Let's just say that....
Overview
Awesome magics and terrifying monsters are the heart of fantasy adventures. This chapter shows you how to include spells, prayers, and superhuman abilities in your game.
“Powers” is a short-hand for any ability which a normal human being can’t do; things like miraculously healing someone, running superhumanly fast, or commanding elemental energies.
Mortal races acquire these abilities by studying magic; gods and demigods wield them naturally, and bestow lesser versions upon their worshippers; and elementals, dragons, demons, and undead have supernatural powers.
This chapter presents a selection of powers, covering things like elemental control, healing, death and domination. It’s not an exhaustive list: for that reason we’ve provided guidelines for you to create your own powers.
Every fantasy setting is unique, and your game may have powers which no other setting has: this chapter shows you how to easily incorporate them into your game.
Powers are skills, and have trappings and stunts showing how they can be used, described below; see the section “How To Do Things With Powers” in Chapter Twelve: How To Do Things for the rules for using power skills.
We’ve described the power skills “neutrally”, allowing them to be used interchangeably as magical spells, divine miracles, or monstrous abilities. What a power looks like is a matter for description, not rules, and is dealt with using manifestations.
Manifestations
Power skills may be used in different ways, depending on the user. They may be cast as spells, called down as divine miracles, or used as natural abilities by creatures. All power skills use the same basic rules (see page 171); there’s no difference in rules terms between a Transmutation spell, a Transmutation miracle, or a Transmutation natural ability.
Characters using power skills can decide for themselves what those powers look like in use. Usually this manifestation is linked to the character’s power aspect (see page 171): a Crotchety Old Hedge Wizard casts spells, a Fanatical Priest of the War God chants prayers, and a Leprechaun Who Loves Practical Jokes has a selection of magical powers which simply work!
For example, Dagoraz the Necromancer uses the Death power to cast spells controlling undead and chilling the souls of his foes.
The ancient vampire Landergast has exactly the same Death power, but for him it represents his ability to drain his victims’ life force and blood. Still further, Malpropor the Mind Master uses the Death power to represent his psionic powers of Mind Blast and the “Anti-life Energy Field” his mental powers can project. All these look very different (and may differ in their favoured trappings and stunts), but all use the same rules.
Yeah, it is epic.
