may pay 1 WP to delay all damage from a blow until the end of the scene instead.

• Dilate Time: Dilate Time reduces initiative by (Temporal Manipulation) per net success, but can be resisted by an opposed (Willpower + Quantum) roll.

Utility Powers

Boost

Boost is a reflexive power which does not take an action to activate, and rolls (Stamina + Boost) rather than (Quantum + Boost), each success adding a dot to the trait being Boosted. Boost may not increase a trait by more than (Quantum + [2 * Power Rating]) dots.

Under no circumstances will Boost give a character Mega-Attributes. To do so is beyond the capacity of the power and is reserved for more risky and powerful expressions of Nova evolution such as Node Spark.

Clone

A Nova may not have more than 1 Clone per dot of power active at any one time, but clones keep the Nova's full traits. All duplicates of the Nova share the same Quantum pool and Willpower track with the Nova himself. Maintenance powers must be separately maintained, and equipment is not duplicated without sufficient Attunement (without at least Attunement 1, clones are, in fact, produced naked). Clones are not linked by default and fade at the end of the scene or upon losing their last Incapacitated health level to any form of damage. Clones are also vulnerable to Disrupt and take damage from it as any other quantum construct. Even permanent clones have these two vulnerabilities.

If a character has more Clones active than he can support (due to whatever reason, such as Eclipsidol, Mox, or Disrupt) all excess clones take 5 aggravated health levels every turn (or every 3 seconds) until killed.

• New Extra: Backup-if the Nova is killed with a Clone still active, one of the Clones becomes the Nova in every way, shape, and form, losing their vulnerability to Disrupt and their propensity to dissolve when Incapacitated. They retain any current damage, though, so if all a Nova's clones are badly wounded, they may still be killed.

Density Increase

Density Increase is no longer rolled, instead adding (Density Control*2) to strength, lethal, and bashing soak, and also multiplying the character's mass by that value rather than the written increase.

Invisibility

Invisibility adds (+Invisibility) to the difficulty of any attack and Awareness rolls against the user unless the opponent possesses a total Perception + Awareness dice pool equal to (Wits + Invisibility + Quantum). Note that certain enhanced senses (Mega-Perception Blindfighting, or Hyperenhanced Hearing) may make Invisibility utterly irrelevant. Furthermore, Invisibility may negate difficulty modifiers for stealth due to poor conditions in addition to its normal bonuses, reducing them by (Invisibility) to a minimum of 0.

Variant: Psychic Invisibility

Psychic Invisibility is an alternative variant which relies on basically making people not pay attention to you. Psychic Invisibility works more easily without anomalous behavior-i.e. instead of rolling Stealth, a character using Psychic Invisibility rolls (Manipulation + Psychic Invisibility) versus a target's (Wits + Awareness + Willpower). Psychic Invisibility masks one's signature more thoroughly (because the sensor readings are there, they just don't pay any attention to them), but the difficulty of the Manipulation + Psychic Invisibility roll increases with anomalous behavior.

Examples of Difficulty Increases

Improperly dressed (wearing heavy body armor at a formal ballroom dance, wearing swim trunks and nothing else in the middle of a warzone): +1

Personnel already on alert: +1

Dealing with paranoids: +1

Minor anomalous behavior (not following a directive, going a different direction to the crowd): +1

Calling attention to oneself (talking, taking unusual action, etc): +2

Doing something threatening (pointing a gun at a person's head, unsheathing a knife, etc): +2

Tripping alarms (not all surveillance is purely human): +3

Hostile action taken: +5

Luck

Luck can be used multiple times per scene at higher levels: A character may use Luck up to (Luck/2) times a scene, round up. Furthermore, when used to augment an ability/attack/damage/defense roll, Luck is added to the roll as bonus dice (or successes for defense rolls), it is only rolled to influence random events.

Matter Creation

There are no restrictions on how much damage items created via Matter Creation can do anymore. To turn an item created via Matter Creation permanent, a Nova must sacrifice a number of permanent Quantum Pool points equal to the power's cost (normally this is 3, but may increase or decrease dependent on various factors).

Hypnosis

Replace system with: Roll Intelligence + Hypnosis against the target's Willpower. Successes generate Casual Sway over a timeframe of ten seconds (3 combat rounds). This Casual Sway fades at the rate of one point/day.

Node Spark

Node Spark's artificially added abilities last for a scene. Node Spark automatically induces some temporary Taint-a character gains a number of temporary points of Taint equal to (1 + number of 1s rolled).

Psychic Shield

Psychic Shield does not give any additional soak against damaging mental powers, just the 2 successes on the resistance roll.

Sizemorph

Sizemorph (Grow) gives a linear increase in volume. 1 dot is doubled mass, 2 is tripled, so on. Sizemorph (Grow) adds +2 Stamina and +2 -0 HLs instead of +1 per level as well, to even it out with the "Large/Huge/Giant/Gargantuan" body modifications.

Each dot of (Quantum + Sizemorph [Shrink]) reduces a Nova's mass by half and his height proportionally (cube roots!). Therefore three dots total are needed to reduce a Nova's height by half. Each dot also reduces soak by 1B/1L/1A (minimum 0B/0L/0A) and Strength by 1. For critters with natural Strength adds, automatic successes are removed first.