CONTENTS 1

THE SUPERS RETRO-CLONE

2 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome, Hero! ..................................................... 4
What Is A Role-Playing Game? ......................... 4
How Do You Play? .................................................. 4
Dice .......................................................................... 5
Types Of Die.......................................................... 5
Multiple Dice .......................................................... 5
Dice Modifiers ....................................................... 5

CHARACTER CREATION
Character Abilities .............................................. 6
Creating A Hero .................................................... 6
Step 1 - Initial Powers ......................................... 6
Step 2 - Ability Scores ....................................... 8
Strength ................................................................. 8
Agility ...................................................................... 8
Will ........................................................................... 9
Endurance ............................................................... 9
Rolling Ability Scores .......................................... 9
Step 3 - Back-Story & Perks ............................. 9
Boffin ....................................................................... 9
Business High-Flyer ............................................10
Contacts .................................................................10
Idle Rich................................................................. 11
Mystic Training .................................................... 11
Position Of Power ................................................12
Specialist Training ..............................................12
Unearthly Being ...................................................12
Step 4 - Filling In The Blanks ..........................12
Equipment ..............................................................12
Final Ability Scores ............................................13
Damage Bonus ......................................................13
Knockback Threshold .........................................13
Strike Bonus .........................................................13
Dodge Bonus .........................................................13
Panels Per Page .....................................................13
Health & Stamina.................................................14
Movement Speed .................................................14
Attacks ...................................................................14
Personal Profile.....................................................14
Hero Points ............................................................14
Resources And Downtime Points .....................15

PERSONAL PROFILE
Personal Profile Summary..................................18
Popularity ...............................................................18
Backing ...................................................................18
Heroism ..................................................................19
Identification ........................................................19
Public Relations ....................................................19
Competence .......................................................... 20
Investigation ........................................................21

Methods .................................................................21
Approachability................................................... 22
Fame ....................................................................... 22
Power Use ............................................................. 22
Contacts ................................................................ 24
Confidence ............................................................ 24
Conscience ............................................................ 25
Social Circle ......................................................... 25
Success rate ........................................................ 25
Public response ................................................... 26
Security ................................................................ 27
Financial Resources ........................................... 28
Material Resources ............................................ 28

COMBAT
Combat Basics ..................................................... 29
Pages And Panels ................................................ 29
Surprise ................................................................ 29
Initiative ............................................................... 29
Actions And Timing ............................................30
Reactions ...............................................................31
Physical attacks ...................................................31
Making A Physical Attack ................................. 33
Reactions To Physical Attacks ........................ 33
The Parry Reaction ............................................ 33
The Block Reaction............................................. 34
The Dodge Reaction........................................... 35
The Bracing Reaction ........................................ 35
The Judo Throw Reaction ................................ 35
Doing Physical Damage ...................................... 36
Knockback ............................................................. 36
Applying damage ................................................. 37
Damage To Mundane Characters ................... 38
Recovering From Damage ................................. 38
Objects in combat .............................................. 39
Grabbing ................................................................41
Grappling And Restraining ............................... 42
Throwing People Around ................................... 43
Falling..................................................................... 43
Psychic And Magic Attacks .............................. 43
Finishing moves ................................................... 43

DOWNTIME
Downtime Basics .................................................44
Downtime Points ..................................................44
Spending Downtime Points ...............................44
Experience Points ............................................... 45
Option: Simpler Experience .............................46
Improving Personal Profile Scores .................46
Improving Ability Scores ................................. 47
Improving Resource Levels .............................. 47
Creating Devices ................................................. 47
New Super Powers .............................................48
Improving Super Powers...................................48

CONTENTS 3
SUPPORTING CAST
Civilians.................................................................. 49
Combatants .......................................................... 49
Robots And Androids ......................................... 49
Animals ..................................................................50

POWERS
Accuracy ................................................................51
Acrobatics .............................................................51
Armour ...................................................................51
Camoufl age ........................................................... 52
Claws ...................................................................... 52
Cybernetics .......................................................... 52
Danger Sense ......................................................54
Density Control (Other)....................................54
Density Control (Self) .......................................54
Duplication ............................................................54
Elasticity...............................................................55
Energy Blast ........................................................55
Energy Reflect.....................................................56
Environmental Control .......................................56
Flight ......................................................................58
Forcefield.............................................................. 59
Growth ................................................................... 60

Immunity................................................................61
Impervious ............................................................61
Invisibility .............................................................61
Larger .....................................................................61
Luck ........................................................................ 62
Magic...................................................................... 62
Martial Arts ......................................................... 65
Phasing................................................................... 66
Psychic Ability ..................................................... 67
Reactions .............................................................. 69
Shapechange........................................................ 70
Shrinking ............................................................... 70
Sidekick ..................................................................71
Skills .......................................................................71
Snare ..................................................................... 72
Super Endurance ................................................ 73
Super Health ....................................................... 73
Super Leap ........................................................... 74
Super Senses ...................................................... 74
Super Speed ........................................................75
Super Strength................................................... 76
Stunning Attack .................................................. 76
Teleport ................................................................ 76
Toughness .............................................................77
Vehicle ...................................................................77
Wallcrawling .........................................................77
Weapon Mastery ................................................77
Weather Control ................................................. 78

All text in this work is hereby

placed in the Public Domain.

All art is copyright:

Storn A. Cook
Art used under the
Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercialShareAlike 2.5 License.

4 INTRODUCTION
WELCOME, HERO!
Welcome to Codename: Spandex, a table-top roleplaying game of super powered costumed heroes!
Superheroes have been part of popular culture for
long enough that they need no introduction here,
but role-playing games might.

WHAT IS A ROLE-PLAYING GAME?

Table-top role-playing games have been around since
the mid 1970s. When they first started, they had
their roots in war-gaming (moving model armies
around in simulations of historical battles) and descriptions of role-playing games would have used
those war games, along with such childhood games
as Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians
as reference points.
However, now that were in the second decade of
the 21st century, times and cultural reference
points have changed.
For most people today, the term role playing game
is usually found abbreviated to RPG and is usually
preceded by the letters C (becoming CRPG or
Computer Role Playing Game) or MMO (becoming
MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role
Playing Game).
In this genre of computer games, the player takes
on the role of a character in an ongoing storyline
usually the main protagonist of the story.
The game consists of trying to get the story to
progress towards its climax, often involving combat
and problem solving.
Table-top role-playing games like Codename: Spandex have a similar basis, except that the game is
controlled by a human game master rather than by
a computer, and rather than the action taking place
on a computer screen the action takes place in the
imaginations of the players.
While this may sound like a step backwards at first
glance, it is much more flexible and adaptable. In
a CRPG, you are limited to telling the single story
that the game designers wrote. You cant go off
the map so to speak. In a table-top role-playing
game, however, you are not limited to fixed stories.
The game master and the players can between them
create an infinite number of stories, limited only by
their imaginations.
The game master can create whatever scenarios
and situations they want to, and the players are not
constrained to only doing what has been anticipated.

If they want their characters to do something, they

dont have to simply hope that some designer wrote
it into the game. They simply tell the game master
what their character is trying to do and the game
master can improvise in a way that a computer never
could (although the rules and guidelines in this book
cover most common situations so that they can be
handled in a consistent manner).
The other main difference between a table-top
role-playing game and a CRPG is the social aspect.
Although many CRPGs allow the player to control a
whole party of characters rather than just a single
one, they are still largely solitary affairs.
Table-top role-playing games, on the other hand,
are generally designed for groups of players to play
together and Codename: Spandex is no exception.
Although it can be played with only a single player
and a game master, it plays best with 2-6 players
playing together, each controlling a single character.
Interaction between the characters controlled by
the different players, as well as unscripted interaction between the characters who are controlled
by players and characters controlled by the game
master, is one of the chief elements of a table-top
role-playing game.

HOW DO YOU PLAY?

Before starting, one person will decide to be the
game master. That person is responsible for establishing a setting for the game (either creating
their own or using a published one).
The other players create characters that live in
that setting. The characters have a set of abilities which represent their capabilities; for example
how strong they are or what sort of super powers
they have.
Then, normal game play consists of the game master
describing the situation that the characters find
themselves in, and the players responding by telling
the game master what their characters are doing.
In many situations, this is all that is required, but
to provide structure and consistency to the game,
this book provides rules covering what characters
can do in various situations.
Additionally, many situations involve random factors,
where a character has a chance of successfully doing something (which may vary depending on their
abilities) rather than being automatically successful
or relying on the game masters whim; for example,
when fighting. In these situations, the rules tell you
when to roll dice and how to interpret the results.

INTRODUCTION 5
THE GUARDIANS STORY
Throughout these rules you will see
boxes like this one that refer to the
guardians story.
The guardian is a character that Lisa is creating and playing in a Codename: Spandex campaign being run by James, and her creation
and ongoing story will be used to illustrate
examples as we go through the rules.

DICE
In Codename: Spandex, dice will be needed to resolve a lot of situations where the whims of fortune
have an effect on the outcome of a situation.
As well as the traditional cubic dice numbered from
one to six, the game uses a variety of other dice of
different shapes. Since these each have different
numbers of sides, they are often called polyhedral
dice.
If you have already played other roll playing games,
you may already own some of these dice. If not,
you can buy them at your friendly local game store
or online.
In order to distinguish between the different types
of die that you can use, Codename: Spandex uses a
standard terminology throughout.

TYPES OF DIE
Each die is referred to using the letter d followed
by the number of sides that the die has. For example, a regular die with six sides is referred to as
a d6, whereas a die with twenty sides is referred
to as a d20.
A normal set of polyhedral dice comes with a four
sided die, a six sided die, an eight sided die, one or
two ten sided dice, a twelve sided die, and a twenty
sided die-or, to use Codename: Spandexs terminology (which is also the standard terminology used
in most table-top role-playing games), a d4, a d6, a
d8, one or two d10s, a d12 and a d20.
Therefore, when the rules say that you roll a d20
for something, they mean that you should roll the
die with twenty sides. If they say that you roll a
d10 for something, they mean that you should roll
the die with eight sides. If they say that you roll
a d6 for something, they mean that you should roll
the die with six sides.

These three are actually the only three types of

die that you need to play. You will not need a d8 or
a d12 to play this game, so you may wish to buy just
the dice you need rather than a full set.
There is another type of roll you will sometimes be
asked to make, which doesnt correspond to any of
the dice. This is a d100 roll.
To roll a d100, take two d10s that are easily distinguished and roll them both. Read one of them
as the tens digit and the other as the units digit,
although if both roll 0 then the result is always
treated as 100 rather than 00.
Sometimes, particularly with older dice sets, the
two d10s will be different colours-in which case
you need to say which will be tens and which will be
units before rolling. Most new dice sets include a
special d10 which has tens already marked on it, so
this always counts as the tens die.
If you only have one d10, simply roll it twice with
the first roll counting as the tens and the second
roll counting as the units.

MULTIPLE DICE
Often, you will need to roll more than one die at
the same time. In this case, there will be a number
before the d as well as after it. The number before
the d shows how many dice must be rolled. If this
number is one then it is sometimes skipped.
When rolling multiple dice in this way, simply add
the numbers rolled on each die together in order
to generate a single result.
Therefore if you are told to roll 3d6, you should
roll three six sided dice and add the numbers rolled
together. If you are told to roll 2d8, you should
roll two eight sided dice and add the numbers rolled
together. If you are told to roll d4, then this is
exactly the same as being told to roll 1d4, and you
should roll a single four sided die.

DICE MODIFIERS
Sometimes your rolls will have additional modifiers.
These are straightforward and are simply added
or subtracted from the total rolled.
For example, if instructed to roll 2d6+4, roll two
six sided dice and add the numbers rolled together;
and then add four to the result. If instructed to
roll 1d8-1, roll a single eight sided die and subtract
one from the number rolled.

6 CHARACTER CREATION

CHARACTER ABILITIES
All characters in Codename: Spandex, whether they
be heroes, villains or simply extras, have a number
of attributes in common.

list in the process, maybe swapping one or more

for perks that fit your back-story. Then you finish
off your character by calculating their secondary
characteristics and personal profile.

STEP 1 - INITIAL POWERS

The first of these is a set of four ability scores.

These give a concrete measure as to how strong
and tough (both mentally and physically) the character is.

Each hero in Codename: Spandex has eight power

slots, each of which is initially assigned a power.

Most characters will also have a bunch of secondary

characteristics that show how the character will
fare in a fight - this being a superhero game, fights
happen with surprising regularity.

Some powers only ever take up a single slot - either

you have the power or you dont. Others may take
up multiple slots and have increased effectiveness
the more slots you fill with them.

Characters may also have a variety of super powers, of course; and finally player characters have a
personal profile consisting of a number of ratings
that show their social and psychological status.

The effectiveness of a power is measured in ranks.

Usually each slot that is assigned a power means
that you have a rank in the power, but this is not
always the case (see the rules below about improving powers).

CREATING A HERO
Creating a hero is done in four stages. Firstly you
determine your initial powers. Secondly you generate a set of ability scores to accompany the powers.
Thirdly you come up with a back-story for how your
character gained those powers and tidy the initial

Go through your power slots in turn, and for each

one assign a power to it according to the following
rules:
For each slot, you may choose to roll a d100
and look on the power list below in order to
assign a random power to the slot.

CHARACTER CREATION 7
Power Table (Roll d100)

Power Table (Roll d100)

Roll

Power

Max Ranks

Roll

Power

Max Ranks

01-02

Accuracy

45-49

Martial Arts*

03-05

Acrobatics

50

Phasing

06-09

Armour

51-52

Psychic ability*

10

Camoufl age

53-54

Reactions

11

Claws

55-56

Shapechange*

12-14

Cybernetics*

57

Shrinking

15

Danger Sense

58

Sidekick

16

Density Control (Other)

59-62

Skills*

17

Density Control (Self)

63

Snare

18

Duplication

64-65

Super Endurance

19

Elasticity

66-67

Super Health*

20-27

Energy Blast*

68-69

Super Leap

28

Energy Reflect*

70-71

Super Senses*

29

Environmental Control*

72-73

Super Speed

30-34

Flight

74-79

Super Strength

35-36

Forcefield*

80

Stunning Attack

37

Growth

81-82

Teleport

38

Immunity*

83-86

Toughness

39

Impervious

87

Vehicle

40

Invisibility

88

Wallcrawling

41

Larger

89-94

Weapon Mastery*

42

Luck

95

Weather Control

43-44

Magic*

96-00

Free choice or upgrade

The list below shows the maximum number of

ranks (Max ranks) that each power may have.
If you roll a power and you already have that
number of ranks in it then you must re-roll.
Powers with a maximum number of ranks listed
as have no maximum. You may have as many
ranks in the power as you are able to get.

Choosing to improve the same power a second

time takes two slots for a single rank increase.
It is not possible to choose to improve the same
power a third time. To get rank 4 or above in a
power the power must be rolled at least twice.

Powers marked with an asterisk (*) contain a

number of sub-powers or fl avours. If you roll
one of these powers, see the powers full description in the powers section for the flavours
that are available. The flavours for each power
must be determined before you move on to the
next power slot.

If you roll (or choose) either the magic power

or the psychic ability power and wish to keep
it when making your back-story, you will be
required to take the mystic training perk. This
will mean that you will have to drop a power
rank of a different power to pay for that perk.
If you roll (or choose) both of those powers
then you will have to take the mystic training
perk twice, once for each power.

In the case of powers with sub-powers or flavours, if you roll the power a second time you
may choose to either increase the rank of the
fl avour or sub-power you already have (to no
greater than its max ranks, obviously) or gain
a new fl avour or sub-power.

If you roll a 96-00, you may choose any power. In all respects this counts as if you have
rolled that power, and you can choose a power
you already have in order to increase its rank
without this counting as if you had opted to
increase the power instead of rolling.

Instead of rolling, you may choose to improve

an existing power by one rank. The first time
you do this for a power it takes a single slot.

8 CHARACTER CREATION
THE GUARDIANS STORY
Lisas first roll is an 06: armour. Because this is her first slot spent on
armour, she has armour rank 1.
Her second roll is a 77: super strength. Again,
because she doesnt already have the power
she gains rank 1 in it.
Her third roll is a 71: super senses. Because
this is marked with a *, Lisa looks at the description of super senses in the powers section
and discovers that she has to roll to see what
type of super sense her hero will have. Following the instructions there, she discovers
that she has radar sense.
Her fourth roll is an 08: armour again. Her
armour increases to rank 2.
For her fifth slot, Lisa decides not to roll the
dice, and instead chooses to increase her armour to rank 3. She has not already increased
her armour without rolling (the previous increase was due to a roll) so it only costs her
one power slot to do this.
For her sixth slot, Lisa again decides not to
roll the dice, and this time chooses to increase
her strength to rank 2. Again this costs her
only one slot, because although shes already
increased her armour rank in this manner she
hasnt increased her strength in this way yet.
Lisa now only has two slots left. She consider
forgoing both rolls to increase her strength
again, but decides shed rather see if she can
get more versatility than just walking around
hitting things, so she rolls the dice again.
Her roll is a 44: magic. She gains this at rank 1,
and follows the instructions in the powers
section to see what type of magic she can
use. She gets astral projection (her speciality
spell), eldritch bolt and hypnosis.
For her final remaining slot, she rolls again
and gets an 88: wallcrawling.
Lisas hero has the following powers:
Armour (Rank 3)
Radar Sense
Super Strength (Rank 2)
Magic (Rank 1)
Wallcrawling

STEP 2 - ABILITY SCORES

Every character in Codename: Spandex has four
ability scores. These are: strength, agility, will and
endurance. For normal people, each of these is rated
on a scale of 1-10, with the average adult having a
score somewhere between 3 and 8 in each ability.
Heroes, of course, are made of stronger stuff. As
a costumed hero, your character will usually have
ability scores ranging from 3 to 18, but they will
tend towards the higher end of that range. In the
case of strength and endurance, your character
may have a score much higher than 18 due to the
effect of powers (e.g. super strength, larger, etc.)

STRENGTH
A characters strength score is an indication of
how strong they are. A high strength score lets you
lift and throw heavier things, and provides a bonus
to the amount of damage you can do when hitting
people. A particularly high strength also improves
your armour or toughness.
The bonuses for strength are listed below. For further details about how damage and dividers work,
see the combat section. In the case of a particularly
low strength, the bonus to damage might be negative
and actually reduce the amount of damage done.
Strength Table
Strength

Damage
Bonus

Divider
Modifier

60+

(Strength-15)

H/+1, S/+3

40-59

(Strength-15)

H/+1, S/+2

19-39

(Strength-15)

H/+1, S/+1

16-18

(Strength-15)

6-15

1-5

(Strength-6)

AGILITY
A characters agility score is an indication of how
dextrous and agile they are. Having a high agility
score makes most combat easier. Your character
has a single agility bonus which contributes to a
variety of different combat bonuses.
Agility Table
Agility

Agility Bonus

16+

(Agility-15)

6-15

1-5

(Agility-6)

CHARACTER CREATION 9
WILL
A characters will score is an indication of their
strength of personality. Will is important for using
magic and psychic powers, and also for resisting
them. Unlike the other ability scores, will does not
have a bonus associated with it. Instead, the score
itself is used in a variety of situations.

ENDURANCE
A characters endurance score is an indication of
how tough they are and how much they can keep going through pain and injury. Naturally, like strength
this can be much higher for costumed heroes than
for normal people. Costumed heroes can often take
hits from tank shells without going down.
Your endurance score directly influences how much
health and stamina you have. See the section on
secondary abilities for more information on these
values.
Additionally, your endurance score affects the rate
at which you recover from injury. A high endurance
means that each time you recover some stamina or
health you recover more than you would otherwise.
Conversely a low endurance makes you recover less.
Endurance Table
Endurance

Recovery Rate Bonus

26+

+3

21-25

+2

16-20

+1

6-15

1-5

-1

ROLLING ABILITY SCORES

To determine the value of your heros ability scores,
draw a small 4x4 grid on a piece of scrap paper and
then go through each of the sixteen squares in the
grid and fill it with a number from 3 to 18 generated
by rolling 3d6.
When you have done this, you should have a 4x4
grid of numbers.
Choose one line, column or major diagonal from the
grid and use that line of numbers (read in either
direction, but kept in order) for your strength, agility, will and endurance respectively.
Dont add any bonuses that your powers may give
you to your strength or endurance just yet unless

you are absolutely sure that you are keeping those

powers, as you still have chance to drop one or two
of your powers during the next stage of character
generation.

STEP 3 - BACK-STORY & PERKS

Now that you have a set of numbers, it is time to
flesh them out by providing a back-story for your
hero.
Your back-story can be anything you like, providing
it is fits in to the games masters setting (theres
no use deciding to be an alien if the game master
has decided that their setting doesnt have any
aliens, for example). The back-story doesnt need
to be too complicated - were not writing essays for
school here - but it should include a bit of history
for who your character is and why they have the
powers that they have.
In particular, the back-story must be able to justify
all the powers that your hero has. If your character can fl y and shoot lasers, its not enough to
have their back story talk about how they stole an
experimental laser gun while leaving the fact that
they can fly completely unexplained.
Any power that you cannot justify must be dropped.
However, each power rank that is dropped may be
replaced by a perk from the list of perks below.
Actually, if you particularly want a specific perk
for your hero then you can always voluntarily drop
a power rank in exchange for it. You are not limited
to doing so only with powers that you cannot justify
as part of your back-story.
Naturally, perks have to be justified as part of your
characters back-story too. This is generally much
easier to do than it is with powers, particularly
since many of the perks can contribute heavily to
that back-story and can themselves help to provide
the justification for the powers that your hero has.
You can take as many perks as you like (providing
you pay for them by dropping a power rank for each
one) although taking the same perk more than once
will often not make sense.
The list of perks is as follows:

BOFFIN
Your character is a brilliant inventor in their field.
This may be an applied science like electronics or
engineering, or it may be a harder science like physics, chemistry or genetic engineering. Whatever

10 CHARACTER CREATION
THE GUARDIANS STORY
Lisa draws a 4x4 grid on a piece of paper
and fills each square in with the result
of a 3d6 roll, getting the following:
14

15

12

17

11

13

14

13

15

11

Because shes going to drop the magic, her will

score isnt going to be that important. Similarly,
her extremely good armour to protect her from
injury means that she doesnt have to worry too
much about her endurance score. Instead she
should concentrate on having a high strength and
agility - the first two ability scores in the list.
Looking at the grid, Lisa decides to use the first
major diagonal for her four scores, reading from
the top left to the bottom right.

Its now decision time. Although she doesnt yet

have to work out her heros back-story, she considers her options.
With her initial set of powers, she could be a
magic oriented hero (wearing magical armour
perhaps?) or she could drop the magic and be a
technological hero in a battle-suit, or she could
come up with something else that results in the
powers she rolled.
Lisa decides that astral projection doesnt really fit with the other powers and the energy
strike will be a bit redundant since she will be so
strong, so she decides that she will be dropping
the magic power in the next stage and her backstory (which she hasnt come up with the details
of yet) will involve her acquiring a technological
battle-suit of some kind instead.
you choose your field of speciality to be, it is likely
that your powers are a direct (but not necessarily
deliberate) result of your research. You may choose
to be well known to others working in your field or
you may choose to be a lone genius working in your
basement.
In either case, your character will start the game
with a material resources rank of 8. See the section
on personal profiles for more details on material
resources.

BUSINESS HIGH-FLYER
Your character is an incredibly wealthy business
person, owning their own business (or more likely
string of businesses). This makes your character (or
at least their secret identity) a publicly known and
respected figure, likely to crop up in the financial

14

15

12

17

11

13

14

13

15

11

This means that Lisas hero will have the following ability scores:
Strength: 14
Agility: 17
Will: 8
Endurance: 11
Even though she knows that her heros strength
will increase due to her three ranks in super
strength, Lisa does not add that extra strength
yet, just in case she changes her mind while she
is fleshing out her heros back-story.
papers regularly. It is up to you what sort of business your character runs.
Your character will start the game with a financial
resources rank of 8. See the section on personal
profiles for more details on financial resources.

CONTACTS
Your character has many contacts in a particular
field. You may choose the field for these contacts
from the following list, or invent a new field (with
game master approval):

Academia
Criminals
Government
Media
Military

CHARACTER CREATION 11
THE GUARDIANS STORY
Lisa has already had the idea that her
hero is going to be someone who uses
a suit of hi-tech powered armour, and that she
is going to drop the magic power that she has
acquired.
Looking at the other powers her hero possesses,
Lisa decides that the powers all come from an
experimental mountain and cave rescue suit. The
suit is heavily armoured for going into dangerous
situations, and enhances the users strength to
enable them to shift rubble and if necessary dig
themselves out of cave-ins. The suit is equipped
with radar sensors for finding trapped people in
situations of low visibility, and with climbing pads
on the hands and feet for reaching otherwise
inaccessible places.
This accounts for all of her rolled superpowers
except for the magic - which Lisa is intending to
swap for a perk anyway.
Looking through the perks for inspiration about
why her hero would be wearing this suit (and why
it never went into production), Lisa thinks that
she doesnt want her character to be the actual
boffin who invented the suit, so decides that the
suit was invented by her characters parents.
Unfortunately, as a mountain/cave rescue suit
it was a failure. It never got past the prototype stage because it was too expensive to mass
produce and required too much training to use.
Maria (the name Lisa has just invented for her
character) was trained in how to use it for demonstration purposes when her parents tried to
find funding to continue their project.

Police
Secret service
These contacts are often able to pass you information or help you out in minor ways. Wherever your
contacts are, your character will start the game
with a contacts rank of 10. See the section on personal profiles for more details on contacts.

IDLE RICH
Your character is one of the idle rich. Whether they
have inherited their money, won the big one on a
lottery, or gained their money through some other
channel, your character is fantastically wealthy and

Unfortunately, Marias parents borrowed much

money from some shady individuals to try to keep
their project afloat, and when it was apparent
that they couldnt pay the money back the enforcers employed by the debt collectors burned
down their house and laboratory in retaliation.
Maria was able to use the experimental suit to
escape, but her parents both died in the blaze.
Maria wished to declare vengeance on all organised criminals, but after failing to inherit
from her parents (all their estate was sold off
to cover their extensive debts) she had no means
with which to do so. The power suit languished
in a cupboard in her home, nothing more than
a memento to remind her of her parents fate.
Instead, Maria devoted her time to becoming
an investigative journalist. It she couldnt fight
crime, she could at least investigate it and report
it to those who could. Marias drive to succeed
and her bravery when going undercover soon
established her as one of the countrys best
reporters.
It is now the tenth anniversary of her parents
death, and thanks to her flourishing media career
Maria has the funds to refurbish the old power
suit, redesign and repaint the exterior so it is
not recognisable, and use it - and her journalistic
skills and contacts - to start rooting out criminals
for herself and fulfil the legacy she promised
her parents so long ago...
...The Guardian has arrived!
To accompany this back-story, Lisa trades in her
characters magic power for the contacts perk;
choosing to have extensive media contacts.

gains enough of a steady income through investments, trust funds, and the like that they need not
work. However, the down side to this is that your
character will be a favourite of the paparazzi, and
will attract much attention wherever they go.
Your character will get an extra downtime point
per week, and will start the game with a financial
resources rank of 8. See the section on personal
profiles for more details on financial resources.

MYSTIC TRAINING
Your character has been trained in the mystic arts,
and is able to use either magic or psychic power.

12 CHARACTER CREATION
section on personal profiles for more details on financial resources.

SPECIALIST TRAINING
Your character has had specialist physical or mental training. This could have been S.A.S. or Navy
Seal training, or could have involved training with a
secret order of mystics or under a wise old kung fu
master, or anything else that you think appropriate.
Regardless of what form the training took, the result is that you can add +2 to one of your characters ability scores or add +1 to each of two of your
characters ability scores.

UNEARTHLY BEING

This may have been some kind of formal training

under a master, or your character may have studied
the mystical arts by themselves.
Even characters whose back-stories include the innate ability to use magic or psychic power of some
kind must still take this perk. In this case it covers
your characters self-taught or mentor guided study
to master their natural abilities.
This perk conveys no bonus to your character, but
you must take it if you have either the magic power
or the psychic ability power. If you have both of
those powers then you must take this perk twice,
once for each of them.
Obviously, you only need to take this perk if you wish
to keep the magic or psychic power. If you decide
to drop the power in exchange for a different perk
you do not also have to take this perk.

POSITION OF POWER
Your character holds a prestigious title. They may
be minor royalty (or major royalty of a small foreign country), or have other important diplomatic
status that can get them out of - or occasionally
into - trouble.
In addition, your character starts the game with
a financial resources rank of 6 and has a staff of
aides that can carry out work for them. See the

Your character isnt even remotely human. They

could be an alien with bizarre biology, an android
or golem, or a divine creature such as an angel, a
guardian spirit, or a pagan god. Naturally you will
need to talk to the game master before deciding
to be anything too outlandish, as some types of
creature may not exist in your game masters campaign setting.
Whatever your characters form, they are immortal and will neither age nor suffer from disease.
However, this does not stop your character from
dying from unnatural causes such as being killed
in battle or dying in some fiendish death trap that
they have been forced into.

STEP 4 - FILLING IN THE BLANKS

You are now in a position to start filling in the character sheet for your hero. You will need to carefully
read through the descriptions of your powers as
you work through the sheet, as many powers modify
one or more of these values.
Some parts of the character sheet, such as your
heros name and powers, are self-explanatory. The
other values that need to go on the sheet are explained in the following text.

EQUIPMENT
Your character will start with any equipment that
their powers rely on. For example a character with
the weapon mastery power will begin with one or
more suitable weapons, and so forth.
If this means that your character starts with fewer
than three pieces of equipment, then you may make

CHARACTER CREATION 13
the number up to three by adding items from the
following list:
A grappling gun for swinging/climbing.
A padded or lightly armoured costume (which
provides you with armour class E rather than
the normal armour class F for a standard costume).
A costume made of morphic fabric, that alters
itself along with you when you use self-altering
powers.
An earpiece radio/mic that transmits on an
encrypted protocol.
A tracking device that can be surreptitiously
attached to something or someone you wish
to follow.
A vehicle (with no special powers).
More mundane items like standard mobile phones
and computing devices do not count towards the
three-item limit. You can simply assume that your
character owns items such as these (providing your
financial resources level is high enough - see later
in this step).

of them around when transferring them to your

character sheet.

DAMAGE BONUS
Your damage bonus is the amount of extra damage
you do in physical combat due to high strength. This
is derived from your strength score according to
the table in step 2.

KNOCKBACK THRESHOLD
Costumed heroes and their enemies can often hit
hard enough to send their opponents flying through
the air. Your knockback threshold is a measure of
how difficult it is for foes to knock you backwards
in this manner. How this works is explained further
in the combat section.
Your knockback threshold will normally be 20, but
some powers may modify this value.

STRIKE BONUS
Your strike bonus is the bonus that you have when
attacking people in combat (and also when parrying attacks or performing judo throws). This bonus is based on your agility bonus (as calculated in
step 2) but it is listed separately on the character
sheet because it tends to get additional modifiers
from different sources. See the combat section
and the individual descriptions of your characters
powers for more details about modifiers to your
strike bonus.

DODGE BONUS
Your dodge bonus is the bonus that you have when
dodging incoming attacks. This will depend on how
well armoured you are. In particular, many heavily
armoured characters cannot dodge at all. See the
combat section for more details about how dodging works.

FINAL ABILITY SCORES

You should copy these from those that you generated in step 2, but be sure to remember any modifiers to them that you gained from your powers or
perks.
Remember that they have to be copied in the order
that you chose in step 2. You cant swap the order

PANELS PER PAGE

When a fight breaks out, time is measured using the
comic-book conventions of pages and panels. This is
described in more detail in the combat section. For
now, simply note that your character has 4 panels
per page. Most heroes and villains have this number,
and it will only be different if you are using the
character sheet for details of a sidekick - in which
case the number of panels per page will depend on
the sidekicks rank.

14 CHARACTER CREATION
HEALTH & STAMINA
Your health indicates the amount of damage that
you can take before dying, and your stamina indicates the amount of damage you can take before
being knocked unconscious.
Each of these scores are generated separately
from each other and both are derived from your
endurance score. Roll a d6 per point of endurance
to find out your health, and repeat the process for
your stamina.
In the case of your health, then divide the rolled
value by ten to get your battered value. This is the
point at which you are so badly injured that you will
need hospital treatment to recover.
Similarly, divide your rolled stamina by five to get
your dazed value and by ten to get your stunned
value. These are the points at which you are reeling
from the damage you have taken and are almost
unconscious.
Your health and stamina each have a divider associated with them. Incoming damage of each type is
divided by the relevant divider as you take it. You
will not normally have damage dividers unless you
are granted them by powers. If you have a particularly high strength score then you may get a bonus
to these dividers, but such a bonus from strength
can only enhance existing dividers provided by powers. It cant provide a divider if you do not already
have one.
Finally, you have a recovery rate for each of the
two. Normally your recovery rate for health is 1d6
points per hour of rest, and your recovery rate for
stamina is 1d6 points per page of rest. Each of these
rates is modified by your endurance score, and each
may also be modified by your powers.

MOVEMENT SPEED
Your movement speed is determined by adding together your strength, agility and endurance (the
original rolled values, not the values after theyve
been modified by powers or perks) and dividing by
six. The result is the number of metres you can
move in a single panel of movement.

ATTACKS
Heroes will normally have a fist/foot attack which
is strike class 2 and does 2d6S/1d6-6H damage,
plus the characters damage bonus. The damage
bonus may be added to the stamina or health dam-

age, or split between them - you choose this each

time you make an attack - but is not added to both
simultaneously. See the combat section for more
details about how strike class and damage work.
Your powers may provide you with more attacks
than this basic one. If so, the descriptions of those
powers will give you the details of the other types
of attack that you can make.

PERSONAL PROFILE
Your characters personal profile is a set of fifteen
measures of how they are doing in terms of their
state of mind, relationship with the public, and investigative work. These fifteen measures are summarised as three values: popularity, investigation
and confidence.
Your characters personal profile will change during
the course of the campaign, and its values will affect other aspects of your character, such as hero
points and downtime points. The personal profile
section has much more detail about how personal
profiles work.
For your starting character, you will need to go
through the personal profile section of this book
with the game master in order to determine your
characters initial values in each of these fifteen
ratings. Most of them are simply derived from your
back-story, but some may be influenced by which
powers and perks you have.

HERO POINTS
Hero points represent the way that people who are
confident and feel good about themselves seem to
attract good luck and succeed more than people who have a more pessimistic outlook. They are
gained by having a high confidence score (see the
personal profile section for more information about
this).
Hero points are points that can be spent to re-roll
the dice. Each hero point spent will allow you to reroll the dice after making any roll, and take either
the original result of the re-rolled one, whichever
is more favourable.
This applies to rolls made by the game master too,
but only those that directly affect your character.
You may make the game master re-roll the dice and
use whichever result is more favourable to your
character. You can use more than one hero point
on the same roll to get multiple re-rolls if you wish.

CHARACTER CREATION 15
Hero points are gone once used, but will refresh
back up to their normal value at the start of each
adventure.
If your campaign involves ongoing overlapping plots
rather than discrete adventures, your game master
will need to let you know when they refresh. Generally it will be at a time when your character gets a
few days of rest and relaxation.
Your character will almost certainly start the game
with no hero points, as their initial confidence wont
be high enough to grant them any. If it does, you
will have found this out while filling in your personal
profile.

RESOURCES AND DOWNTIME POINTS

Resources (which are split into two ratings - material resources and financial resources) indicate how
well equipped and well off your character is. Each
is measured on a 1-10 scale.
Unless you have a perk that says otherwise, your
character will start with a material resources level
of 4 (that means youve a basement or shed and
access to power tools, but no specialised science
lab or anything like that) and a financial resources
level of 5 (that means youre comfortably off in a

rented fl at and have access to a second hand car

or a motorbike).
If it fits your back-story better then you can freely start with resource levels lower than this; but
to start with resources higher than this requires
perks.
Downtime points are what you spend to get better.
Unless you have a perk that says otherwise, you
will almost certainly get 7 per week (its possible
to have less than 7 per week if your confidence is
particularly low, but thats unlikely to be the case
for a starting character).
Each downtime point roughly translates to a days
worth of free time (outside the hours of your heros
day job), but they are not usually measured on an
hour by hour basis.
As the campaign progresses, you will spend your
free time (and therefore your downtime points)
doing various activities ranging from practising in
the use of your powers to patrolling the streets to
social/charity work and sorting your social life out.
As you spend downtime points on these things they
will affect your personal profile and your powers.
Resources and downtime points are discussed in
more detail in the advancement section.

16 CHARACTER CREATION
THE GUARDIANS STORY
Lisa already has a name for her character - The Guardian - and has already
decided that her secret identity is a journalist
called Maria. As she starts to fill in the character sheet, she decides on dAngelo as a surname
for Maria.
The Guardian starts with her battlesuit, so she
can have another two pieces of equipment. She
goes for a radio earpiece/mic and asks the game
master if she can have a smartphone with internet access built into her suit. Since this would
normally be a mundane thing if not built in to the
suit, the game master approves the item.
Her ability scores are mostly just copied across,
as none of her powers or perks affect her agility,
will or endurance. However, her super strength
will affect her strength score.
The Guardians super strength increases her
strength by 10+1d10 points per rank. Lisa rolls
the dice and gets a 2 and a 9. Therefore her total
strength is 14+(10+2)+(10+9) = 45.
Her damage bonus is equal to her strength-15,
so it is +30.
The Guardians knockback threshold is the default 20, since none of her powers modify that;
although she makes a note in her list of powers
that her super strength gives her a +10 bonus
to this when bracing herself against an attack.
Lisa then moves on to her agility, noting that she
has a strike bonus of +2 from her high agility,
but that her armour power prevents her from
dodging.
Like most other heroes, The Guardian gets 4
panels per page.
The Guardians movement speed is based on her
(Strength+Agility+Endurance)/6, counting her
original strength without the modifications for
her powers. This works out at (14+17+11)/6 = 7.
Rolling for her health score, Lisa now rolls 11d6
because The Guardian has an endurance of 11,
getting 3, 5, 1, 4, 2, 2, 6, 2, 3, 6, 1 for a total of 35.
This gives her a battered value of 35/10=4.
For her stamina, she rolls 5, 6, 1, 3, 1, 6, 3, 5, 3
, 2, 1 for a total of 36. This gives her a dazed
value of 36/5=7 and a stunned value of 36/10=4.

The Guardians armour power gives her damage

dividers of H/5 and S/4. She adds the bonus to
those dividers from her high strength (H/+1,
S/+2) giving her total dividers of H/6, S/6.
Her endurance is average, so her recovery rates
are both set at the standard 1d6.
The Guardians powers do not give her any special
attacks, so she has only the standard fist/foot
attack. However, with her extreme strength she
can do impressive damage nonetheless.
Lisa goes through The Guardians back-story
with the game master and between them they
establish the initial values for his personal profile
(that process is described in more detail in the
The Guardians Story boxes in the personal
profile section). After doing that, Lisa sees that
The Guardians confidence is not high enough
to give her any hero points, so she marks those
down as zero.
Similarly, there is nothing in The Guardians backstory to indicate that she is particularly poor,
but neither has she any perks that give her extra financial resources or material resources.
Therefore she starts with the default values
for those of 4 and 5 respectively. If she wants
to be able to keep her battlesuit in tip-top form
and maybe even upgrade it shes going to have
to spend some downtime points.
Speaking of downtime points, The Guardian has
no perks that would change the amount she gets,
and her confidence isnt low enough to reduce
them, so she gets the default 7 per week.
Lisas character is now finished, and is ready to
start play. While she waits for the other players
to finish off their characters, Lisa adds some
more biographical information to her back-story.
She decides that Maria dAngelo is 58 tall, with
long black hair. Maria is slim enough that The
Guardian battlesuit which was originally designed
to be unisex does not give away her gender while
she is wearing it, and she asks the game master
for permission to have the battlesuit disguise
Marias voice while she is wearing it so that she
is not recognised. The game master allows this.
As a trade-off for the voice disguise, the game
master decides that since the battlesuit provides armour class B, it is likely to be too big to
fit under Marias clothing. She is going to have to
carry it in a holdall or similar and find somewhere
to change when she wishes to wear it.


NAME: ................................................

CHARACTER CREATION 17

SECRET IDENTITY: ................................................

STRENGTH

Damage Bonus: ................

AGILITY

Strike Bonus: ................

WILL

ENDURANCE

Knockback Threshold: ................

Dodge Bonus: ................

Panels Per Page: ................ Magic/Psychic/Energy: ................

Armour Class: ................

POWERS & PERKS

Movement Speed: ................

EQUIPMENT

HEALTH: ................

Battered: ................

H Divider: ................

Recovery Rate: ................

ATTACK

STRIKE CLASS

STAMINA: ................

HERO POINTS: ................

Material Resources: ................

Dazed: ................
Financial Resources: ................

Stunned: ................
Downtime Pts / Week: ................
Recovery Rate:
................
S Divider: ................

DAMAGE

NOTES

Approachability: ................

Fame: ................

Power Use: ................

Contacts: ................

INVESTIGATION: ................

Social Circle: ................

Success Rate: ................

Public Response: ................

Security: ................

CONFIDENCE: ................

Heroism: ................
Identification: ................

Public Relations: ................

Competence: ................

POPULARITY: ................
Backing: ................

Methods: ................

Conscience: ................

18 PERSONAL PROFILE
PERSONAL PROFILE SUMMARY
Your personal profile is a set of values that indicate
how well adjusted your character is and how they
relate to the public and themselves.
It consists of three categories:
Popularity
Investigation
Confidence
In each of these categories you have five attributes. Four of these are measured on a 1-5 scale,
and the fifth is measured on a 1-10 scale. Therefore
when added together, they give a number between 5
and 30.
In each category, this total is then tripled (to give
it a score from 15-90) and used as a value for the
category. The category values never change independently. They are always dependent on their
constituent scores and only change if and when
those constituent scores change.
The constituent scores themselves often change
due to the changing circumstances of your character, whether through plot related reasons over
the course of the campaign or through determined
effort (and the spending of downtime points) on
your characters part.
Details of how to use downtime points to improve
your characters personal profile is given in the advancement section of this book.
Additionally, your character has a financial resources level and a material resources level. These values
are also measured on a 1-10 scale but are independent of the three categories.

POPULARITY
Your popularity is a measure of how the public react
to you. It combines both how famous you are and
how popular you are into a single measure.
If you are trying to intimidate petty (non-superpowered) criminals or trying to influence bystanders
then you can succeed by rolling this value or less
on a d100.
Generally you can infl uence people more strongly
the higher your score is. The table below shows
who you can try to influence based on your score.
If you are trying to give someone persuasive advice
rather than ordering them around, you can gener-

ally influence people as if your popularity was one

category higher than its actual value.
Similarly, if circumstances dictate, the game master
may give you a penalty or bonus to your roll. Persuading people to leave a dangerous area is easier
than persuading them to follow you into danger,
for example.
In any case, rolling your popularity should not be
used as a sledgehammer tactic to constantly order
people around. If you overuse it, the game master
might ask you to lower your characters public relations score since your character is presenting
themselves as an arrogant bully rather than as a
charismatic hero.
Status
15-30
31-45
46-60
61-75
76-87
88-90

Reaction
Influence
Who are you?
Criminals
Resented
Criminals
Accepted
Bystanders
Liked
Bystanders
Wildly popular
Police
A legend Government/Army

Your popularity is composed of triple the total of

the following scores:

Backing (from 1-5)

Heroism (from 1-5)
Identification (from 1-5)
Public relations (from 1-5)
Competence (from 1-10)

BACKING
Your backing is an indication of the level of support you have. Heroes who work alone tend to be
less popular than those who have approval from
the police or even the government. Obviously, your
backing score only counts the people or organisations that will publicly endorse you. Being a secret
military agent with full government backing doesnt
help people trust you if they dont know about it.
The possible values for backing are:
1 = No known backing
2 = Local community support
3 = Tacit police support or endorsement
from a political or pressure group
4 = Official police endorsement or support
from a respected philanthropist or a
commercial organisation
5 = Official government approval and/or
military rank (honorary or otherwise)
Starting characters will normally begin with a backing score of 3, but depending on their back-story

PERSONAL PROFILE 19
the game master may give them an initial backing
score anywhere from 1 to 4.

HEROISM
Your heroism is an indication of how you behave. Are
you a paragon of virtue or a low-life little better
than the criminals you fight?
As with backing, it is the publics perception of you
that is the important factor here. If the tabloids
decide to have a field day with you, you might find
that your heroism is lower than you might expect
given your actual behaviour. Similarly, with a good
publicist you can be seen to be more heroic than
you actually are.

Starting heroes will normally begin with a identification somewhere between 1 and 3. If the hero
appears to be relatively normal (albeit stronger
and more agile, or using technological devices) then
they will start with a score of 3. If they have more
outlandish powers such as the ability to fly or throw
energy bolts around, they will start with a score
of 2. If they appear to be alien, monstrous or robotic in nature; or otherwise non-human, they will
start with a score of 1.

The possible values for heroism are:

1 = No better than your enemies
2 = The lesser evil
3 = Slightly suspicious
4 = Decent and honest
5 = A complete boy/girl scout
Starting heroes will normally begin with a score
of 3, since (unless their back-story indicates otherwise) they will be previously unknown and therefore
slightly suspicious.

IDENTIFICATION
Your identification indicates how different you appear to be to normal people.
Naturally, as a costumed hero you are likely to be
thought of as a bit peculiar anyway, but if you have
an outlandish appearance or powers then you can
seem very alien to the common folk (whether you
actually are alien or not!)
As with heroism, identification is often influenced by
press - both good and bad. While many heroes are
loathe to give out any kind of personal information,
those more prepared to do interviews and who come
across as normal people (albeit celebrities) rather
than arrogant freaks with delusions of godhood
find that their identification is better than that
of their more reticent colleagues.
The possible values for identification are:
1 = The freak shows in town
2 = Theres something strange about you
3 = Typical celebrity
4 = Refreshingly down to earth
5 = The boy/girl next door

PUBLIC RELATIONS
Your public relations is an indication of how well
you actually get on with members of the public and
with authorities.
Unlike most of the other popularity components,
public relations rarely changes due to factors outside your control. Any changes are more likely to
derive directly from the way that you role-play
your character.
If youre aloof and stand-offish, or outright dismissive of the mundanes then your score will drop,
but if you are helpful and seem to genuinely enjoy
interacting with people then your score will rise.
It is possible to devote downtime points to trying
to improve this score, but improving it in this way

20 PERSONAL PROFILE
is difficult because spending time doing charity
work (for example) is all very well but if you clearly
despise the people youre helping then youll just
come across as cynically using them to further your
career and reputation rather than genuinely desiring to help them.
Generally, once it has settled onto a value based
on how you have decided to play your character, it
wont change during the campaign unless you start
consistently playing your character in a noticeably
different way.
The possible values for public relations are:
1 = You hate the mundanes
2 = You ignore the mundanes
3 = Average
4 = Friendly and courteous
5 = You go the extra mile
Starting heroes will normally begin with a public
relations score of 3, as the public dont yet know
what to expect, but it will quickly change depending
on their behaviour.

COMPETENCE
Your competence score is an indication of how successful your activities are. Once again, this is based
on public perception. If you save the world and noone knows about it then your competence score
wont change.
Unlike the other components of your popularity,
your competence score is rated from 1-10 rather
than 1-5. It is also less subjectively measured than
those other component scores.
Each scenario, plot or event that your hero is known
to be involved with is given a competence rating
from 1-10 depending on its size and scope. If you
succeed in a scenario or mission that has a higher
competence level than your current level the publics faith in your abilities increases and you may
increase your competence score by half the difference between your current score and the score of
the scenario. Round any fractions down unless the
competence score of the scenario was only a single
point above your own.
Similarly, if you fail in a mission or scenario that
has a competence score lower than your own competence score, the public will lose faith in you and
you must decrease your competence score by half
the difference between your current score and the
score of the scenario. Again you should round any
fractions down unless the competence score of the
scenario was only a single point lower than your own.

THE GUARDIANS STORY

Lisa is checking the starting values
of her new heros popularity scores,
ready for the guardian to make her first appearance in the campaign.
Since she has nothing in her back-story to
suggest otherwise, her backing starts at a
score of 3.
Similarly, her heroism also starts at 3 since
there is nothing to indicate otherwise.
The game master decides that because the
guardian wears a full-body battlesuit which
prevents anyone from looking her in the eye,
and this is compounded by the presence of
a voice-changer in the suit, she seems very
impersonal and other when dealing with the
public.
Because of this, the guardian only starts with
a score of 2 in her identification.
However, until lisa starts playing the character, theres no reason for her to have anything
other than a 3 in public relations.
Finally, since the guardian has so far done
nothing except appear in public, she starts
with a competence of 1.
Therefore, the guardians final popularity is:
(3 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 1) x 3 = 36
This barely puts her into the Resented category, and means that shes only going to have
a 36% chance of being able to intimidate lesser
non-powered criminals or influence bystanders, and even then shes only going to be able
to make suggestions to bystanders. Theyre
not going to take orders from some weirdo
in a costume that hasnt proven herself yet.
Similarly, until shes a bit more well known shes
unlikely to get much co-operation from the
police. For all they know she could be some new
villain whos trying to trap them or distract
them for some nefarious reason.
Lisa decides that she definitely needs to start
spending downtime points in order to increase
her popularity as soon as she has them available.

PERSONAL PROFILE 21
Failing a scenario with a competence score equal
to or higher than your own does not lose you anything, since the public never expected you to be
able to succeed in such a scenario anyway. Similarly,
succeeding in a scenario with a competence score
equal to or lower than your own does not gain you
anything because the public always had faith that
youd manage it.
Obviously, it is up to the game master to determine
exactly what qualifies as a success or failure
in the eyes of the public, although a good (or bad)
relationship with the media can sometimes skew
their perception.
The possible competence scores for scenarios are:
10 = Save the world
9 = Save the country
8 = Save the city
7 = Fight a major villain with a team of
normal villains
6 = Fight a major villain on their own or a
team of normal villains
5 = Fight a normal villain or a team of minor
villains
4 = Fight a minor villain or an organised
team of non-powered criminals
3 = Fight a non-powered rabble, or help
with a minor disaster (fire, riot, etc.)
2 = Deal with a minor crime involving a small
Number of non-powered criminals
1 = Make a public appearance
Starting heroes will always start with a competence
score of 1, as they are assumed to have made their
first public appearance in costume but have not yet
proven themselves capable of dealing with any more
major incidents or situations.

INVESTIGATION
Your investigation is a measure of how good you are
at not only following leads but also gaining leads and
information. Characters with a high investigation
will likely have many contacts and be able to pick up
word on the street that characters with a lower
investigation will be oblivious to.
In some ways, your characters investigation is the
opposite of their popularity. After all, people with
dubious or sensitive information are far less likely
to talk to the big famous heroes that work for the
government than they are to the local guy whos just
trying to keep the neighbourhood safe.
You use your investigation by trying to roll equal to
or less than its score on a d100. This is usually to see
if you can find out about criminal activity; such as

rolling to recognise a particular non-costumed villain

who you have encountered working as an enforcer,
or to recognise who supplied the hi-tech devices
used in a crime, or to know which of the local gangs
is having problems with a leadership struggle.
The game master may also choose to invent some
rumours of criminal activity each game week or
month, have the players roll their investigation for
each one, giving each titbit of information out to
those players whose rolls succeeded.
As always, the game master may give you a bonus
or penalty to your roll depending on how obscure or
well known the information that you are seeking is.
In the case of recognising a well known costumed
villain you may not even need to roll at all. The game
master may just inform you that you recognise the
villain automatically.
Your investigation is composed of triple the total
of the following scores:

Methods (from 1-5)

Approachability (from 1-5)
Fame (from 1-5)
Power use (from 1-5)
Contacts (from 1-10)

METHODS
Your methods is an indication of the how effective
your methods for keeping up to date with information and with solving crimes are. This score is mostly
dependent on the way you role-play your character,
since it depends on their actual actions rather than
on any kind of ability score.
However, it can be increased by spending downtime
points appropriately (for example spending time
collating information or cross-referencing news
reports and files).
The possible values for methods are:
1 = You make no effort
2 = You occasionally question witnesses or
look for clues at a crime scene
3 = Average
4 = You always question witnesses and look
for clues at a crime scene
5 = You keep extensive files and crossreference new information with that
previously known
Starting heroes will always begin play with a methods score of 3, and this will change as it becomes
apparent how much or little time they devote to
this area.

22 PERSONAL PROFILE
If this formula ends up with an odd fraction, round
it up.
Approachability cannot normally be adjusted except
by adjusting the two scores that it relies on.
The possible values for approachability are:
1 = You are avoided
2 = Only the desperate will talk to you
3 = Average
4 = You receive a good supply of tips
5 = Youre the first person people think of
When theyre in trouble and need to
talk to someone
Starting heroes will always begin play with an approachability score based on the above formula.

FAME
Your fame score indicates how much attention the
press pay to you, or rather it indicates how much
attention they dont pay to you.
Following up clues and tips often involves working
under cover or at the very least being subtle. If
youre a world famous hero with the tabloids hanging
on every word and every public appearance (whether
for good or for ill) its hard to slip away or to poke
into things without being spotted.
Your fame score is therefore determined directly
by your popularity.

APPROACHABILITY
Your approachability is an indication of how likely
it is that people with information will give it to you.
There are two main factors in your approachability.
On the one hand, people are more likely to want to
talk to someone they feel is normal rather than
some strange weirdo or alien. On the other hand
people who will often be involved in petty crime
themselves are going to feel far more comfortable
approaching someone who isnt quite so squeaky
clean and is more likely to overlook the informants
own activities.
Because of these conflicting factors, your characters approachability score is always:
3 + ( x identification) - ( x heroism)

Popularity
76-90
61-75
46-60
31-45
15-30

Fame
1
2
3
4
5

Description
Tabloid darling
In the public eye
Average
Rarely mentioned
Works in secret

Starting heroes will always begin play with a fame

score based on their popularity as above.

POWER USE
Your power use score indicates how suited your
super powers are for investigative work and how
well you use them for that type of work.
For each power that you have that will naturally
enhance your investigative work without you having
to deliberately use it for such (for example subconscious luck or some of the super senses) you
automatically get a point of powers score.

PERSONAL PROFILE 23
For each of your superpowers that you must deliberately use for investigation (such as invisibility,
phasing, or the disguise skill) you also get a point
of powers score but only if you make the effort to
actually use it.
Characters who naturally have few (or no) powers
that they can use in investigation can use devices
to make up for that, and can count those devices
towards their power use score as if they were super
powers - but again, only if they actually use them.
No matter how many powers and devices you have,
your power use score can never be less than 1 or
more than 5.
Starting heroes will begin the game with a power
use score based only those super powers that are
automatically helpful, and must start regularly finding ways to use their other powers for investigative
work in order to increase their score.

THE GUARDIANS STORY

Lisa is filling out the guardians beginning investigation in readiness to
introduce her character into the campaign.
Her methods score starts at 3, since she has
not yet played the character and therefore
her usual methods have not yet been revealed.
Her approachability score is based on her
heroism and identification score. Since her
identification is 2 and her heroism is 3, her
approachability is calculated as:
3 + ( x 2) - ( x 3) = 2
Rounding the odd half up, this is an approachability score of 3.
As a new hero, the guardians popularity is
only 36. This is good news for her fame score
as it means she is rarely mentioned in the news
and there is little press interest in what she
does. This gives her a fame score of 4.
Unfortunately, when it comes to her powers
score, lisa is not so lucky. With armour, super
strength, wallcrawling and radar sense as her
powers she has nothing that will give her an
automatic bonus to her investigative abilities.
While she could possibly start using her wallcrawling to eavesdrop (literally) on conversations or build a new device into her battlesuit
at a later date, this does her no good now, and
her powers score starts at the minimum of 1.
However, since lisa chose the contacts perk
she has the maximum possible score for her
contacts: 10. As an investigative journalist in
her day job, her character has access to all
sorts of contacts and information that she
might otherwise struggle to find.
The guardians final investigation is:
(3 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 10) x 3 = 63
This is a respectable score, and the guardian
should have little problem finding out information and following up clues.

24 PERSONAL PROFILE
Confidence Table
Confidence

Downtime Points

Can Increase
Resources?

Will Bonus
For Defence

Hero Points

15-30

-2

No

31-45

No

46-60

Yes

61-63

Yes

+1

64-66

Yes

+2

67-69

Yes

+3

70-72

Yes

+4

73-75

Yes

+5

76-78

Yes

+5

79-81

Yes

+5

82-84

Yes

+5

85-87

Yes

+5

88-90

Yes

+5

CONTACTS
Your contacts score indicates how many people you
have who regularly give you information, and on how
informed those people are. Unlike random people
who might occasionally give you a tip off, these are
people with whom your character has an established
relationship of trust, and as such they dont care
about your approachability or lack of it.
Your contacts score can be modified both as a plot
device and by spending downtime points establishing
such a network. Your contacts can be in a variety
of areas, from criminals themselves to police or
media or even sources from government agencies.
The contacts score does not distinguish between
different types of contact, merely summing up the
total level of information you get from them.
The possible contacts scores are:
1 = You have no contacts
2 = You have an intermittent and unreliable
source
3 = You have a few sources of variable but
generally poor reliability
4 = You have a couple of minor but reliable
sources
5 = You have a few reliable minor sources
6 = You have a couple of sources of major
information, and many of minor matters
7 = You have full sources for minor matters
and several varied reliability contacts
for major information
8 = You have several reliable major sources
9 = You have many reliable major sources
10 = You are fully part of an major network
of information

Starting heroes will usually start with a contacts

score of 5, but certain perks can change this.

CONFIDENCE
Your confidence score is a measure of your self
confidence and your mental stability. Unlike the
other two status measures it is rarely rolled against
during play. However, it does have a big effect on
your character both during play and in downtime.
If your character has a particularly low confidence,
their private life is a complete shambles. They are
likely spending most of their time just holding things
together, and thus will have fewer downtime points
per week to spend on other activities - and the wont
be able to use those downtime points to improve
their financial resources.
If your characters confidence is high enough, they
feel on top of the world. This increased self-confidence gives them a bonus to their will when defending against mental attacks, and at high enough levels
it also gives them hero points that they can spend
to re-roll die rolls. See the character creation section for more details about how hero points work.
Your investigation is composed of triple the total
of the following scores:

Conscience (from 1-5)

Social circle (from 1-5)
Success rate (from 1-5)
Public response (from 1-5)
Security (from 1-10)

PERSONAL PROFILE 25
CONSCIENCE
Your conscience score is an indication of whether
your hero has skeletons in their closet that will
prey on their mind.

While it could be influenced by how the character

is role-played (for example a character who clams
up and refuses to talk to the other heroes in the
team could find their social circle rating drop) it is
mostly concerned with the strength of the characters social life.

Normally, this score will increase or decrease based

on your characters actions during a campaign. If
your character makes a point of resolving or reconciling with past issues then their conscience score
may increase accordingly, and conversely if your
character performs actions during the campaign
that they must keep secret to avoid either humiliation or even legal consequences then their conscience score may decrease.
It is also possible to increase your characters conscience score by using downtime points, although the
game master should discourage this. Role-playing
the resolution of dark secrets is far more satisfying for everyone than simply spending points to get
rid of them.
Having said that, if a characters secrets are nothing
to do with the other player characters and resolving them would involve giving that one character
(and therefore their player) all the game masters
attention for an extended period of time this can
prove disruptive. This is the ideal situation in which
the character should be resolving the issue in their
downtime rather than when everyone is wanting to
get on with the action.
Simply having a secret identity should not count
as having a secret for purposes of your conscience
score. This is a normal aspect of being a costumed
hero, and is not something that the average hero
would be ashamed of.
The possible values for conscience are:
1 = You have dark secrets that could ruin
you if discovered
2 = You have an embarrassing secret or two
3 = Average
4 = Youre squeaky clean
5 = Your life is an open book
Starting heroes will usually begin play with a conscience score of 3, unless there is something specific
in their back-story that would indicate otherwise.

SOCIAL CIRCLE
Your social circle score is an indication of how well
your character is able to express their problems
and issues, and how may close friends and confidantes they have.

The more friends and relations your character has,

the higher their social circle score.
While increasing your characters circle of friends
can be done via role-playing or plot, the most common way to increase it is to spend downtime points
socialising and networking.
The possible values for social circle are:
1 = Youre a complete loner with no friends
2 = You have only a couple of friends
3 = Average
4 = Youre outgoing with lots of friends
5 = Your social calendar is full
Starting heroes will normally begin play with an
social circle score of 3, unless there is something
specific in their back-story that would indicate that
it should be otherwise.

SUCCESS RATE
Your success rate is simply an indication of how many
of the last five scenarios you have succeeded in.
Unlike your competence score, this is not depend-

26 PERSONAL PROFILE
Status
Measurement

Starting
Contributes To
Value

Changes Due To

Backing

Popularity

Events

Heroism

Popularity

Role-play, media response

Identification

2-3

Popularity

Media response

Public Relations

Popularity

Role-play, downtime, media response

Competence

Popularity

Success in scenarios, media response

Methods

Investigation

Role-play, downtime

Approachability

1-5

Investigation

Changes to identification and heroism

Fame

1-5

Investigation

Changes to popularity

Power Use

1-5

Investigation

Role-play

Contacts

1-10

Investigation

Events, downtime

Conscience

1-3

Confidence

Events & role-play, downtime

Social Circle

1-5

Confidence

Role-play, downtime

Public Response

1-5

Confidence

Changes to popularity

Success Rate

Confidence

Success in scenarios

Security

1-10

Confidence

Events, changes to financial resources

THE GUARDIANS STORY

Lisa is filling out the guardians beginning
confidence in readiness to introduce her
character into the campaign.

The guardians final confidence is:

(3 + 3 + 2 + 0 + 5) x 3 = 39
This is rather on the low side (although that is
typical for a starting character).

Her conscience score starts at the default of 3,

since there is nothing in her back-story that
would indicate otherwise.

The guardian is still unsure of herself and trying to find her footing in the world of costumed
heroes.

Similarly, her social circle score also starts at 3

for the same reason.

Although her confidence of 39 is not low enough

to give her a penalty to her downtime points per
week, it is low enough that until she sorts her
life out she is going to be unable to improve her
financial and material resource levels.

Because her popularity is only 36, her public response starts at a score of 2.
The guardian has not had any successes yet, so
she starts with a success rate score of 0.
Finally, her security score starts at the same
level as her financial resources, which is 5.
ent on public opinion, neither is it dependent on how
difficult the scenario was. It is purely determined
by whether the scenario was a success in your
characters own opinion.
Whether or not a scenario was a success in this
context should be agreed with the game master.
While there is some leeway in considering a scenario
to have been a success even if you didnt achieve the
main objective (because you achieved other things
that were more important while doing it) this should
not turn into an exercise in trying to rationalise
failures by describing them in misleading terms.

This could prove a problem for her, since she

was hoping to be able to improve her material
resources as a precursor to improving her battlesuit.
Naturally, the only way to improve your success
rate is to simply undertake more scenarios and try
to succeed in them.
Starting heroes will always have a success rate of 0,
since they have not yet undertaken any successful
scenarios.

PUBLIC RESPONSE
Your public response score is an indication of how
the publics reaction to you affects your self worth.

PERSONAL PROFILE 27
As such, it is entirely derived from your popularity
score.
It is not possible to modify your public response
independently. It only changes when your popularity changes.
The possible values for public response are:
Popularity
15-30
31-45
46-60
61-75
76-90

Public response Description

1
They hate me
2
I get funny looks
3
Average
4
Im appreciated
5
They love me

As a starting hero, you will begin play with a public

response score based on your popularity score as
above.

SECURITY
Your security score is an indication of how safe
your character feels.
While costumed heroes face danger on a regular
basis, this is not a measure of that. Instead it is a
measure of the security of your characters home
life when they arent wearing their costume.
This is less about the heros own physical safety
than it is about their financial security, the security
of their relationships, and the safety and wellbeing
of their loved ones.
Security is measured on a scale from 1-10, and is
normally equal to you characters financial resources
level. Although money cant buy happiness, it can
reduce the stress of being unable to afford your
rent or the fear of losing your job because youve
spent too long away from it while fighting crime.
This is then modified by -2 if your identity is publicly
known. While you can usually keep those close to you
safe theres always the chance of some formerly
defeated enemy trying to get at you indirectly by
getting at those close to you.
This is the reason that most costumed heroes maintain a secret identity. It is partly to keep a psychological separation between their private and public
lives, but also to prevent enemies from knowing who
they are and targeting their loved ones.
Similarly, if your character is not human and does
not have the basic human needs (usually this will
require the unearthly being perk, but with some
unusual back-stories it may be possible to have this
status without that perk), your security score gets
a +2 bonus. If you dont need to eat, you dont need
to worry too much about where the next meal is
coming from.
In neither case can the modifier take your security
score below 1 or above 10.
Security is normally only modified by plot devices. If
a characters loved one is kidnapped, or a their business is targeted by villains, this will result in a drop
in security score until these issues are resolved.
It is not normally possible to increase your security score (other than by changing your financial
resources level), but you can spend downtime points
to establish a new secret identity if your old one
is compromised.
As a starting hero, your security score will be equal
to your financial resources, modified as above.

28 PERSONAL PROFILE
Financial Resources Table
Financial
Resources

Description

Home

Clothing

Transport

Destitute

Homeless

Rags

Foot

Scraping by

Hostel

A single change

Bus

Poor

Rented room

Charity shop selection

Bicycle

Average

Rented fl at

Cheap casual clothes

Moped

Comfortable

Shared house

Cheap suit

Second hand car

Well off

Small house

Quality suit

New car

Affluent

Cottage

Made-to-measure suit

4x4 or sports car

Loaded

Large town house

Designer suit

Chauffeur driven

Rich

Mansion

High fashion

Private yacht

10

Filthy rich

Castle

Personal designer

Private jet

Material Resources Table

Material
Resources

Description

None

A few simple and basic tools

(screwdriver, shovel, hammer)

A basic tool set

Power tools

Scientific tools for one speciality

Scientific tools for

many specialities

Full laboratory for one speciality

Full laboratories for

many specialities

Entire research facility

10

Multinational research facilities

FINANCIAL RESOURCES
Your financial resources score is a rough indication
of how much money and income your character has.

The financial resources table indicates what sort of

lifestyle is available to you at each level of financial
resources. This should be used as a guide when
determining what your character can afford to do
and buy, not an exact list of what you own.
Normally a starting character would have a financial
resources score of 5, but this could be lower depending on the nature of the characters back-story.
Characters cant start with a financial resources of
higher than 5 without the aid of perks.

MATERIAL RESOURCES
Your material resources score shows what level of
tools and equipment your character has access to.
While this is similar to financial resources in that
richer characters will normally have access to more
equipment, this is not necessarily the case.
Some characters could be rich but never have had a
need for the sorts of high level resources indicated
by a high material resources level.
Conversely, some characters may have privileged
access to high level corporate, governmental or academic resources that they do not own and could
never hope to afford to buy themselves.

The game does not track where every last penny

goes, and financial resources is rarely used as a
number.

Your material resources level is rarely is rarely

used as a number. However, when allocating downtime points (see the downtime section for further
details) your characters material resources must
be taken into account; especially if you are building
or inventing anything.

However, when allocating downtime points (see the

downtime section for further details) your characters financial resources must be taken into account;
especially if you are building or inventing something
that would take expensive components.

Normally a starting character would have a material

resources score of 4, but this could be lower depending on the nature of the characters back-story.
Characters cant start with a material resources of
higher than 4 without the aid of perks.

COMBAT 29
the action - whether an attack or a response to an
attack - of a single character. Particularly big or
complex actions may take up two consecutive panels
or require a double-size panel to show.
In Codename: Spandex, combat works in exactly
the same way.
A fight is split up into a number of pages. Each page
represents a few seconds of action (the exact time
taken may vary from page to page). Within that
page, each combatant is allocated a number of panels. Normally this will be four for a costumed hero
or villain, and two for mundane characters such as
bystanders or thugs and goons. Some characters
who are somewhat between the two statuses, such
as sidekicks, may get three panels per page.
Characters who are stunned only get two panels
per page.

SURPRISE
If one side in a fight is either completely unaware of
the presence of the other side or not expecting the
other side to suddenly attack them, the attacking
side may each take two panels worth of actions at
the start of the fight against which the defending
side may not take any defensive reactions.
This should be used only in the case of a complete
surprise attack. If a group of characters is on the
lookout or already suspicious then a sudden attack
will not surprise them. Only an attack from a completely undetected source will.

COMBAT BASICS

INITIATIVE

Combat in Codename: Spandex is a fast paced affair

reflecting the structure of a comic book. Characters generally take turns acting, and when they act
they will normally make some kind of attack or use
a super power. This will often require an attack roll.
The defender usually gets the chance to react to
the attack (for example by attempting to parry it)
and then the results of the attack and parry are
resolved and it moves on to the next person to take
their chosen action.

Once the fight has started and any surprise attacks

have been dealt with, at the beginning of each panel
you start by rolling to see who has the initiative
and can act first.

PAGES AND PANELS

When people fight in comics, you dont usually just
see a big bunch of full-page illustrations of the fight
with everything occurring simultaneously in each
one. Instead, a page will be split up into a number
of panels and each panel will usually concentrate on

Each side in the conflict rolls a d10, and the higher

roll wins initiative in that page. If the rolls are tied,
simply roll again.
The page then proceeds in the following order:
The winning side each get 1-4 panels worth
of actions each (in order from highest agility
to lowest).
The losing side each get all their panels worth
of actions (in order from highest agility to
lowest).

30 COMBAT
Initiative Table (Roll d10 vs d10)
Initiative
Difference

Winners Advance Panels

1-2

1 panel

3-4

2 panels

5-6

3 panels

7-9

4 panels

The winning side each get any remaining panels

worth of actions (in order from highest agility
to lowest).
The exact number of panels worth of actions that
the winning side get depends on the difference
between their d10 roll and that of the losing side,
as shown on the initiative table.
In no case can a combatant get more than their
normal number of panels per page.
Characters who are on the winning side do not have
to take all the actions that they can before the
losing side acts.
Saving a single panel in this way can also be done
from page to page if the need arises.

ACTIONS AND TIMING

It is not possible to list all the possible actions
that may be taken in combat. However, the most
common actions are:
Move up to your movement speed (in metres).
This action takes a single panel to perform. If
you have some kind of movement based super
power you may be able to use it to move much
farther than your normal movement speed in
the same time period. If you have the super
speed power (and only if you have that power),
you can spend half a panel moving up to half
your movement speed, perform an action that
takes a single panel, and then spend another
half panel moving up to half your movement
speed a second time. This move-act-move sequence takes a double-panel to perform in full,
and is the only time you ever split time down
below the level of a single panel.
Attack your opponent in melee. If using a basic
melee attack with a fist or foot or using a single
handed weapon, this action takes only a single
panel. If using a two handed weapon, it takes
a double-panel. Items may be thrown in only
a single panel, but only if they are already in
your hand.
Use a super power. Unless it says otherwise
in the description of the power, using a super

THE GUARDIANS STORY

The Guardian, while patrolling, has
encountered a crime in progress.
The villain Nefario is holding up a bank, accompanied by a group of thugs. There are a
couple of police officers trying to keep them
from leaving the scene, but they are no match
for the villains. The Guardian dashes in to
help the police.
Lisa and James each roll for initiative, with
Lisa getting an 8 and James getting a 3. Lisas
side has therefore won initiative by 5 points.
Theoretically the first page of combat will
start with The Guardian and the police officers getting 3 panels each. However, because
the police officers are not heroes, they only
get 2 panels per page. Therefore they can
only take 2 panels worth of actions despite
the high initiative roll.
After this, the villains get all their panels.
Nefario gets four, and the thugs get two each.
Once the villains have had their actions, The
Guardian and the police would now each theoretically have 1 panel of actions left to take
(because theyve taken three of their four
so far) but the police officers actually have
none left to take because they only started
with two and theyve taken both of them this
page already.
Since The Guardian has three panels to take
before the villains get their panels, she could
take three actions that take a panel each, or
an action that takes a double-panel and an
action that takes a panel (in either order).
She cant take two double-panel actions immediately, because she only has three panels
to take, not four. If she wishes to take two
double-panel actions she can take one now and
save her third panel until after the villains act
so that she can combine it with her fourth one
for her second double-panel action.

power takes a double-panel. Similarly, switching

a power on usually takes a double-panel unless
the description of the power says otherwise.
Powers that are always on - such as toughness
or armour - do not take any time to use.

COMBAT 31
Pick up an object. Whether you pick up an object to throw, to parry an attack with, to hit
someone with, or simply to run off with it; it
takes a single panel to pick something up off
the floor.
The length of time it takes to perform other actions should simply be agreed between the players
and the game master based on the actions above.
Actions that take a double-panel to perform must
be done when the character has two consecutive
panels available in which to perform them.
A character who only has a single panel left available because of the way the initiative roll worked
out (or because they have already used their other
panels on other actions) cannot start to perform a
double-panel action and then finish it later.
They must wait until they have two panels together
before starting the action (but they can save a
panel for this purpose - see the section on initiative above).

REACTIONS
When a character is attacked, they often need to
react to the attack immediately. They may wish to
parry the attack or to brace themselves against
the attack so that it doesnt knock them backwards,
for example.
In these circumstances, the character may use
their panels out of sequence. They may perform
these actions immediately (usually interrupting the
attack itself) but the panels they spend performing
them are not used until the character next gets to
use their panels.
If a character has used up panels in advance in
this way, they may no longer perform any other
action apart from further reactions until they have
skipped enough normal actions to pay back those
that they used up.
However, a hero or villain character gets four free
reactions each page against strike class 0 or strike
class 1 attacks (i.e. attacks from mundane characters). These four free reactions do not need to be
paid back like other reactions do.

PHYSICAL ATTACKS
Whether they be with fists, feet, weapons or bizarre
energy bolts, the majority of the attacks that one
combatant makes on another are physical attacks.
The attacker is trying to hit the defender with

something that will hurt them, and the defender

is trying to avoid being hit by it.
A physical attack is resolved in four stages:

The attacker rolls to hit.

The defender (optionally) takes a reaction.
The attacker rolls for damage.
The damage is applied to the defender.

To resolve a physical attack, you need to know how

good the attacker is at making attacks and how good
the defender is at avoiding them (and in the case of
tough opponents, soaking them up without injury).
The attackers prowess is determined by the strike
class of their attack. There are six possible strike
classes, numbered from 0 to 5, with higher numbers
being better:
Strike Class 0 - This is the weakest strike
class. It represents attacks by non-powered
characters who are unarmed or using a weapon
with which they are not familiar. Most mundane
people are not familiar with any weapon and will
use this strike class for any attack they make.
Strike Class 1 - This represents attacks by
non-powered characters who have a level of
skill or expertise with the attacks they are
using. It is normally used for police, soldiers,
terrorists, some criminals, and the thugs and
goons employed by villains.
Strike Class 2 - This strike class is the default
strike class used for an attack by a costumed
hero or villain. This includes standard melee
attacks and attacks with thrown objects, as
well as attacks with any power that does not
explicitly say that it uses a different strike
class.
Strike Class 3 - This represents an attack by
a costumed hero or villain with an advanced
offensive power, such as an energy blast or
most ranks of martial arts. Attacks are only
made at strike class 3 if the power specifically
says they are.
Strike Class 4 - This strike class is used for
the most advanced attacks by costumed heroes
and villains. Only characters with the weapon
mastery power or rank 3 oriental martial arts
will normally have this strike class. As with
strike class 3, the power will explicitly say that
it uses this strike class for attacks.
Strike Class 5 - This strike class represents
the pinnacle of combat capabilities and is beyond the capabilities of any character (hero

32 COMBAT
or villain) created using the rules in this book.
However, it may be used by villains created by
the game master and it may be possible for
player characters to achieve this strike class
with an attack after much character advancement.
Both the defenders prowess and toughness are
combined into a single rating called their armour
class. There are twelve possible armour classes
rated from A to L, with an A being the best and
an L being the worst.
As well as making it harder for your character to be
hit, your armour class also determines whether you
can use dodge as a reaction in combat (and whether
you get a bonus while doing so) and what damage
dividers you get. Dodging and damage dividers are
both explained more fully later in this section:

with this armour class gain no dodge bonus,

but they get S/2 and H/3 damage dividers.
Armour Class E - This armour class is used
for costumed heroes or villains who have decided to take a padded or armoured costume
as one of their three pieces of equipment. The
tougher armour of such a costume is slightly
restrictive, so the wearer gains no dodge bonus, but they get an H/2 damage divider.
Armour Class F - This armour class is used for
costumed heroes or villains whose costumes
are not padded or armoured. Characters with
this armour class rating get a +1 dodge bonus
when dodging as a reaction, but get no damage
dividers against incoming damage.

Armour Class A - This represents the toughest armour class that the game provides. Specifically, that of characters with the toughness
power at rank 4. Characters with this armour
class rating are immune to all damage from any
strike class 0 or strike class 1 attack and get
S/5 and H/6 damage dividers against other
attacks, but they may not dodge as a reaction.
Armour Class B - This armour class is used
for costumed heroes or villains who have extremely strong protective powers. Specifically,
those with armour rank 3 or toughness rank 3.
Characters with this armour class rating are
immune to all damage from any strike class 0
or strike class 1 attack and get S/4 and H/5
damage dividers against other attacks, but
they may not dodge as a reaction.
Armour Class C - This armour class is used for
costumed heroes or villains who have stronger
protective powers. Specifically, those with armour rank 2 or toughness rank 2. Characters
with this armour class rating are immune to
all damage from any strike class 0 or strike
class 1 attack and get S/3 and H/4 damage
dividers against other attacks, but they may
not dodge as a reaction.
Armour Class D - This is used for costumed
heroes or villains who have protective powers.
Specifically, those with armour rank 1 or toughness rank 1. Characters with this armour class
rating are immune to health damage from any
strike class 0 or strike class 1 attack, taking
only stamina damage from such attacks. If the
strike class 0 or strike class 1 attacks are with
mundane bullets or blades, characters with this
armour class rating are completely immune,
taking no stamina damage either. Characters

Armour Classes G, H, I & J - These represent the defensive capabilities of non-powered

characters with varying degrees of combat
skill; such as soldiers, goons and thugs. These
armour classes may include some limited mundane body armour such as stab vests or tough
leather jackets. Characters with these armour
class ratings get a +1 dodge bonus when using
dodge as a reaction, but get no damage dividers against incoming damage.
Armour Classes K & L - These armour classes
represent the defensive capabilities of nonpowered characters who are not trained in

COMBAT 33
combat. Characters with these armour class
ratings may not dodge as a reaction in combat,
and get no damage dividers against incoming
damage.

To-Hit Table (Roll number or higher)

Strike Class
1

13

12

11

10

MAKING A PHYSICAL ATTACK

13

12

11

10

13

12

11

10

Resolving a physical attack, whether it is melee or

ranged, is done by rolling a d20 and comparing it to
the target number in the chart on this page.

13

12

11

10

13

12

11

10

12

11

10

11

10

10

This attack takes a panel of the attackers time (if

done with a one-handed weapon or unarmed) or a
double-panel of the attackers time if done with a
two-handed weapon or a super power (unless the
super power description explicitly says that it only
takes a single panel to use).
In order to hit the target, the attacker must roll
the indicated number or higher on their d20 after
adding all relevant bonuses and penalties to their
roll that the situation demands.
Bonuses (or penalties) to the attack roll that should
be applied in certain situations include:
+(Attackers strike bonus)
+2 if attacker is behind target (not cumulative
with being above target)
+1 if attacker is above target (not cumulative
with being behind target)
+2 if target is unaware of the incoming attack
+4 if target is grappled or restrained
-1 to -10 if target is behind cover (judged subjectively)
-3 if target is obscured by fog or smoke
-2 if attacker is dazed
-5 if attacker is stunned
-1 per fifth of the maximum range of a ranged
attack
If the result of the to-hit roll indicates that the
attack has missed, this ends the attack. On the
other hand, if the result of the to-hit roll indicates
that the attack is on target to hit the defender,
the defender may respond with a reaction before
the results of the attack are determined.

REACTIONS TO PHYSICAL ATTACKS

If a physical attack is about to hit a defender, that
defender may take a reaction in order to reduce
the effect of the attack. No reaction is necessary
if the attack was going to miss anyway.
Normally a reaction will take a panel or double-panel
of the defenders time; and this panel is used up in
advance of the defenders next turn. However, hero

Armour Class

or villain characters may take up to four reactions

against strike class 0 or strike class 1 attacks per
page for free.
The five types of reaction that the defender can
take against a physical attack are a parry, a block,
a dodge, bracing, or a judo throw. The effect of
each of these is described in the following sections.
Normally the defender is free to choose which type
of reaction (if any) they will take to a successful
attack, but sometimes circumstances may make a
particular type of reaction impossible. A character
may only take one reaction to any given attack, even
if they are capable of more than one type.

THE PARRY REACTION

Parrying is an attempt to deflect a physical attack
before it hits, in order to reduce the amount of
damage it will do.
Parrying takes the same amount of time to do as the
attack itself takes (unless it is done as one of the
free reactions to a strike class 0 or strike class 1
attack, in which case it takes no panels).
In order to resolve the parrying attempt, the defender cross references the type of attack being
made with the type of parry they are attempting.
If the result is a -, that type of attack cannot
be parried with the type of parry the defender
wishes to use. If it is a number, the defender must
roll that number or higher on a d20 (adding their
strike bonus if they have one) in order to successfully parry the attack.
In some cases, common sense will dictate that a
parry is not possible even if the table says it is. For

34 COMBAT
Parrying Table (Roll number or higher)

Rank 3 martial arts

Rank 1-2 martial arts

Shield
(with weapon mastery)

Other melee parry

(with weapon mastery)

Other melee parry

(without weapon mastery)

Any ranged weapon

(with weapon mastery)

Any ranged weapon

(without weapon mastery)

Energy blast

Attack Type

Parry type

Rank 3 martial arts

14

Rank 1-2 martial arts

13

Other melee attack

(with weapon mastery)

10

14

Other melee attack

(without weapon mastery)

Any ranged weapon

(with weapon mastery)

10

15

11

Thrown weapon
(without weapon mastery)

13

Projectile weapon
(without weapon mastery)

14

10

Energy blast

example according to the table a thrown weapon

may be parried by a ranged weapon with which the
defender has weapon mastery on a roll of 5+. However even in a super hero world shooting a thrown
bus or large boulder in order to deflect it is simply
not going to work. However, you should try to be
lenient in these cases and only disallow the most
obviously ridiculous parry attempts.
If the parry is successful, the defender rolls virtual
damage for the parry as if it were a normal attack,
and adds together the health and stamina damage it
would do. This damage total is then used to reduce
the incoming damage from the attack, starting with
the health damage and then the stamina damage. If
there is surplus parrying damage left over after
all the attackers damage has been negated, the
excess is simply wasted. It does not affect the
attacker in any way.
If a thrown object is successfully parried by a melee
parry using a characters bare hands, the defender
may elect to catch the object rather than simply
defl ecting it (providing they have a high enough

strength to have been able to throw the object

themselves).

THE BLOCK REACTION

Blocking is an attempt to interpose an object between yourself and an incoming attack so that the
object will take the damage instead of you taking it
yourself. The advantage of blocking over parrying is
that blocking is automatically successful. However,
the disadvantage is that the item that you are using
to block the attack will be damaged by the attack
and may be destroyed.
Blocking an attack with an object that is already in
your hand takes only a single panel, regardless of
how long the attack itself took (unless it is done
as one of their free reactions to a strike class 0
or strike class 1 attack, in which case it takes no
panels).
If you do not have an object already in your hand,
you may pick one that is within reach up as part of

COMBAT 35
Dodging Table (Roll d6 + dodge bonus)

Dodge Roll

Strike Class
0

12

11

+P

10

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

+P

the reaction. This takes a single additional panel

regardless of whether or not your block is done as
one of your free reactions.
To resolve a block, simply look up how much damage it would take to destroy the object being used
to block, and reduce the incoming damage by that
much. If there is still incoming damage left over,
the blocking object is destroyed and the defending character takes the remaining damage. If the
blocking object has health remaining, then the attack has been completely blocked and the blocking
object is damaged but not yet destroyed.

THE DODGE REACTION

Dodging is an attempt to turn a hit into a miss, or
at least a mere glancing blow, by simply getting out
of the way. Characters who are particularly heavily built or heavily armoured (Armour class A-C) or
completely untrained at fighting (Armour class K-L)
are too slow to effectively dodge.

Dodging takes the same amount of time to do as the

attack itself takes (unless it is done as one of the
free reactions to a strike class 0 or strike class 1
attack, in which case it takes no panels).
The defending character rolls 1d6 and adds their
dodge bonus, and then compares the result to the
strike class of the attack they are dodging on the
dodging table. The table will indicate one of three
results:
- - The attack has not been successfully dodged
and the defender will take full damage.
- The attack has been partially dodged and the
defender will only take half the rolled damage from
the attack.
+P - The attack has been mostly dodged. The defender has the choice of either taking half the
rolled damage from the attack or spending an extra
panel on the dodge reaction in order to make the
attack miss completely. This extra panel, if taken,
is not free; even if the dodge itself is free.
Y - The attack has been completely dodged and
the defender takes no damage from it at all.

THE BRACING REACTION

Only characters with the super strength power may
take the bracing reaction. This action involves bracing oneself for the incoming attack in an attempt
not to be knocked backwards by the force of it.
Unlike the other reactions, bracing oneself for an
attack takes no panels, regardless of whether or not
it is done as one of the free reactions to a strike
class 0 or strike class 1 attack.
No roll is needed to brace oneself against an attack, and bracing oneself simply increases your
knockback threshold against the attack by +5 per
rank of super strength.

THE JUDO THROW REACTION

A judo throw is an attempt to use the attackers
momentum against them in order to overbalance
them and (hopefully) throw them to the ground.
This reaction can only be made against melee attacks, and can only be made if the defender has
taken the judo throw option as part of the martial
arts power.
To resolve the attempted judo throw, the defender
must first spend a panel trying to grab their at-

36 COMBAT

Judo Throw Roll

Judo Throw Table (Roll d6 + strike bonus)

1

3+

12

2P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

11

2P, dam

2P, dam

10

2P, dam

Physical Damage Table (By attack type)

Damage

Attack Type

Health

Stamina

Unarmed

1d6-6

2d6

2P, dam

Judo throw

1d3

2d6

2P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

Blunt one-handed
weapon

1d6-6

2d6

2P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

1d6

2d6+6

P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

Blunt two-handed
weapon

P, dam

2P, dam

2P, dam

1d6

2d6+3

P, dam

2P, dam

Blunt thrown
object or weapon

P, dam

2P, dam

Sharp one-handed
weapon

2d6

1d6

P, dam

P, dam

Sharp two-handed
weapon

2d6+3

1d6

Sharp thrown weapon

2d6+3

1d6

Projectile weapon

2d6+3

1d6+3

tacker (see the grabbing rules later in this section)

and then, if the grab was successful, spend a second
panel performing the throw. As with other reactions,
if this may be done as one of the free reactions
to a strike class 0 or strike class 1 attack, and if
it is done in this situation neither the grab nor the
throw take any future panels.
Assuming the grab was successful, the defending
character rolls 1d6 and adds their strike bonus,
looking up the result on the judo throw table.
The possible results are:
- - The throw fails. The attack hits as normal.
P - The throw succeeds. The attack misses and
the attacker is unbalanced and must lose their next
panel recovering.

Explosive weapon

3d6+3

2d6+3

Energy blast

Varies

Varies

The basic amount of damage done by a physical attack will depend on the type of attack being made,
although some super powers (such as martial arts
or weapon mastery) can change this basic amount.
Additionally, in the case of unarmed attacks, melee
attacks or thrown objects/weapons, the attacker
may add their damage bonus to the damage being
done. The attacker may split their damage bonus
between the health and stamina damage done by
the attack however they choose.

KNOCKBACK

2P - The throw succeeds. The attack misses and

the attacker is knocked prone and must lose their
next two panels recovering.

When an attacker inflicts physical damage on a defender, the defender may be knocked backwards
by the force of the attack.

Dam - The attacker is hurt and takes 2d6 stamina

damage and 1d3 health damage. If the defender has
a damage bonus, this may be added to the amount
of damage taken by the attacker. Check for knockback (see the knockback rules later in this section)
based on this damage.

Every character has a knockback threshold. Normally this will be 20, but some super powers may
alter this value. Characters who are bracing themselves add an additional 5 to this value.

DOING PHYSICAL DAMAGE

If, after both the to-hit roll and any reactions have
taken place, a physical attack is determined to have
hit the defender then it will inflict an amount of
damage. This damage is split into two types: health
damage and stamina damage. These reduce the
defenders health and stamina respectively.

When an attack deals more than the defenders

knockback threshold in stamina damage, the defender will be knocked backwards.
For the purposes of determining whether someone
is knocked back, not all damage is counted. The following rules apply:
The damage reduction for a parrying with a
ranged attack form happens before the knockback is determined.

COMBAT 37
Wall Strength Table
(For a super-hero sized hole)
Material

Damage
Needed

Knockback
Reduction

Normal glass

2m

Wood

2m

Thin metal

2m

Bulletproof glass

16

4m

Brick

16

4m

Metal door

24

6m

Stone

32

8m

Concrete

32

8m

Armour plating

32

8m

If despite this reduction in distance the knockback would still push the defender through the
obstruction then the defender breaks through the
obstruction and continues to be pushed back for
the remaining distance.
It is possible for the defender to be knocked back
through multiple obstructions (taking the 1d6 stamina damage for each of them) if they were hit hard
enough by the blow.
At the end of the knockback, the defender must
roll 1d20 and add +1 for each two metres that they
were knocked back. If the total is greater than
their agility then they are also knocked prone by the
attack and must spend their next panel recovering.

The damage reduction for a dodge happens

before the knockback is determined.

APPLYING DAMAGE

The knockback is determined before the reduction in damage due to parrying with a melee
attack form happens.

Applying damage is straightforward. Health damage

is subtracted from the defenders health total and
stamina damage is subtracted from the defenders
stamina total.

The knockback is determined before the damage reduction for a block happens.
The knockback is determined before the damage is reduced by the defenders stamina divider (see the applying damage rules in this
section).
For each five points of stamina damage (or partial
five points of stamina damage) over and above the
defenders knockback threshold, the defender is
knocked backwards two metres by the force of
the blow.
If this knocks the defender into a wall or other solid
obstruction, the defender takes 1d6 stamina damage. This reduces the distance that the defender is
knocked back by two metres for every four health
damage that it would take to break the obstruction.
If the obstruction is a wall or other large object, the
defender only needs to break a person-sized hole
in it rather than destroy it completely. However, if
it is made of brick, concrete or metal then it may
have an h divider as well as health.
For example a super hero knocked back into a brick
wall would need to make a super hero sized hole (8
health) in order to be knocked through it, but the
wall would have an h divider of /2 so it would actually
take 16 health damage to break such a hole and the
distance that the hero is being knocked back would
therefore be reduced by 8 metres (two metres per
four health damage). The wall strength table gives
precalculated examples for most common walls that
a character might be thrown or knocked back into.

In both cases, the defender may have a divider for

that type of damage (an H divider for reducing
health damage and an S divider for reducing stamina damage). This usually comes from the armour
or toughness super powers, but may additionally
be derived from a high strength score. However, a
high strength can only add to existing dividers, it
can not provide dividers on its own.
Dividers, as the name would suggest, reduce the
amount of incoming damage by dividing it. For example if you have an S divider of /3 then you would
divide all incoming stamina damage by three before
removing it from your stamina total. When using dividers, always round the amount of damage taken up.
Dividers are always applied to the remaining damage
after all reductions for reactions have been taken
off, and after knockback has been calculated.
Some attacks (for example energy blast) are capable of reducing the defenders dividers. In this
case, a divider of less than two is ignored, and does
not reduce the incoming damage at all.
Once the damage has been divided, it reduces the
defenders health or stamina (depending on the type
of damage). The effects of this are as follows:
If your health has been reduced to less than
or equal to your battered value (one tenth of
your total health score) then you are battered.
While battered, you will be conscious but you
are so badly injured that you can take no ac-

38 COMBAT
tions other than slowly dragging yourself along
the floor or similar efforts.
If your health has been reduced to exactly
zero, you are at deaths door. You are unconscious and will die in five minutes or less unless
given CPR or similar emergency aid.
If your health has been reduced to below zero,
you are dead. Theres no coming back from this,
unless by some kind of plot device (e.g. Returning as a ghost, or having your brain saved and
placed in an android body). Such plot devices
are beyond the scope of these rules and should
be used with caution lest they cheapen the
threat of death.
If your stamina has been reduced to less than
or equal to your dazed score (one fifth of your
total stamina score) then you are dazed. While
dazed your movement speed is halved and you
have a -2 penalty to all to-hit rolls.
If your stamina has been reduced to less than
or equal to your stunned score (one tenth of
your total stamina score) then you are stunned.
While stunned you only have two panels per
page, you cannot move, and you have a -5 penalty to all to-hit rolls.
If your stamina has been reduced to less than
or equal to zero then you are unconscious.
If your stamina has been reduced to less than
or equal to a negative value equal to your endurance score then any further stamina damage that you take will be taken as health damage instead.

DAMAGE TO MUNDANE CHARACTERS

Characters without super powers (police, thugs,
bystanders, and so forth) have damage to them
handled in a simpler manner.
Rather than keeping track of health and stamina
totals for such characters, simply assume that any
strike by a character using a super power (this includes weapon mastery, martial arts, and punches
from characters with the super strength or super
speed powers) will knock the mundane character
unconscious or kill them at the attackers choice;
and that any two strikes from someone not using a
super power will do the same.

RECOVERING FROM DAMAGE

Characters recover lost health and stamina points
at varying rates depending on their status.
If you are dead then you do not recover at all!
If you are battered then you heal 1d6 points of
health per day, but only if you receive hospital
treatment.
If you are not battered then you recover 1d6
points of health per hour.
First aid from a trained professional will let
you recover 1d6 points of health immediately
providing you are still alive. This cant be done
in the middle of a fight, since it takes a few
minutes.
If you are unconscious then you may roll 1d20
at the end of each page. If you roll less than
or equal to your endurance score then you recover 1d6 points of stamina.
If you are conscious then you automatically
recover 1d6 points of stamina at the end of
each page.

COMBAT 39
Object Table
Object Size/Mass

Strength Needed To

Example Objects

Health

Tablet, boot, stone

Laptop, brick, chair, monitor

Television, desk, bicycle, sign post

26kg-80kg

11

Dishwasher, fridge, moped, lamp post

81kg-195kg

11

16

Motorcycle, safe, washing machine

196kg-445kg

11

16

21

Caravan, trailer, concrete bollard

10

446kg-1,000kg

16

21

26

Sports car, glider

12

1,001kg-2,150kg

21

26

31

Hatchback car, small helicopter

14

2,151kg-4,650kg

26

31

36

4x4 vehicle, van

16

4,651kg-10t

31

36

41

Jet fighter, coach, fl atbed truck

18

Push

Lift

Throw

< 1kg

1kg-4kg

5kg-25kg

10.1t-21.5t

36

41

46

Lorry, bulldozer

20

21.6t-46.5t

41

46

51

Articulated lorry, train carriage, private jet

22

46.6t-100t

46

51

56

Tank, train locomotive, fishing boat

25

101t-215t

51

56

61

Space shuttle, hovercraft, steam train

28

216t-465t

56

61

66

Passenger ferry, jumbo jet

31

466t-1,000t

61

66

71

Minesweeper, passenger ferry

34

1,001t-2,150t

66

71

76

Submarine, frigate

37

2,151t-4,650t

71

76

81

Destroyer, rocket

40

4,651t-10,000t

76

81

86

Cruiser, container vessel

45

10,001t-21,500t

81

86

91

Oil tanker, heavy cruiser

50

21,501t-46,500t

86

91

96

Battleship, cruise liner

55

46,501t-100,000t

91

96

101

Aircraft carrier, oil rig

60

If you have a particularly high or low endurance

score, the amount recovered in each of these cases
may vary. For example a character with an endurance of 18 will recover 1d6+1 health or stamina instead of 1d6.
Similarly, some super powers may affect the rate
at which you recover.

OBJECTS IN COMBAT
Inanimate objects may be involved in a combat situation in a number of ways. Characters may throw
them at each other, use them to block, hide behind
them, be knocked back into them, or just plain try
to destroy them.
In game terms, objects are given a health score
as if they were a character and may be broken or
destroyed if they take enough health damage; but
have no stamina score and are immune to stamina
damage.
The objects table shows a variety of sizes of object
along with how much strength is needed to push,

lift and throw them and how much health damage

is needed to destroy them.
Some objects, such as tanks, are heavily armoured
or otherwise solidly built. Although this does not
give them extra health for their mass, such objects
should be given an h divider to represent how solid
they are. Generally this should have a value of /2
for brick, /3 for thin metal, or /4 for stone, concrete
and armour-plated metal.
If a character is trying to tear off a smaller piece
of a large object or tear a smaller hole in a larger
object, use the size of the piece or hole as a guideline rather than the size of the whole object.
A character with just enough strength to push an
object can spend a panel to roughly move it a metre.
A character with enough strength to lift an object
can push it at half their normal movement speed. A
character with enough strength to throw an object
can push it at their full movement speed.
If an object has wheels, rollers, is on ice, or is floating in water, it only requires half the shown strength
score to push it.

40 COMBAT
THE GUARDIANS STORY
Its The Guardians turn to act, and she
has three panels worth of actions that
she can take. Since she has no ranged attacks,
she spends her first action moving into melee
range with Nefario, leaving her two panels left.
She spends the first panel trying to hit Nefario.
Nefario has no armour, just a normal costume,
so he is armour class F. The Guardians unarmed
attacks are strike class 2. Lisa looks at the tohit table and sees that she needs to roll a 10 or
better on 1d20 to hit him. She has no modifiers
to this for any unusual circumstances.
Lisa rolls the die and gets a 14, easily enough to
hit him. Shes about to pick up the dice to roll
for her damage when James stops her. Nefario
is going to try to parry the punch with his staff.
Neither of the combatants has the weapon mastery power, so this is a case of a normal melee
attack against a normal melee parry. According to
the parrying table, this means that James needs
to roll a 9 or higher. He rolls a 20, and Nefario
has parried the blow.
James now rolls virtual damage for the parry. As
Nefario is using a two handed blunt weapon, this
is 2d6+3 stamina damage and 1d6 health damage
which, because this is a parry, is added together
to make a single total. Nefario has no damage
bonus. James rolls 3, 5 and 2 on the dice giving
him a total of 13.
Lisa now rolls for The Guardians damage from
her punch. Because of The Guardians strength,
she needs to roll 2d6 stamina damage and 1d6-6
health damage. She is adding all of The Guardians +30 damage bonus to the stamina damage,
so she doesnt even bother to roll the 1d6-6 for
health damage - it cant actually roll any damage.
Rolling a 2 and a 4, she gets a total of 36 stamina
damage.

his knockback threshold of 20, he is knocked

back four metres.
Having a quick look at the sketched map that he
drew of the area of the fight, James sees that
Nefario is standing directly in front of a normal
wooden door that leads into an office.
Nefario takes another 1d6 stamina damage as
he slams into the door, and the two metres of
reduced knockback that the door gives him isnt
enough to stop him. The door splinters as he flies
back another two metres into the room beyond.
Luckily for him, the room more than two metres
wide so he doesnt hit its back wall.
Nefario must now roll 1d20 and add four (because
he was knocked back four metres), and try to
get under his agility score to remain on his feet.
Rolling a 2, he easily does this.
Flushed with success, and feeling rather confident, The Guardian spends her final panel advancing to where Nefario landed while telling him to
give up because hes no match for her strength.
Now its Nefarios turn to act. He would normally
get all four of his panels at this point, but he
used one up in advance parrying The Guardians
attack so he only has three left.
Nefario spends his first panel fl ying over The
Guardians head back into the main atrium of the
bank where he is confident that he can hover at
ceiling level out of her reach.
His remaining two panels are spend shooting her
with an energy blast from his staff. This attack
is strike class 3, and takes a double-panel to use.
However, if it hits it will do 6d6 stamina damage
and 4d6 health damage. Looking at strike class 3
against The Guardians armour class B, James
will need to roll a 10 or better to hit her, but
he will get +2 to his roll because Nefario is now
hovering behind The Guardian.
He rolls a 16, and hits.

The 13 virtual damage from the parry is subtracted from this, leaving Nefario to take the
remaining 23 stamina damage. He has no s divider,
so he takes all 23 and it nearly dazes him.

Lisa is now in a quandary. The Guardian cant

parry the blast with any of the attacks she has,
and she cant dodge because her armour isnt
manoeuvrable enough.

However, because the strike did 30 damage before the parry reduced it, this is enough to knock
Nefario off his feet. Since it is ten more than

The only thing she can do is to grab a desk and

try to use it to block the worst of the blast.

COMBAT 41
Weighing up her odds, she decides that losing
three whole panels (one to grab the desk, and
two to interpose it against a double-panel attack)
simply arent worth it for the limited amount of
damage that it would stop, so instead she simply relies on the protection of her armour, and
instead braces herself so that she isnt knocked
back by the blast (bracing doesnt use up any
future panels).
James rolls the dice for the energy blast and
gets lucky. He rolls 4, 3, 1, 6, 6, 4 for a total of 24
stamina damage and rolls 3, 5, 5, 4 for a total
of 17 health damage.
The 24 stamina damage would normally be enough
to knock someone backwards, but because The
Guardian is bracing herself it she stays where
she is.
The Guardian normally has an S divider of /6 and
an H divider of /6, but because this is an energy
blast it says in the description of the power that
it reduces dividers by two, so her dividers are
both effectively /4.
Similarly, a character with just enough strength
to lift an object can only stagger with it at half
their normal movement speed. A character with
enough strength to throw an object can carry it
at normal speed.
Thrown objects do not do extra damage based on
their mass. Instead, the throwers damage bonus
is used for all objects more massive than 1kg. Characters can throw lighter objects harder than they
can throw heavier objects, and for game purposes
it can all be considered to balance itself out in the
long run.
The distance that a character can throw an object is
two metres per point of strength above the minimum
required to throw it. If the character has exactly
the minimum required strength then the object
can only be thrown a single metre. If the object is
particularly unaerodynamic (such as a fl ailing person) then it can only be thrown half this distance.

GRABBING
Instead of trying to destroy an object or trying to
hurt someone, characters will often try to grab a
person or object in combat.
This could be grabbing an item to use it to block
an incoming attack or to throw it; or it could be
grabbing an attacker as a prelude to using a judo

Therefore The Guardian takes 24/4=6 stamina

damage and 17/4=5 health damage.
While doing this, Nefario shouts to his goons to
grab hostages and shoot them if The Guardian
attacks him again. Each of his goons spends their
two panels grabbing a hostage.
Now that the bad guys have had their turns,
its back to The Guardian. She still has a panel
remaining, and she uses it to move back out into
the atrium and survey the scene. There are three
goons, each with a gun to the head of a hostage;
a fourth goon stuffing money into a sack; and
Nefario is hovering above her looking hurt but
smug.
Thats the end of the first page of the combat,
so everyone whos conscious regains some 1d6
stamina.
Lisa hopes that shell win the initiative next round
and desperately thinks of how she can try to
save all three hostages without letting Nefario
escape...
throw on them; or it could be something mundane
like grabbing the MacGuffin before the villain does
in order to escape with it.
Grabbing always takes a single panel to execute,
and is automatically successful against inanimate
objects. Grabbing an enemy combatant requires a
to-hit roll as if striking the opponent. Normally it is
not possible to grab items or people with a weapon
(unless you are using a whip) so usually this will be
the equivalent of an unarmed strike rather than a
weapon attack.
When defending against a grab, you may use the
parry, dodge and judo throw reactions, just as when
defending against a strike, but you cannot use the
block or bracing reactions.
When the defender is parrying or blocking a grab,
the attacker should roll 1d6 and add their damage
bonus. This total should be used as virtual health
damage score. It does not actually get inflicted on
the defender, and is merely used to see whether
the parry or block is successful. In the case of a
block, the virtual damage will not actually damage or
destroy the blocking object. The attacker is pushing
past the object rather than hitting it.
In the case of the grab that forms part of a judo
throw, this may end up with the attacker and defender grabbing and counter-grabbing for quite a
few panels before one of them finally misses. Char-

42 COMBAT
acters involved in such a tussle should beware of
spending too many panels in advance and ending up
missing important things happening elsewhere in the
fight because theyre too distracted going mano-amano with their immediate opponent.

GRAPPLING AND RESTRAINING

If an attacker wishes to hold and restrain the defender rather than simply strike them, the attacker
may choose to perform a grapple on their target.
The attacker must first grab their target, and then
also make a second successful grab on the same
target.
If this second grab succeeds then the defender is
considered to be grappled.
A grappled character may not make any attacks,
and may only spend their actions either attempting
to wriggle out of the grapple (treat this as if the
defender were retroactively trying to dodge the
second grab; the defender needs to make the grab
miss in order to escape) or by trying to force their
way out of the grapple by strength (treat this as
if the defender were retroactively trying to parry
the second grab; the attacker needs to roll 1d6 +
damage bonus as virtual health damage and the
defender needs to roll a successful parry against
the attacker and beat the virtual damage - see the
grabbing section above).

Either attempt to escape a grapple can be tried as

often as the grappled defender has actions.
Depending on the super powers they have, the defender may be able to use other actions while grappled. For example the defender may be able to fly
carrying their grappler with them, or may be able
to teleport out of the grapple or phase or shrink
their way out of it. Common sense should be used
to adjudicate such situations.
A character who is merely grabbed may take any action, including attacking the person who has grabbed
them, without penalty - with the exception that they
cannot move away from the person who has grabbed
them (although if they are strong enough they can
move away dragging their grabber with them).
Character who are grabbed may attempt to wriggle
or force their way out of the grab just like those
who are grappled.
If you have successfully grappled a person, you do
not just have to stand there holding them while they
try to escape. When you next have spare panels
you can try to actively hurt them by a combination of crushing, choke holds, and other wrestling
manoeuvres.
Such manoeuvres need no to-hit roll, although the
defender can respond with a dodge or parry reaction, and in a single panel the grappler can inflict up
to 1d6 stamina damage and 1d6-6 health damage.
The grapplers damage bonus applies (and is split

COMBAT 43
between the two) as normal. If the dodge or parry
is successful, this does not mean that the grapple
is broken; only that the manoeuvre was successfully avoided.

H dividers and S dividers are doubled when factoring falling damage, and if the character lands
on something soft then additional dividers may be
added at the game masters discretion.

THROWING PEOPLE AROUND

Characters who are thrown or knocked off an edge

can respond with a reaction to grab the edge and
prevent themselves from falling, and characters
with the acrobatics super power can slow their fall
to prevent all damage providing they are falling
adjacent to some kind of surface (a cliff, a building, or similar).

If an attacker wishes to pick up and throw an unwilling defender, this takes two panels. Firstly the
attacked must grab the defender (this can be countered by the normal reactions available to someone
being grabbed) and then the attacker must take a
second panel to throw the defender.
This does not require a to-hit roll, but the attacker
must be strong enough to throw something with the
mass of the defender.
The defender may respond to being thrown with
one of two reactions.
Firstly they may successfully grab their attacker.
If successful, this will prevent their attacker from
throwing them.
Secondly they may use any attack they have on
their attacker as if it were a reaction.
This attack-as-reaction is resolved as a normal attack, and if the attacker is dazed, stunned, knocked
unconscious, battered or killed by it then they are
unable to make the throw. If the attack simply hurts
the thrower then the throw still happens (but the
damage is applied normally).
If the throw happens, work out the distance that
the character is thrown (one metre per point of
the throwers strength above the minimum needed
to throw the character - for a character with the
mass of an average super hero this works out to
one metre per point of strength over 16) and treat
the throw as if it were a knockback of the same
distance.

FALLING
Most of the time when people are being thrown in
combat, they are not being thrown into something,
but thrown off something - a rooftop, a cliff, out
of an aeroplane, and so forth.

PSYCHIC AND MAGIC ATTACKS

Characters with some super powers are able to make
non-physical attacks using their magic or psychic
abilities.
These attacks are resolved by the attacker rolling 1d20 + will and the defender also rolling 1d20 +
will. If the attackers total is at least as high as the
defenders, the attack succeeds and the magical or
psychic effect is applied to the defender.
Magical and psychic attacks cannot be dodged, parried or blocked, as they are not tangible. However,
the defender can choose to actively resist the attack as a reaction. This takes a double-panel to do,
and retroactively adds and additional 1d6 to the
defenders roll to avoid the attack.
Note that magical energy blasts are physical in nature and use the normal rules for physical attacks,
not these magical attack rules.

FINISHING MOVES
Since each super powered character gets a chance
to recover some stamina each page, even while unconscious, its highly likely that someone will be able
to return to the fight even when theyre down.
In order to keep someone down, any character can
perform a finishing move on a target that is either
unconscious or stunned. A finishing move takes a
double-panel to perform, and is automatically successful at knocking the target out for 1d6 hours.

A character who has fallen takes 1d6 health damage

and 1d6 stamina damage per five metres that they
fell, with a maximum of 20d6 of each type.

Characters who have been knocked out by a finishing

move recover health as normal, but do not start to
recover stamina until the duration of the finishing
move induced knockout has ended.

If the character jumps rather than simply falling,

they can reduce the effective distance fallen by
five metres.

However, it is possible for an ally or other concerned

individual to end the knockout early by the application of first aid.

44 DOWNTIME
DOWNTIME BASICS
The life of a super hero isnt all excitement. Although this game concentrates on those exciting
parts of the your characters life when they are
saving the world and battling villains and so forth,
the majority of the characters actual time is spent
doing mundane things like working in their day jobs,
socialising with friends, training at the gym, and
so forth.
Although these activities are less interesting to
play out in detail (although theres nothing stopping
you doing that if your group really wants to) they
are actually just as important to your character as
the exciting moments are.
This is particularly true when it comes to character
development. While some of the scores in your characters personal profile are likely to change because
of things that have happened during a session - for
example if your character foils a terrorist plot that
is likely to increase their success rate and probably
their confidence too - other scores are likely to
change due to mundane things in your characters
life that arent covered in detail in a playing session - for example working hard in their day job and
getting a promotion that will increase their financial
resources or spending time reconciling with past
actions which will increase their conscience rating.
Similarly, increasing your ability scores or boosting your powers is something that is usually done
over the course of a long period of training rather
than something that just happens as a result of
stopping a crime.
In game terms, this is handled by a downtime system.

DOWNTIME POINTS
Every character gets a set of downtime points each
game week. These points represent the amount of
characters free time when they are not working.
Normally a character will have 7 of these points per
week, but some characters with a particularly low
confidence score will get fewer (they dont make
productive use of their time because theyre too
busy moping) and characters with the idle rich perk
will get more because of their increased free time.
These seven points roughly represent one per day,
although tracking them point by point on an exact
daily basis would be too fiddly, so they should be
tracked on a weekly basis.

Dont worry if the characters spend a day and a half

tracking a villain down, for example. Just give them
the weeks worth as normal for that week. Its only
if characters are involved in intensive shenanigans
that take them out of their normal environment for
an extended period of time (at least a week) that
downtime points should not be given for that week.

SPENDING DOWNTIME POINTS

Spending downtime points is easy. You decide what
your character will be doing during the week, and
tell the game master. Your character could spend
the whole week doing one thing, or could do more
than one thing, splitting their downtime points between the different activities.
If your character is deliberately working towards
some specific goal, then also tell the game master
what that goal is.
Theres no limit (within reason, of course) to what
you can have your character do during downtime in
that theres no specific list of activities to choose
from. Different characters will have different goals
and interests, and may end up doing as wide a variety of things as a person in the real world would.
Note that when it comes to goals, these do not have
to be the characters goals. They can be the players
goals. For example if you want your character to
improve their strength score you can suggest that
your character goes to the gym each day.

DOWNTIME 45
Downtime Point Experience Table
Suitability of
Activity to Goal

Experience
Points Gained

Completely Unsuitable

A Poor Fit

Average

Well Suited

Ideal

However, your character isnt necessarily making a

deliberate attempt to get stronger. They may be
simply visiting the gym because they enjoy it and any
increase to their strength score that comes out of
it would be incidental to their main purpose - which
was to have fun.
It is also important to remember that your character is limited by their financial resources and their
material resources.
If your character is destitute they cant spend their
time schmoozing the rich and famous or having expensive fencing lessons. Similarly if your character
cant start building complex electronic devices if
they dont have at least the basic tools and preferably a fully fitted out workshop.

EXPERIENCE POINTS
The game master should keep a track of what the
goals of each character are and how they are spending their downtime points.
As part of this tracking, the game master must
make a subjective decision about how well suited
the characters activity is for their goal, and look
this up on the downtime point experience table. This
will give a number of experience points towards the
characters goal per downtime point from 1 to 5,
depending on the suitability.
It is up to your group whether this is done by agreement with the whole group or whether it is done
secretly by the game master without the players
knowing what multipliers they have. Neither way
is more correct than the other, and it is merely a
matter of preference.
If possible, activities should always give a total of
five experience points with those not contributing
to the main goal being allowed to contribute to other
secondary goals or results instead.
For example a character who is trying to increase
their public relations score by regularly patrolling
the streets may find that although this isnt the
best way of doing that (the group agree that it is

THE GUARDIANS STORY

After her initial introduction where
she foiled a bank robbery being committed by Nefario, The Guardian has a week
of downtime.
James asks her how The Guardian will spend
this time, and Lisa looks down at the character sheet in front of her and tries to decide.
What shed really like to do is to improve her
battle suit and add some nifty new powers
to it. However, in her current situation she
hasnt a hope of being able to do that. She
simply doesnt have the material resources
to be able to attempt such a thing.
Unfortunately she cant improve her material resources (or her financial resources) yet
because her confidence score is less than 46.
So she looks at the things that contribute to
her confidence score to see which of them she
can devote time and attention to.
Unfortunately, the biggest factor is her success rate and for that score to improve she
needs to go out and solve crimes rather than
do particular things during downtime. However, she can help things along by trying to
improve her public response score. This is
based on her popularity and if she can get
herself more popular with the public then this
will increase.
Lisa therefore declares that The Guardian will
spend the week patrolling the streets of her
local area with an emphasis on making herself
visible and helping people who need it (not just
from crimes).
James decides that each downtime point she
spends on this type of patrolling will give her 3
experience points towards an increase in public relations, 1 experience point towards an
increase in backing (as she gets community
support) and 1 experience point towards an
increase in fame as she makes the local papers
and is seen on local television news.
Since her current public relations score is 3, it
will take her 30 experience points to increase
it; which works out at ten days of this type of
patrolling. At the end of that ten days, shell
also have accumulated 10 experience points
towards each of the other improvements.

46 DOWNTIME
Experience Point Cost Table
Desired
Result

Experience Points
Needed

Increase a
Personal Profile Score

10 x current score

Increase an
Ability Score

10 x current score

Increase a
Resource Level

10 x current score

Keep an Increase

5 per week for

(New score) weeks

Create a Device

Varies

Acquire a
New Super Power

30 x current powers

Improve a
Super Powers Rank

100 x current rank

average and should give 3 experience points per

downtime point) it has the side effect of both enabling them to keep in touch with what is happening
on the streets and also keep them in touch with
various informers and other contacts. As such it also
gives them an experience point towards increasing their methods score and an experience point
towards increasing their contacts score. This gives
their patrolling a total multiplier of five experience
points per development point.
Depending on their personalities, powers and how
they describe their activities, two characters who
both perform the same activity may accumulate
experience points towards different results.

Its even possible for a player not to have a particular goal in mind when declaring an activity and
have all five experience points per downtime point
spent on the activity contribute to other results.

OPTION: SIMPLER EXPERIENCE

If this system sounds a bit too complicated and involved for your group, you can agree to use a simpler
experience system.
Instead of the players declaring what their characters downtime actions are and the game master
adjudicating the effectiveness of those actions,
just let players spend their downtime points directly on the improvements they want and simply
assume that their characters are acting in appropriate ways without bothering to detail exactly what
those ways are.
If you do this, you should divide all the experience
costs for the various improvements by 5 in order to
derive the equivalent downtime point costs (except
for acquiring new super powers which should only be
divided by 3, because you wouldnt normally be able
to get 5 experience points per day when doing that).

IMPROVING PERSONAL PROFILE SCORES

Any personal profile score can be improved by appropriate downtime activities, with the exception
of those that specifically say that they cannot be
improved in this way (Competence, approachability,
fame, success rate, public response and security).
In order to increase a personal profile score by a
single point, you need to accumulate 10 experience
points multiplied by the current value of the score.
Once the required experience has been accumulated, the score increases.
However, once the increase has occurred, your must
make sure that your characters situation doesnt
simply revert back to what it was before once they
suddenly stop putting the extra effort in.
In order to keep the increase, your activities must
give you five experience points per week towards it
for a number of weeks equal to the new score. If you
skip more than two consecutive weeks before you
have done this, your increased score will revert back
to its former value. These five experience points
per week are used up maintaining the increase, and
do not accumulate towards further increases.
No personal profile score can be increased beyond
its normal maximum (either 5 or 10).

DOWNTIME 47
Device Components Table
Complexity

Material Resources
Needed

Experience Points Per Stage

Anyone could make it

Needs some know-how

10

Needs knowledge
and equipment

15

Needs specialist
equipment

20

Needs precision work and

innovative research

25

Device Components Table

Components
Needed

Financial Resources
Needed

Cheap, common parts

Average, common
parts

Hard to find or
expensive parts

Custom-made
hi-tech parts

Secret, illegal or
cutting edge parts

IMPROVING ABILITY SCORES

In order to increase one of your ability scores by a
single point, you need to accumulate 10 experience
points multiplied by the current value of the score.

IMPROVING RESOURCE LEVELS

In order to increase your financial resources or
your material resources by a single point, you need
to accumulate 10 experience points multiplied by the
current value of the score. However, you are only
able to increase your financial resources or material resources if you have a confidence score of at
least 46. With too little self-confidence its hard
to make the changes in lifestyle that are needed.
Once the required experience has been accumulated, the score increases.
However, once the increase has occurred, your must
make sure that your characters situation doesnt
simply revert back to what it was before once they
suddenly stop putting the extra effort in.

Once the required experience has been accumulated, the score increases. However, once the increase has occurred, your must make sure that your
characters situation doesnt simply revert back to
what it was before once they suddenly stop putting
the extra effort in.

In order to keep the increase, your activities must

give you five experience points per week towards it
for a number of weeks equal to the new score. If you
skip more than two consecutive weeks before you
have done this, your increased score will revert back
to its former value. These five experience points
per week are used up maintaining the increase, and
do not accumulate towards further increases.

In order to keep the increase, your activities must

give you five experience points per week towards
it for a number of weeks equal to the new score.

Neither financial resources nor material resources

can be increased beyond their normal maximum
of 10.

If you skip more than two consecutive weeks before you have done this, your increased score will
revert back to its former value. These five experience points per week are used up maintaining the
increase, and do not accumulate towards further
increases.

Characters with the boffin perk may spend their

time inventing devices that use their area of expertise.

Ability scores can only be increased to a maximum

value of 21 by this method. Beyond that they can
only be increased by the acquisition of or improvement of relevant super powers.

The rules for creating devices assume that the device is going to be an additional piece of equipment
that the character uses. This could be anything
from an encrypted tracking device to a custom ve-

CREATING DEVICES

48 DOWNTIME
hicle or anything else the character desires. However, a device can only have mundane abilities - not
super powers.
If you wish to build a device with actual super powers built in (for example an energy blaster, a suit
of power armour or a teleporter) you must use the
rules for acquiring new super powers. The actual
device is just a special effect of the new super
power and is not created using these rules.
When inventing a device, you are constrained by
both your material resources level and your financial
resources level.
The device components table shows the minimum
level of financial resources needed to be able to buy
the component parts and research materials for the
device, and the device complexity table shows both
the minimum level of material resources needed to
put it together as well as the amount of experience
points that must be spent completing it.
This cost in experience points must be spent a total
of four times, for the research, design, production
and testing stages of making the device.
If a design is particularly complex and the finished
device will have multiple functions, the game master (or group) may decide that each stage must be
repeated separately for each function that the
device has.
If you already have designs for your device that
you know work you can skip the research and design
stages.

NEW SUPER POWERS

It is possible to acquire a new super power with
suitable downtime activities. The cost of this is
a number of experience points equal to 30 times
the number of different powers your character
already has.
However, gaining a new super power should take
unusual downtime activities. Gaining acrobatics or
super strength isnt as simple as going down to the
gym once a week and hitting the weights; particularly if you dont already have similar powers.
This means that a downtime activity must generally
be particularly focused on gaining the new power
and must be an activity that is out of the ordinary
and not available to everyday folks.
This may involve using expensive or specialist equipment (and therefore a high financial resources or
material resources score), or it may involve some

kind of esoteric study, it all depends on your characters back-story and how their existing powers
are rationalised.
It should be rare for any downtime activity to contribute five experience points per downtime point
on the acquisition of a new super power unless the
power itself and the downtime activity both fit well
with the characters back-story and existing powers.
Most downtime activities directed at the acquisition
of new super powers will contribute no more than
three experience points per downtime point towards
it and the other experience points generated from
that activity should contribute to side benefits of
the activity where possible.

IMPROVING SUPER POWERS

Improving existing super powers is very similar to
acquiring new ones. To increase the rank of a super
power by one takes a number of experience points
equal to 100 times the current number of ranks
that the power has.
It is not possible to increase the rank of a super
power beyond its normal limit, and in the case of
super powers that have different sub-powers or flavours gaining an additional sub-power from the list
counts as acquiring a new power rather than merely
increasing the rank of an existing power unless the
power description specifically says that increasing
it in rank gives you an additional sub-power.
The downtime activity for improving an existing
super power doesnt need to be quite so focused as
that needed to gain a new power, because by definition increasing a power you already have is always
going to fit with your existing powers. However, it
will still require some kind of exotic or expensive activity, and this requirement should become harsher
the higher the rank of the power.

SUPPORTING CAST 49
CIVILIANS
Basic civilians can fill the roles of innocent bystanders, hostages, and many others.
Rather than keeping track of health and stamina
totals for such characters, simply assume that any
strike by a character using a super power (this includes weapon mastery, martial arts, and punches
from characters who have super strength or super
speed) will knock the mundane character unconscious or kill them at the attackers choice; and that
any two strikes from someone not using a super
power will do the same.
Civilians get two panels per page.
Ability scores for different types of civilian are
listed below:
Normal adult - Ability scores = 1d3+2. Normal
adults have armour class L and strike class 0
with whatever weapon or unarmed attack they
use.
Street tough - Ability scores = 1d6+2. Street
toughs have armour class K and strike class 1
with unarmed combat or knives, strike class 0
with guns.
Specialists - Ability scores = 1d3+2 (physical)
and 2d6 (mental) or vice versa. Specialists include scientists, athletes, and other adults who
are trained and talented either physically or
mentally. They have armour class J and strike
class 0 with whatever weapon or unarmed attack they use.
Children - Ability scores = 1d3, and in general
the sum of their ability scores will equal their
age. Children are armour class L and strike
class 0 with whatever weapon or unarmed attack they use.

COMBATANTS
Combatants are characters without super powers
but whom are combat trained and equipped.
This group includes both those on the side of law
(police, army, security guards) and those on the
side of villainy (thugs, bodyguards, terrorists, petty
criminals).
As with normal civilians, rather than keeping track
of health and stamina totals for such characters,
simply assume that any strike by a character using
a super power (this includes weapon mastery, mar-

tial arts, and punches from characters with super

strength or super speed) will knock the mundane
character unconscious or kill them at the attackers
choice; and that any two strikes from someone not
using a super power will do the same.
Combatants should roll 1d6+2 for each ability score,
have strike rank 1 with their weapon, and (if you
wish to randomise their combat prowess) roll 1d6
and consult the list below.
Roll
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Weapon
Armour class
Unarmed
L
Nightstick
K
Knife
J
Pistol
I
Pistol
I
Shotgun
H
Sub-machine gun
H
Hi-tech blaster
G

The Hi-tech blaster should be treated as either

a rank 1 energy blast power or the stunning attack
power.
Combatants who are employed in a well-trained combat role (such as soldiers or henchmen to a powerful
villain) should add +1 to both their ability score rolls
and their combat prowess roll. Elite combatants
(special agents, bodyguards to important people)
should add +2 to both those rolls.
Combatants without super powers should get two
panels per page.

ROBOTS AND ANDROIDS

Although there are a myriad of possibilities when
it comes to artificial constructs, this game splits
them into two types: robots and androids.
Robots do not have free will, only artificial logic.
As such, they do not have a stamina value and are
immune to stunning damage. In order to be stopped
they must be destroyed by sufficient health damage. Robots occasionally have super powers, and
their ability scores can vary wildly depending on
the needs of the game. Similarly, the number of
panels per page that they get will vary depending
on how important they are.
It is also possible for robots to have some of the
more straightforward super powers, although it is
not possible for a player character to be a robot.
Building a robot is considered to be making a device (see the downtime section for more details on
making devices), although they should be consid-

50 SUPPORTING CAST
ered to be cutting edge technology with expensive
components.

plot device rather than as something that players

can make.

If the robot is to have powers, then installing these

powers in the robot takes the same amount of time
as acquiring the power oneself, except that the cost
is based on the number of powers the robot has
(simply being a robot counts as a power in itself)
rather than the number of powers its creator has.

If a player particularly wants to make an android, it

should be a long term project that only a character
with the boffin perk can manage, which requires at
least material resources 9 and financial resources 9,
and which is bought as the character acquiring the
sidekick super power.

Similarly, increasing the rank of a robots power

takes the same amount of experience points as
increasing the rank of one of your own powers except that the cost is based on the current rank of
the robots power.

Once an android is made, it has free will just like

any other character and wont slavishly obey its
creator like a robot does.

In either case, because robots are not self-aware

they are unable to gain experience and improve
themselves. Instead their creators must work on
them spending the downtime points themselves.

ANIMALS
Animals often play a part in super hero stories,
either as sidekicks or problems that must be dealt
with. Their ability scores will normally vary depending on their size and species, although they will
normally have strike class 1, armour class H, and
two panels per page.
As with normal civilians, rather than keeping track
of health and stamina totals for animals, simply assume that any strike by a character using a super
power (this includes weapon mastery, martial arts,
and punches from characters with super strength
or super speed) will knock the animal unconscious
or kill them at the attackers choice; and that any
two strikes from someone not using a super power
will do the same.
Animal sidekicks should be assumed to be superior
to normal animals and should be created as full
characters in the same way that normal sidekicks
are.

Unlike robots, androids are fully sapient. Androids

are much more advanced than robots and are capable of free will and self repair. In essence, they
are alive.
Because of this, androids are treated the same
mechanically as any other super hero. They can be
stunned or knocked unconscious, and they get their
own downtime points. As such are suitable for use
as player characters and (assuming your campaign
includes such things) player characters can include
being an android in their back-story.
As with robots, the ability scores of an android can
vary tremendously, but a player character android
should be assumed to have the same range of ability
scores as any other player character.
Building an android is far beyond normal technology levels, and cannot be done by simply creating
them as a device. Normally they will appear as a

POWERS 51
ACCURACY
You can aim very precise shots and immediately size
up the geometry of areas just by looking at them.
Rank 1: Your aim is so accurate that by bouncing
your shots off other objects, you can make attacks
that are hard to track with one ranged attack form
that you possess.
Before rolling to hit, you may decide to subtract any
amount from your to-hit roll. If you still hit even
with this penalty, the target of your attack suffers
the same penalty on any parry or dodge roll they
make against the attack.
You may bounce your attacks off other combatants in order to hit your targets, but because such
bounced attacks must necessarily be glancing blows
they do not hurt the person they are bounced off
if that person is a super powered character (although if the person you bounce the attack off is
a mundane character, the bounced shot does count
as an attack with a super power and therefore does
knock them out or kill them).
Rank 2: Your precise aim at vulnerable spots gives
you a +5 damage bonus with the attack form with
which you are precise.
Additionally, for each additional panel you spend
aiming before taking your shot before attacking you
get an additional +5 damage bonus with the attack,
up to a maximum of +25.

ACROBATICS
You have incredible acrobatic skills. You can swing on
lines, walk on tightropes, balance on narrow ledges,
and so forth with no chance of failure.
Rank 1: You are able to leap 4 metres in a single
panel. Also, if you possess some kind of grapple or
line-slinger, you can use it to swing from tall buildings or high objects; swinging at double your normal
movement speed in a single swing that takes a panel
to perform, or four times your normal movement
speed in a single swing that takes a double-panel
to perform.
Additionally, you get a +2 dodge bonus.
If you swing or leap at least 4 metres into combat
directly before making an attack, you can either
gain a +2 damage bonus on one of your normal melee
attacks or make a special fl ying kick attack that
does 1d6 health damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage.
The flying kick attack takes a panel to perform, and

uses up a second panel in advance (similar to taking

a reaction) during which you must recover.
Rank 2: You can leap up to 8 metres in a doublepanel, or make a number of 4 metre leaps with a
total distance of twice your normal movement speed
in a double-panel.
Additionally, your dodge bonus increases to +3.

ARMOUR
You wear a protective suit of some kind that makes
you harder to hurt.
Rank 1: You have an armour class of D, an H divider
of /3 and an S divider of /2.
Also, you are immune to health damage from any
strike class 0 or strike class 1 attack, taking only
stamina damage from such attacks. If the strike
class 0 or strike class 1 attacks are with mundane
bullets or blades, you are completely immune, taking
no stamina damage either.
Rank 2: You have an armour class of C, an H divider
of /4 and an S divider of /3.
You are immune to all damage from any strike class 0
or strike class 1 attacks, but you may not dodge as
a reaction.
Rank 3: You have an armour class of B, an H divider
of /5 and an S divider of /4.

52 POWERS
You are immune to all damage done by any strike
class 0 or strike class 1 attacks, but you may not
dodge as a reaction.

Cybernetic implants table

Roll (1d10)

Implant

Bionic arm

Retractable glider

Hologram projector

You may change colour to match your surroundings. Normally this only affects your skin, not your
clothes, but if you wear a costume made from morphic fabric it will change with you.

Cyber controller

Power simulator

Power enhancer

Brain implant

This lets you turn effectively invisible providing

you stand still, and when you are moving around in
combat it gives all your attackers a -2 penalty on
their to-hit rolls.

Cyber weapon

Mind control device

10

Choose

CAMOUFLAGE

CLAWS
You have sharp claws or blades on your hands or
feet. These may be natural or artificial and may
optionally retract.
This makes your unarmed attacks do 2d6 health
damage and 1d6 stamina damage.

CYBERNETICS
You have one or more cybernetic implants in your
body.

The flying kick attack takes a panel to perform, and

uses up a second panel in advance (similar to taking
a reaction) during which you must recover.
If you enhance this implant with a second rank, it
becomes identical to the having the flight power
at rank 1.
Hologram Projector - You have an implanted device
which can project a full colour 3D image of around
the size of a car or five people anywhere within a
range of 6 metres. The image is silent and cannot
make things invisible, but you can project an image
of a larger object over something in order to hide it.

Rank 1: You have one cybernetic implant. Roll on

the cybernetic implants table to see which type
you have.

If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each

extra rank either increases the size (to an additional five people or car size) or increases the range
by another 6 metres.

Rank 2+: You have an additional cybernetic implant

per rank. For each rank, either enhance one of your
existing implants or roll on the cybernetic implants
table for each one to see what type it is:

Cyber Controller - You have an implanted device

which lets you control a specific type of animal,
which you must choose when you acquire the controller.

Bionic Arm - You have a replacement bionic arm

that is stronger than normal. You have rank 1 of
the super strength power, but only in that arm. Additional ranks spent enhancing this implant either
give more ranks of super strength or mean that
you have two bionic arms.

If the type of animal you can control is large such

as a wolf, dog, snake or similar, you can only control
a single individual at a time. If the type of animal
you can control is small such as rats, mice or insects
you can control a whole swarm at a time. In either
case, the animal or swarm has the statistics of a
mundane combatant.

Retractable Glider - You have a retractable pair of

glider wings that can pop out if you fall or jump. You
can silently fly at a speed of 10 metres per panel,
but after 20+4d10 panels of continuous flight you
must land.
If you power dive at least 4 metres into combat
directly before making an attack, you can either
gain a +2 damage bonus on one of your normal melee
attacks or make a special fl ying kick attack that
does 1d6 health damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage.

The controller does not let you summon the animals, only control ones that are already present.
You control them via mental commands, which takes
no time on your part, and if you concentrate you can
also perceive through their senses.
Controlling a normal animal is automatic, but controlling an animal which is a super powered character
(or the sidekick of a super powered character) is
not possible.

POWERS 53
If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each
additional rank either lets you control a different
type of animal or an additional animal (or swarm) of
a single type you can already control.
Power Simulator - You have an implant which simulates the effects of rank 1 of a different super
power, chosen at the time you acquire this implant.
If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each
additional rank either increases the rank of the
simulated super power or allows you to simulate
another super power.
Power Enhancer - You have an implant which increases the rank of another super power that you
possess by one, chosen at the time you acquire this
implant.
If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each
additional rank either enhances the same super
power by another rank or enhances another of your
super powers by a rank.
Brain Implant - You have a computer implant in your
brain that gives you a perfectly accurate memory
of everything that you have experience since it
was implanted. Additionally it can perform complex
calculations for you instantly.
By calculating trajectories and predicting movements, your brain implant also gives you a +1 bonus
on your to-hit rolls with any attacks you make for
each additional panel you spend analysing the situation before making your attack, to a maximum of +5.
If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each
additional rank enhances the to-hit bonus by +1
per panel of analysis. However, the maximum bonus
remains at +5.
Cyber Weapon - You have a weapon which is controlled using implants directly into your nervous
system. This weapon does +5 health damage and +5
stamina damage compared to a normal weapon of its
type. Also, if the weapon is a throwing weapon you
can summon it back to your hand in a double-panel.
If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each
additional rank provides the same bonuses with an
additional weapon.
Mind Control Device - You have an implanted device
which allows you to control the minds of others. You
must make eye contact with your target and make
a successful psychic attack on your target. This
attack uses the devices Will of 10 rather than
your own will.

If the attack succeeds, you must spend 1d6 doublepanels establishing control over your target, during
which time neither of you can take any other actions.
If either of you are hurt during this time or if eye
contact is broken then the control fails.
Once control is established, your target will obey
any verbal or written command you give them as
long as it doesnt violate their principles.
This mind control can be broken by your target
suffering 20 points of stamina damage (or being
knocked out), or by another mind control power.
Once per hour you must repeat the psychic attack,
and if the new attack fails the power ends.
If you voluntarily end the mind control you can leave
your target with no memory of the period during
which you controlled them, but if it ends prematurely due to your target suffering damage or your
repeat attack failing then your target will remember
being mind controlled.
If you enhance this implant with more ranks, each
additional rank provides a +2 bonus to the devices
Will.

54 POWERS
DANGER SENSE
You have a subconscious warning mechanism that will
alert you to impending danger with a 90% success
rate. The game master should roll each time there
is danger. You are not alerted to the type of danger,
just given a general sense that something is wrong.
Additionally you are never surprised in combat and
can always perform a reaction to any incoming attack.
When faced with a random choice about which you
have no knowledge but in which one or more options is immediately dangerous (for example choosing which possibly booby-trapped door to open or
choosing which wire to cut when defusing a bomb),
you may use your danger sense to eliminate the
dangerous options at the normal 90% rate of success (the game master should roll separately for
each dangerous option).

When you stop concentrating, the target loses density and mass at double the rate they gained it.

DENSITY CONTROL (SELF)

You are able to increase and decrease your own
density (and therefore your own mass).
If you take a double-panel to increase your mass,
you get only half of your normal number of panels
per page, but gain a +10 damage modifier in melee
combat and +5 to your knockback threshold.
If you take a double-panel to decrease your mass,
you may walk on any surface (for example paper
or water) without breaking through. You also do
minimum possible damage in melee combat and your
knockback threshold is reduced to 10.

DUPLICATION

You may increase the density (and therefore mass)

of other people and objects.

You may produce up to five copies of yourself per

day, with each copy emerging from your body. If
you want your duplicates to be clothed as you are
when they emerge, you must wear a costume of
morphic fabric.

Each double-panel that you concentrate doubles

the mass of a target within 6 metres to a maximum
of 16 times their normal mass.

Your duplicates have the same ability scores and

secondary characteristics as yourself, with a maximum of 20 in any ability score and a maximum of 70

DENSITY CONTROL (OTHER)

If your target is intelligent, you must make a successful psychic attack on them to use this power.
However, the target cannot resist this psychic attack.
At double normal mass, the target gets only half
their normal number of panels per page, but gains
a +10 damage modifier in melee combat and +5 to
their knockback threshold.
At four times normal mass, the target is immobilised
and must roll 1d20 and get less than or equal to their
will score. If this roll fails, they are immediately
reduced to 0 stamina and black out. The target
gains an additional +5 to their knockback threshold.
At eight times normal mass, the target is still immobilised and must roll 1d20+10 and get less than
or equal to their will score. If this roll fails they
are immediately reduced to 0 stamina and black
out. The target gains another +5 to their knockback
threshold.
At sixteen times normal mass, the target is automatically reduced to 0 stamina and blacks out.
The target gains another +5 to their knockback
threshold.

POWERS 55
Energy Type Table
Roll (1d10)

Energy Type

Fire

Cold

Electricity

Light

Sound

Nuclear

Plasma

Shadow

Cosmic

10

Choose

health and stamina. Duplicates only get two panels

per page in combat.
Normally your duplicates possess no super powers,
but if it suits your back-story you may choose to
give one or more of your other super powers to

your duplicates (you lose the power or powers, and

each power is only given to one duplicate). If you
are giving powers to your duplicates, this must be
chosen at character generation.
You are in constant mental contact with your duplicates and share all their memories and experiences.
If one of your duplicates dies or if you fail to reabsorb it before the end of the day, it cannot be
re-produced for a month and you lose a fifth of your
health and stamina for that period.

ELASTICITY
You are able to stretch your body like rubber. In
order to do this without ripping apart your clothes,
you must wear a costume of morphic fabric.
Rank 1: You can stretch your arms and legs up to 6
metres in order to either make attacks or manipulate things. You also gain an h divider of /2 and an s
divider of /2 against any blunt attack against which
you perform a dodge reaction due to your bodys
lack of rigidity. You get these dividers regardless
of whether or not your dodge is successful.
Rank 2: You are able to stretch any part of your
body over extreme distances, but if you stretch any
part of it over 20 metres they you lose 1 stamina
per additional 5 metres or part of 5 metres that
you stretch it.

ENERGY BLAST
You have the ability to project blasts of energy at
people and objects.
If you have not done so for an existing power, roll on
the energy types table in order to see which type of
energy you can produce. If you have already rolled
on the energy types table for a previous power (for
example immunity or energy reflect) then you may
choose to either be able to produce that same type
of energy or to be able to produce a random type
rolled on the table.
Your energy blasts take a double-panel to produce,
and have a range of 40 metres. They are strike
class 3, and the dividers of any target they hit are
treated as if two points less than they actually are.
Rank 1: You can produce up to 15d6 worth of energy
over the course of 5 pages. At the end of that 5
pages your energy reserve refreshes to full.
You may use up to 10d6 worth of energy in a single
attack, and must split that 10d6 between stamina

56 POWERS
of energy you can reflect. If you have already rolled
on the energy types table for a previous power (for
example immunity or energy blast) then you may
choose to either be able to reflect that same type
of energy or to be able to reflect a random type
rolled on the table.
When you are attacked with the type of energy
that you are able to reflect and choose the parry
reaction, you automatically succeed in a melee parry
and may reflect the attack back at its source. Make
an immediate to-hit roll (Weapon class 2) against
the originator of the attack. The originator of the
attack may make a reaction against the attack as
normal.
If both you and the originator of the attack have
energy reflect for this type of energy, the energy
continues to bounce back and forth between you
as long as you both keep parrying and succeeding
in your to-hit rolls.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
You can control an aspect of your environment within
an area around you. Roll 1d6 on the environmental
control table to see which aspect of your environment you can control.
damage and health damage, with neither damage
type having more than two more dice than the other.
Rank 2: You choose one of the following options:
You have 1d10 more dice of energy every five
pages. Roll the die once when you gain this rank
rather than rolling it each time you refresh
your energy dice.
You have the immunity power for the same
energy type as your energy blast.
You have the energy refl ect power for the
same energy type as your energy blast.
Rank 3: You choose one of the rank 2 options that
you havent already chosen.

Dimensional - You can distort the dimensional structure of the space around you with a radius of 20
metres. Although this does not harm people or affect the distance people move (which is distorted
along with the space they are in), it does affect
peoples perception.
While you concentrate on the effect (you may take
no other actions) all in the area suffer a penalty
of -4 on their to-hit rolls and parry rolls; and people
firing ranged attacks into or through the area also
suffer a -4 penalty on their to-hit rolls.
You are immune to the effects of your own dimensional distortion and suffer no penalties. You may
also carefully control the distortion in order to make
things appear normal from the position of one other
person, making them immune to the effects too.

ENERGY REFLECT

Electrical - You can control electrical and electronic

devices within 20 metres of yourself. This lets you
operate any electrical or electronic device within
range either according to its normal operating parameters or by making it malfunction.

You have the ability to reflect a particular type of

energy back at its source.

You can control robots in this manner, but not androids.

If you have not done so for an existing power, roll on

the energy types table on order to see which type

You must concentrate in order to control a device,

although when you stop concentrating devices that

Rank 4: You gain the remaining rank 2 option.

POWERS 57
Environmental control table
Roll (1d6)

Environmental aspect

Dimensional

Electrical

Gravity

Magnetism

Molecular

Temperature

have been switched on or off or placed into a stable

mode of operation remain in that state until they
are operated again by someone or power is cut off
from them.

At sixteen times normal gravity, people in the area

are automatically reduced to 0 stamina and black
out.
When you stop concentrating, gravity in the area
returns to normal at double the rate at which it
was increased or decreased.
Increasing or decreasing gravity over part of a
building or other large structure may cause it to be
damaged or collapse, but this will need to be judged
by the game master on a case-by-case basis.
Magnetism - You can control magnetic fields in a 20
metre radius around yourself.

This power does not let you read information directly out of the memory of a computer, but does
let you use remotely operate the user-interface
of the computer and bypass its security measures
in order to display that information on screen or
transfer it to another device.

You can repel yourself away from metal surfaces,

either gently (to levitate yourself up to 10 metres
into the air while you concentrate, providing there is
a metal surface beneath you) or suddenly (spending
a double-panel building up the field and then flinging
yourself away from the surface).

Additionally, if there is a mains-strength source of

electricity within range you can make it arc to any
target within range. No to-hit roll is necessary, and
the arc does 1d6 stamina damage and 1d6 health
damage to the target.

If you fling yourself away from a surface, you can

make a single leap with a distance up to your normal
movement speed.

Gravity - You are able to alter the strength of gravity within the area around you. By concentrating on
a 2 metre radius within 20 metres, you can increase
or reduce the gravity in that area by a factor of
up to 16.
Each double-panel of concentration allows you to
either double or halve gravity in the area, within
the limits of 1/16x to 16x normal gravity.
Reduced gravity has no effect on peoples health,
although it lets them jump or throw things proportionally higher (half gravity lets people jump twice
as high, and so forth).
At double normal gravity, people in the area get
only half their normal number of panels per page.
At four times normal gravity, people in the area are
immobilised and must roll 1d20 and get less than or
equal to their will score. If this roll fails, they are
immediately reduced to 0 stamina and black out.
At eight times normal gravity, people in the area
are still immobilised and must roll 1d20+10 and get
less than or equal to their will score. If this roll
fails they are immediately reduced to 0 stamina
and black out.

If you fling yourself at least 4 metres into combat

directly before making an attack, you can either
gain a +2 damage bonus on one of your normal melee
attacks or make a special fl ying kick attack that
does 1d6 health damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage.

58 POWERS
The flying kick attack takes a panel to perform, and
uses up a second panel in advance (similar to taking
a reaction) during which you must recover.
You can also attract metal objects of up to 25kg towards a target within range (needing no to-hit roll),
or repel them away from yourself directing them
at a target outside the range of your power (which
needs a to-hit roll). Either of these actions takes
a double-panel to perform, and does 2d6 stamina
damage to the target.
Finally, you can manipulate small magnets within
the area, such as flipping magnetic switches. This
takes a singe panel.
Molecular - You can alter the molecular forces within
unattended inanimate objects (not living creatures
or androids or inanimate substances within, worn or
carried by those creatures or androids) within a 6
metre range, changing their state between solid,
liquid and gas.
As an action taking a double-panel, you can solidify
small amounts of air, water, or other liquids and
gasses enough to allow a person to walk on them
or surround a person with a semi-solid protective
layer that still allows them to breathe but improves
their armour class by one rank.
You can also destroy inanimate solid objects (or
parts of larger objects) by vaporising them into
clouds of dust and smoke. Simply destroying an object in this uncontrolled manner only takes a single
panel, but destroying parts of an object carefully
takes a double-panel.
If you wish to hurt someone by destroying nearby
objects (for example destroying part of the ceiling
it so that another part drops on someones head or
destroying part of the floor to make someone trip
in the resulting hole) this requires a to-hit roll and
can cause a maximum of 2d6 stamina damage to a
person affected by it.
Temperature - You can alter the ambient temperature in the area around you.
By concentrating on a 2 metre radius within 20 metres, you can increase or reduce the temperature in
that area enough to make people in the area dehydrate or chill severely enough that they will be hurt.
Each double-panel that you concentrate allows you
to do 2d6 stamina damage to everyone in the radius
from either excess heat or cold. S dividers do not
help against this damage, and it can only be prevented by the relevant immunity power.

You may also freeze or evaporate water in the area

by concentrating, drying things in a controlled manner, or put out fires by cooling them down. These
types of miscellaneous minor action only take a single panel to perform.
You cant create fires directly, but you can heat
fl ammable or explosive substances to their fl ash
point by spending a double-panel concentrating.

FLIGHT
You are able to fly carrying anything you are strong
enough to lift. If you are carrying so much weight
that you only walk at half speed, you can only fly at
half speed too.
Rank 1: In combat, you can fl y at a speed of 15
metres per panel. If you have a long straight path,
you can increase your speed by 1 metre per panel
per page up to a maximum speed of 17 metres per
panel (around 112kph).
If you power dive at least 4 metres into combat
directly before making an attack, you can either

POWERS 59
gain a +5 damage bonus on one of your normal melee
attacks or make a special fl ying kick attack that
does 1d6 health damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage.
The flying kick attack takes a panel to perform, and
uses up a second panel in advance (similar to taking
a reaction) during which you must recover.
Rank 2: Your combat speed is increased to 20 metres per panel. If you have a long straight path,
you can increase your speed by 2 meters per panel
per page up to a maximum speed of 30 metres per
panel (around 200kph).
Rank 3: Your combat speed is increased to 25 metres per panel. If you have a long straight path, you
can increase your speed by 40 meters per panel
per page up to a maximum speed of 185 metres per
panel (around 1,200kph or mach 1).
Rank 4: Your combat speed is increased to 30 metres per panel. If you have a long straight path, you
can increase your speed by 80 meters per panel
per page up to a maximum speed of 6,000 metres
per panel (around 40,000kph or escape velocity).

FORCEFIELD
You can create barriers or walls of pure force that
block damaging attacks. Roll on the forcefield table to see which kind of forcefield you can create.
Whichever kind you can create, you roll for the
strength of the forcefield when you acquire this
power, and every time you use it it will have that
same strength.
Forcefields protect you from physical and energy
attacks, but do not stop magic or psychic attacks
or miscellaneous powers.
Activating a forcefield of any variety takes a double-panel.
Hard Force Wall - You can create a solid wall of
force up to 8 square metres in size anywhere withing 6 metres of yourself. The wall of force can be
straight or can be gently arced in up to a quarter
circle. The wall must be formed in the open air or
water, and cant cut through any solid matter.
The wall of force can take up to 5d6 health damage
without being destroyed, and all damage to it must
be inflicted in a single attack as it repairs itself between attacks. Attacks that hit the wall (including
the one that destroys it) are completely stopped by
it, with neither health damage nor stamina damage
passing through.
You must concentrate to keep the wall up, and if it
is destroyed you cant re-create it for an hour per

Forcefield Table
Roll (1d6)

Forcefield Type

Hard force wall

Soft force wall

Hard force shield

Soft force shield

Personal forcefield

Choose

point of health that it has. If it drops because you

stopped concentrating then you can re-create it in
your next available double-panel.
Soft Force Wall - You can create a solid wall of
force up to 8 square metres in size anywhere withing 6 metres of yourself. The wall of force can be
straight or can be gently arced in up to a quarter
circle. The wall must be formed in the open air or
water, and cant cut through any solid matter.
The wall of force can take up to 3d6 health damage
without being destroyed, and all damage to it must
be inflicted in a single attack as it repairs itself between attacks. Attacks that hit the wall (including
the one that destroys it) are completely stopped by
it, with neither health damage nor stamina damage
passing through.
You must concentrate to keep the wall up, although
if it is destroyed you can re-create it in your next
available double-panel.

60 POWERS
Hard Force Shield - You can create a solid shield
of force that totally surrounds you at a distance of
around 2cm. The shield must be formed in the open
air or water, and cant cut through any solid matter.
The force shield can take up to 5d6 health damage
without being destroyed, and all damage to it must
be inflicted in a single attack as it repairs itself between attacks. Attacks that hit the shield (including
the one that destroys it) are completely stopped by
it, with neither health damage nor stamina damage
passing through.
The shield does not protect you from any knockback
that the attack may do.
Once you have activated the shield, you do not need
to concentrate to keep the it up. It takes a doublepanel for you to voluntarily drop the shield, and if
you do so then you can re-create it in your next
available double-panel. However, if it is destroyed
you cant re-create it for an hour per point of health
that it has.

Once you have activated the shield, you do not need

to concentrate to keep the it up. It takes a doublepanel for you to voluntarily drop the shield, and if
you do so then you can re-create it in your next
available double-panel.

GROWTH
You may grow in size up to twice your normal height
in a double-panel.
While you are grown, you gain an extra 1d6 points
of strength and an extra 1d6 points of endurance.
These are rolled when you acquire the power, and
every time you grow you gain the same amount.
The extra endurance gives you additional health
and stamina points, and all damage done to you while
grown comes off these points first.

Soft Force Shield - You can create a solid shield

of force that totally surrounds you at a distance of
around 2cm. The shield must be formed in the open
air or water, and cant cut through any solid matter.
The force shield can take up to 3d6 health damage
without being destroyed, and all damage to it must
be inflicted in a single attack as it repairs itself between attacks. Attacks that hit the shield (including
the one that destroys it) are completely stopped by
it, with neither health damage nor stamina damage
passing through.
The shield does not protect you from any knockback
that the attack may do.
Once you have activated the shield, you do not need
to concentrate to keep the it up. It takes a doublepanel for you to voluntarily drop the shield, and if
you do so (or if it is destroyed) then you can recreate it in your next available double-panel.
Personal Forcefield - You can create a solid shield
of force that totally surrounds you at a distance of
around 2cm. The shield must be formed in the open
air or water, and cant cut through any solid matter.
The forcefield has a health of 4d6, and incoming
physical and energy attacks all have their damage
reduced by this amount, with it first being subtracted from the incoming health damage and then
any remainder being subtracted from the incoming
stamina damage.
The forcefield does not protect you from any knockback that the attack may do.

Shrinking back to normal size also takes a doublepanel. Shrinking and re-growing will not replenish
the extra stamina and health if you have been damaged, but it will heal at normal rates.
For example if you normally have 55 stamina and
you grow gaining an extra 15 stamina, you will have
a total of 70 stamina while grown. If you take 10
stamina damage while grown leaving you with 60
stamina, shrinking will take you back to 55 stamina
as normal but re-growing will only take you up to 60
rather than 70. If you take 25 stamina damage while
grown, leaving you with 45 stamina, shrinking will

POWERS 61
cause you to remain on 45 stamina and re-growing
will also cause you to still remain on 45 stamina.
If you grow directly before making an attack, using
the momentum of your growth to add to the attack,
you can either gain a +4 damage bonus on one of your
normal melee attacks or make a special slam attack
that does 1d6 health damage and 2d6+6 stamina
damage. The slam attack takes a panel to perform,
and uses up a second panel in advance (similar to
taking a reaction) during which you must recover.
If you wish to grow without ripping all your clothing,
you must wear a costume made from morphic fabric.

IMMUNITY
You are completely immune to damage from one
type of energy.
If you have not done so for an existing power, roll
on the energy types table to see which type of energy you are immune to. If you have already rolled
on the energy types table for a previous power (for
example energy blast or energy reflect) then you
may choose to either be immune to that same type
of energy or to be immune to a random type rolled
on the table.

IMPERVIOUS
You are able to make yourself temporarily impervious to all physical damage by concentrating for a
double-panel.
To maintain the power you must continue to concentrate, and while concentrating on this power,
you may not move at all - not even a slow walk or
to breathe.
You may only maintain this power for a maximum
number of consecutive pages as your will score, and
once it has stopped you cannot activate it again for
another 5 pages.

INVISIBILITY
You can make yourself invisible to normal sight by
concentrating for a panel. Once you are invisible you
need not continue to concentrate, but it also takes
a panel to become visible once more.
While you are invisible, you can still be detected by
some super senses.
Opponents trying to attack you get a -4 penalty
to their to-hit rolls if they cant see you; and even

then they must at least have a good idea where you

are because someone who can see you has told them
or because theyve seen an attack launched by you.
If you wish your clothes to become invisible when
you do, you need to have a costume made from morphic fabric.

LARGER
You are bigger than other people. Unlike the growth
power, your size does not change. You are simply
always bigger.
You have the choice of being stockier or taller than
normal people.
Rank 1: If you are stockier than normal people are
then you weigh 50% more than a normal person, and
have 1d6+2 more strength, and have 1d6+2 more
endurance (with a corresponding increase in health
and stamina scores). These increases are rolled
when you acquire this power. You also gain +5 to
your knockback threshold.
If you are taller than normal people are then you
are 50% taller than a normal person, and have 1d6+2
more strength, and have 1d6+2 more endurance
(with a corresponding increase in health and stamina
scores). These increases are rolled when you acquire
this power. Your movement speed also increases
by 50%.

62 POWERS
Rank 2+: Each additional rank increases your weight
or height by another 50% of that of a normal person, gives you another 1d6+2 strength and endurance, and either increases your movement speed
by 50% of your original (not your current) movement
speed or increases your knockback threshold by
another +5.

Magic Spells Table

Roll (1d10)

Spell

Astral Projection

Bestow Gift

Eldritch Bolt

Hypnotism

Illusion

Lore

You are unnaturally lucky. When you acquire this

power, roll 1d3 and multiply it by your will score.
This is your luck chance.

Mystic Shield

Restraint

Summoning

When something unfortunate would happen to you,

for example being hit with an attack, falling off a
building, or springing some kind of booby trap, you
may roll 1d100. If you roll less than or equal to your
luck chance then no harm comes to you due to some
contrived coincidence.

10

Choose

LUCK

You may only use your luck chance once per page.

MAGIC
You are able to cast magic spells. Spells take a double-panel to cast, and you must speak an incantation
in at least a whisper in order to cast one.
You have a number of points called magic points,
and casting each spell takes some of those points.
If you dont have enough points left, you cant cast
the spell. You recover all your magic points every
five pages.
You can cancel one of your spells at any time without
effort, and you can spend a double-panel to cancel
the spell of another person providing it is a spell
you are capable of casting yourself.
Cancelling anothers spell takes the same number
of magic points as casting it yourself would, and
you must succeed in a magical attack against the
caster of the spell.
Rank 1: You have 15 magic points which refresh
each 5 pages, but you can use no more than 10 magic
points on a single spell casting action. Roll 1d10 three
times on the magic spells table to find out which
three spells you can cast. The first spell you roll is
your speciality spell. This spell costs you only half
the normal magic points when you cast it (or cancel
it when someone else has cast it).
Rank 2: You have an additional 1d10 magic points
per 5 page period. Roll the die once when you gain
this rank rather than rolling it each time you refresh your magic points. Also, you learn an addi-

tional spell. Roll again on the magic spells table to

determine what this spell is.
Rank 3: You have an additional 1d10 magic points
per 5 page period. Roll the die once when you gain
this rank rather than rolling it each time you refresh your magic points.
Also, choose a second spell that you know to be a
speciality spell. This spell only costs you half the
normal magic points when you cast it (or cancel it
when someone else has cast it).
Astral Projection - This spell separates your spirit
from your body and allows it to move around on its
own. Your spirit can move at double your normal
movement speed and can pass through walls and
other physical obstructions and barriers.
This spell costs 5 magic points to cast, and lasts
until your spirit returns to your body. Your body is
comatose while your spirit is gone.
Your spirit can see and hear as well as you can normally, but cant smell or touch anything. It is immune to physical attacks (except from other astral
forms), but can still be hurt by energy attacks. Any
damage it takes is also taken by your physical body,
which may spontaneously display wounds.
Your astral form is almost invisible to normal sight,
and anyone looking in your direction must roll their
will or less on 1d100 to notice your ghostly form.
While your astral form is separated from your body,
you can still cast magic spells, but you may only
spend 5 magic points on a single spell casting action.
Bestow Gift - This spell bestows a magical gift to
its recipient (which may be yourself) that enhances
them in some way. It costs 5 magic points to cast
the spell, and you must spend 5 magic points per
page (and a panels worth of effort) to keep the
spell going.

POWERS 63
The spell can be cast multiple times on the same
target or different targets, but each target can
only benefit from each type of gift once.
The possible gifts are:
Invisibility (The target gains the invisibility
power.)
Speed (The target gains rank 1 of the super
speed power.)
Strength (The target gains 1d6+6 strength.)
Combat prowess (The target gains the oriental
martial arts power at rank 2.)
Flight (The target gains the flight power at
rank 1.)
Regeneration (The target regenerates 1d6
health per double-panel of rest.)
Eldritch Bolt - This spell fires a bolt of magical
energy , doing 1d6 health damage or 1d6 stamina
damage per two magic points spent on it. The bolt
has a range of 40 metres.
The damage dice can be split between health damage and stamina damage as the caster sees fit although they must decide how to split the dice before the attack is made, and it ignores h dividers
and s dividers.
The caster must make a to-hit roll with the spell,
and it is strike class 3.
Because of its fl eeting nature, the eldritch bolt
spell cannot be cancelled by another spell caster.
Hypnotism - This spell allows you to control the
minds of others. You must make eye contact with
your target and make a successful magic attack on
your target. The spell costs 10 magic points whether
the attack succeeds or not.
If the attack succeeds, you must spend 1d6 doublepanels establishing control over your target, during
which time neither of you can take any other actions.
If either of you are hurt during this time or if eye
contact is broken then the control fails.
Once control is established, your target will obey
any verbal or written command you give them as
long as it doesnt violate their principles.
This mind control can be broken by your target
suffering 20 points of stamina damage (or being
knocked out), or by another mind control power.

Once per hour you must repeat the magic attack

and spend another 10 magic points, and if the new
attack fails the spell ends.
If you voluntarily cancel the mind control you can
leave your target with no memory of the period
during which you controlled them, but if it ends
prematurely due to your target suffering damage,
your repeat attack failing, or the spell being cancelled by another spell caster then your target will
remember being mind controlled.
Illusion - This spell creates illusions in a 2 metre
radius within 20 metres of the caster.
It costs 3 magic points to create a purely visual
or a purely auditory illusion, 7 magic points to create a visual illusion accompanied by minor sounds,
and 10 magic points to create a visual illusion which
incorporates speech or loud clear sounds.
The illusion can be created larger or further away.
Every additional 2 metre radius or 20 metre distance costs the caster an additional magic point.
The illusion may perform a fixed looping set of actions, but will not react or act in a novel manner to
its surroundings unless the caster concentrates on
it to make it do so. Anything attempting to touch
an illusion will go straight through it.

64 POWERS
The illusion will last for an hour or until the caster
or another caster cancels it, whichever comes first.
Lore - This spell reveals information about a person,
object or place. It costs 10 magic points per casting.
The information revealed can be any one of the
following:
A mental image of the owner of the item the
spell is cast on. Note that super heroes and
villains and their secret identities are considered separate people for the purposes of this
spell. An object owned by a super hero will only
reveal an image of their super hero identity,
and an object owned by the same person in
their secret identity will only reveal an image
of that identity.

The mystic shield can take up to 1d6 health damage

per 4 magic points without being destroyed, and all
damage to it must be inflicted in a single attack as
it repairs itself between attacks. Attacks that hit
the shield (including the one that destroys it) are
completely stopped by it, with neither health damage nor stamina damage passing through.
You must concentrate to keep the shield up, although
if it is destroyed you can re-create it by casting
the spell again.

A mental picture of all who have touched the

item the spell is cast on in the last 24 hours.
A mental picture of all who have visited the
place the spell is cast on in the last 24 hours.
The name of a person whose picture the caster
is looking at or has in their mind. Note that
super heroes and villains and their secret identities are considered separate people for the
purposes of this spell. A picture of a super
hero in costume will only reveal the name of
their super hero identity, and an picture of the
same person in their secret identity will only
reveal the name of that identity.
Whether the target of the spell is lying or not
in what they are saying as the spell is cast.
Note that the person must be deliberately
saying things that are not true in order for this
spell to pick it up. Dissembling and vagueness
are not enough. Similarly, if the target doesnt
know that what they are saying is false then
this spell will not pick it up.
General encyclopedic information about the
person, place or item that the caster has a
mental image of. This information will be of
the scope and quality that could be found with
half an hour of internet searching, and will not
reveal secrets.
Because of the immediate nature of this spell, it
cant be cancelled by another spell caster.
Mystic Shield - This spell creates a solid wall of
force up to 8 square metres in size anywhere withing 6 metres of yourself. The mystic shield can be
straight or can be gently arced in up to a quarter
circle. The shield must be formed in the open air
or water, and cant cut through any solid matter.

Restraint - This spell binds a single target within 20

metres so that they cannot move. The restraints
created by the spell have a strength equal to 10
times the number of magic points spent on it.
The basic chance of the target breaking free from
the restraint is equal to the targets strength expressed as a percentage.
For each magic point less than 10 that you spend on
the spell, increase that chance by +10%.
For each super power that the target has that could
help them escape (flight, super leap, elasticity, acrobatics, freeform shapechange, claws, gymnastics
skill) the chance increases by +10%. The escapology
skill increase the chance by +30%.

POWERS 65
If the target has the teleport power or the phasing
power, they can use these to automatically escape
the restraint.
If the targets chance to escape is 100% or better,
they can do so without needing to spend any actions.
If the targets chance to escape is 70%-99%, they
lose their next panel while restrained, and may then
make attempts to break free that take a doublepanel per attempt.
If the targets chance to escape is 1%-69%, they
lose their next 2 panels while restrained, and may
then make attempts to break free that take a double-panel per attempt.
Summoning - This spell summons a creature. The
nature of the creature summoned will depend on
the back-story of the character casting the spell.
The summoned creature has a movement of 4 metres per panel, and it gets 2 panels per page. Its
ability scores are each 6, and it has 1d10 health
and 1d10 stamina per magic point spent on the spell.
The creature is armour class J and its attacks are
strike class 0.
The creature remains in existence for an hour or
until it is killed or the caster or another spell caster
cancels the spell.
The caster must spend two panels per page (this
does not have to be a double-panel) instructing the
creature, and it will obey those instructions even if
they are suicidal. If the caster does not instruct the
creature during a page, it will not act during that
page - not even to defend itself. If the creature
goes out of earshot of the caster, it will stop acting
until it hears the caster again or the spell ends.
The caster may have more than one summoned creature at the same time, but each must be instructed
separately.
The summoned creature can have extra abilities
from the following list, at the cost of an additional 2
magic points per ability. No ability can be given to
the same creature twice.
Flight (The creature can fl y at 8 metres per
panel.)
Speed (The creature can move at 6 metres per
panel, and gets 3 panels per page.)
Claws (The creature has claws or fangs which
do 1d6 stamina damage and 2d6 health damage
when they strike. Attacks take a single panel.)

Strength (The creature has a strength of 25,

and therefore a +10 damage bonus.)
Intelligence (The creature only needs to be
instructed for 1 panel per page.)
Toughness (The creature has an armour class
of F.)
Weapon (The creature has a two handed weapon, and attacks as strike class 1.)

MARTIAL ARTS
You are an expert at martial arts and hand-to-hand
fighting. Roll 1d6 on the martial arts table to see
which type of martial arts you know. Ranks in the
two different types of martial arts are tracked
separately. It is possible to acquire three ranks in
oriental martial arts, but only two in streetfighting.
When you acquire an additional rank in this super
power after the first, you have the choice of:
Increasing the rank of a type of martial arts
that you know.

66 POWERS
Martial Arts Table
Roll (1d6)

Style

1-3

Oriental

4-6

Streetfighting

Gaining rank 1 in the other type of martial arts.

Gaining the ability to do the judo throw reaction.
Rank 1: Your unarmed attacks are strike class 3 and
do 2d6 stamina damage and 1d6-6 health damage.
If you have oriental martial arts, you can choose to
do 1d6 stamina damage and 2d6 health damage with
your unarmed attacks instead. You choose which
damage to do each attack.
If you have streetfighting, you can perform a haymaker punch. This takes a double-panel and gives
you a +2 bonus to your to-hit roll. The haymaker
does 1d6 health damage and 3d6+12 stamina damage. You may only do a haymaker once per opponent
per combat.
Rank 2: Your dodge bonus increases by +1, and your
unarmed attacks now do 2d6+6 stamina damage
and 1d6 health damage.
If you have oriental martial arts, you can choose
to do 1d6 stamina damage and 2d6+3 health damage with your unarmed attacks instead. You choose
which damage to do each attack.
Rank 3: If you have oriental martial arts, your unarmed attacks are now strike class 4.

PHASING
You are able to take your body out of phase with
normal matter and energy. This takes a double-panel
to do, but once you are out of phase you need not
concentrate. You can fully re-phase yourself as
another double-panel action.
While out of phase, you can move through physical matter such as walls and other obstacles as if
they werent there. However, you are unable to pass
through forcefields and you are unable to touch
anything or use any other super powers other than
those that affect only yourself.
You may partially re-phase yourself inside an opponent or an object in a controlled manner in order
to damage it.
The attack takes 1 panel and to hit an opponent
with this it you need to make a to-hit roll as if the

opponent were armour class F. This attack may be

dodged, but not parried or blocked.
The opponent or object takes from 1-3d6 damage
at your choice (depending on how much you want to
re-phase yourself) and you may split the dice (before rolling) between stamina damage and health
damage as you see fit.
For each successive re-phasing attack you make,
there is a 20% cumulative chance that you have
become re-phased enough to be hurt normally by
physical attacks. If this happens, you will remain
partially re-phased until you spend a double-panel
to either fully re-phase yourself or to take yourself
back out of phase once more.
Ranks 1: You can still be hurt slightly while out of
phase. You have an s divider of /11 and an h divider
of /11, although you dont take damage from any
attack that is not capable of reducing or negating
those dividers.
Rank 2: While out of phase you cant be hurt at all
by attacks that do stamina or health damage, not
even if they reduce or negate dividers.

POWERS 67
PSYCHIC ABILITY

Psychic Powers Table

Roll (1d10)

Power

You are able to use the power of your mind to activate various psychic powers. Psychic powers take
a double-panel to activate.

Empathy

Hallucinations

Mind Control

You have a number of points called psi points, and

activating each power takes some of those points.
If you dont have enough points left, you cant use
the power. You recover all of your psi points every
five pages.

Precognition

Psionic Blast

Psychic Drain

Telekinesis

Rank 1: You have 15 psi points which refresh each 5

pages, but you can use no more than 10 psi points
on a single power activation. Roll 1d10 three times
on the psychic powers table to find out which three
powers you can use. The first power you roll is your
speciality power. This power costs you only half the
normal psi points when you activate it.

Telepathy

Transmutation

10

Choose

Rank 3: You have an additional 1d10 psi points per 5

page period. Roll the die once when you gain this
rank rather than rolling it each time you refresh
your psi points. Also, choose a second power that you
know to be a speciality power. This power only costs
you half the normal psi points when you activate it.
Empathy - You are able to both detect and influence
other peoples emotions. You can scan the feelings
of one person within 20 metres for 3 psi points. If
the target is unwilling, you must make a successful
psychic attack against them.
For 5 psi points, you are able to strengthen or weaken the emotions of one person within 20 metres. If
the target is unwilling, you must make a successful
psychic attack against them.
You cannot change the nature of the emotions that
your target is feeling, only their strength. For example you can turn dislike into hatred, but not into
love; and you can turn terror into mild nervousness,
but not into anger.
Hallucinations - You can create illusions in a 2 metre
radius within 20 metres of yourself.
It costs 3 psi points to create a purely visual or
a purely auditory illusion, 7 psi points to create a
visual illusion accompanied by minor sounds, and 10
psi points to create a visual illusion which incorporates speech or loud clear sounds.
The illusion can be created larger or further away.
Every additional 2 metre radius or 20 metre distance costs you an additional psi point.

Rank 2: You have an additional 1d10 psi points per 5

page period. Roll the die once when you gain this
rank rather than rolling it each time you refresh
your psi points. Also, you learn an additional power.
Roll again on the psychic powers table to determine
what this power is.

The illusion will last as long as you concentrate and

perform as you direct. Because of the mental nature
of the illusion, it can be perceived by thinking beings
but not by cameras , motion detectors or robots
If someone tries to touch the illusion or if you make
the illusion attack a person, you must make a psychic

68 POWERS
attack against that person as well as any to-hit roll
necessary to get the illusion to hit them.
If your psychic attack succeeds, the person will
be able to feel (and be blocked by) the illusion and
may be hurt by it (it can do damage equivalent to a
two handed blunt weapon at most, and cannot inflict
health damage).
If your psychic attack fails, the person will pass
straight through the illusion (or vice versa) and
that particular illusions will never be able to block
or hurt that person again.
Mind Control - You can control the minds of others.
You must either be touching your target (make a
to-hit roll against them if theyre unwilling) or already be in telepathic contact with them, and you
must then make a successful psychic attack on your
target. The attempt costs 10 psi points whether the
attack succeeds or not.
If the attack succeeds, you have complete control
over your targets body.
You may make your target use any ability that you
are aware they have, but you cant read their mind.
Your target is in a visibly trance-like state and only
gets half their normal number of panels per page.
This mind control can be broken by your target
suffering 20 points of stamina damage (or being
knocked out), or by another mind control power.
Trying to force your target to do something immediately dangerous (for example jumping off a
bridge) will also break the mind control.
You must spend an additional psi point per round to
keep control of your target, but you do not need to
concentrate to give them instructions. You can do
that subconsciously.
The maximum number of targets you can mind control at any one time is one per six points of your will
stat (round down with a minimum of one).
Precognition - You are able to predict the future.
This costs 10 psi points and reveals the likely course
of events in the short term (the next few rounds).
The game master should tell you what is likely to
happen over that time period, based on their knowledge of your characters situation.
If your character spends an entire minute in a precognitive trance (not possible in combat), you can
predict the outcomes of what if scenarios over the
next few minutes, for example What would happen
over the next few minutes if i pressed that button?

Naturally, while the game master shouldnt deliberately lie to you, it is always possible that they will
be wrong and the precognition will therefore also
be wrong. It is also possible that you will act in a
different way because you know what lies in store
and that this will change the course of events.
Psionic Blast - You can project a direct attack into
someones mind. The range of the attack is 20 metres, and you must make a mental attack roll for
it to succeed.
If the attack does succeed, it does 2d6 stamina
damage or 2d6 health damage per 2 psi points you
put into it, to a maximum of 10d6 total damage.
You must decide how many psi points to commit (and
what the split between stamina and health damage
will be) before you roll the attack.
The damage from a psionic blast ignores dividers.
Psychic Drain - You can drain the powers of others.
If you can successfully make a psychic attack on a
target within 20 metres, one of their powers that
uses a pool of points (energy blast, magic, psychic
powers or snare) has its pool drained of one point
per point you beat their roll by in the psychic combat.
Using this power costs you a minimum of 1 psi point,
and for each psi point you spend when using it you
gain a +1 on your psychic combat roll (to a maximum
of +10).

POWERS 69
If an opponent has more than one power that uses
a pool of points, you may choose which one to drain.
If you reduce an opponents points to zero using
this power, their stamina is reduced to zero and
they fall unconscious, not getting any recoveries
until they have points again.
Telekinesis - You can move objects around with the
power of your mind.
You can move any single object or person within 20
metres at a cost of 1 psi point per 10 kg of weight.
If you target a person, you must make a successful
psychic attack against them.
You can lift objects, push them, and move them at a
speed equal to a third of your will score in metres
per frame, but you cant throw them.
You may only move objects as a whole, not squeeze
or bend them, although you can operate buttons,
levers and so forth.
The telekinesis ends when the object goes out of
range or you stop concentrating.
Telepathy - You may read and transmit thoughts. It
costs 2 psi points to attempt to read the surface
thoughts of a person within 20 metres. If the person is unwilling then you must make a psychic attack
against them to succeed.
You may only read what is verbally passing through
the persons stream of consciousness, and may not
probe deeper for memories or motives unless the
target is willing. Such deeper probing requires up to
an hour, and must be done in a relaxed environment.
For 2 psi points per person you may also send a message of 6 words or less (or a single mental image)
to up to six people within 20 metres.
Against unwilling targets you must make a psychic
attack to succeed.
Transmutation - You are able to transmute one unattended object up to the size of a tank into another
object of similar size and mass.
The whole object must be changed, not just a portion of it, and both the source and result must actually be solid objects. You cant use this power to
turn something into air, for example, as a way of
destroying it.
The power does work on unintelligent beings such
as animals and plants, but not sapient creatures.

The difficulty of the transformation is based on a

number of factors. Start with a difficulty of 10 and
subtract for the following:

Source object is up to cat sized: -0

Source object is up to person-sized: -2
Source object is up to a van sized: -4
Source object is up to tank sized: -6
Only a minor change in form or substance: -1
Substantial change of shape or material: -3
Substantial change of shape and material: -5
Source or result is living but the other isnt: -3
Object is emotionally important to someone: -7
Object is highly valuable or unique: -7
Transmutation will last 2d6 pages: -0
Transmutation is permanent: -3

If the total difficulty is 0 or less, the transmutation cannot be done.

If the total difficulty is 1 or more, multiply it by
your will score. This gives the percentage change
of the transmutation working.
The power costs 6 psi points to use, regardless of
whether it works or not.

REACTIONS
Your reactions in combat are so fast that you gain
a +2 dodge bonus and anyone reacting to one of your
attacks has a -2 penalty on their parry, dodge or
judo throw roll.

70 POWERS
Shapechange Table
Roll (1d6)

Type

1-3

Freeform

4-6

Specific

SHAPECHANGE
You have the ability to change your shape. There
are two types of shapechanging ability: freeform
and specific. Roll 1d6 on the shapechange table to
see which type you have.
Freeform - You can change your physical shape into
that of any living creature that is approximately the
same size and mass as your normal form. You may
use this ability to copy a specific creature or person,
but the accuracy of the copy will depend on your
knowledge of that creature or persons appearance.

and must wait until you have returned to your normal

form before returning to your normal size.
While shapechanged, you retain your own ability
scores and do not get the abilities of whatever you
have become. For example if you shapeshift into the
form of a shark although you gain the outer appearance of having gills, you do not have the internal gill
mechanisms and therefore do not gain the ability
to breathe underwater.
Similarly, if you shapeshift into a form with wings
you do not gain the appropriate skeletal and muscular structure necessary to be able to use them
to fly effectively.
Within these limits, you are not limited to natural creatures. You can shapeshift into alien forms,
mythological creatures, and so forth.
Changing form takes a double-panel.
Specific - You can change your physical form into one
or more specific alternate forms. You must choose
these specific forms when you acquire this power.
You may split your other super powers between your
forms as you see fit, although each power must be
assigned to only a single form.
The exception to this rule is that if you have a power
at greater than rank 1 you may split the ranks and
give some of the ranks to one form and others to a
different form, as long as the total number of ranks
that the forms possess between them is no more
than the number of ranks you originally acquired.
The most common way to split super powers between forms is to give all your powers to one form
and have that as your heroic form and have your
other form as your secret identity form. This is
not compulsory though, and you may have more than
one heroic form that each has different powers.
However, you may only have one non-powered form
at the most.

If you are wearing a costume made from morphic

fabric, it will change with you.
While shapechanged, you may not use any other super power that you possess; with the exception that
if you have the growth, larger or shrinking power
then your pre-shapeshifting size may vary and you
may shapeshift into a creature to match that size.
You still get the benefits of the growth, larger or
shrinking power, although in the case of growth and
shrinking you cannot change size while shapeshifted

Switching between forms only takes a single panel,

but you must have a costume made from morphic
fabric if you wish it to change with you.

SHRINKING
You have the ability to shrink down to 10cm tall, the
size of a house mouse, small bird or large insect.
Shrinking takes a double-panel, as does growing
back to normal size.
While shrunk, opponents trying to hit you have a -3
penalty on their to-hit rolls. Your own attacks (in-

POWERS 71
cluding powers like energy blasts) have no penalty
on their to-hit rolls, but always do minimum damage.

Skills Table
Roll (1d10)

Skill

You may only move at 1 metre per panel while shrunk,

unless you have the flight power in which case you
can fly at half your normal flying speed.

Acting

Computer Use

Disguise

When shrunk, your knockback threshold is reduced

by 10.

Escapology

Gymnastics

Locksmith

Pilot

Stealth

Surgeon

10

Choose

If you return to normal size directly before making

an attack, using the momentum of your growth to
add to the attack, you can either gain a +4 damage
bonus on one of your normal melee attacks or make
a special slam attack that does 1d6 health damage
and 2d6+6 stamina damage. The slam attack takes
a panel to perform, and it uses up a second panel in
advance (similar to taking a reaction) during which
you must recover.
If you wish to shrink without your clothing falling
off, you must wear a costume made from morphic
fabric.

SIDEKICK
You have a loyal sidekick who helps you and fights
alongside you. A sidekick may not have their own
sidekick. If this power is rolled while you are generating a sidekick character with powers, re-roll it.
Rank 1: Your sidekick is created as if a super hero
(and fights like one, with proper health and stamina
totals and attacks that are strike class 2). However,
they only get 2 panels per page and they have no
super powers.
Rank 2: Your sidekick is created as a full super
hero character, although they only receive 1 super
power roll. They get 3 panels per page.
Rank 3: Your sidekick is created as a full super
hero character, although they only receive 2 super
power rolls. They get 4 panels per page.

SKILLS
You are incredibly talented at a mundane yet useful
skill. Although each of these skills is not something
that would normally be considered a super power,
you are one of the top people in the world at your
particular skill.
Roll 1d10 on the skills table to see which skill you
possess.
Acting - You are an incredible actor, able to improvise and emote brilliantly in any situation. Your

ability to get into character allows you to actually

feel the emotions that you are faking to the extent
that if someone uses the empathy psychic power
on you, the emotions you are pretending to have
appear genuine.
You are able to imitate the voice and mannerisms of
other people perfectly if given time to study them.
Also, you are an excellent singer and dancer.
Computer Use - You are highly skilled with computers, able to configure them and program them with
ease. Given time, you are able to bypass security
systems and even hack into even unfamiliar and alien
computer systems.

72 POWERS
Disguise - You are an excellent observer of other
people, and with appropriate make up and clothing
you are able to make any person look like any other
person of approximately the same size.
Your experience with make up and imitation also
means that you can spot the subtle imperfections
that reveal someone to be an imposter even if they
have shapechanged or had the disguise skill used
on them. Only people using the acting skill are good
enough at imitating people to be able to fool you.

Even in broad daylight, if you are not in sight (for

example you are behind someone) then you may automatically creep unnoticed by them at half your
normal movement speed unless they have appropriate super senses.
Additionally, if you are fighting in dark or shadowy
areas, anyone attacking you without appropriate
super senses does so with a -2 penalty to their
to-hit rolls.

Escapology - You have an incredible ability to escape from any form of binding, manacles or similar
restraining devices given time. This includes temporarily dislocating joints, picking locks with your
toes and teeth, and so forth.
Gymnastics - You are world-class gymnast. Your
movement speed is increased by 50% when you move
by tumbling, cartwheeling and flipping rather than
normal running.
Additionally, you get a +1 dodge bonus, and when you
suffer knockback you automatically succeed in the
agility check to stay on your feet without needing
to roll the die.
If you tumble at least 4 metres into combat directly
before making an attack, you can either gain a +2
damage bonus on one of your normal melee attacks
or make a special flying kick attack that does 1d6
health damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage. The flying kick attack takes a panel to perform, and uses
up a second panel in advance (similar to taking a
reaction) during which you must recover.
Locksmith - You can open any normal lock in a few
seconds with no more than a bent paperclip.
High security locks and vaults may take longer and
require proper equipment, but there is no lock that
is beyond your capability given time.
Pilot - You are the best of the best, with honours.
You are able to fly any type of plane or helicopter
with ease, and can execute fantastic manoeuvres.
Given time to familiarise yourself with the controls,
you can fly even completely alien vehicles providing
they have some kind of manual controls.
Stealth - You are so good at moving quietly and hiding that whenever you are in shadows or darkness,
providing you are wearing suitable clothing you will
not be noticed by enemies who do not have appropriate super senses while standing still or creeping
at half your normal movement speed.

Surgeon - You are a top surgeon, able to perform

emergency operations even in the field, with scavenged and improvised equipment. Given proper facilities you can perform even the most delicate surgery.

SNARE
You are able to produce a sticky glue or fluid. The
fluid sets quickly on contact with air to form ropes,
lines, nets, balls and so forth with a variety of uses.
The set fluid evaporates in a few minutes, leaving
no residue, and it is not fl ammable. While solid, it
is as strong as steel cable.
Rank 1: You have a fluid reserve equal to 15 fluid
points, that is replenished back to full capacity
every 5 pages. You can spend no more than 10 fluid
points on any individual action.
For 1 fluid point per line created, you can create
rope-like lines as if from a lineslinger gun. You can
climb such lines by re-absorbing the fluid from
the bottom up.
In a single panel, you can spin a spiral of fl uid to
create a shield with which to make blocking reactions. This shield has a health of 1d6 per fluid point

POWERS 73
spent. The shield may only be used for blocking, not
for parrying.
In a double-panel, you can roll a ball of fluid and fire
it at an enemy. The ball does 1d6 damage per 2 fluid
points spent. The damage dice may be split between
health damage and stamina damage as you choose
(before attacking), but you may not assign more dice
to health damage than to stamina damage.
In a double-panel, you may wrap single target within 20 metres in strands of fluid so that they cannot
move. This action binds a single target within 20
metres so that they cannot move. The restraints
created by the fl uid have a strength equal to 10
times the number of magic points spent on it.
The basic chance of the target breaking free from
the restraint is equal to the targets strength expressed as a percentage.
For each fluid point less than 10 that you spend on
the attack, increase that chance by +10%.
For each super power that the target has that could
help them escape (flight, super leap, elasticity, acrobatics, freeform shapechange, claws, gymnastics
skill) the chance increases by +10%. The escapology
skill increase the chance by +30%.
If the target has the teleport power or the phasing
power, they can use these to automatically escape
the restraint.
If the targets chance to escape is 100% or better,
they can do so without needing to spend any actions.
If the targets chance to escape is 70%-99%, they
lose their next panel while restrained, and may then
make attempts to break free that take a doublepanel per attempt.
If the targets chance to escape is 1%-69%, they
lose their next 2 panels while restrained, and may
then make attempts to break free that take a double-panel per attempt.
Rank 2: You have an additional 1d10 fl uid points
per 5 page period. Roll the die once when you gain
this rank rather than rolling it each time you refresh your fluid points.

SUPER ENDURANCE
You have unnatural levels of endurance. You can
run marathons without getting tired, and hold your
breath for an hour.

Rank 1: Your endurance score is increased by 1d6+6

points. This may increase your stamina, health and
recovery rate.
Rank 2+: Your endurance score is increased by another 1d6+6 points per rank. This may increase your
stamina, health and recovery rate.

SUPER HEALTH
You have unusual regenerative or are unnaturally
healthy. Roll 1d6 on the super health table to see
what type of health power you have.
Environmental Protection - You have no need of
oxygen and do not need to breathe (although toxic
or otherwise gasses affect you normally), and you
can survive in any pressure from the vacuum of
space to deep sea depths.
Fast Recovery - You recover stamina twice per page
rather than once, and you recover health twice per
hour instead of once.
Immune To Disease/Radiation - You are immune
to all normal diseases and to the harmful effects
of radiation. This does not give you immunity to
nuclear enegy blasts.
Immune To Poison - You are immune to all poisons
and toxins.

74 POWERS
Super Health Table

Super Senses Table

Roll (1d6)

Health Type

Roll (1d6)

Sense Type

Environmental Protection

1-2

Animal Senses

Fast Recovery

3-4

Enhanced Sense

Immune To Disease/Radiation

Radar Sense

Immune To Poison

Choose or special sense

Regeneration

Choose

Regeneration - You recover 1d6 health each time

you spend a double-panel resting.

SUPER LEAP
You can leap great distances, either in a single bound
or (if you do not have the headroom) a series of
smaller leaps.

Enhanced Sense Table

Roll (1d6)

Sense Type

Enhanced Hearing

Enhanced Sight

Enhanced Smell

Enhanced Taste

Enhanced Touch

Choose
Special Sense Table

Rank 1: In a double-panel you can leap twice your

normal movement speed if leaping horizontally, or
your normal movement speed if leaping vertically.

Roll (1d6)

Sense Type

Thermal Vision

Microscopic Vision

If you leap at least 4 metres into combat directly

before making an attack, you can either gain a +2
damage bonus on one of your normal melee attacks
or make a special flying kick attack that does 1d6
health damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage. The flying kick attack takes a panel to perform, and uses
up a second panel in advance (similar to taking a
reaction) during which you must recover.

Magnetic Sense

Life Sense

X-Ray Vision

Choose

During the first and last double-panels of the leap,

you may perform no other action, but during other
mid-leap panels and double-panels you may perform
other actions while in mid-air.

SUPER SENSES
You have senses that a normal person does not possess, or your senses are unnaturally sensitive in
some way.
Roll 1d6 on the super senses table to see what type
of sense you have. If you get an enhanced sense,
roll 1d6 on the enhanced sense table. If you get a
special sense, roll on the special sense table.

Rank 2: You can leap a distance of up to your movement speed multiplied by your strength score horizontally or half your movement speed multiplied by
your strength score vertically.
The time taken for the leap is half the time it would
take to cover the distance using normal movement.

Animal Senses - You have the normal human senses,

but all of them are as acute as those of a predatory
animal. You can hear a footstep at fifty paces, and
spot a mouse scurrying through the grass. You are
never surprised by an attack. You gain a +1 bonus to
all parrying rolls and can automatically see astral
forms.
Radar Sense - You are able to detect solid matter
within 40 metres in a 180 degree arc in front of
you regardless of whether it is visible or not. This
lets you effectively see in total darkness and lets
you see people using the invisibility or camoufl age

POWERS 75
page, feel the fingerprints left on a surface, and
similar feats.
Thermal Vision - You can see the temperature of
objects. This lets you effectively see in total darkness and lets you see people using the invisibility
or camoufl age powers or the stealth skill. You can
also tell whether objects have recently been handled due to the residual heat on them and can even
read in the dark by observing the different thermal
properties of ink and paper.
Microscopic Vision - You are able to see incredible
detail on close objects as if looking at them through
a powerful microscope. This lets you identify different fibres or hairs left at a crime scene, recognise
fingerprints, read microdots, and similar feats.

powers or the stealth skill. This sense is not fine

grained enough to read by.
Enhanced Hearing - Your hearing is sensitive enough
to recognise people by their distinctive heartbeat
or to pick out a whispered conversation across a
crowded noisy room. You can track the movements
of opponents you cant see by the noise they make,
and when attacking such opponents you only get half
the normal penalties to your to-hit roll.
Enhanced Sight - You can see in pinpoint detail all
the way to the horizon as long as your view is not
obstructed.
Enhanced Smell - You can identify people by their
unique smell even if they are otherwise perfectly
disguised, and you can tell who people have met in
the last 24 hours and where they live by the lingering scents on their clothes. You can also track by
scent as well as a bloodhound can and can detect
the presence of unusual or poisonous gasses in the
air before their concentration has reached a high
enough level to be dangerous.
Enhanced Taste - Your taste is so sensitive that
you can identify the exact chemical composition of
anything you taste even a tiny amount of. This lets
you detect any poison in food, identify different
inks by licking the paper they have been written
on, and similar feats.
Enhanced Touch - Your sense of touch is so fine
that you can detect microscopic fl aws or cracks
in materials, read a book by feeling the ink on the

Magnetic Sense - You are aware of magnetic fields

within 40 metres. This lets you see active electrical devices and wiring even if they are behind walls
and see the changes in magnetic fields caused by
the use of electrical devices. It also lets you read
the earths magnetic field and always know exactly
where you are and which direction you are facing.
Life Sense - You can sense the exact number and
position of all living beings within 100 metres that
are larger than a mouse, including androids. This lets
you see people using the invisibility or camoufl age
powers or the stealth skill. Although you can distinguish the rough size and shape of each life form,
so you can tell a person from a dog for example, you
can not use this skill to recognise individuals.
X-Ray Vision - You can see through objects within 40 metres as if they are made of clear glass,
with the exception of lead and gold. X-ray vision
is targeted in that you can only see through the
thing you are directly looking at. Other things in
your field of vision appear solid as normal. You can
control the depth to which you look as naturally as
focusing your eyes on different distances.

SUPER SPEED
You can move at incredible speeds. The increased
speed only applies to normal ground movement. If
you have the flight power, having super speed does
not let you fly faster.
Rank 1: You can move at twice your normal movement speed in combat, and three times your normal movement speed if moving in a long relatively
straight line.
You may always act before other people on your
side when it is your initiative, regardless of your
relative agility scores.

76 POWERS
As a double-panel action, you may spend half a panel
moving, a panel taking an action that normally takes
that amount of time, and then a second half panel
moving again. If you have the flight power then you
may do this using flying movement.
If you run at least 4 metres into combat directly before making an attack, you can either gain a +4 Damage bonus on one of your normal melee attacks or
make a special charge attack that does 1d6 health
damage and 2d6+6 stamina damage. The charge attack takes a panel to perform, and uses up a second
panel in advance (similar to taking a reaction) during
which you must recover.

Rank 1: For every metre that you teleport you lose 1

stamina.
Teleporting while carrying large amounts of matter is more tiring and can actually be damage. For
each multiple of your own mass (round down) that
you take with you when you teleport, the amount of
stamina that you lose is doubled.
Additionally you lose half as much health as you
lose stamina and any living creatures or androids
you take with you lose as much stamina as you lose
health.

You also get a +3 dodge bonus.

Rank 2+: Each additional rank doubles your movement speed compared to the previous rank.

SUPER STRENGTH
You are much stronger than normal people.
Rank 1: Add 1d10+10 to your strength score. This
affects your dividers and your damage bonus normally.
Also, you may use the brace reaction in combat to
gain +5 to your knockback threshold.
Rank 2+: Add an additional 1d10+10 to your strength
score per rank. This affects your dividers and your
damage bonus normally.
Also, you may use the brace reaction in combat to
gain an additional +5 to your knockback threshold
per rank.

STUNNING ATTACK
You can shoot an energy beam that can stun your
opponents.
Your stunning attack takes a double-panel to produce, and has a range of 40 metres. It is strike
class 3, and the S divider of any target it hit is
treated as if two points less than it actually is.
The stunning attack does 3d6 stamina damage and
no health damage.

TELEPORT
You have the ability to move from place to place
without crossing the intervening distance. Teleporting requires a double-panel.

If you teleport vertically upwards, it costs you twice

as much stamina.
If you teleport into an area that you cant see and
about which you have no knowledge, there is a 1%
chance per 2 metres that you will appear partially inside an object and take 5d6 stamina damage
and 5d6 health damage as you are shunted out. If
the area your are teleporting in is entirely solid,
you die.
Rank 2: you only lose 1 stamina per 2 metres that
you teleport (before multipliers apply), to a maximum
of 20 stamina for teleporting 40 metres or more.
You can teleport a maximum of 80 metres.
Rank 3: you only lose 1 stamina per 4 metres that
you teleport (before multipliers), to a maximum of 15
stamina for teleporting 60 metres or more. You can
teleport a maximum of 3,000 metres.

POWERS 77
TOUGHNESS
Your skin is extremely hard, and offers protection
as if you were armoured.
Rank 1: You have an armour class of D, an H divider
of /3 and an S divider of /2.
Also, you are immune to health damage from any
strike class 0 or strike class 1 attack, taking only
stamina damage from such attacks. If the strike
class 0 or strike class 1 attacks are with mundane
bullets or blades, you are completely immune, taking
no stamina damage either.

You are immune to all damage from any strike class 0

or strike class 1 attacks, but you may not dodge as
a reaction.

VEHICLE
You have a custom vehicle of some kind. The vehicle
may be aquatic or may be able to fly for free.
The vehicle does not count as one of your three
pieces of starting equipment, and you may choose
three extra pieces of starting equipment as gadgets
for your vehicle.

You are immune to all damage from any strike class 0

or strike class 1 attacks, but you may not dodge as
a reaction.

If you choose to do so, you may assign any other

powers that you start the game with to be part
of your vehicle rather than powers that you have
personally. For example if you rolled the energy
blast power you could decide that you had a blaster
cannon mounted on your vehicle rather than being
able to produce energy blasts yourself.

Rank 3: You have an armour class of B, an H divider

of /5 and an S divider of /4.

WALLCRAWLING

Rank 2: You have an armour class of C, an H divider

of /4 and an S divider of /3.

You are immune to all damage from any strike class 0

or strike class 1 attacks, but you may not dodge as
a reaction.
Rank 4: You have an armour class of A, an H divider
of /6 and an S divider of /5.

You are able to walk on walls and ceilings without

needing handholds and with no chance of falling off.

WEAPON MASTERY
You are incredibly skilled with a particular weapon.
You may possess this power multiple times for skill
with more than one weapon. The weapon chosen
must be a specific form of weapon (e.g. swords,
bows, guns, and so forth) but does not have to be
a specific individual item. For example, if you have
weapon mastery with swords you are skilled with
all swords and not just your own personal katana.
Rank 1: When using your chosen weapon type in a
single attack mode (melee or ranged) your attacks
are strike class 4. If your chosen weapon is a shield,
then it has an additional mode (defence) and you
must choose this mode.
Rank 2: Choose one of the following two options:
Your attacks with your chosen weapon type are
strike class 4 in all attack modes.
Attacks with your chosen weapon in your chosen attack mode do +2 damage if it is single
handed or +5 damage if it is two-handed.
Rank 3: Choose one of the following two options:
Your attacks with your chosen weapon type are
strike class 4 in all attack modes. They do +2

78 POWERS
double-panel, and you must spend one panel per page
concentrating to keep the fog in place, otherwise
they fade.
You may summon a whirlwind around yourself. The
whirlwind has a health of 1d6 (rolled when you create
it), and incoming physical and energy attacks have
their damage reduced by this amount, with it first
being subtracted from the incoming health damage
and then any remainder being subtracted from the
incoming stamina damage.
The whirlwind does not protect you from any knockback that the attack may do.
Once you have activated the whirlwind, you do not
need to concentrate to keep it up.
damage if it is single handed or +5 damage if
it is two-handed.
Attacks with your chosen weapon in your chosen attack mode do +5 damage if it is single
handed or +10 damage if it is two-handed.

WEATHER CONTROL
You are able to control weather and produce a variety of weather effects. Summoning any weather
effect takes a double-panel, as does dismissing it.
Rank 1: You can summon gale force winds in a 20
metre radius. The winds force everyone in the area
to move at half speed and give everyone who is either in the area or firing a ranged attack into the
area a -2 penalty on their to-hit rolls.
Since you are in the eye of the storm, your own
movement is not affected by the gale (and the area
moves as you do) but your ranged attacks are affected by it.
You must spend one panel per page concentrating
to keep the winds in place, otherwise they fade.
You can also reverse the process to stop winds that
are up to gale force and slow stronger winds within
a 20 metre radius.
Rank 2: When you summon a gale, for each extra
panel you spend concentrating on it (over and above
the panel per page that you need to spend to maintain it) you can increase the to-hit penalty by an
additional -1 and reduce all movement by a further 1
metre per panel.
You may summon thick fog in a 20 metre radius. This
obscures vision and gives a -2 penalty on all to-hit
rolls but does not affect movement. This takes a

You may summon torrential rain or snow in a 20

metre radius that can put out fires. You do not need
to concentrate to keep it up.
you may only have one of the above weather phenomena active at one time.
You can also nullify any of the above weather phenomena within a 20 metre range if they are naturally
occurring.
Rank 3: You may summon and maintain more than
one weather phenomena at the same time, and you
only have to spend one panel per page concentrating
to keep them in place.

TABLES 79
ABILITY AND WEIGHT TABLES
Object Table

Object Size/Mass

Strength Needed To

Example Objects

Health

Tablet, Boot, Stone

Laptop, Brick, Chair, Monitor

Television, Desk, Bicycle, Sign Post

26kg-80kg

11

Dishwasher, Fridge, Moped, Lamp Post

81kg-195kg

11

16

Motorcycle, Safe, Washing Machine

196kg-445kg

11

16

21

Caravan, Trailer, Concrete Bollard

10

446kg-1,000kg

16

21

26

Sports Car, Glider

12

1,001kg-2,150kg

21

26

31

Hatchback Car, Small Helicopter

14

2,151kg-4,650kg

26

31

36

4x4 Vehicle, Van

16

4,651kg-10t

31

36

41

Jet Fighter, Coach, Flatbed Truck

18

10.1t-21.5t

36

41

46

Lorry, Bulldozer

20

21.6t-46.5t

41

46

51

Articulated Lorry, Train Carriage, Private Jet

22

46.6t-100t

46

51

56

Tank, Train Locomotive, Fishing Boat

25

101t-215t

51

56

61

Space Shuttle, Hovercraft, Steam Train

28

216t-465t

56

61

66

Passenger Ferry, Jumbo Jet

31

466t-1,000t

61

66

71

Minesweeper, Passenger Ferry

34

1,001t-2,150t

66

71

76

Submarine, Frigate

37

2,151t-4,650t

71

76

81

Destroyer, Rocket

40

4,651t-10,000t

76

81

86

Cruiser, Container Vessel

45

10,001t-21,500t

81

86

91

Oil Tanker, Heavy Cruiser

50

21,501t-46,500t

86

91

96

Battleship, Cruise Liner

55

46,501t-100,000t

91

96

101

Aircraft Carrier, Oil Rig

60

Push

Lift

Throw

< 1kg

1kg-4kg

5kg-25kg

Wall Strength Table

(For A Super-hero Sized Hole)
Material

Damage
Needed

Knockback
Reduction

Normal Glass

2m

Wood

2m

Thin Metal

2m

Bulletproof Glass

16

4m

Brick

16

4m

Metal Door

24

6m

Stone

32

8m

Concrete

32

8m

Armour Plating

32

8m

Agility Table
Agility

Agility Bonus

16+

(Agility-15)

6-15

1-5

(Agility-6)

Strength Table
Strength

Damage
Bonus

Divider
Modifier

60+

(Strength-15)

H/+1, S/+3

40-59

(Strength-15)

H/+1, S/+2

19-39

(Strength-15)

H/+1, S/+1

16-18

(Strength-15)

6-15

1-5

(Strength-6)

Endurance Table
Endurance

Recovery Rate Bonus

26+

+3

21-25

+2

16-20

+1

6-15

1-5

-1

80 TABLES
Power Table (Roll d100)

POWER GENERATION TABLES

Power Table (Roll d100)

Roll

Power

Max Ranks

Roll

Power

Max Ranks

01-02

Accuracy

45-49

Martial Arts*

03-05

Acrobatics

50

Phasing

06-09

Armour

51-52

Psychic Ability*

10

Camoufl age

53-54

Reactions

11

Claws

55-56

Shapechange*

12-14

Cybernetics*

57

Shrinking

15

Danger Sense

58

Sidekick

16

Density Control (Other)

59-62

Skills*

17

Density Control (Self)

63

Snare

18

Duplication

64-65

Super Endurance

19

Elasticity

66-67

Super Health*

20-27

Energy Blast*

68-69

Super Leap

28

Energy Reflect*

70-71

Super Senses*

29

Environmental Control*

72-73

Super Speed

30-34

Flight

74-79

Super Strength

35-36

Forcefield*

80

Stunning Attack

37

Growth

81-82

Teleport

38

Immunity*

83-86

Toughness

39

Impervious

87

Vehicle

40

Invisibility

88

Wallcrawling

41

Larger

89-94

Weapon Mastery*

42

Luck

95

Weather Control

43-44

Magic*

96-00

Free Choice or Upgrade

Cybernetic Implants Table

Energy Type Table

Roll (1d10)

Implant

Roll (1d10)

Energy Type

Bionic Arm

Fire

Retractable Glider

Cold

Hologram Projector

Electricity

Cyber Controller

Light

Power Simulator

Sound

Power Enhancer

Nuclear

Brain Implant

Plasma

Cyber Weapon

Shadow

Mind Control Device

Cosmic

10

Choose

10

Choose

Martial Arts Table

Shapechange Table

Roll (1d6)

Style

Roll (1d6)

Type

1-3

Oriental

1-3

Freeform

4-6

Streetfighting

4-6

Specific

TABLES 81
POWER GENERATION TABLES (CONTINUED)

Environmental Control Table

Forcefield Table

Roll (1d6)

Environmental Aspect

Roll (1d6)

Forcefield Type

Dimensional

Hard Force Wall

Electrical

Soft Force Wall

Gravity

Hard Force Shield

Magnetism

Soft Force Shield

Molecular

Personal Forcefield

Temperature

Choose

Magic Spells Table

Psychic Powers Table

Roll (1d10)

Spell

Roll (1d10)

Power

Astral Projection

Empathy

Bestow Gift

Hallucinations

Eldritch Bolt

Mind Control

Hypnotism

Precognition

Illusion

Psionic Blast

Lore

Psychic Drain

Mystic Shield

Telekinesis

Restraint

Telepathy

Summoning

Transmutation

10

Choose

10

Choose

Skills Table

Super Senses Table

Roll (1d10)

Skill

Roll (1d6)

Sense Type

Acting

1-2

Animal Senses

Computer Use

3-4

Enhanced Sense

Disguise

Radar Sense

Escapology

Choose or Special Sense

Gymnastics

Locksmith

Pilot

Stealth

Surgeon

10

Choose
Super Health Table

Roll (1d6)

Health Type

Environmental Protection

Fast Recovery

Immune to Disease/Radiation

Immune to Poison

Regeneration

Choose

Enhanced Sense Table

Roll (1d6)

Sense Type

Enhanced Hearing

Enhanced Sight

Enhanced Smell

Enhanced Taste

Enhanced Touch

Choose
Special Sense Table

Roll (1d6)

Sense Type

Thermal Vision

Microscopic Vision

Magnetic Sense

Life Sense

X-ray Vision

Choose

82 TABLES
BASIC COMBAT TABLES

Physical Attack Detailed Steps Table

Order of Step

Details of Step

Attacker rolls to-hit. If they miss, the attack ends here.

Defender chooses a Reaction.

2a (optional)

If the defender is Dodging, they roll to reduce the incoming damage.

Knockback distance is calculated (2 metres per 5 stun

damage beyond their Knockback Threshold).

3a (optional)

If the defender is Parrying, they roll for success. On a success,

they roll parrying damage to cancel out incoming damage.

3b (optional)

If the defender is Blocking, the object they are blocking with takes
some of the incoming damage, reducing the amount they take.

The defender takes any remaining damage,

reducing it if they have Dividers.

4a (optional)

If the defender was knocked back into an object, they take 1d6
Stun (reduced by their S Divider) and may be knocked through it.

4b (optional)

If the defender was knocked back, they must roll 1d20 + 1 per 2 metres of
Knockback and get less than or equal to their Agility to remain standing.

Initiative Table (Roll d10 vs d10)

Physical Damage Table (By Attack Type)

Initiative
Difference

Winners Advance Panels

1-2

1 Panel

3-4

2 Panels

5-6
7-9

Attack Type

Health

Stamina

Unarmed

1d6-6

2d6

3 Panels

Judo Throw

1d3

2d6

4 Panels

Blunt One-handed
Weapon

1d6-6

2d6

Blunt Two-handed
Weapon

1d6

2d6+6

Blunt Thrown
Object/Weapon

1d6

2d6+3

Sharp One-handed
Weapon

2d6

1d6

Sharp Two-handed
Weapon

2d6+3

1d6

Sharp Thrown
Weapon

2d6+3

1d6

Projectile Weapon

2d6+3

1d6+3

Explosive Weapon

3d6+3

2d6+3

Energy Blast

Varies

Varies

To-hit Table (Roll number or higher)

Strike Class

Armour Class

Damage

13

12

11

10

13

12

11

10

13

12

11

10

13

12

11

10

13

12

11

10

12

11

10

11

10

10

TABLES 83
COMBAT REACTION TABLES

Judo Throw Table (Roll d6 + Strike Bonus)

Dodging Table (Roll d6 + Dodge Bonus)

3+

12

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

12

11

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

11

+P

10

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

10

+P

+P

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

+P

+P

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

+P

+P

P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

+P

+P

P, Dam

2P, Dam

2P, Dam

+P

+P

P, Dam

2P, Dam

+P

P, Dam

2P, Dam

P, Dam

P, Dam

Dodge Roll

Judo Throw Roll

Strike Class

Parrying Table (Roll number or higher)

Rank 3 Martial Arts

Rank 1-2 Martial Arts

Shield
(With Weapon Mastery)

Other Melee Parry

(With Weapon Mastery)

Other Melee Parry

(Without Weapon Mastery)

Any Ranged Weapon

(With Weapon Mastery)

Any Ranged Weapon

(Without Weapon Mastery)

Energy Blast

Attack Type

Parry Type

Rank 3 Martial Arts

14

Rank 1-2 Martial Arts

13

Other Melee Attack

(With Weapon Mastery)

10

14

Other Melee Attack

(Without Weapon Mastery)

Any Ranged Weapon

(With Weapon Mastery)

10

15

11

Thrown Weapon
(Without Weapon Mastery)

13

Projectile Weapon
(Without Weapon Mastery)

14

10

Energy Blast

84 TABLES
PERSONAL PROFILE TABLES
Confidence Table

Confidence

Downtime Points

Can Increase
Resources?

Will bonus
for defence

Hero Points

15-30

-2

No

31-45

No

46-60

Yes

61-63

Yes

+1

64-66

Yes

+2

67-69

Yes

+3

70-72

Yes

+4

73-75

Yes

+5

76-78

Yes

+5

79-81

Yes

+5

82-84

Yes

+5

85-87

Yes

+5

88-90

Yes

+5

Financial Resources Table

Financial
Resources

Description

Home

Clothing

Transport

Destitute

Homeless

Rags

Foot

Scraping By

Hostel

A Single Change

Bus

Poor

Rented Room

Charity Shop Selection

Bicycle

Average

Rented Flat

Cheap Casual Clothes

Moped

Comfortable

Shared House

Cheap Suit

Second Hand Car

Well Off

Small House

Quality Suit

New Car

Affluent

Cottage

Made-to-measure Suit

4x4 or Sports Car

Loaded

Large Town House

Designer Suit

Chauffeur Driven

Rich

Mansion

High Fashion

Private Yacht

10

Filthy Rich

Castle

Personal Designer

Private Jet

Material Resources Table

Material
Resources

Description

None

A few simple and basic tools (screwdriver, shovel, hammer)

A basic tool set

Power tools

Scientific tools for one speciality

Scientific tools for many specialities

Full laboratory for one speciality

Full laboratories for many specialities

Entire research facility

10

Multinational research facilities

TABLES 85
DOWNTIME TABLES

Device Components Table

Complexity

Material Resources
Needed

Experience Points Per Stage

Anyone could make it

Needs some know-how

10

Needs knowledge
and equipment

15

Needs specialist
equipment

20

Needs precision work and

innovative research

25

Experience Point Cost Table

Device Components Table

Desired
Result

Experience Points
Needed

Components
Needed

Financial Resources
Needed

Increase a
Personal Profile Score

10 x Current Score

Cheap, common parts

Increase an
Ability Score

10 x Current Score

Average, common
parts

Increase a
Resource Level

10 x Current Score

Hard to find or
expensive parts

Keep an Increase

5 per week for

(New Score) weeks

Custom-made
hi-tech parts

Create a Device

Varies

Acquire a
New Super Power

30 x Current Powers

Secret, illegal or
cutting edge parts

Improve a
Super Powers Rank

100 x Current Rank

Downtime Point Experience Table

Suitability Of
Activity To Goal

Experience
Points Gained

Completely Unsuitable

A Poor Fit

Average

Well Suited

Ideal

NAME: ................................................

SECRET IDENTITY: ................................................

STRENGTH

Damage Bonus: ................

Knockback Threshold: ................

AGILITY

Strike Bonus: ................

Dodge Bonus: ................

WILL

Panels Per Page: ................ Magic/Psychic/Energy: ................

ENDURANCE

Armour Class: ................

POWERS & PERKS

EQUIPMENT

Health: ................

Stamina: ................

S Divider: ................

Material Resources: ................

Battered: ................

Dazed: ................

Financial Resources: ................

Stunned: ................

Downtime Pts / Week: ................

H Divider: ................

Recovery Rate: ................

Attack

Movement Speed: ................

Hero Points: ................

Recovery Rate: ................

Strike Class Damage

Notes

Backing: ................

Methods: ................

Conscience: ................

Heroism: ................

Approachability: ................

Social Circle: ................

Identification: ................

Fame: ................

Success Rate: ................

Public Relations: ................

Power Use: ................

Public Response: ................

Competence: ................

Contacts: ................

Security: ................

POPULARITY: ................

INVESTIGATION: ................

CONFIDENCE: ................