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Awesome mathematical ability allows you to model the world in real time, giving you an edge over everyone.

Tier 1: Predictive Equation (2 Intellect points): You observe or study a creature, object, or location for at least one round. The next time you interact with it (possibly in the following round), a related task (such as persuading the creature, attacking it, or defending from its attack) is eased. Action. 

Tier 1: Higher Mathematics: You are trained in standard and higher mathematics. Enabler.

GM Intrusions: Too many predicted results threaten to overwhelm and stun the character. A result points to imminent disaster.

You can dig into the thoughts of others

Tier 1: Telepathic (1+ Intellect points): You can speak telepathically with others who are within short range. Communication is two-way, but the other party must be willing and able to communicate. You don’t have to see the target, but you must know that it’s within range. You can have more than one active contact at once, but you must establish contact with each target individually. Each contact lasts up to ten minutes. If you apply a level of Effort to increase the duration rather than ease the task, the contact lasts for 24 hours. Action to establish contact. 

GM Intrusions: Something glimpsed in the target’s mind is horrifying. A feedback loop allows the target to read the character’s mind.

Your preternatural insight and ability make you a scientist capable of amazing feats.

Tier 1: Lab Analysis (3 Intellect points): You analyze the scene of a crime, the site of a mysterious incident, or a series of unexplained phenomena, and maybe learn a surprising amount of information about the perpetrators, the participants, or the force(s) responsible. To do so, you must collect samples from the scene. Samples are paint or wood scrapings, dirt, photographs of the area, hair, an entire corpse, and so on. With samples in hand, you can discover up to three pertinent pieces of information about the scene, possibly clearing up a lesser mystery and pointing the way to solving a greater one. The GM will decide what you learn and what level of difficulty is needed to learn it. (For comparison, discovering that a victim was killed not by a fall, as seems immediately obvious, but rather by electrocution, is a difficulty 3 task for you.) The task is eased if you take the time to transport the samples to a permanent lab (if you have access to one), as opposed to conducting the analysis with your field science kit. Action to initiate, 2d20 minutes to complete. 

Tier 1: Knowledge Skills: You are trained in two skills in which you are not already trained. Choose two areas of knowledge such as history, geography, archeology, and so on. You can select this ability multiple times. Each time you select it, you must choose two different skills. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Creations get out of control. Side effects cannot always be predicted. Weird science terrifies people and can draw the media. When a device created or modified by weird science is depleted, it detonates.

The dead answer your questions, and their reanimated corpses serve you.

Tier 1: Speaker for the Dead (2+ Intellect points): You can ask a question of a dead being whose corpse you are touching. Because the answer comes through the filter of the being’s understanding and personality, it can’t answer questions that it wouldn’t have understood in life, and it can’t provide answers that it wouldn’t have known in life. In fact, the being is not compelled to answer at all, so you might need to interact with it in a way that would have convinced it to answer while it was alive. For each additional Intellect point you spend when you activate the ability, you can ask the being an additional question. Action.

GM Intrusions: The character’s necromantic reputation precedes them. A corpse seeks revenge for being reanimated.

Everyone wants you on their side when it comes to a fight because nothing gets by you.

Tier 1: Fortified Position (2 Might points): For the next minute, you gain +1 Armor and an asset to your Might defense tasks, as long as you haven’t moved more than an immediate distance since your last turn. Action to initiate. 

Tier 1: Rally to Me (2 Intellect points): You cry out, blow a battle horn, or otherwise signal to everyone within very long range that you require aid. All allied creatures who respond by moving to within an immediate distance of you within the next few rounds gain one asset on any one attack or defense task within the next hour that you suggest, such as “Hold the gate,” “Charge that group of orcs,” or something similar. Action to initiate. 

GM Intrusions: A strategically important structure collapses. The enemy attacks from an unexpected direction.

You’re a slacker, but you know a little about a lot of things.

Tier 1: Life Lessons: Choose any two noncombat skills. You are trained in those skills. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: New situations are confounding and stressful. Past actions (or inactions) come back to haunt the character.

Whether balancing on two wheels, jumping another vehicle, or driving head-on toward an oncoming enemy car, you don’t think about the risks when you’re behind the wheel. (Someone who Drives Like a Maniac needs access to a vehicle.)

Tier 1: Driver: You are trained in all tasks related to driving a car, truck, or motorcycle, including mechanical repair tasks. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Driving on the Edge: You can make an attack with a light or medium ranged weapon and attempt a driving task as a single action. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: The engine develops a knock. The bridge on the road ahead is out. The windshield shatters. Someone unexpectedly runs in front of the vehicle.

You perform, mostly for the benefit of others.

Tier 1: Levity: Through wit, charm, humor, and grace, you are trained in all social interactions other than those involving coercion or intimidation. During rests, you put friends and comrades at ease so much that they gain +1 to their recovery rolls. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: The audience is annoyed or offended. Musical instruments break. Paints dry in their pots. The words to a poem or song are forgotten.

You’re the archetypal treasure hunter, scavenger, and finder of lost things. 

Tier 1: Superb Explorer: You are trained in searching, listening, climbing, balancing, and jumping tasks. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Possessions fall out of pockets or bags in the dark; maps get lost; information gained fails to include an important detail.

You’ll do anything to win a fight: bite, scratch, kick, trick, and worse.

Tier 1: Tracker: You are trained in following and identifying tracks. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Stalker: You gain an asset to all types of movement tasks (including climbing, swimming, jumping, and balancing). Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: People look poorly upon those who cheat or fight without honor. Sometimes a dirty trick backfires.

You’re a swashbuckling daredevil who fights with flamboyant style that’s entertaining to watch.

Tier 1: Attack Flourish: With your attack, you add stylish moves, entertaining quips, or a certain something that entertains or impresses others. One creature you choose within short range who can see you gains an asset to its next task if taken within a round or two. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: The display comes off looking silly, clumsy, or unattractive.

You can telekinetically move objects with your mind without physically touching them.

Tier 1: Divert Attacks (4 Speed points): For one minute, you automatically deflect or dodge any ranged projectile attacks. However, on your next turn after you’re attacked with ranged projectiles, all your other actions are hindered. Action to initiate.

GM Intrusions: One mental slip, and moving objects drop or fragile objects break. Sometimes the wrong item moves, falls, or breaks.

You love your friends and help them out of any difficulty, no matter what.

Type Swap Option: Advice From a Friend (1 Intellect point): You know your friend’s strengths and weaknesses, and how to motivate them to succeed. When you give an ally a suggestion involving their next action, the character is trained in that action for one round. Action. 

Tier 1: Friendly Help: If your friend tries a task and fails, they can try again without spending Effort if you help. You provide this advantage to your friend even if you are not trained in the task that they are retrying. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Courageous: You are trained in Intellect defense tasks and initiative tasks. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Others sometimes have ulterior motives. The law takes an undue interest. Even when everything goes right, repercussions follow.

You are a stalking hunter who excels at bringing down your selected quarry.

Tier 1: Attack Flourish: With your attack, you add stylish moves, entertaining quips, or a certain something that entertains or impresses others. One creature you choose within short range who can see you gains an asset to its next task if taken within a round or two. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Tracker: You are trained in following and identifying tracks. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: The quarry notices the character. The quarry isn’t as vulnerable as it seemed.

Subtlety, guile, and stealth allow you to get in where others can’t.

Tier 1: Stealth Skills: You are trained in your choice of two of the following skills: disguise, deception, lockpicking, pickpocketing, seeing through deception, sleight of hand, or stealth. You can choose this ability multiple times, but you must select different skills each time. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Sense Attitudes: You are trained in sensing lies and whether a person is likely to (or already does) believe your lies. Enabler.

GM Intrusions: Spies are treated harshly when caught. Allies disavow infiltrators who get caught. Some secrets are better left unknown.

You excel at winning others over to your views.

Tier 1: Opening Statement: You’re trained in tasks related to persuasion, deception, and detecting the falsehoods of others. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Knowledge of the Law: You’re trained in the law of the land. If you don’t know the answer to a question of law, you know where and how to research it (a university’s law library is a good place to start, but you’ve also got online sources). Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Onlookers react badly to a know-it-all. A distraction or interruption throws the character’s argument off the rails.

You carry a gun and you know how to use it in a fight.

Tier 1: Gunner: You inflict 1 additional point of damage with guns. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Practiced With Guns: You are practiced with guns and suffer no penalty when using one. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Misfire or jam! The attack fails and the action is lost, plus an additional action is needed to fix the problem.

Your natural leadership capability allows you to command others, including a loyal band of followers.

Tier 1: Natural Charisma: You are trained in all social interactions, whether they involve charm, learning a person’s secrets, or intimidating others. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Good Advice: Anyone can help an ally, easing whatever task they’re attempting. However, you have the benefit of clarity and wisdom. When you help another character, they gain an additional asset. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Followers fail, betray, lie, become corrupted, get kidnapped, or die.

You deal with bad situations as they arise, learning new lessons each time.

Tier 1: Enhanced Intellect: You gain 3 points to your Intellect Pool. Enabler.

Tier 1: There’s Your Problem: You are trained in tasks related to figuring out how to solve problems with multiple solutions (like the best way to pack a truck, calm an enraged customer, give a cat a shot of insulin, or find a route through the city for maximum speed). Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Accidents and mistakes are great teachers.

You can survive in badlands where others perish.

Tier 1: Wilderness Life: You are trained in two of the following: climbing, swimming, navigation, or identifying plants and creatures. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Enhanced Might: You gain 3 points to your Might Pool. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: People in cities and towns sometimes disparage those who look (and smell) like they live in the wilds, as if they were ignorant or barbaric.

You’re a scrapper and love a good fight.

Tier 1: Fists of Fury: You inflict 2 additional points of damage with unarmed attacks. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Wound Tender: You are trained in healing. Enabler.

GM Intrusions: Weapons break or fly from even the strongest grip. Brawlers trip and fall. Even the battlefield can work against you with things falling or collapsing.

By specializing in spellcasting and keeping a spellbook, you can quickly cast spells of arcing lightning, rolling fire, creeping shadow, and summoning.

Tier 1: Arcane Flare (1 Intellect point): You enhance the damage of another attack spell with an extra charge of energy so that it deals 1 additional point of damage. Alternatively, you attack a target within long range by projecting a flare of raw magic that inflicts 4 points of damage. Enabler for enhancement; action for long-range attack. 

GM Intrusions: The spell goes wrong. The summoned creature turns on the caster. A rival spellcaster is drawn to the magic use.

You are a master user of a particular type of weapon, be it a sword, whip, dagger, gun, or something else. (Someone who Masters Weaponry might have additional equipment, including a high- quality weapon.)

Tier 1: Weapon Master: You inflict an additional 1 point of damage with your chosen weapon. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Weapon Crafter: You are trained in crafting tasks associated with your chosen weapon. For instance, if your weapon is a bow, you are trained in tasks related to crafting bows and fletching arrows; if your weapon is a sword, you are trained in tasks for forging swords and sharpening blades; and so on. Enabler.

GM Intrusions: Weapons break. Weapons can be stolen. Weapons can be dropped or forced out of your hand.

You right wrongs, protect the innocent, and punish the guilty.

Tier 1: Make Judgment: You are trained in discerning the truth of a situation, seeing through lies, or otherwise overcoming deception. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Designation: You assign an innocent or guilty label to one creature within immediate range, based on your assessment of a given situation or a predominant feeling. In other words, someone who is labeled innocent can be innocent in a certain circumstance, or they can be generally innocent of terrible crimes (such as murder, major theft, and so on). Likewise, you can declare that a creature is guilty of a particular crime or of terrible deeds in general. The accuracy of your assessment isn’t important as long as you believe it to be the truth; the GM may require you to give a rationale. Henceforth, your tasks to socially interact with someone you designate as innocent gain an asset, and your attacks against those you designate as guilty gain an asset. You can change your assessment, but it requires another designation action. The benefits of the designation last until you change it or until you are shown proof that it is wrong. Action. (The benefits provided by Designation apply to the character using the ability, their allies, and anyone who hears or is told of their judgment and believes their assessment.)

GM Intrusions: Guilt or innocence can be complicated. Some people resent the presumption of a self-appointed judge. Passing judgment makes enemies.

Lithe, flexible, and graceful, you move quickly and smoothly, and never seem to be where danger is.

Tier 1: Greater Enhanced Speed: You gain 6 points to your Speed Pool. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Balance: You are trained in balancing. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Even a cat can be clumsy. A jump isn’t quite as easy as it looks. An escape move is so overzealous that it sends the character right into harm’s way.

You can move so fast that you become a blur.

Tier 1: Greater Enhanced Speed: You gain 6 points to your Speed Pool. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Fleet of Foot (1+ Speed points): You can move a short distance as part of another action. You can move a long distance as your entire action for a turn. If you apply a level of Effort to this ability, you can move a long distance and make an attack as your entire action for a turn, but the attack is hindered. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Surfaces can be slick or offer hidden obstacles. The movement of other creatures can be unpredictable, and the character might run into them. 

Powerful punches, kicks, elbows, knees, and full body movements are all the weapons you need.

Tier 1: Fists of Fury: You inflict 2 additional points of damage with unarmed attacks. Enabler.

Tier 1: Flesh of Stone: You have +1 to Armor if you do not wear physical armor. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Striking certain foes hurts you as much as it hurts them. Opponents with weapons have greater reach. Complicated martial arts moves can knock you off balance.

You never quit, can shrug off a beating, and always come back for more.

Tier 1: Improved Recovery: Your ten-minute recovery roll takes only one action instead, so that your first two recovery rolls are one action, the third is one hour, and the fourth is ten hours. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Push on Through (2 Might points): You ignore the effects of terrain while moving for one hour. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Sometimes, it’s equipment or weapons that give out.

Under the guise of someone else, you seek to find answers the powerful do not want divulged. (Someone who Operates Undercover might have additional equipment that includes a disguise kit.)

Tier 1: Investigate: You are trained in perception, cryptography, deceiving, and breaking into computers. Enabler. 

Tier 2: Disguise: You are trained in disguise. You can alter your posture, voice, mannerisms, and hair to look like someone else for as long as you keep up the disguise. However, it is extremely difficult to adopt the appearance of a specific individual without a disguise kit at your disposal. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Bad luck can ruin the best plans. Disguises fail. Allies are revealed to be agents, too.

A muscled prodigy, you can haul incredible weight, hurl your body through the air, and punch through doors.

Tier 1: Athlete: You are trained in carrying, climbing, jumping, and smashing. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Enhanced Might Edge: You gain +1 to your Might Edge. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: It’s easy to break delicate things or hurt someone accidentally.

Lessons, reflexes, and strategies you’ve learned by playing too many games have applications in the real world, where people who don’t play enough toil and live their dreary lives.

Tier 1: Game Lessons: You’ve played so many games that you’ve picked up some real knowledge. Choose any two noncombat skills. You are trained in those skills. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Gamer: Pick any one style of game such as real-time strategy games, games of chance in the style of poker, roleplaying games, and so on. You can apply an asset to a task related to playing that style of game once between each recovery roll. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Missed attacks strike the wrong target. Equipment breaks. Sometimes people react negatively to someone who has lived most of their life in imaginary game worlds.

When you go berserk, everyone fears you.

Tier 1: Frenzy (1 Intellect point): When you wish, while in combat, you can enter a state of frenzy. While in this state, you can’t use Intellect points, but you gain +1 to your Might Edge and your Speed Edge. This effect lasts as long as you wish, but it ends if no combat is taking place within range of your senses. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: It’s easy for a berserker to lose control and attack friend as well as foe.

Your first instinct is to run from danger, and you’ve gotten very good at it.

Tier 1: Go Defensive (1 Intellect point): When you wish, while in combat, you can enter a state of heightened awareness of threat. While in this state, you can’t use points from your Intellect Pool, but you gain +1 to your Speed Edge and gain two assets to Speed defense tasks. This effect lasts as long as you wish or until you attack a foe or no combat is taking place within range of your senses. Once the effect of this ability ends, you can’t enter it again for one minute. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Quick movements sometimes lead to dropped items, slipping on uneven ground, or going the wrong way by accident.

You have a psychic sense that allows you to see what others cannot.

Tier 1: See the Unseen: You can automatically perceive creatures and objects that are normally invisible, out of phase, or only partially in this universe. When looking for things more conventionally hidden, the task is eased. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Some secrets are too terrible to know.

You can project your mind out of your body to see faraway places and learn secrets that would otherwise remain hidden.

Tier 1: Third Eye (1 Intellect point): You visualize a place within short range and cast your mind to that place, creating an immobile, invisible sensor for one minute or until you choose to end this ability. While using your third eye, you see through your sensor instead of your eyes using your normal visual abilities. You may perceive the area around your body using your other senses as normal. Action. 

GM Intrusions: Reuniting mind and body can sometimes be disorienting and require a character to spend a few moments to get their bearings.

You keep the place where you live safe from all danger.

Tier 1: Community Knowledge (2 Intellect points): If you’ve invested yourself in a community and have spent at least a few months living there, you can learn things about it through a variety of methods. Sometimes contacts slip the information to you. Other times, you’re able to draw conclusions simply by what you can see and hear. When you use this ability, you can ask the GM one question about the community and get a very short answer. Action.

Tier 1: Community Activist: When speaking to others in a community you have a strong connection to, you are trained in persuasion and intimidation tasks about topics that directly relate to the community. Enabler.

GM Intrusions: People in the community misunderstand the character’s motives. Rivals try to oust the character.

Wandering souls, nature spirits, and elemental beings aid and support you.

Tier 1: Question the Spirits (2 Intellect points): You can call a spirit to you and petition it to answer a few questions (usually no more than three before the spirit fades).  

First, you must summon a spirit. If it is a spirit of the dead, you must have personally known the creature, have an object that was owned by the creature, or touch the physical remains of the creature. For other spirits, you must know the spirit’s full name or have a great deal of an element (such as fire or earth) that the spirit is associated with. 

If the spirit responds, it can manifest as an insubstantial shade that answers for itself, it can inhabit an object or any remains you provide, or it can manifest as an invisible presence that you speak for. 

The spirit may not wish to answer your questions, in which case you must persuade it to help. You can attempt to psychically wrestle the spirit into submission (an Intellect task), or you can try diplomacy, deception, or blackmail (“Answer me, or I’ll tell your children that you were a philanderer” or “I’ll destroy this relic that belonged to you”). 

The GM determines what the spirit might know, based on the knowledge it possessed in life. Action to initiate. 

GM Intrusions: Some people don’t trust those who deal with spirits. The dead sometimes don’t want shepherding.

You kill monsters. (Although wielding a sword in a setting where people usually do not carry such weapons is fine, you can change the Slays Monsters sword-related abilities to use a different weapon, such as a gun with silver bullets.)

Tier 1: Practiced With Swords: You are practiced with swords and can use them without penalty. Enabler.

Tier 1: Monster Bane: You inflict 1 additional point of damage with weapons. When you inflict damage to creatures more than twice as large or massive as you, you inflict 3 additional points of damage. Enabler.

Tier 1: Monster Lore: You are trained in the names, habits, suspected lairs, and related topics regarding the monsters of your world. You can make yourself understood in their languages (if they have one). Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: The monster laid a trap or set an ambush. The monster has previously undisclosed abilities. The monster’s mother vows revenge.

You’re a master of deduction, using evidence to find the answer.

Tier 1: Investigator: To really shine as an investigator, you must engage your mind and body in your deductions. You can spend points from your Might Pool, Speed Pool, or Intellect Pool to apply levels of Effort to any Intellect-based task. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Sleuth: Finding the clues is the first step in solving a mystery. You are trained in perception. Enabler.

GM Intrusions: Evidence disappears, red herrings confuse, and witnesses lie. Initial research can be faulty.

Your spiritual connection to nature and the environment grants you mystical abilities.

Tier 1: Seeds of Fury (1 Intellect point): You throw a handful of seeds in the air that ignite and speed toward a target within long range, scratching the air with twisting smoke trails. The attack deals 3 points of damage and catches the target on fire, which inflicts 1 additional point of damage per round for up to a minute or until the target uses an action to douse the flames. Action. 

Tier 1: Wilderness Lore: You are trained in wilderness navigation and in identifying plants and creatures. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: An injured natural (but dangerous) creature is discovered. Someone’s poaching wildlife for their skins, leaving the carcasses to rot. A tree falls in the forest, one of the last elder trees.

Everything that leaves your hand goes exactly where you’d like it to go and at the range and speed to make the perfect impact.

Tier 1: Precision: You deal 2 additional points of damage with attacks using weapons that you throw. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Missed attacks strike the wrong target. Ricochets can be dangerous. Improvised weapons break.

You are the “chosen one,” and prophecy, prediction, prognostication, or some other method of determination expects great things of you one day.

Tier 1: Interaction Skills: You are trained in two skills in which you are not already trained. Choose two of the following: deceiving, persuading, public speaking, seeing through deception, or intimidation. You can select this ability multiple times. Each time you select it, you must choose two different skills. Enabler. 

Tier 1: Knowing: You are trained in one area of knowledge of your choice. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: An enemy described in prophecy appears. Unbelievers threaten to ruin the moment. The character gains a reputation in outside circles as a fraud.

You bear steel with both hands, ready to take on any foe.

Tier 1: Dual Light Wield: You can use two light weapons at the same time, making two separate attacks on your turn as a single action. You remain limited by the amount of Effort you can apply on one action, but because you make separate attacks, your opponent’s Armor applies to both. Anything that modifies your attack or damage applies to both attacks, unless it’s specifically tied to one of the weapons. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: A blade snaps in two or a weapon flies loose from its bearer’s grip.

You take great satisfaction in a job well done, whether it’s coding, building houses, or mining asteroids.

Tier 1: Handy: You work for a living and are trained in tasks related to carpentry, plumbing, and electrical repair. Your knowledge in these realms also gives you an asset to craft entirely new items within your spheres of knowledge and the limits of possibility within the setting. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Repairs sometimes fail. Wiring can be tricky to decipher and still carry an electrical charge. Some people are rude to those who work for a living.

You make your way unseen, stealing from the wealthy to achieve your ends.

Tier 1: Stealth Skills: You are trained in your choice of two of the following skills: disguise, deception, lockpicking, pickpocketing, seeing through deception, sleight of hand, or stealth. You can choose this ability multiple times, but you must select different skills each time. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Thieves are thrown in jail. Powerful enemies are made.

You can exploit flaws in artificial systems, including but not limited to computer code.

Tier 1: Hack the Impossible (3 Intellect points): You can persuade robots, machines, and computers to do your bidding. You can discover an encrypted password, break through security on a website, briefly turn off a machine such as a surveillance camera, or disable a robot with a moment’s worth of fiddling. Action. 

Tier 1: Computer Programming: You are trained in using (and exploiting) computer software, you know one or more computer languages well enough to write basic programs, and you are fluent in internet protocol. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Contacts sometimes have ulterior motives. Devices sometimes have failsafes or even traps.

Books are your friends. What’s more important than knowledge? Nothing.

Tier 1: Knowledge Is Power: Choose two noncombat skills in which you are not trained. You are trained in those skills. Enabler. 

GM Intrusions: Books burn, get wet, or get lost. Computers break or lose power. Glasses break.